skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm going to reply to myself to share some history.

I came up when things like 'structured analysis' and 'Yourdon diagrams' were a thing. I was repeatedly told that if I wasn't doing this I was "hacking" in the pejorative sense.

These diagrams were the worst hack that I've ever seen. There is no language, there is no verification, you can literally draw anything. There were case tools that attempted to balance all your arrow so that all ins had an out, and so on, but it was just a disaster. Hack, hack, hack.

In contrast, in code I could quickly express up an API design. It was concrete, it was testable, it was understandable, and it was a 1-to-1 match to what the eventual code would be. It was wonderfully, powerfully expressive. It wasn't limited to 2D, I could express complicated relationships without someone arguing "these lines cross, move this over there to improve the layout", and other nonsense that had nothing to do with solving the problem.

It was not a language, it didn't have a grammar, and it was untestable. It was extraordinarily limited. You couldn't show that this module is used by 10 different modules in different situations. You could express impossible things. You had no way to analyze it for correctness. Sure, there were case tools that put in things like state diagrams and simulation and such, but it was all just terrible. It was either impossibly constrained, or impossibly free-form.

In contrast, my stubbed API's were an exact representation of my ideas. If I want to test a hypothesis, I'd just implement part of the API, stub out parts that weren't important, and have running proof of my ideas. I was doing a lot of concurrent stuff then, and this was important. Visual depictions were incredibly cumbersome, untestable, and were just terrible, terrible hacks.

I went through more than one project where we spent a tremendous amount of time generating these things, they collapsed under their own weight (you just can't reason well about these things once relationships go past 2D), they'd all get discarded, and then the real design work would begin, in code.

I argue, without proof, that without a language visual types of design will always have these problems. I also argue that it is not incumbent on me to provide that proof. The power of Turing complete languages and math has been proven. A viable alternative needs to prove not only that it is equal to the existing approach, but is better in some important way.
I've seen a serious multitenant business app that manages financial info do this. Except the credentials were root. And also valid for SSH. Users would run a Java applet, which would SELECT from users (after connecting as root) to determine if their login was successful. 7-8 figures per install and this was a "known issue".
No, it happened four years later with the iMac.

At the time of the article, you had trouble getting a computer with a TCP/IP stack on it out of the box. The NeXT machines did, and Macs did, but most people had windows and didn't even have TCP/IP, IIRC

The iMac was the first internet connected out of the box machine.
Off topic: Does anyone else find the font in this article incredibly off-putting? The 'a's are particularly egregious.
Could I look smarter with this?
Are you in the right place? I feel you've commented on the wrong story.
>Selling exploits to the black market does strike me as unethical, though.

If I gave them away and they get exploited is it unethical? If I gave them away publicly vs privately does it make a difference? If I responsibly reported to the manufacturer a month previously?

I guess intent matters, and I'm ok with that being the line. In the end though I feel the rewards for fast production far outweigh the consequences of security bugs. My firefox updated last night and added pocket and I was reminded that I couldn't even remove the useless bloody thing.
Kink was a lot easier back then, because anything other than man-on-woman top-down missionary penetration was either not considered sex, or was blasphemous/unnatural. But there's also evidence of a lot of kink going on, even if it was somewhat tame by today's standards. The simplest examples were fashion that emphasized the male's, uh, manliness, like the poulaine shoes and codpieces.

The most popular sex trope of the day was probably 'the wayward nun' and 'the mischevious monk'. Plenty of people have written about sexual misconduct in the clergy - probably far more than was actually happening - because of the inherent naughtiness of the chaste getting away with lascivious behavior. Then there's just the stories in general of religious or political figures being objectified and chased after like veritable Ricky Martins, and of course, always gallantly rejecting all these people trying to fuck them all the time. Sir Gaiwan and the Green Knight, a poem from the 14th century, does much with the trope of Knights as manly men who are constantly being lusted after and rejecting random women's objectification of them, and has plenty of bondage jokes, apparently.

One of my favorite stories is from a book on the history of flagellation. There was some traveling monk who got called on by a woman while he was passing her house, and she was asking him for help or something, so of course he went in with her - while her husband was away - but only to help, of course. Once inside, she throws herself on him, trying to fuck him for like a good four hours, him rejecting her advances the entire time of course. Finally he succumbs. (Awwww, poor monk!) And as a result of her wickedness, he flagellates her for another couple hours so she can pay for her sins. When the husband comes home to see his wife beaten & flogged by this monk, the monk tells him the whole story. The husband's response? Thank god you beat & flogged her! Now she won't have to pay for her sins in the afterlife!

The Handbook of Medieval Sexuality goes over some other common examples of 'unusual' sex documented in the middle ages, such as homosexuality, cross-dressing/gender role change, prostitution, contraception, castration, etc. And sure, we had to wait 'til the 17th and 18th century to see famous examples of kinky personalities such as John Wilmot and the Marquis de Sade, but you have to assume there were others rejecting the puritan attitudes of the day before them.
I've noticed it does that - I wonder if it locks down a thread after it gets so much traffic?
I think it depends on how you live it.

I remember that doing ./config failed, and I honestly had no clue in the beginning. So, while some friends of mine suggested that I abandon Linux and use Windows "because it works, and you don't have to waste your time" I decided to `waste` my time.

So I googled, asked around, watched the masters, and most importantly, learned. I tried again, failed again, and faster, but not on the same pitfall. Always on something new. And in the process I increased my knowledge of the system, of the programming languages used, I learned how to patch the software, clever and not-so-clever tricks.

The best part? I'm still failing, and I'm still learning.

I'm not into OS-wars - I just loved what I did, still do, and I'd do it again a million time :)
The way Federal budgeting works, congress appropriates money for specific purposes. They've had something like $1B in operations funding cut over a 2-3 year period.

The politicians love to hand wave about "big government" and "do something" about the evil IRS. But actual simplification of the tax code would cost their political patrons too much money, so they make it easier for folks to break the law.

Findings from a GAO report this year:
http://www.accountingweb.com/tax/irs/gao-report-links-irs-pr...

The actual report:
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-14-298
You don't need a virtual DOM or real DOM on the server to render HTML. The fastest way to render pages on the server is to compile templates into JavaScript programs that produce an HTML string (not virutal DOM nodes and definitely not real DOM nodes) and you can use almost any HTML templating engine to do client+server side rendering. morphdom is only meant for use in the browser when you need to update the DOM based on new HTML/DOM nodes.
I would add:

-A PROXY_OUT -d 127.0.0.0/8 -j DROP

-A PROXY_OUT -d 169.254.0.0/16 -j DROP

That seems to cover everything in IPv4, but if you have IPv6 enabled, you probably want fd00::/8, fe80::/10 and ::1/128 as well (disclaimer: my knowledge of IPv6 is rather limited.)
But...why? Why make up 'societal work', to keep people busy? Is it such a bad idea that folks should be able to choose their own lives, doing their own thing?

For instance, I might never want to become a touchy-feely creative-industry person. What is there in this planned society for me?

The trouble with this discussion is, that it starts assuming everybody must have a job. I disagree; that's the old pre-abundance view of the world. We have to get past that.
I mainly fly out of LGA but, next time I fly through SFO I'll hit you up on the offer!

The lady at the desk said if we applied right there she would have let us in. I'm more of a cash back person though. Can't be bothered with points or fees.
IBM and Samsung are also working on a similar project using Ethereum, Bittorrent and Telehash:

http://www.coindesk.com/ibm-reveals-proof-concept-blockchain...

https://www.theprotocol.tv/adept-demo-ibm-samsung/

I wonder why they don't just use IPFS, too.
Sadly, tech journalism has only gotten worse in the past 20 years. As bad as it was then-- there was no surprise that reporters didn't understand technology-- now they think they do, which is worse.
You're making an assumption that the purpose of humanity is to work to create wealth. That's a very narrow view of our potential. Many would view human flourishing more through the lens of creativity, relationships, and meaningful work (which may not be economically productive).

While I do believe that smaller populations may be more desirable, the logical conclusion of your line of thinking would be that once we automate everything, then humans should naturally bow out to their technological creations.
What's the use case for something like this?
The mortality of companies
Games on Sale is an app made by gamers to gamers
There's more to it than being connected to the Internet out of the box.

>> their Navigator platform will be our primary interface to the world

Replace Netscape with Google and Navigator with 'Chrome'
Molding CNNs for text: non-linear, non-consecutive convolutions
Are there enough apps for cyclists? Never
They make no sense, for two reasons:

1) hardware engineering: there is no dead space in a phone, every single square inch is used by something. The PCB is as compact as possible. If you design a modular phone (like project Ara), you easily double the space required. Instant losing proposition: less efficient, more bulky.

2) market: even if you offered a wonderful selection of decent modules, market reality means that 90% of your customers would use no more than 2 or 3 different configurations, at most. If that's the case, forget about modularity, just build those 3 configs and optimize them to death.
After trying it a bit, this could be very useful for quickly prototyping mobile application workflow.
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The browser was ultimately mid-level on the list of grievances the DOJ had with Microsoft. That's why MS can bundle IE and Edge with the operating system today and nobody cares, including the US government.

If all Microsoft had done is bundled a free browser with the OS, it would have never stood up in court in terms of anti-trust prosecution. It would have been a laughable case.

What the DOJ got them on, was restraint of trade issues with OEMs, restrictions on API access, deep integration of IE into the OS (lying about being able to remove it), and market place conduct through leveraging their monopoly, leading to (in the DOJ's opinion) harm to consumers. Microsoft also basically taunted the bull in the countless ways they tried to jam the government, the ways they acted like assholes at every turn (including to the judge), the quotes that came out on things they said about competition, etc. They ended up with nearly everyone against them and looked like the ultimate bullies. If you want to have a bad time, be a monopoly and pretend you're more powerful than the US Government, and pretend you can stone-wall them.
Soylent Under Fire for Allegedly Failing to Provide Adequate Warnings
Does Github have a responsibility to help people out with this kind of thing? What do you all think?
We try not to start battles with other open source projects. Live and let live.
Arne Jacobsen Swan chair. Style and appeal: -1. Didn't see that one coming.
just like with cars bought by companies and rentals, construction and farm machines are bought mostly with the warranty in mind.

just like in software, for every one nerd that wants to fix things themselves, there are millions who do not. and those folks don't even change the oil to not lose warranty. and newer models even phone home (to the dealer!) when the engine is being abused. and it's actually sold to the buyer as a feature, because the phone home system can be used in case of theft.

do you rater sell one hactor or a million tractors?
Except that morality is highly subjective and some people would be completely fine commiting a criminal activity just for the hell of it.
Eritrea --> London,UK

I am still waiting my first experience on a plane. I haven't been on a plane yet. crossing the border to neighbouring country took me about five days on my own. few hours on the day but mostly on the night as you can imagine there are security on the border.crossing the sahara desert, the mediterranean sea and finally to UK. currently working as software developer.
And how do I update? I went to System Update and it says "Your device's software is up to date."

[edit]

According to Sprint's website[1] 4.4.4 is the latest version.

1: http://support.sprint.com/support/article/Find-and-update-th...
The Glorious Horror of TECO
There's room for improvement here. The case wasn't against them bundling it with their operating system, they're perfectly free to do that. It wasn't about them being a monopoly either, which also is perfectly allowed.

The DOJ was against them as a result of abuse of monopoly power. Using their market dominance with Windows, they attempted to strangle out Firefox by demanding that their reselling partners would not also bundle Firefox on their Windows-based computers. If they did bundle Firefox, they would lose their Windows certification.

Free = allowed

Bundling = allowed

Monopoly = allowed

Leveraging partner relationships to unfairly disadvantage a competitor = antitrust violation.
Goals of science vs. Goals of scientists (& a love letter to PLOS One)
Agreed, however, the context wasn't tablets & phones.
No. There are valid cases to upload SSH keys and other certificates or secrets. Preventing it would be annoying, and near impossible to be very effective.

Just my $0.02.
Maybe I didn't make myself clear. If you want to compare speed cross lang, take fastest impl of each and compare that; so long as we're talking about real compilers existing today.

Also, fundamentally C# and java aren't designed on zero-cost abstractions as core principle, which is fine in and of itself. Implementations try to recover performance but it's an uphill battle as compilers will always be limited by various constraints.
4 Questions Before Joining a Coding Boot Camp
> If you would start out with a JavaScript JIT (like V8) what things would you have to add (i.e. things that are not required to JIT JavaScript) besides the obvious modifications in the parser?

This is such a tempting thought -- that JavaScript and Lua are similar enough languages that an engine for one could be retargeted to the other with some parser changes and a few new features.

In practice it doesn't work out that way. Here is the story of Tessel, who originally set out to do it the other way around (implement JavaScript on LuaJIT) but reversed course after two years: https://tessel.io/blog/112888410737/moving-faster-with-iojs

"We believed that over time we could cover all of the corner cases of JavaScript with our own runtime, but perhaps we should have taken a cue from the “Wat talk” that it was going to be an uphill battle. While the semantics between JavaScript and Lua are very similar, they are also just slightly different in many ways (For example, the comparisons between null vs undefined vs falsy), and capturing all of those idiosyncrasies has proved frustrating for both the users and developers of the Runtime. [...] I still do believe it’s possible to make a nearly compatible runtime, but it’s going to take much more work than we expected and that resource investment would be an unwise business decision."
coinciding with Motorola and others (well, htc broke...) quitting offers on "developer" models.

make me think if the ill supported dev models were not just a way to try to corrupt that. "he can't jail break that one because it's not the Dev model. if they wanted to, they should have bought that one"
The Fastest-Growing States for Tech Jobs
> Note: Electrolytic capacitors dry out, frequently rendering power supplies and other electronics unusable in a decade or three but they're easily replaced w/ soldiering.

When they don't take half of the circuitry with them when they go, of course. The capacitors in my last PSU failed so spectacularly that security personnel came to investigate, thinking there were gunshots.
John Sebastian – Darling be home soon(Awesome cover by an Indian guy)
His presi about designing the tools to make an MMO as a solo dev is definitely worth watching.

https://vimeo.com/6010060
5 Things to Know about the IoT
The sensors and engine parts are often "coded" in a way that requires software access to replace - either because they require some sort of calibration to operate, or because they literally have a burned-in serial number which the software checks for a match.
Personal favourite https://github.com/valeriangalliat/dotfiles/blob/b227cf9b252...
How is this a rent? The concept of economic rent by definition excludes produced goods like tractors.
I can't tell if this is an april fools prank.

Honestly, none of those value added features do I want.

Talking to my desk? No, I don't even talk to my mac (And it's been listening for over a decade.) I only talk to Siri in my car.

Ordering food from my desk? WTF?

Here's what I want:
- Inexpensive
- Programmable positions
- Powered raise-lowering ability

That's it.
Gotta love those timescales! I don't know what you can build in 4 hours but the Fedex (even in 1996) certainly is somewhat hyperbolic!

"For example, it took Federal Express four months to build its Web site – using WebObjects, you could build that same site in four hours."
Wow, so microsoft says that the style of DRM is harmful to the users, the maker of the DRM just says "Well it's their fault they don't like it now" Sounds a bit like blaming the victim.
Nor Sprint as far as I can tell. That covers about 190 million subscribers in the US.
Life-Hack: Purging Your Closet for Clarity
As a follow-up to the BI article about capsule wardrobes (http://www.businessinsider.com/what-are-capsule-wardrobes-20...) I wanted to share the method I use to keep my closet clean.

Does anyone else find routine purges useful? Every time I go through my stuff and clean out things I haven't seen or used in months I feel way better and am able to focus much more effectively. I know this isn't tech related but I wanted to share, does anyone else have a similar habit or routine they do?
I agree with you, but I can't imagine a use case for a secret that's not secret.
The Massive Destruction that will Hit America before 2017
As someone that travels with a myfi hotspot this is welcome news. The fines should have been higher.
Most amusing were the wild predictions and unbridled blind enthusiasm. How they might explain why webvan would be the next juggernaut, for example. Not sure they did a story on webvan in particular, but in general very frothy reporting.
I don't think they remove it. I do believe that they send an automated email if they detect private keys from being committed to a public repo though. Amazon does something similar to this and they even revoke the key if they see that its public.
If you're that worried about compensation, the correct answer is to determine up front whether there's a bounty program, and if not, move on. Not to do work you had every reason to believe would not be compensated, then complain when it isn't compensated.
That part of the game (game rule logic) usually works (with some bugs) but the UI suffers from extremely poor UX and is unresponsive. This is endemic throughout the game including area where game rules aren`t being evaluated.

Add on poor server stability that causes players who paid to participate in events to get kicked out and loose due to the issues and the experience is horrible.

It`s a credit to the quality of the card game that such a crappy experience is even played at all.
People I think defend it in the same way as prosecuting Al Capone for tax evasion: we'll take what we can get. In the context of things like the "Halloween memos", funding the SCO controversy, and various other bits of anti-interoperability work people were just grateful for an impairment of the platform monopolist.

Nowadays Apple has a policy of banning all other web browsers and even program interpreters from its platform. This isn't really acceptable either, but there doesn't seem to be any prospect of doing anything about it.
Amazon does help with it. A friend of mine recently went through a newbie programmer class and forgot the teacher instructed them to keep their AWS SSH keys out of their repo and within a 20-hour period someone racked up tens of thousands of dollars in EC2 charges! Amazon kindly refunded the entire bill.
Americans buy 10B rounds of ammunition every year. I doubt the problem during the next collapse will be lack of ammo.
If only they could do the same thing for airports (e.g. LAX) where they don't explicitly block your signals, but they also don't allow any cell towers to be built in the area...
> running something as root avoids a whole class of deploy problems

Only one class of deploy problems: you're not at all familiar with Linux or other Unix clones.
Show HN: Bright Canopy -- an Application Streaming Service for Second Life
Awesome! Would be awesomer if it supported color. E.g. a similar stack based way to generate a smooth 256 color palette.
http://www.lycaeum.org/books/books/metaprogramming_with_lsd_...
Except that the generic consumer in this case is actually very specialized and the market is very illiquid. There are only so many types of tractors you can buy and I would imagine all of them have the software since it "improves" efficiency.

There is an excellent book called "Shop Class as Soul­craft: An Inquiry Into The Value Of Work" that examines this move towards things in our life that we can no longer fix on our own. You can't change the oil in fancy cars because they have no dipsticks. You can't fix the tractor because it has proprietary software. You can't jail break your phone because it's illegal (or was and could be again). Etc, etc. We are rapidly getting to the point where no one, not even the historically self-reliant, can fix the things they supposedly own. We don't actually "own" these things anymore, we are just renting them. Or best case, we have them on loan until we throw them out for something newer.

Whether all this is an improvement is a matter of discussion but there seems to be no doubt that the concept of "ownership" is rapidly changing.
.. which might be more than they would have gotten for them in an auction. Clever.