skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Smalltalk's death had almost nothing to do with the language itself. It died for four reasons:

#1 was price, and especially requiring companies to pay royalties on the software they write with your tools,

#2 was the epic mismanagement at ParcPlace/Digitalk (including the merger of the two),

#3 is that Smalltalk was (when the web took off) pretty damn bad for writing server-side Web applications, because of the threading model and blocking IO, and

#4 concerns about security: the lack of high quality libraries for things like encryption, for one thing, and more fundamentally, the way you can do _anything_ once you're in the VM.)

The last one is the only one that's related to the tech itself. If IBM had open-sourced VisualAge when they decided to dump it, it would probably be fairly popular now.
Lots of decisions at the government level require putting a value on human lives. It's a feature, not a bug, that congressmen aren't usually held accountable for indirect death like this.
Yeah I love how they haven't come to the conclusion they have certain "flowers" that will never run out of nectar and will fiercely defend those feeders no matter how much you fill them up. Maybe they do realize that, but they just don't like sharing anyways.
Yes. The term is not legislatively defined, it is a term used in industry, over the years I've heard it defined both ways as "agreed" and "accepted", but I agree that accepted seems more common now. Talks to the point of why use of undefined acronyms can lead to confusion.
You're correct; a product line merger was attempted but failed, so VSE was ultimately just killed off.
Theoretically, there is no difference between theory and practice. Practically, however, there is.

(Thanks for letting me use one of my favorite quotes!)
The JSON support in SQLite is in a very early stage of design and development still. There is a lot of cool stuff coming. But there is also still a lot of work to do.

Please check back in a few weeks.

If you would like to leave comments describing the kinds of problems you would like JSON support in SQLite to solve, I promise to read them all and give them careful consideration.
Timestamping sounds like a good idea. We can easily do it now in a decentralized way without depending on any 3rd party service e.g. https://github.com/chainpoint/chainpoint
I probably shouldn't post this but what the heck.

I quit on the spot twice when a company was dickish.

Once I had a friend, previous co-worker, that would visit. He'd come into my office and we'd play games (this was a game company). This had happened about once every month or 2 for a year or so. One time I had to go to the restroom. I came back and he was gone. The new boss had escorted him out of the office. I quit on the spot. Saw that boss at a trade show years later. He apologized.

Another time a boss at a company that was flex and who and never missed a deadline decided it doesn't going to be flex anymore for the next project. I was late one day 45 minutes and he got in my face. I brought up that I'd been an hour and a half early the previous day. He didn't care. Claimed if I worked at "The Gap" I'd have been fired. It was like "this isn't the Gap, I'm not an hourly employee". Arguments escalated, I quit.

Apparently he then laid now the law for the remaining employees with strict hours and strict lunch hours and that you were not to leave the building outside those hours and threatening to doc people's pay if they were late. Of course he probably didn't realized that's probably illegal, at least in the USA. If you dock salaries employees by hours worked they become non-exempt meaning by not letting them choose their hours they are effectively hourly employees that have to be paid by the hour and paid overtime. At least in the USA. Of course IANAL but that's my reading of the law.

I'm not really happy with the way I handled things and it's a life long work in progress to not get heated but I am proud that I didn't take shit and moved on from those situations when I did.
Accidentally downvoted you, sorry.
I do not have a product, and I have not raised any money, but if you have an MVP you should definitely post it here. This solves a real problem both VCs and entrepreneurs currently have. To the point where YC CEO and partners at A16Z (both leaders in their categories) have to write about it.
Here:
http://vitovan.com/rss.xml

It's still hot, I added the code for generating rss one minute ago.
Actually I agree with your points, my comment was made in a rush and on reflection is full of hubris. My complaint was with the article which is attempting to define terms for newcomers not defining this term. I didn't mean non accountants shouldn't use the term, I meant that use of this term as an acronymn without definition in a definitions of things article seemed inappropriate.
You would be amused how many of my computational colleagues completely fail to see the ethical issues of having a perfect working simulation of the human brain in a computer.
Share your LinkedIn profile with nearby people over Bluetooth and Chrome
I went overboard with my Raspberry PI and temperature sensors a couple of years ago. I hooked a bunch of sensors up to old wiring in the house that a previous owner had used for a security system. And while I was at it, I hooked up an old crank-telephone so I could remotely ring the bells, play "The Raspberries" on the handset, etc. It's not all operational anymore, but the DS1820b temperature sensors are. It's surprising how sensitive they are. By watching a graph, you can see when the heater or AC runs, when someone takes a shower, when the garage door opens, when a car is in the garage, etc.

http://buzbee.asuscomm.com:8100/
There is a point though, around dusk, when they stop fighting and just feed. I've seen 12-16 birds perched on my 8 spot feeder, with birds sharing spots, taking turns, just sucking it down as fast as they can.

There was usually a cloud of others waiting for a turn, so there really was no way for any group to defend the feeder.

I joked that 3 hummingbirds can eat in peace, but only if there are 5 others fighting nearby.
The Kinesis Pro is excellent and by far the fastest keyboard I've ever typed on, as well as the most ergonomic (no strain for me):

http://www.kinesis-ergo.com/shop/advantage-pro-for-pc-mac/

It optimizes the contour of the layout to minimize finger movement distance, and improve comfort. It also moves frequently pressed keys like ctrl, shift, backspace, etc. onto the thumbs which are stronger. Overall I type noticeably faster.

The 3M Ergonomic Mouse is a mouse I use that's very ergonomic as well. No stress or strain for me ever since switching to those with a standing desk, years ago, even despite very intensive computer use.
https://www.speedgauge.net/

I only know about this 'cause I know some of their sysadmins. but there's a whole industry of automated truck-tracking and truck-activity logging out there.

Most of it, I think, is focused on reducing liability/reducing insurance costs, I think; I don't think most of it is legally mandated.

Note, I've also heard from other people who's pagers go off when certain devices can't resolve GPS signals that a common cause of their pager going off is a trucker driving by with a GPS jammer that was being used to defeat one of these automatic truck logging deals.

So... yeah, it's not legally mandated or anything, but automatic logging of truck activity and speed is pretty common.
Since interviewing is very subjective, a company might not even be able to give you a clear reason why you were rejected. You may have been interviewed by six people, each of whom gave you a 9 out of 10 rating. You thought the interview went very well, and so did they. But then those people interviewed someone else, whom five interviewers gave a 9 out of 10 rating but one gave a 10 out of 10 rating. So they chose the second person instead of you. But there may not have been a clearly expressible reason why - just one interviewer's gut instinct.

Also, they may have rejected you for a stupid reason, like "the CEO didn't like your blue hair and nose piercing", which they may not feel comfortable sharing with you even though it's perfectly legal (under U.S. law, these are not legally protected attributes).
Basically, I'm not willing to supply useful data to a site which then profits off of it without also making it open.

So if they weren't open then they wouldn't be getting my answers (or a bunch of other people's).
‘It May Seem Silly’
> Smalltalk 80--the prototype for all modern Smalltalks--was designed and released to be useful day-to-day

That's a straw man. Yes, Smalltalk 80 was designed and released to be useful day-to-day, but it certainly wasn't the prototype. As I understand it, Smalltalk 71 was the first semi-formal definition, and 72 was the first working version. These were designed explicitly for programming language research at Xerox PARC. After After a few iterations, the good ideas were packaged into Smalltalk 80.

In fact, Alan Kay actually seems to be disappointed that Smalltalk 80 had such a different goal than earlier Smalltalks. From http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/1998-...

> This was why I complained at the last OOPSLA that - whereas at PARC we changed Smalltalk constantly, treating it always as a work in progress - when ST hit the larger world, it was pretty much taken as "something just to be learned", as though it were Pascal or Algol.

> Smalltalk-80 never really was mutated into the next better versions of OOP. Given the current low state of programming in general, I think this is a real mistake.
Actually a ton of stuff he's posted in this thread is complete bs, i.e. flat out wrong

Like EU GDP not growing for 8 years, wrong.

Median household wealth being better in the US than Italy, Sweden or Germany, wrong

The US producing more nobel prize winners than the EU, wrong

Statements about the danger of living in Amsterdam, wrong

Canadian gun ownership being comparable to the US, wrong

The murder rate for 99% of US citizens in cities being < 2 per 100k, wrong

Then there's a lot of statements he makes which are so vague, they're likely his opinion rather than substantiated facts, but I can't disregard them altogether as he didn't qualify them. For example the US having more opportunity than any other nation is hard to qualify so one can't even begin to dispute it. But if define what that means by say 'social mobility', which can be qualified to a large extent, and look at social mobility for example, the US is nowhere near the leading country.

And then finally there's a ton of facts which are correct, and they're completely disingenuous. For example he references median student debt at $13k. He doesn't mention that this is the median student debt for all people. i.e. if you graduated in 1970 and still owe $3k in student debt after having paid off tens of thousands already, then you're part of that equation and it hugely understates the debt burden for students. When what you THINK he's talking about is what is the average debt that a student graduates with. And that number is $36k for 2015, much more than his truthful statistic.

The only reference he made is to the OECD better life index, and I'm glad he did because I'm familiar with that index. If he hadn't referenced it I might've taken for granted that he must know what he's talking about. But as I mentioned in another post, here's a little joke: the OECD better life index ranked the bottom 10% of Poland to have a better standard of living than the bottom 10% of Japan and France. And here's the kicker, same with the top 10%. Yes, Poland's bottom and top 10% respectively have better lives than the bottom and top 10% in France. It's a total joke. Of course you could say it's a (giant) anomaly but I've lived in many of the countries in the index in 4 different continents and there's a lot of misguided information there. Like gender equality in the Netherlands being one of the poorest of all studied countries, environment being one of the worst of all countries studied, being one of the least safe countries in the study (even worse than the US), or health being better in Greece than Germany, oh and if you want a good education you better move to Slovenia from the US because the OECD says it's better! I think you get the point, it's a total joke once you look at the individual parameters and the scoring on them.

So yeah some references would've been nice here and there. Not asking for links or anything, but just some reference to a source, like 'OECD better life index' which he referenced and turned out to be nonsense.
How El Salvador became the homicide capital of the world
Nope. I've been on hacker news since 2007. It's never been a tolerant community of people who have different viewpoints, no matter how well articulated.

I've been harassed, doxxed, and was even once hellbanned for linking to a scientific article.

But keep on believing it- the delusion that you're being rational is a key component of getting you to embrace your ideology.

Just keep thinking all those who point out errors are religious idiots, or irrational or "stupid".

Hell, you couldn't even provide a counter argument to me-- you just called me stupid.

Think about that.

You can't make an argument.

You call me a name.

And still you think you're the more rational one?

Amazing!

Enjoy your filter bubble.
A new site may come to replace it, but what of the 10MM+ questions and scads more answers created by the Stack Overflow community over the last 7 years? Without the CC license all that hard work gets lost in the case SO goes rogue.
Semantics. But then, this is hacker news, intelligent discussion gets downvoted or hellbanned.
Maybe, but it's hard to argue there isn't something to it. I think for each technology you can distinguish three types of users. 1) Those who care about it for itself - in this case the ones assembling their own drones, or willing to at least understand them on a deep level. 2) Those who treat it as just a tool, means to an end - think people doing air photos for money with drones. And 3), tourists - those who don't know a thing about the tech, don't want to know about it, but come drooling because it's cool and shiny.

Usually the third group does stupid shit (as in stupid stupid, not smart stupid), the first one gets angry at "kids these days", and the second doesn't care as long as it doesn't affect their use of their tools.

I find this model to accurately describe quite a lot interactions in the general tech sphere. So for instance in programming, the group 1) is what you call "hackers", and the primary folks who get religious over editors or programming languages. Group 2) mostly looks at it and says "meh". Those are the "product-focused" people, the "professionals". Group 3) are kids that try to flock to CS because it's cool and pays a lot.

Or, Google screwed up the deployment of Glass, because they marketed and sold it to rich people from Group 3) instead of Group 1) (Glass itself wasn't a good enough tool to create the Group 2) around it.).

Or all the remarks about how technology companies dumb down everything. That's Group 1) complaining that Group 2) designs stuff for Group 3).
Animal ag is environmentally devastating.
Sure, I really agree with you. My beef was not their use of term but the fact they didnt go on to define it in what is a let's define the things article. I suppose if they'd just unpacked the acronymn with a brief definition would have made this article more approachable in my opinion.
Show HN: ShouldYouBlank – Turn your followers into customers with a quiz
That's interesting though they sometimes cooperate. Only time I really see them do that here is when it's the offspring of one. Perhaps it has to do with the species of hummingbird? The ones where I am are all Ruby Throated ones.

http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Ruby-throated_Hummingbird...
You concede the politicization of science, which is my point, so thank you for that. Even if you have a different ideology, thanks for conceding the point. That's too challenging for most here.
It seems to matter to you a lot, since you've replied to every single dissenting opinion. So, have an upvote!)
If you sign and they advise you that you were rejected for an illegal reason, they can be charged for that crime, and if they are guilty, you can sue for $$.
If you sign and they give a rational and reasonable reason, like you only received 15 points on their rating system, and they chose only prospective employees who received 25+ points on that rating system, then you agreed to not sue if they revealed and you can not.

That said, there are many nuances in this, however, any company would be a fool to codify illegal acts - if they have their own lawyer, so you might not get anywhere.

I would say, sign and get the details, and if they can not be changed by extra study, get going and improve your score.
A lot of people never get criticisms on which to base self improvement.
Ask HN: Staying Happy
I really remember it, back to the time when i was in college, i have so much tasks. I needed to attend campus club. Lots of assignment. But the fact i was happy still surprises me.

It has been ~1.5 years since i graduated from my college and got to work as a software engineer. I got decent job with decent salary (at least pretty good in my area). The workplace itself considered as a "fun" environment: sleeping pod, ping pong table, coffee machine and no cubicles. Also, workload is lighter than class assignments. But it seems like i am not happy anymore -- i don't know why. (Btw, yes, i do love coding. I do some of my pet projects in weekend)

I tried to do so much things (to try) making myself happier: Cycling around the city, playing some game with friends; but none of them seems to be working.

After all, i want to create happiness, not to "do something" or "buy something" to make myself happy. I know happiness is intrinsic and subjective. Two persons doing a same thing may perceive that thing differently.
There's something about Tcl that I like. It managed to take a few simple rules and parlay that into a language that seems like it's much more complicated than it actually is.

When someone asks me about Tcl I always tell them to just "man Tcl" (if you have a Mac, it's already installed). Look at that man page—that's the entire syntax of the language. Everything else in the language is commands. It's almost lisp-ish in its simplicity, but it feels like a "normal" scripting language.

Even the base language was always made to be embeddable and extensible. I always loved that when you created a new Tcl command, the C function to implemented it looked like:

typedef int Tcl_CmdProc(ClientData clientData, Tcl_Interp *interp,
int argc, const char *argv[]);

IE, just standard "main()" style code with a couple extra args. (The newer Tcls have a new API that doesn't use strings for everything but that's a little more complicated).

This interpreter seems even easier, and that's saying something.
Ah thanks for that, I thought it was an English thing (here in the Netherlands we just say 'Ukraine') but I always heard it as 'the' on english television. After your correction I looked into it and it turns out saying 'the' is actually insulting!
What Is the Universe Really Made Of?
If you shift "backwards" doing shift work, you're significantly more likely to have a heart attack, accident, etc.

Take a few minutes and google it, this has been studied for 100 years or more.
That this factual comment is at -1 on Hacker News is my proudest achievement. No more proof of the anti-intellectualism of this site is needed.

I'm pretty much done wasting time here wading thru 20 year olds mindlessly regurgitating cargo cultism.
This 'feels' accurate, but I don't know how worthwhile it is to say 'well it was shittier back then so...'. People commit suicide, relationships are ruined and diseases appear due to the kind of stressors described in the Amazon exposés. They're worthy of being considered today, in context, not compared to British coal workers in the past or whatever.
Getting to Mars is a goal with many difficult problems along the way. But its kind of like building a nuclear bomb. The expertise and technologies developed could be immensely valuable to other industries. For example, it is said that SpaceX developed their own unique friction welding techniques for welding together two pieces of alloy. They share those techniques with Tesla.

Who knows what kind of interesting innovations in rocketry, material sciences, biology, etc. will come up in trying to accomplish the Mars mission.
Hum, you're associate is not right. I'm from France and I don't filter tap water (nor the majority of people I know). You do find people that do it, but I wouldn't say it's the majority.
Why wait a hundred years? If we have any 60+ year olds on HN that have worked in tech all their life (I can recall of at least one person like this chiming in on discussions in the past) -- then they can probably comment on what sort of toll this takes on your life in the longer term.
Kudos to boss#1 for apologizing. I hope he mellowed out.
What brilliant article and website design!

I feel stupid for not being able to visualize complex numbers before.
I agree that the shape of the code is what I start with too: the syntax-highlighted keywords stick out as anchor points when scrolling, and I know from indentation where sections start and end.

Example:

if (...)
{
...
}
else
{
...
}

or

loop
{
...
}

After I home in on the words then yes I will generally read left to right, top to bottom. But another part of imperative style is code is usually split into separate paragraphs of related functionality - so I can usually jump down whole paragraphs too.

The only other obvious variation I can think of is I will read bottom up when tracing the path a variable took to get to where I am currently looking.
Everyone knows that rockets work by pushing against the atmosphere!
Would be nice to see, in contrast, a C implementation.
C was invented at Bell Labs, a subsidiary of AT&T. Surely that counts as "backing of a major vendor"? C spread along with UNIX, which AT&T as vendor licensed to many other companies. It was also helped along by AT&T's own use of C and UNIX in its internal systems, especially telephone switch development.
Actually, I filed a report when I left. I had a great track record until that point. My work was spotless, I think I was nice to everyone.

Within 1 week of me leaving my boss was promoted!

Not because he was good at his job, but because he was a bad manager. He was promoted to a position that didn't require him to have a team under him.
Seems nice! I would use this to avoid all the OpenCL bloat code. However, there's an inconvenient: why restrict the vector sizes to be all the same? I see that it is used to set the workgroup size. I think that giving the possibility to pass arrays of whatever size and allowing the client to set the workgroup size wouldn't add much complexity to the code nor to the API.

Apart from that, really nice work, the code is well written and commented, it's a joy reading things like that.
Oh, the old "you didn't read it" argument to excuse a horrible article.
Lenovo Thinkpads do often have very good matte screens. My previous T520 and T530 machines' 15" 1080p screens were excellent, and my current T450S 14" 1080p IPS is even better (all machines generally excellent on all other counts as well). T450S is shaped like a rectangular prism rather than a wedge, but is still called an ultrabook at 3.5 lbs.. I frequently use retina MacBook screens for brief spells, and I'd say mine is better :)
No. A company has nothing to gain in telling you. Doing so would only open itself to risk.