skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I group "Code of Conduct" with Political Correctness.

For anyone interested in a good read on the subject, check out End of Discussion: How the Left's Outrage Industry Shuts Down Debate, Manipulates Voters, and Makes America Less Free (and Fun) by Mary Ham and Guy Benson.

It's an excellent read, and shouldn't be too much of a sting to the social outrage panderers out there.
GEB?
I don't know that this indicates a business downturn but Fry's used to have its own 4-6 page insert in the S.J. Mercury in the Friday edition. For the last several years, this advert has been reduced to a single page on the back of one of the regular sections. Also, although very subjective, it appears to me that the huge parking lots at the Sunnyvale, San Jose, and Fremont stores are less crowded than I remember. Indicators? Maybe.
Are you saying that talking about what goes on in the mind is unscientific and should not be done?
"Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined" by Steven Pinker

Bill Gates calls it one of the most important books he's read in his life.
"People often ask me what is the best book I’ve read in the last year. Steven Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined stands out as one of the most important books I’ve read – not just this year, but ever."
http://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/The-Better-Angels-of-Our-Nat...
Just for the sake of nitpicking:

For PHP PEAR is dead. Packagist is the de facto central repository for packages.
Lower interest rates mean it's cheaper to borrow, which makes borrowing more affordable to more people, which increases demand, which increases prices when supply is limited (artificially or otherwise, see San Francisco).
Now that it's finally been released, I recommend Rationality: From AI to Zombies: https://intelligence.org/rationality-ai-zombies/
I agree. I haven't used AWS for a while but IIRC for a small side project I was looking into with a couple of friends I set up a low privilege IAM access for them but I logged directly into the VPS using a password if I needed to update something.
> (leave those for i, j, k etc)

Why use them then if you have autocomplete? Since character variable names are useful as very short conventions, I'd never want to see them used generally. Someone working in this code would have to know the meaning immediately from the name, as for any variable. In my application area x,y,w,h,r (radius) and c (context - which is domain specific, but is present in about 50% of LOC in my current code-base) are all as ubiquitous as i and j (I'd probably not be comfortable with k, too deep nesting). i and j are much rarer in python, either using sequences of underscore for 'don't care'.

On the second point, there is reason, as I pointed out. It makes code shorter, clearer, and in some cases more performant (when contents is a property, for example). Don't get me wrong, I was following up on the specific point, I wasn't trying to recommend this style as good general practice (alias all your self variables at the top of a method - erm, no).

The lack of 'const'ing in python is a risk, yes. We use immutable data structures whenever possible, including immutable classes, because we try to ensure as much code is written without side effects on data. I'd want to not alias variables that have side effects applied to them, yes.

But you're right that it makes it easier for a sloppy edit to mess things up. In most cases the 'sloppy' would be adding the side effects at all, however, which either version has.

Still, in pages of such code, it helps to write

cos_t = math.cos(theta)
sin_t = math.sin(theta)
x, y = self.position.x, self.position.y
return x*cos_t - y*sin_t, x*sin_t + y*cos_t

rather than

cos_theta = math.cos(theta)
sin_theta = math.sin(theta)
return self.position.x * cos_theta - self.position.y * sin_theta, self.position.x * sin_theta + self.position.y * cos_theta

particularly as the number of uses of x and y increase beyond two in a functon.

Ultimately code-quality and maintainability can't be mandated by a PEP or any universal rule. But like any field, you have to understand the purpose of the rule, and weigh up its risks and benefits before you break it.
I'm surprised that she did not have a diving buddy. All of the training I've had with water diving, scuba or freediving, always recommends to have a buddy. The freediving buddy typically waits on top, looking down, to see if the diver has issues. If any issues are encountered, this buddy can potentially save the divers life.
Yeah, definitely aware that it's slower - I was severely bounded my memory when I came up with this, as I was trying to get my training data and all the variables in my model into 8GB of RAM for a machine learning project. Without the trick, swap was killing the speed; with the trick everything sailed along :)
Yeah, I agree that a few sections were worded badly (the thing about reverse-isms isn't really needed, and just raises more questions than it answers). it's just that a lot of people don't seem to have the patience or the good faith to see these sorts of issues fixed.
I'm sure I find books to read in this "Ask HN" but your comment is exactly what's the issue with it.

So the OP asks for high signal to noise ratio. There comes a recommendation, and then I read some good discussion on Reddit on how the book is actually kind of wrong.

This begs the question: What's "high signal to noise" anyways? Someone who has read 10 books on a subject will find barely anything new. One who just starts out might find "gems" on every other page.

And also: If a recommendation here in this "Ask HN" is given and then debunked as mediocre, how sure can one be to actually find a book with high signal to noise without reading the book?

In that sense: Thanks for your comment. In-depth discussions like the one on Reddit is really necessary, because I, as a starter, have no clue how to evaluate a book. Every recommendation should probably come with a lengthy discussion about its accuracy by people who know the subject :)
It seems like the loudest voices are brand new accounts with some sort of anti-diversity agenda.
1) Biology and Knowledge by Jean Piaget

2) Ontogeny and Phylogeny by S.J. Gould

3) The Logic of Life by Francois Jacob

These books have very little fluff and will challenge you to think in new ways about evolution, biology, and the development of human knowledge.
Well, it's ok to discriminate against people with Commit Privileges - they can just bypass the whole pull request system anyway.
It's less than humorous. Once bogus data declaring you dead works its way into the system, credit cards get shut off, accounts get closed, and you're liable to have serious problems with your bank.
Hypothetical situation: what do you do if you lose all of your ID (e.g. house fire)? You have to start somewhere, and your SSN is a good choice.

You can't do it solely based on one single number, but in this case a data breach would include name, address, credit card number, SSN, and probably security questions. You can turn around and use that information to play the part of a person to another organization, and then go from there. Combine that data with social engineering, and you can get a lot of information about someone and then use it in further attacks.

That's not to say the US's system isn't broken; lots of companies ask for (and require!) the SSN even though they shouldn't. The problem is that it's not just one identifier that holds the key to your life, but that the SSN is an extremely strong identifier which is assumed to be secret.
That's the problem, it really is that easy. All it takes is someone to know you SSN and, depending on what they are trying to do, a little bit of information about you.

SSN numbers were originally only supposed to be used as a government identifier for social security, however, they have evolved into a unique identifier for all US citizens. They are used in every facet of the banking/credit industry here and are relied upon in determining financial decisions. For example, it is completely possible to simply know someone's SSN and date of birth to obtain a credit card. Although many banks/credit card companies are asking for increasing amounts of information to confirm it is really the person applying.
That is exactly why they don't want competition. They don't want to spend more and charge less.
One of the most important books in my life has been

The Way of Zen by Alan Watts

(I listened to it as an audiobook). It changed the way I think and feel (or at least how I react to feelings). Other interesting books about philosophy/spirituality are

Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach

Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse

The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle

The last one is the least recommended, I'm not sure I got anything out of it, but I read it in in the same period of time as the ones above, so I might have learned something subconsciously.
The trouble is, most flagship phones are made these days under the assumption of a two year use. I bought a HTC One M7 two years back because it was the best Android phone available then, but it's now barely usable: I have to charge it twice a day, the camera has this ridiculous purple tint, the latest Android is bog slow on it, and its out of warranty.

I've been using the same PC for five years with no problems, so I bought my phone at full price from HTC thinking I'd use it for a similar lifetime, but it's really a PITA to use now.
Probably Godel Escher Bach https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del,_Escher,_Bach
thanks for the spoiler!
Mongo has been paying a few interns to write a driver, actually. They presented at the last NYC meetup, and I've been doing code review.
There's what looks like an obviously fake account (lots of 0-star repos with nonsense names) who just started arguing in an issue that privelige doesn't exist and that people are only lazy. That really doesn't help at all, and I'm kinda surprised that it seems as though people are trying to reason with people like that.
That's like saying Kwikset (or any lock manufacturer) should be responsible because I left the key in my deadbolt and someone used it to break into my house.

I do agree though that a pre commit check would be nice but it isn't GitHub's responsibility.
+1 for Jonathan Livingston Seagull - Fantastic book, and a very very easy read to boot!
Verizon still plays games with phones purchased through them, however. Their new plan, "Edge", is only discounted to a reasonable rate if you also purchase a phone from them through monthly installments. The cheapest phone they offer that qualifies for this discount ($15/m) is $200.

So, no bringing your own device, unless you like paying more for the same service.
Scientific Self-Help: The State of Our Knowledge
Haven't done any writing of C++ since college, and not too much reading either, but just flew through Effective Modern C++, and found it to be a great, information-dense, and eye-opening read. Highly recommended.
But the question is, are they also supporting/adopting this change/suspension? That's not clear from the linked post.
He owns a 707, but he also has a 747 type rating (among many others).
Nobody is suggesting that people Can't view more than 80 cols. But many people have their machines and environments set up for 80 cols. They have their windows laid out based on the code they're writing, and then they load a new file and have to drag and resize their environment to accommodate you.

If there's a way to change window size and position from 3 columns of 80 + a project browser into 120 col with a single keypress, then I'd like to know. It isn't a major problem, but it is an unnecessary problem.

Nobody is forced to use long lines either, and if you want to lay out your environment to support 120 cols and you get my 80 col source code it will work without even a keypress or a second thought. You won't even notice it.
Came here to post this as well. Medical care itself is the third leading cause of death in the US.
I must be missing something: but why did they keep reimplementing this in modern CPU's ? (Or did they remove it from modern CPU's?)
For those confused, here is the actual code of conduct [1]

[1] http://todogroup.org/opencodeofconduct/
I feel like an open code of conduct is unnecessary.

Really - the only thing you need to remember is - be nice to each other and be patient with those supplying advice and those who are asking for advice. (I have screenshots of discussions that violate this simple fundamental rule). I have flagged 40+ comments (that were accepted and acted upon) on stackoverflow alone of people just being stupid jerks.

The SVN people did a great presentation about how to protect your project from poisonous people [1]. Their story goes is that someone came on the SVN mailing list ranting about how SVN sucks and doesn't have the features he wanted - according to the talk the SVN community was polite and the guy just went away.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q52kFL8zVoM
Everything can be considered fluff if you're familiar with the topic already. For example, I respect Richard Dawkins and agree with his position, but if you read two or three of his books, everything else is just "fluff". Similarly, if you already know Calculus, every other book on Calculus will be just "fluff". So, this basically means that you need to be reading books on topics that you don't know. The main difference I would make here is not in terms of having fluff or not, but if the book is well written.
I do as well. Check out https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9834099
Hi, Phil and everyone, Paweł here (you can call me Paul, Polish is hard).

This article highlighted the existence of Urbit to me (and probably many more)... and I shouldn't probably talk about your startup, since this thread is arguing exactly against it. Just to say: you're doing good work – and I might meet you some time in Urbit's chat :D
Nice. But, seriously, use / for division, please.
That's the smartest thing they've done all week. Now it's time to bury it dead. This is a solution looking for a problem (tm).

The only thing this code of conduct does beside state the obvious (behave like adults) is the implied distrust expressed by introducing it in the first place: that without being nannied into proper behaviour, we would all act like vile animals.

Generally I find such nannying deeply offensive.
Apportable basically used a heavily modified fork of GNUStep originally, but yes, then they did switch to a correctly layered architecture.
"It is fn. expensive when compared to EU prices. Why is that?"

In the US, there are only 4 major cell phone carriers and their plans are so similar in price, it might as well be a monopoly.
Also worth noting that storing them in a long probably means 2 memory reads per access on most modern architectures, whereas storing them in bitfields will allow the compiler to select the containing CPU word, which will be 1 read. I would be interested to see actual performance measurements (maybe a performance vs memory usage chart).
yes, I was impressed just thinking about how much work and information gathering must have gone into that book.
I worked for the telco that has the largest operating area of any in the world (far Northern Canada).. with unbelievably low population densities, and it was mandated we provide a minimum of 5Mbps to all people living there, and 4G.. we were slapping up 4G towers in isolated, fly-in only "communities" with 50 people.
>Physical contact and simulated physical contact (eg, textual descriptions like “hug” or “backrub”) without consent or after a request to stop. [violates the code of conduct]

I can't tell if this is a joke or not.
> It is fn. expensive when compared to EU prices. Why is that?

US carriers have to cover a land area 1/3rd greater than the total land area of Europe[0] and they have just barely half the population to spread the costs over[1]. Also there are no inter-state roaming fees in the US, from what I understand most European carriers have roaming fees outside of your home country. That doesn't explain the entire price gap, but even in a perfect world US phone plans would still be more expensive than European plans just on that basis alone.

Additionally, Verizon's main selling point is they have the largest coverage area so their plans are always the most expensive. T-Mobile, Sprint and many MVNOs offer much cheaper service (with less coverage). For example you can get 100 minutes/unlimited texts/5 GB of 4G LTE data for $30/month on T-Mobile prepaid, 300 minutes/unlimited texts/2.5 GB data for $35/month on Virgin Mobile (uses the Sprint network), or unlimited minutes/texts/2.5 GB 4G LTE data (throttled to 8 Mbps) for $35/month (with autopay discount) on Cricket (uses the AT&T network).

[0]: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%28land+area+of+usa+-+l... (excluding Alaska since it's huge and almost nobody lives there)

[1]: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=population+of+usa+%2F+p...
It doesn't make any difference to her now, but I imagine it did when she was still alive.

Consider that we're all in the process of dying - it's just not as imminent for most. I imagine you still want to enjoy life, despite knowing that one day you won't be around for that enjoyment to mean anything to you.

Knowing that everyone is eventually going to die, and that fulfillment is still important, why wouldn't you wish it upon people to enjoy their life til the very end?
It's a crazy world when you can sue someone for not selling you something.

Why should they have to sell it to you?
Great tool, but not to be put in the wrong hands. The folks at Django got it right. We used it for unifying, simplifying and ensuring consistency of deeply nested configuration data entered using different means. However, in environment with less experience, I have seen "Akira-final-scene-tetsuo" monsters come to life with this.

Another loosely related suggestion: if we could stay away from singleton as examples, I think we would save ourselves a lot of future troubles. ^^
Building a Dynamic Static Website with Pelican and IFTTT
That's a great outcome, props on making it happen.
Colleges do a good job providing general cs skills.

Bootcamps teach you how to use ruby on rails +CSS + HTML + js, and that's it. Data structures? Algorthim analysis? Databases? Machine learning? No
Richard Dawkins is OK. Sam Harris and Steven Pinker are more relevant.
I recently read Intelligence: All That Matters, a short (160 pages) introduction to measuring intelligence. It covers a little history, how it's done, why it matters. Written by a working researcher so not very fluffy, and came out in June, not last century.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OGLKHDO
Without going into heavily technical books, I'd recommend The Code Book by Simon Singh. There's also Fermat's Last Theorem by the same author.

On the more technical side, it's somewhat cliche but, TAOCP really is excellent.
If you consider extravagance as noise, this book will have a terrible SNR. (I think it's nonetheless worth reading. It's basically an introduction to the theory of computation with fables and plenty of illustrating examples by Escher and Bach (both of which have unknowingly used important concepts from computation in their works). It is definitely much easier to read after having attended to a theory of computation I lecture.)
(Disclaimer: I used to work at a dating website.)

You have it backwards. A paradox of choice for females.

Men aren't picking, they're the one's pasting messages desperately to get responses. It's a hopeless situation.

Ever been to a night club? Male:Female ratio? You have any idea how much worse it is on a dating website?

It's interesting how you say I projected, I'm interested in the tendency of men to fib about their success with females.

Yes, I've seen hundreds of comments like yours, then I saw their accounts get banned out of frustration the next day.

Even if you did have success on a dating website (I have, and have had friends who married), by no means are they in favor of men.

If you need me to elaborate on the data, I can.
does it taste good?
Do you have an email address I can contact you at?
Someone sends alot of money to nowhere
Presumably, "Goedel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter.

Which, incidentally, doesn't have a particularly high "signal-to-noise ratio" but it's one of the most interesting books I've ever read.
Money quote: "We take the security of customer data extremely seriously"
It shouldn't be necessary, but it is.

We live in an age where if an action is not explicitly called out as unacceptable, a significant number of people will perform said action, because if it's not explicitly unacceptable, it's obviously acceptable. In short, if you don't say I can't abuse people, it's ok for me to abuse people.

Oh, and these people will also happily throw around the "First Amendment" as justification, which makes me incredibly sad for the future of our nation.

Solving that behavior though is incredibly difficult.
Even better: You can create a death certificate for yourself, and create a birth certificate for yourself under a different name a few decades ago.

New identity, very cheaply and easily.
The Next Generation Open Source UAV Autopilot
I disagree. The Information has a broad scope, so there is a lot of content but none of which I found to be InfoJunk. I thought it was very interesting and just kept on reading.
For the sake of discussion, this is the part that people seem to be taking the most issue with:

Our open source community prioritizes marginalized people’s safety over privileged people’s comfort. We will not act on complaints regarding:

- ‘Reverse’ -isms, including ‘reverse racism,’ ‘reverse sexism,’ and ‘cisphobia’

- Reasonable communication of boundaries, such as “leave me alone,” “go away,” or “I’m not discussing this with you”

- Refusal to explain or debate social justice concepts

- Communicating in a ‘tone’ you don’t find congenial

- Criticizing racist, sexist, cissexist, or otherwise oppressive behavior or assumptions
query = villain.query_joke_formats_and_transports()
formats, transports = query

or

formats, transports = (
villain.query_joke_formats_and_transports())

or

formats, transports = \
villain.query_joke_formats_and_transports()

Of which, we tend to do the first.

Again, the longer version is clearer and simpler, but the shorter version is not so confounding that it is a slamdunk argument for longer lines, particularly as, for any length line, you could get this problem, so you'll have to do something like it eventually. If you're seeing this all over the place, it may be worth wrapping the API in more pythonic terms. 'Getters' taking no arguments, for example, are often a code-smell in python, though queries (as in your case) are a good exception, since it is also not great to have properties do expensive work (like querying a DB, say).
I think the manufacturers intend the phones to be obsolete after two years, but there are perfectly good phones that will run for years. I've had a Nexus 4 since early 2013 and it came out generally in 2012. Still runs just as well as the first day I got it, Lollipop and all. The only problems I've had have been with the software, but that can happen on any hardware. I thought about buying an iPhone last year and will think about it this year again and likely keep it at least another year or two unless I give it to someone else who will use it also for that period of time. Five years isn't bad for a phone.

That being said, I would not buy a Google hardware product since they will not fix software bugs that affects their two year old hardware even if that bug is that phone calls don't work. I can see that from other manufacturers, but since Google owns Android, that's inexcusable. The hardware itself is tough as nails though.
Beaker: iOS app for chemistry simulations
It is very tempting to question the motives of who believes a 0% solution is better than 55% first step.
Americans have very different attitudes to loans, compared to Europeans: you do not borrow - you are missing out what life offers to you.