skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
As someone who learnt to code as a kid, then studied and worked in civil/structural engineering, then ended up later on back in software, I do find comparisons (somehow always involving bridge analogies) between software engineering and 'traditional' engineering to always be off somehow.

Most traditional engineering projects are not magical bastions of rigor and certainty. It is really only in very large budget or critical projects that a lot of analysis or rigour comes into play to create that certainty.

At least in the civil/structural world you'd be surprised how much comes down to just gut feel by experienced engineers who then throw down some very quick calculations (budgets don't allow for much more than that) to back up their choices. Most numbers are looked up in tables. They then hopefully get run past another experienced engineers gut feel for validation then get signed off. And most of the time the public agency will just accept that uncritically - as they no longer have the resources to double check designs themselves.

The main difference with software as I see it, is that software is binary and the real world is analogue. Civil/structural engineering standards have factors of safety for materials and loading codes etc to cope with inconsistencies or minor mistakes/oversights or unforeseen circumstances etc. Even most failures are not catastrophic and can be detected and fixed before a catastrophic failure eg things can yield or crack rather than snap.

Software being binary though means for a certain set of circumstances it either works or it doesn't. You don't have the luxury of factors of safety and just overspeccing components to be sure.
One of the reasons I love Hartl's Rails Tutorial <https://www.railstutorial.org/book> is because he integrated a completely free c9.io account which (with the commands he gives you) is guaranteed to setup Rails and a shell environment identical to what the book expects. I have seen so many aspiring programmers stymied by things like installing a text editor, let alone the right version of Ruby or incompatible gems. And, people with less money are more likely to have a cheap Windows laptop, which makes configuration even more difficult. By contrast, anyone with a computer or even an Internet cafe should be able to get an up-to-date browser, and c9 is plenty good enough for getting started.

I've started taking my 9-year-old son through the book, and though it's crazy how large a vocabulary you need if you really wanted to understand everything, that's not actually necessary and he's able to follow the directions and make progress.
When open source implementations, reference guides/manuals and public internet forums (in that order from biggest to smallest sign) start being ubiquitous.
In its early stages, every technology is vertically integrated, aka tightly coupled.

If you were to buy a minicomputer or mainframe in the 1970s, or a personal computer in the early-1980s, the same provider would make the hardware, peripherals, OS, applications, etc.

As the technology develops, that changes -- the PC market in the 1990s turned the hardware, peripherals into commodities. Until Apple's resurgence, it looked like the whole market outside of the OS would be commoditized.

With smartphoness in the late-2000s, it was a very similar story: tightly-integrated early phones, gradually maturing into more commoditized hardware, peripherals, and applications, while retaining a premium market segment (iOS) with tight vertical integration.

This pattern is fairly similar across industries, some good reading on the topic:

https://hbr.org/2009/12/vertical-integration-can-work/

Clayton Christiansen, "The Innovator's Solution", Chapter 6: "How to Avoid Commoditization"

Simon Wardley and "Wardley maps"; a good intro is here: http://www.slideshare.net/swardley/general-2013
Poe's law meets Muphry's Law.
Free Computer Science Engineering Course Online
Not thinking about or expressing doesn't necessarily falsity it, much less serve as a reason to castigate someone at HN for pointing it out, albeit in a sentimental way.

Is it really that hard, even in this supposedly liberalized day and age, to have a conversation about these outdated romantic notions?
One of 11 open source projects will receive $4K prize in a few days
Even if such a thing were possible, it seems highly unlikely that a bunch of slaves could pull it off successfully. How's a slave going to gain access to a high-speed communication network in a way that doesn't immediately prompt retribution?

Slaves are either compliant or tortured for not being compliant. That's why slavery is so brutal; if your owner doesn't beat you, he'll either kill you or sell you to someone who will. There's really no other option for dealing with a slave who refuses to obey. (And I don't see how a compliant slave can help end slavery.)

> I can imagine scenarios where it might end peacefully

How? People who legally own slaves aren't going to just let their slaves walk away anymore than any company now is going to let their employees walk away with all their profits.
- When there is a bunch of people on the internet discussing it.

- When you can buy the components on Alibaba for a fraction of the publicy known price

Example: electric powertrain for cars. You could convert your car in a pure electric one for less than 4000USD by buying the motor & controller on the internet. And 22kWh worth of batteries (18650) for less than 6000USD. Very interesting stuff!
was The Innovator's Solution a good book ?
How Much Do Hired Goons Make?
Hence his use of the word “effectively.” [insert some sort of quip questioning if English is your first language here]
"I am so smart, I've risen above looks, but not mistakes."
That chapter, and the two immediately preceding and following, were excellent. The rest was all right.
Uncanny valley
I'd think that the biggest sign (though arguably a sign that a technology has already become commoditized) is when you see a leading vendor explicitly announcing/advertising a price cut. At that point, the story they're telling is concretely shifting away from the narrative of "our technology is uniquely suited to your needs" and toward "we can give you more widgets per dollar than the other guy".

Example: GoPro. They recently announced a substantial price cut, and their stock took a pretty big hit in the wake of that announcement.
Are we talking about classic incinerators (simply burn stuff) or plasma arc (gasification)incinerators? With plasma arc gasifications the temperatures are so high (2,200 to 13,900 °C) that all the waste and any resulting toxic byproducts, the very molecules themselves, are broken down to individual atoms. There are no toxic compounds left.

All that remains at the end is ash that contains various metals and syngas that is produced in the process. Which can be used for generating electric power.

I hope plasma arc gasification becomes the standard for managing and disposing municipal solid waste. It really works. But you do need a certain scale (enough waste) for it to be effective.

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

http://www.waste-management-world.com/articles/print/volume-...
> I wish they would tone down how loose the physics on ragdolls

There's more than one "they", of course. You can certainly fault Havok for the default settings being set for impressive demonstrations rather than realistic immersion. But developers certainly deserve a lot of blame for not tweaking the knobs Havok provides to tone it down.

Look at Dark Souls vs Dark Souls II. Both Havok, one with comical ragdolling and one with very reasonable ragdolling (aside from enemy weapons that will launch themselves 30m in the air when the wielder dies, anyway, or stick straight up at a 90% angle).
Is the dotcom bubble about to burst (again)?
Every technology will become commoditized sooner or later eventually.

But here are some signs to tell when a technology goes from an innovation to a commodity

1) An increase in competitors is a sure sign of commoditization.

Increase in competitors -> price war mostly -> existing core technology becomes commoditized as players start to differentiate with value-added services/products.

2) A new technology emerges that's 10x better on some dimension but still out of reach and a few years out of most customers' hands. It forces existing market for the technology to demand lower and lower prices for old tech -> commoditization of that tech as original innovator no longer might find it worth it to pursue that product.

3) Regulation could some time force commoditization. Often seen in healthcare/drugs production.

I'm sure there are others. The common vain is that there's a rapid increase in competition.
Just added a "5 minute walk from South Station" neighborhood.

A few notes/observations:

1. I didn't realize that there were already several other maps for the area I wanted to map (South Station). It would have been cool to see a message like "Looks like you are mapping a previously mapped section of the town. Want to review that map?" I would have commented/loved that map instead of creating a new one and adding to the noise.

2. I don't see any way to link to my neighborhood map. So, how can I share this with other and get more love?

3. How is this different from Google's "My Maps" feature[1]? Not being snarky, but the only thing I can think of is the 'discoverability' of bostonography maps.

[1] https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/
Although there are complex emotions involved on top of "his own boner" - I agree with the substance of your post. Reading
joostdevries's comment reminds me of how much people still undervalue the power of instinctual passions in guiding behaviour, thoughts and (as all the sad love songs and this craigslist post amply demonstrates) words.
From the article:

> They found that people from the US tended to describe the voices as intrusive unreal thoughts they hated. In contrast, people from South India were more likely to describe them as providing useful guidance, and people from Ghana were more likely to think of them as morally good.

You are getting down-voted for not reading the article before commenting.
No, I believe you are wrong.
Obligatory:
http://www.girlswithslingshots.com/comic/gws-849/
Guilty! I wonder if these types of turbines are what Yves Rossy and others use in their jet-packs. It looks similar! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yves_Rossy#Jet-pack
I got the correct answer immediately because I've seen a similar problem before in HN, although with a Tetris lamp instead.

Link: http://jackm.co.uk/the-simple-proof-of-the-tetris-lamp/

Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8870479
Another alternative, quite viable today, Web Workers.
GitHub MarkupDown
Considering how often, and by how many, cars are used in comparison to guns, anything else would bee outrageous. According to your line of thinking, we should all drive drunk, since most people involved in car accidents are sober.
There are some pretty obvious PR motivations for Specialized here:

1) Try to dissuade people from buying cheap Chinese frames (not just the counterfeit frames in the article, but the higher quality ones that have been gaining popularity on various internet forums).

2) Justify Specialized's extreme litigiousness with respect to trademarks (which has gotten it a lot of negative press) by spreading the idea that it's motivated by the goal of protecting its customers from unsafe products.

On the other hand, I'm sure counterfeits are really a problem. It's probably tempting for Chinese companies that are making a pittance selling bike parts to other companies to make copies to get prices that are many times higher.
I am probably missing something, but I take it you're okay with The Guardian as a source? How is this not clickbait? https://twitter.com/somuchguardian
Hacker News Rankings
Location:Minsk, Belarus

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Technologies: Java, JavaScript(Angular, ExtJS), CSS, Apache Wicket, OSGi

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Highly qualified IT professional with 4 years of experience in software development and a special focus on Java and JavaScript. Solid knowledge of computer science concepts.
DiffPy – Atomic Structure Analysis in Python
Meet Ajax, the British Army's new war machine
Volume leads to low cost and high quality. That's why Ethernet got commoditized but fiber channel didn't. Today notable examples are in solar power and batteries, but also think sparc vs x86 vs arm (mobile volumes much higher than desktop/server)
> Microsoft has shown that it wants to push physics calculations into the cloud.

Ugh. Yet another excuse for publishers to retain the ability to shut off single-player games some single-digit-number of years after release. :(

Don't get me wrong, I've wanted new and better physics ever since Max Payne 2. Except for some niche games whose names I have forgotten ( :( ), we haven't really gotten good physics yet.
Intel has maintained itself well, but they missed a huge opportunity in the rise of smartphones and tablets.
I don't know how you get 'we should all drive drunk' from a call for giving more respect to the danger of driving cars. The line of thinking you are following is not mine.
South Carolina Residents Told to Stay Home as Scores Are Rescued from Floods
Except that (i) measures which improve corporate image often increase shareholder value and (ii) shareholders freely choose to invest in companies knowing they have chosen to spend a portion of revenues on CSR initiatives, and very rarely revolt against corporate boards over CSR
Good stories? Do you mean good projects? Or perhaps "good submissions" if you're looking for more generic verbiage.
The poster was probably just drawing an equivalence between people who operate on simple stereotypes. In some sense, both the grammar Nazi and the racist accept the same fallacy.

However, if your grammar is so poor that I cannot easily read your sentences, there is a good chance that I will not try further to read them.
payment processors
The last two paragraphs about how Grindr is completely different are great.
Terminal Emulator for Atom Editor
Look at the rate of subway construction in China[1]. Self driving cars + tunnel means the subway comes to you, the riders don't need to go to the station. In the US tunnels seem like a rare and expensive thing, but they're very commonplace.

[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/why-china-is-tunneling-a-mind...

The difficulty of public works projects in the US is a legitimate question. But it's a separate question from what self driving cars will make possible (especially for the 90%+ of people who live outside the US).
That's cool. As far as I can tell, you are approximating bezier curves with line segments. It is a valid solution in many cases, but I would not use this technique for anything but aestetics.

Have you seen this paper: http://www.msr-waypoint.net/en-us/um/people/cloop/LoopBlinn0... ?
Just looked up typographic and the author made this come by at the end:

"If you like this project then I encourage you to check out a few of my other projects that go well with Typographic.

Lost Grid - Quite simply the best grid out there in every comparison available. Simple yet incredibly powerful."

Following a quick read LOST Grid seems very comprehensive, anyone have experience using this?
> Air travel won't be snuffed out by annoying security, but possibly by restrictions to the oil supply.

Your conclusion does not follow from your statement.

We are never going to run out of oil, and it will always be cheap. Air travel has nothing to worry about.

And on top of that if oil did become hard to come by then you can simply synthesize it (from coal or trees and water, or even from thin air if necessary), it's not especially hard as these things go.
Mobile Device Management (MDM). Blackberry got the ball rolling in the early 2000's, but it was the release of iPhone and Android that got vendors rich.

Apple and Google created API's and enrollment processes to manage devices (device lock, wipe, etc.). Companies created software to consume those API's, the biggest being AirWatch, Mobile Iron, and MaaS360. AirWatch was acquired by VMware for $1.5billion in 2014 and Mobile Iron went public, rising 22% in the first day of trading. MaaS360 was acquired by IBM for several hundred million.

At first, license fees were high, competition wasn't too fierce, and the market was booming.

Then many more low-cost players moved in. Open source MDM software appeared. One company (Miradore) gives MDM away for free to hook customers on IT management fees and various other upsells. Mobile Iron stock is down 70% for the year.

I was listening to an NPR podcast this morning and heard an advertisement for a product named Bushel doing Apple MDM. I think the definition of commoditized tech is when you hear companies advertising on NPR.

My take on the situation is that it's risky to build a core business merely consuming other company's API's. Doing analysis and more advanced things, sure. But simply executing an API command is not special. The MDM list of features is completely controlled by Apple and Android manufacturers, and anytime they release a new feature, every MDM player instantly gets access to it. The only differentiation between products becomes how effectively they use the pre-existing API's (scaling, integration with other enterprise products, etc.) and pricing. This obviously becomes a race-to-the-bottom on pricing, destroying margins.

The reason I know so much about this is that I work at a company called Apperian, focusing on Mobile Application Management (MAM). We use to compete with the MDM guys, but it's a completely different game now. All of our core technology is unique, most of it is patented / patent pending, and we solve problems that the MDM API's cannot. We dominate the MAM industry, although niche and much smaller than the MDM sector, is growing very quickly. It would be extremely difficult and costly for a company to implement what we do, in contrast to the MDM guys.

It's been very interesting to watch the rise and fall of big players, as our sales keep booming. I will keep watching the drama unfold.
It would be unwise to stop / break it from running on Playstation and Nintendo consoles otherwise the cross platform developers would not be interested in using the middleware so I'm not sure what they are intending on doing.
"can we classify it as terrorism?"

The definition used does not appear to be based on hate crimes, nor on public shooting, but on cases the government classified as terrorism related crimes.

The linked-to page is dated Jun 24, 2015. It cites a New America study, and links to a site where the content no longer displays anything useful. Archive.org to the rescue - https://web.archive.org/web/20150212164145/http://securityda... .

The data set is:

== Deadly Jihadist Attacks ==
Plot name Persons killed
2014 Washington and New Jersey Killing Spree	4
2014 Oklahoma Beheading 1
2013 Boston Marathon Bombing 4
2009 Little Rock Shooting 1
2009 Fort Hood Shooting 13
2006 Seattle Jewish Federation Shooting 1
2002 Los Angeles Airport Shooting 2

== Deadly Right Wing Attacks ==
2014 Tallahassee Police Ambush 1
2014 Las Vegas Police Ambush 3
2014 Kansas Jewish Center Shooting 3
2014 Blooming Grove Police Shooting 1
2012 Tri-State Killing Spree 4
2012 St. John's Parish Police Ambush 2
2012 Sikh Temple Shooting 6
2011 FEAR Militia 3
2010 Carlisle, PA Murder 1
2010 Austin, TX Plane Attack 1
2009 Pittsburgh Police Shootings 3
2009 Holocaust Museum Shooting 1
2009 George Tiller Assassination 1
2009 Ft. Walton, FL Shooting 2
2009 Flores Murders, Pima County, AZ 2
2009 Brockton, MA Murders 2
2008 Knoxville, TN Church Shooting 2
2004 Tulsa OK, Bank Robbery 1

The methodology is:

> The dataset seeks to include all American citizens and residents indicted or convicted for terrorism crimes who were inspired by or associated with Al Qaeda and its affiliated groups as well as those citizens and residents who were killed before they could be indicted but have been widely reported to have worked with or been inspired by al-Qaeda and its affiliated groups. The dataset does not include extremists tied to violent Islamist groups that do not target the United States as part of al-Qaeda’s war, for example Hamas and Hezbollah, nor does it include individuals who were acquitted or charged with lesser crimes, for example immigration violations, that cannot be shown to involve some kind of terrorism-related crime.

> The dataset also includes individuals inspired by right wing, left wing, and other non-Jihadist political ideologies, who have been indicted for terrorism related crimes. The data on non-Jihadist extremists is less developed than the data on Jihadist extremists but where available it is included to provide a comparison across ideologies. The dataset relies mainly upon court documents, wire service reports, and news reports as sources.
At SunSed.com we moved from linode to GC a year ago! It has been great! The only thing that I am currently looking for is GC HTTP(S) load balancing support for HTTP/1.1 100 Continue response.
Yeah, the routing system is. Fred Hebert (aka ferd, the author of "Learn You Some Erlang" and "Stuff Goes Bad: Erlang in Anger") is one of the folks working at Heroku on exactly that.
This is the trade off I've wrestled with. I've kicked around setting up a Clound9 IDE with access to our environments, so that I can access and repair any of our production environments remotely without needing my laptop.
Of course they had noise problems. They were using a solderless breadboard. Analog computers require shielding, good ground planes, and bypass caps on power at each IC.

I once had two 555 timers, set up as oscillators, on a solderless breadboard, and they'd phase-lock just from inductive coupling if they were near the same frequency. Without bypass caps at each IC, they'd phase-lock even when the frequencies weren't close, at some ratio like 7:6. When the big power transistor in a 555 switches, it introduces a transient, which gets into the input signals. Fun to watch on a scope.

While you can build analog differentiators, they're so noise-sensitive that they're almost useless. Combined differentiators and low-pass filters can work, but a pure differentiator tries to track the slope of every tiny noise event. Analog computing is usually all integrators, summers, and multipliers, as they did here.
A few interesting things I noticed in the video:

• Oppenheimer mentions a young physicist named Dyson. This is Freeman Dyson[1], who is still active today[2]. Human lives are long.

• Cloud chambers had been around for decades at this point, and lots of particles make a "V" in a them.[3]

• I'm not very knowledgable when it comes to particle physics, so I don't know the meaning of the symbols on the chalkboard. Whatever it is, I bet it's wrong. The quark model wasn't ironed out for another decade.

• Oppenheimer was quite right in worrying more about nuclear war than contamination from nuclear testing. Atmospheric testing would result in increased cancer rates and birth defects. Not good, but an endurable harm. On the other hand, global nuclear war could have ended humanity or drastically limited our potential.

It would be very interesting to see the whole interview. Several times, Oppenheimer struggled to explain his ideas in layman's terms. It's likely that quite a few technical bits were edited out.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeman_Dyson

2. http://www.wired.com/2014/03/quanta-freeman-dyson-qa/

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_particle