jkeisling/hacker-news-corpus-2007-2022 huggingface dataset:
I assume you're referring to the Crescent Bay prototype, and I agree. The Gear VR will help too, as will potentially their acquisition of Nimble VR (more robust hand-tracking than the Leap).

That said, 2015 is just the beginning of the VR explosion, and Fred Wilson's prediction is phrased vaguely enough that he could probably claim it to have been accurate at the end of 2015 either way.
Proactive Computing -- Los Altos, CA / Remote

Hiring: DevOps, Backend, and full-stack engineers.

Our stack: AWS, Python, C

Today, computing is reactive. Users pull out their phone or laptop and start from scratch with an empty search box or a screen of apps. There is no context for the task at hand, and no history of the user's preferences. It won't be this way for long, your computer has an incredible volume of data about you stored in email and in calendar so a world where this rich context is put to use is inevitable. We are doing just this -- building rich user profiles and analyzing the tasks each user needs to accomplish in real time -- so that when a user pulls out their phone, they are proactively presented with personalized solutions.

We are moving from a world where computers are tools people engage, to a world where computers proactively engage users with targeted decisions -- simplifying and automating life's daily tasks. This is a categorical shift in how we use computers and we have found early traction and growth via converting daily tasks into actions through large scale data processing of users email and calendar data.

Contact: wferrell AT weldai.com
Looks like my 2015 will be a lot of python -- specifically to build more robust systems with Django, Scrapy, and NLTK.

And if I get a new Mac this year I might attempt Swift.
Stories like this make me wonder if there should be some sort of law/regulation to ensure data availability for a certain amount of time if a site is shut down - in a similar way that there's a process for the government to force companies to issue safety recalls. There's an interesting philosophical question here - if our data makes up part of our memories, is negligence of that data tantamount to, say, negligence in making football helmets that could permit head trauma and potentially "erase" the ability to access memories?
This is the message i sent

Should we ban pencils, because a terrorist wrote a threat on a paper?
This is exactly what has happened.

Honorable Sir, Yesterday an order issued by DoT blocked 32 websites
including Github which are used by scientists/engineers/researchers/students
for collaboration.

This is clearly an un-informed decision, and engineers across the
world are wondering how this was arm-twisted as a policy.

I have never interacted with the PMO, but I voice the opinion of
millions of engineers like me.
The 486 was pipelined but not superscalar. You could approach 1 instruction per clock cycle but you could never go over 1.

---

286: protected memory extensions for x86

386: useful protected memory extensions for x86. (Hardly anything used 286 protected memory.)

486: first RISC-like pipelined x86

586: first superscalar x86
ComScore Total Universe Report: 1 (as far as we know)
What I find Surreal is that IBM is still the company to beat in 2011. I mean, by 1981 they were already the king of the hill for a good 15-20 years. To put that into perspective, who thinks apple, (or google, microsoft) will be relevant in 2061!!
There is tremendous growth left in the ARM/smartphone form-factor (not necessarily touch), because it will eventually disrupt the desktop.
It would seem difficult for apple to retain dominant marketshare (Android passed it already) once processors get fast enough that apple's ingenious integration isn't needed anymore, but apple will grow with it.
Apple will also still have strengths of design, marketing, installed base of apps, AppStore, developers, experience in all of that, lower costs, ahead of the engineering learning curve etc. I agree that without Steve, they'll probably find it hard to pull off the next great revolution (like many companies without their firebrand founders, eg HP).

IBM doesn't need to lose for apple to grow larger than them. You're right that their diversification gives them safety, but as Buffett says of growth: put all your eggs in one basket and watch that basket.
I agree that biology is nanotechnology. But I disagree that nanotech is limited by what nature has done already on Earth. Nature cannot possibly have explored the entire search space and found the global optimum, even in these five billion years.
IIRC from previous posts on HN, you should correct that to read "Engineer of Reddit".

They're an organization in flux, and when you're in that state, the priority is survival.
The NSA had a benevolent reputation with regards to primitives, not in general. The thinking was that the NSA would not structurally weaken encryption standards, because USG uses these primitives too, so they would be shooting themselves in the foot by inserting backdoors - don't shit in your own backyard basically.
The NSA was accused of weakening DES, even though they did the opposite. There has never been a time where the NSA was trusted.
Union organizers need better opsec. Ideally, management shouldn't know the workers are talking union until they stage the first wildcat strike.
Let me give you an example to illustrate the scale.

An average human cell is composed of 100 trillion atoms. [0]

An average human body is composed of 100 trillion cells.

By that we see there are about 10^28 atoms in a human body.

Let’s be conservative, and say the world population for the next fifty years stays under 10 billion (most estimates say closer to 100 years).

That gives us about 10^38 atoms across all human beings on earth.

Why does this matter? Because 2^128 is 3.4 × 10^38.

That’s three IPv6 addresses for each and every atom in all the humans on earth for at least the next 50 years.

If that’s not the definition of overkill, I dunno what is.

[0] https://www.thoughtco.com/how-many-atoms-in-human-cell-60388...

Edit:
And if you say the real routable space of IPv6 is only 2^64, then my point still stands. Rather than it being 3 IPs for every atom, it’s still an IP for essentially every cell of every human on earth for the foreseeable future.
The word "vegan" is not regulated in the US. If hypocrisy is to be avoided then vegan friendly non-milk beverages need to refrain from calling themselves "milk".
I work at Stripe. Could you email me at edwin@stripe.com? I'd like to dig into this more.

US sanction regulations generally mean we can't work with entities that have business connected to Iran (but that doesn't necessarily mean Iranian food is prohibited).
You don't. If you're not my doctor, you don't get access. How do I know you're not putting the data on a misconfigured ElasticSearch instance that's accessible via public internet? Why should I take that chance?
Where suspicion approaches certainty, evil-ish approaches perfectly understandable and rational.
Interesting for its exploration of the idea of programming languages expressed in something other than linear text.
Apple at $1000 is not a winner. GameStop at $1 is a winner. If you are Buffet you can start doubting the price that the market sets for the stock. If you are a normal person you will probably be wrong more often than the market so don't bother contradicting it.
Why did Germans go from having a functioning liberal democratic society, to becoming some of the most cruel barbarians in human history, to becoming a peace-loving nation, all over the course of a few decades?

Things are complicated and the forces of history move in unpredictable and difficult to explain ways. We can identify broad trends which change cultures and societies: catastrophic events, economic changes, political changes, etc. But there's often no single explanation.
It would be interesting to see what JSON library they used that uses scanf for parsing numbers. Nothing like a painters algorithm type scenario to really slow things down, but also JSON numbers are super simple and don't need all that work. That is hundreds of MB's of unneeded searching for 0s
Speaking as someone who is has done this in their career, the data trove here would be extremely easy to monetize. No Hedge fund / Fintech company would ever turn this kinda data down the yearly licensing fee would def be in the millions. Not saying that they are doing this now but remember that once you submit this data that's going to be with LL for a long time. If they run into some situation in a few years and find this desirable, you're data is going to be part of the package.

What they really should be doing is outsourcing this to another company that is specifically dedicated to identity verification (like Personia.io) and NOT collect any of the underlying documentation. But why the hell would they do that when there's so much future upside they would be giving up?
And with most RE software(especially the mentioned inaccessible interactive disassembling tool) you'll get that by default, waiting for a 70mb binary to analyze isn't fun :)
Is it really that bad? From what I remember, in Canada my vulnerable sector check was as simple as going to a location, showing my drivers license and giving basic contact info, and waiting a few minutes while they query a few databases. I’m told it gets slightly more complicated if you share a name and birthday with somebody convicted of a serious crime, but that’s the exception rather than the rule.
Thanks for sharing!

I use a collection of commands in a dotfiles [1] repo I share around a few machines.

This [2] command, compresses any video into a small web-playable file with relatively high quality so you can quickly share HD footage.

ffcompress INPUT.mp4
# creates INPUT.compressed.mp4

[1] https://github.com/benwinding/dotfiles

[2] https://github.com/benwinding/dotfiles/blob/master/bin/ffcom...
If there's already a language that's good at CRUD and ETL (or aims to be), and most programs are that, then it's not a problem to have other languages that are good at other things at the expense of being good at CRUD and ETL.

Even if it's true, as you say, that it's rare to write a derivative function, it still does come up. And there should be a good way to express it in at least some languages.
From the article:

> It’s privacy-by-obfuscation instead of privacy-by-abstention. But it does prevent your web browser/IP address/location from being leaked.
I've benefited a great deal from the interactive exercises at Khan Academy, and I wish these folks the best. It's a huge undertaking to go beyond static illustrations, to animations, to user-interactive immersive elements — and to make it all work smoothly across many platforms and devices.

LOL, when I click on figure 2.3 I see "Firefox prevented this site from opening 21 pop-up windows." http://immersivemath.com/ila/ch02_vectors/ch02.html#fig_vec_...

Obviously a bug and not anything nefarious. Seeing this just makes me feel more grateful for their efforts.
What I getting to?

If the companies sponsoring Blender, many of which already customers from the commercial days, withdraw their support tomorrow, in a couple of years Blender will turn into another Gimp, as everyone switch to something else to pay their bills.

What I learned from my zealot FOSS days, is that trying to sell FOSS desktop or developer tools is hardly any different from trying to make a living as street musician.

It is cool for a while, eventually it turns into survival, as bitter Winter arrives.
I imagine similar reason why Google Search only shows 1000 results maximum: those who hit the limit are either bots/crawlers or can find work-around (like searching for something else). To be honest realistically who is reading 500 replies to a comment?
I think the Wikipedia's scihub page [0] can always be relied upon to know the current canonical URL.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub
For this specific decision I think we can put it down to incompetence over malice - it'd presumably be easy for whoever was co-ordinating it dismiss all the riot talks as bluster and figure it'd just be yet another protest with a lot of shouting. I imagine we'll hear more about it, but I would be surprised if it was a co-ordinated effort in concert with the rioters (I don't know what to call them).

The footage of police opening barriers and stuff, and taking selfies is however a bit more worrying. I think it's pretty well known that individuals within the police could identify or sympathise with Q or the far right - so if it turns out that this footage was exactly what it's seems to be (and we know how easily things can be misrepresented and shown out of context) then I imagine some cops are gonna be in big trouble.
Tor hidden services now for drugs AND crazy. Alternatively freenet not just for pedophiles anymore!
It is definitely true. There are hundreds if not thousands of right-leaning voices that have been silenced on left-leaning platforms like YT, Insta, Twit, & FB.
Scams always work on the way up. Madoff operated a Ponzi scheme for 17 years before running out of money. He simply used his bank account to pay off anyone who wanted to withdraw. As long as more total money flows in than flows out of the system, it doesn't fall apart.

The entire narrative around BTC is "HODL", and the only thing people really do with it is buy and hold. Money is flowing into the system, so there's room for scams to operate undetected within those margins.
Alexa says that thedonald.win ranks... #2404 globally, and #419 in the US.

https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/thedonald.win

For reference, this is higher than infowars (#507 in the US) but far lower than Breitbart (#72 in the US), to name other, um, right-wing conspiracy-promoting sites.

This is also lower than amazon.ca in the US (#354), apparently. That probably says something.
Yes, it is one of the methods used by Russian government to silence the opposition. Though the platforms are usually privately owned, they all 'independently' decide that some content can't be allowed on them.

Same will happen with the US. Sad.
I like the second version better because it taught me something I didn't know.
C# has an alternative compiler - Mono that let's it run on Android, iOS. How do I run a Go program on iPhone? What's the point of the "freedom" then?
Enables this:

# echo caps-lock > /sys/devices/platform/$your_led_device/leds/$the_led_name/trigger
Yes, they are hilariously on time. It really is a model for others to follow.
Upshot is, The Indie revealed another piece of the puzzle in the reach of the surveillance culture that's being built.

I suspect this is a direct leak from GCHQ, trying to get ahead of future stories, and also trying to undermine Snowden's stance as a responsible whistleblower. No-one else is in possession of this information, and the article reads like a puff piece for GCHQ, particularly the ending.

This is incredibly misleading from the Independent - if it was from government sources that should have been clearly stated. If not they should name their source, it's not The Guardian (info destroyed one month ago), Snowden (denied, seems unlikely), Greenwald (Brazil), or Poitras, so where did it come from if not the government? It's really embarrassing for them if they have been duped, and even worse if they are complicit and reproducing press-releases from GCHQ without attribution, and with the implication that they have seen secret documents.

If they have seen secret documents and the UK government provided them, this undermines the argument against whistleblowers like Snowden, if not, who is the source? Without a source being specified, their story is not credible.
I think it would be difficult to say. There are certainly specific products made in Shanghai, but other products made elsewhere may depend on parts made in Shanghai. The shutdown could easily extend to other regions at any time as well so that everything made in China could be affected, and everything that depends on parts from China. But there may be existing stores of products and parts, or workarounds, so if the shutdown doesn't last too long the effects may not be very noticeable. Even if ports are overwhelmed, a lot of product will still be moving, the chain will just be behind in delivering it. There is the supply chain "bullwhip effect" as well:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullwhip_effect

which can cause supply chains to undersupply, then oversupply, then undersupply in cycles. Note that the last supply chain disruption, while it has diminished, is still going on in some ways. I guess I'd expect more of the same, though maybe there are now better ways to work around the disruptions (workers sleeping at the workplace for a few months, etc.) Look at what things in your life you consider essential (car, plumbing, roof, heating, cooling, ...) and think about which might need replacing soon and decide whether to risk it or replace them now (or at least buy the parts). In most cases nonavailability for a while is more of an inconvenience than a crisis. In some cases there's not much you can do (ordering syringes to make sure your family can get vaccinated probably won't help for example). Prescription drugs made in China might be a particular point of concern if supply chain issues caused shortages, though then your doctor would have to understand your concern and agree and write an extended prescription. We've kind of been through this once, so there's a lot to learn from that experience. What problems did the last supply chain disruption cause for you?
Such a massive waste of space (not Facebook, others). Rooftops could easily house grass, solar and parking and yet is pretty much always completely wasted.
I don't know why equity would be a dealbreaker for you. There is some $X where getting $X extra would make up for no equity (considering equity is usually worth $0).

Instead of equity, you could ask to be paid $20k more, go to a casino, and bet it all on one spin of roulette at 36:1. If you win the first spin, let half of it ride on another 36:1 bet. That would give you a better payout distribution than is likely from equity.
For those wondering where 53 bits comes from, it's the size of the mantissa (significand, fraction) in a 64bit IEEE float.

You can use 64bit floats (double) to store exact integers up to 53 bits.

This works in a lot of languages on non 64bit hardware, php for example.
Basic income could be the solution to the unemployment problem caused by automation and higher productivity per person:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income_guarantee
You could save even more money by eliminating social security altogether, yet it is a useful service that shouldn't be dismantled for the sake of budgets alone. When cutting its important to take into consideration why something was started.
Which is why API or other names with 'new' in them are a bad idea. :-)
If Einstein were around today, I wonder if he'd be working on Wall Street?
You can never have too many white boards round the office. Always having a surface to draw on within reach encourages people to communicate.
Probably > 95% of them are free apps with hardly any traffic.

But this is part of the beauty of Heroku. If you hack something together instead just storing it with "git push origin" you can do "git push heroku" and actually demo it to the world for free.

I like to think of Heroku's 100,000 apps as public demos of a lot of GitHub repositories.
or better yet, how about their own status page?

http://status.github.com/
> All of which is a workaround for the fact that there is no explicit way to declare a c++ class to be abstract-only.

Sure you can. Just put the word "Abstract" in the class name, and then every programmer who reads that class name will know that it's abstract. What more does one need?

That approach is much clearer than resorting to tricks like a pure virtual destructor. At the end of the day it's all about communicating design.
Who cares? You can still code and commit code. Thats the magic of a DVCS.

If its bothering you that you can't push, take a break and watch the football game, or something[1]. The Bills might win their first game this season and the Jets were playing like they're trying to lose to the Browns (but are still winning).

1. No, not everyone is American. But, even in Australia, its not even 8AM on a Monday yet. I think its safe to assume that its not the busiest time in the world.

// edit: My point (glibly made) was that this shouldn't stop you from writing code, if you don't want it to. But, there are plenty of other things to do as well, besides coding.
Now with new inking capabilities, Project Spartan enables you to write or type directly on the page, comment on what’s interesting or clip what you want – then easily share this “Web Note” via mail, or a social network.

I'm really, really not sure how this is going to work in an era of single page apps. Presumably it can only really send the URL, so unless a developer has been very strict about using pushState (and good on them if they have) I think we'll see a lot of broken experiences with anything other than article web pages.
Well seems that simula OOP was a bit more like java/c++.
It was Kay who had the message passing idea, and the smalltalk people still don't consider java/c++/simula-derivatives as true OOP languages because they miss that.

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?AlanKaysDefinitionOfObjectOriented
http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~ram/pub/pub_jf47ht81Ht/doc_kay...
There are companies like teleport http://teleport.org that try to visualise this potential with data.

Also recommend this YCombinator startup school talk by Balaji Srinivasan on this topic: Silicon Valleys Ultimate Exit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOubCHLXT6A
>Use WordPress and P2, use Slack, use G+ Hangouts, use Skype, use any of the amazing technology that allows us to collaborate as effectively online as previous generations of company did offline.

I've been a 100% remote worker for 5+ years but I think we have to be honest here. All those teleconferencing/videoconferencing/virtualwhiteboards/etc are not as effective as everyone sharing the same physical workspace. Yes, they do help mitigate many issues of isolation and they do help collaboration but there's still some "bandwidth loss" when people are not in the same room or even down the hall from each other.

I'm not advocating an open floor plan with noise and distractions. Even a set of private offices that share a common corridor to facilitate spontaneous conversation with a side conference room for group brainstorming, is superior to keeping Skype windows open.

Yes, there are the common examples of virtual remote workers at basecamp, Automattic, github etc. Those are not billion dollar companies. A lot of startups have ambitious goals and very hard technical challenges and you can't compete with a team made up of 99% remote workers. I see no evidence that this has ever been successfully done. Small scale modest businesses, yes, but not big ones.

Maybe you can hire a 5-person 100% remote team to launch a new web magazine. Journalists and editors by their nature seem to fit the remote work paradigm quite nicely. At first glance, it seems programming also fits, but only for modest projects.

Yes, the remote workers themselves will insist "I'm 100% just as effective offsite as onsite -- in fact, I'm more productive because I'm not interrupted by office nonsense." No doubt they feel that way but the whole team isn't more effective.

Remote workers even with today's fanciest collaboration technology is not the answer to finding the best talent.
> I'm doing it since 09/22/2014.

"I've /been/ doing it since ..." Concordo. Acho que deve continuar escrever. De onde você é?

I agree. You should continue to write. Where are you from?
Hey Matt, I'm so glad you felt it necessary to include that DHTML snowstorm. My laptop fan really needed the exercise and I have your ~500-line JavaScript workout to thank for it!

Of course, I closed the tab pretty much immediately after noticing it so I didn't read the article. Can't wait for unnecessary js to go out of style.