skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You're mixing up arguments. No one on your team should be changing indentations. You should decide as a team what your settings are going to be, that's why I suggest using DetectIndent to make sure your settings match whatever the project guidelines are.

It's not a matter of personal preference though. Tabs are simply superior for encoding indentation. If you use tabs for indentation you can configure their width in your editor to match your personal preference, spaces doesn't allow for that. That's the only significant difference, and the only good reason for using tabs instead of spaces.

None of the arguments you made about spaces make sense. What's the fact that sometimes people mix up tabs and spaces got to do with anything? The whole idea of using tabs is that the code does format well regardless of what tab-width setting you have on your machine. Converting tabs to spaces does not require manual intervention at all. Alignment should be done with spaces, no one is argueing to use tabs for alignment. You can't use tabs for alignment because their width is undefined! The whole idea of using tabs is semantically encoding the authors original intention to allow you to reformat as you wish! At this point.. are you just trolling me?
How do they work, and how reliable? Seems like a pretty difficult thing to determine which healthy people are predisposed to mental ilness and which aren't.
Interesting. If you think from the UX point of view the cell number is much more convenient than email as people generally have multiple email ids but 1/2 phone ids. Also obviously the fake account issue is much much lower in phone's case compared to email ids.
What are reflectors?
Show HN: Web based tool (for desktops) to make awesome app screenshots fast
> you can fit 500 billion of them in memory

You will also need space for fulltext indexes, indexes per hashtag (a set which grows constantly and never shrinks, but has a power distribution, meaning that some hot tags will overwhelm any single machine and it constantly changes), the ability to call up any tweet from any point in history (growing by one beefy Dell server per day), the ability to fan out to 1 or 10 or 10 million followers and so on. The fanout problem turns sharding into a lumpy problem because again, there is a power law distribution that can overwhelm any single machine.

Then there's the fun part that Twitter is so reliable these days that when something else on the internet breaks, we check Twitter for updates. Robustness at that scale is more than buying a pair of SSDs and setting up RAID.

One thing I've learnt from being a consulting engineer is to stop assuming other engineers are morons. Sometimes we do things out of ignorance, or out of fear, or out of necessity. But often, when you inquire, there is a solid non-obvious reason for non-trivial diversions from the simplest thing that could possibly work.

I always find it useful to give the benefit of the doubt.
"Velázquez" by Las Meninas? Uh...
> that can't be explained by anything except by a desire to be treated like a princess

Do you mean a desire to be more efficient?

Am I some kind of princess because I decided to use a different keyboard layout than the default? That I decided to learn a different language than the one I was told to learn in school? That I wanted to install a different operating system than the one that came with my computer?

Your comment is not just hostile, it is unbelievably pretentious. You quite clearly don't understand why people customize things. If you want to live in your undecorated, perfectly square single-room house you're welcome to do so without telling others they're not "part of the team" for having different preferences than you do.

Damn...
> I mostly agree, but the scale of what Twitter is doing technically is very different.

If anything, Twitter's operation is significantly easier.
Project Faces
Soooo... RSS? Isn't that what you've just described? You could run that on a pretty small web server....
Qualcomm enters server CPU market with 24-core ARM chip
Not at all. Have you ever thought about caching Twitter? It's an archetypical example of a site that's extremely difficult to cache well, which is the source of so many of its scaling problems.

Every person's new feed is uniquely generated based on their followers. That means you can only at best cache at the individual tweet level -- you still need to uniquely generate a news feed for each user. This means that for every user you need to individually grab information simultaneously from the same high velocity tweets, while still being able to present information to each user uniquely based on conditions regarding how twitter should display tweets for that specific user individually. That's incredibly demanding data wise because it makes horizontal distribution of load much more difficult --- a huge number of people are all making demands on the same set of data resources, and you can't easily cache that data because of how real time and quickly updating it is.

In comparison WhatsApp on Erlang is basically just an example of extremely dramatic real time horizontal scaling. Hosting hundreds of millions of simultaneous chats is relatively trivial in Erlang, given each one is operating under its own separately scalable chat process. Since very few chats share data with one another, horizontal scaling is easy because you don't have the issue of the same resource getting called simultaneously by millions of unique users at the same time, who all need that resource represented back to their own news feed in differently categorized ways.

tl;dr: WhatsApp with the right technology is WAY easier to scale than Twitter.

---------------

(Speaking of the magic of Erlang for chat programs, this funny video "for Ruby/Node.js hipsters" explains how Erlang does this magic quite well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRbY3TMUcgQ) )
> That year, Royal Mail said the line cost five times as much as using roads and the network shut down.

I wonder if that calculated cost of using roads included the externalized costs of using roads – exhaust emissions, traffic congestions, road wear, etc.
Bootstrap style theme and Font Awesome for Android native apps
It is called personal choice.
I think focusing on the intelligence aspects is a bit of a distraction. The court in question was asked whether there was a case to be heard at all ("does this safe harbor thing really do what it says on the tin?") and the outcome as we know was "no", but not (only) due to vague undocumented (by court standards) foreign intelligence activities, but because rather simply the plain fact that unlike an EU operator, EU citizens have no legal recourse against companies in the US in the event of disputes such as the one in question.

It's this lack of legal process which means that the safe harbor agreement did not provide equivalent protections required by the charter, without even considering the spying angle.
WhatsApp also appears, at the moment, to have a much simpler business model - you buy it. No advertising technology, no audience/data teams and, probably most significantly, no sales team to go out and get people to use the platform. And no big agency handholding people, no data scientists, no customer success account managers. I'd be curious to see what the breakdown is between tech and sales at Twitter.
Funny how the discussion is never to simplify the code

If you simplify the code, it's bound to adversely affect some people, even if it helps others. The losers will loudly protest the changes and you will be a very unpopular politician. So it rarely happens.
In what sense? Technically? Business? Why is easier?
I wonder how you can even convict just on some CCTV footage of a masked man. Do you just trust the "super recognizer"?
iOS 9 Universal Links and Forgotten Passwords
Well, it seems that idea has failed now. Why else would they be cutting costs?
I agree @amix. More often than not it's asign of poor vision and leadership.
Plutocrats doing their policy making has nothing to do with who the proles voted for.
Writing scalable Angular apps – lessons from PayPal Checkout
Do you not have your own computer at work? Because that's what these ridiculous complaints sound like.
5 announcements I missed at re:Invent
While this book is only one anecdote with severe extenuating circumstances - it's a pretty good read.

http://www.amazon.com/And-Then-Thought-Was-Fish-ebook/dp/B00...

It's also online as part of his blog: http://www.stilldrinking.org/the-episode-part-1
500M tweets per day, not 500B: http://www.internetlivestats.com/twitter-statistics/
Assuming 100 Bytes per message gives 50GB of messages per day.
Most code editors are half-useless by default though. I don't think anyone is using the default Atom or Sublime. It takes time to both tweak them and learn how to use them. So I don't think Vim is THAT different.
Heh, I store my entire config in a Github repo: https://github.com/Diablo-D3/config
Myths about Multics
CHICAGO is an amazing city
It's more hassle to cheat than to pay your taxes, since they are also famously low.
I've got it working fine with BT Sync. All you need to do is put the .agilechain file in a sharable folder and load it up with 1password on both ends. It syncs up just fine.
I don't think the problem is big spending. It's their's not much oversight on how the money is spent.

I worked at a federal park, and every year employees would damage equipment, and throw it into a dumpster. Why, so they could get money to buy new equipment the following year.

My county is loaded with professional grant writers. You would be amazed at what a 501C3, and a well written paragraph will get an organization. I would list off some rediculious examples, but afraid I might expose my identity, or hurt low level employees who don't benefit from these grants.

I still think about those two companies, one was Dick Cheney's former stomping ground, who literally got more money, the more they spent. It was an open ended contract?
All they needed to show was receipts, and they were paid?

So, I expect the government to spend tax money, but not throw it away.

I am no angel, but in the last two decades I see a complete lack of morality in too many people. It's almost like, "Hay, it's not illegial, so I feel fine doing it!" Maybe it's always been there, and I was naieve?
First off, I'm not American either.

It's crazy because you've just given the entire substance of his campaign. He hasn't actually given any more details than that, and the points are ostensibly chosen because they're easily latched onto by people who can't be bothered to pay very much attention. Also the wall thing.
Watch+1011+avi
How do you block in app adds?
It's only "reversed" if you consider the other direction "normal". Either one makes sense: Mac acts like your finger is moving the page itself; X11 and Windows act like your finger is moving the location indicator on the scrollbar. Either one makes sense a priori, but once you're used to one the other becomes intolerable.
Glad someone had the same reaction I did. What's the value of conforming to a company standard when it makes you less efficient? Yeah, okay, chastise me and call me a princess - I'm going to go work somewhere else for someone who doesn't hold such a misguided set of principals and let's me work in my own best environment.
A piece of software that takes one input and fans it out to many consumers.
I've been a Twitter user since 2006 and mostly just use it to post sarcastic and pretentious remarks for my own enjoyment; the social aspect of it is almost meaningless to me. Many of my friends in tech do have Twitter accounts, of which they make varying degrees of use (though I'm not sure how many of them would regard it as essential - probably not many).

Most of my non-tech friends in real life broadly do not have Twitter accounts, or if they do, they follow about eight people (usually including Stephen Fry) and have either never tweeted, or only tweeted about four times, usually starting with, "Well, I'm on Twitter now. What do I do next?"

I'm talking about people in their 20s and 30s here. The same set of people do make a lot of use of Facebook (though a few, like me, find it vastly irritating and have deleted their accounts in recent years - but I'm not sure I know anyone female in that age bracket who doesn't have and use a Facebook account).

A bit more anecdata while I'm at it: Instagram seems pretty popular in cities, where people enjoy posting pictures of their pulled pork burgers and cocktails in jam jars - out here in the countryside, I don't hear much about it. The younger generation definitely do use Snapchat and the like, but I think most people over about 25 have no understanding at all of it. WhatsApp seems to have a very broad and universal appeal, and is a real common denominator for anyone who falls under the category of "I want to keep in contact with a friend who lives abroad" (I don't fully understand how it won out over Skype, apart from Skype being a very poor experience on mobile). Lastly, I'm not sure I know anyone who doesn't work in online media who actually uses Pinterest.
Sky-high price of new stem cell therapies is a growing concern
Beauty Tips for Girls – Health Tips in Urdu
It then says "The Earth does in fact orbit the sun. In the strictest sense, however, it doesn’t."

It concludes by saying the Earth orbits where the Solar System's barycenter was ~8 minutes ago. Note though that in the strictest sense, the concept of "barycenter" is ill-defined when one starts including light cones.

BTW, it ends with "it propagates at roughly the speed of light". As best as we can tell, it's at exactly the speed of light.
Rebinding jk to escape because escape is too far away seemed like a fairly ugly hack to me, especially because you can't type it anymore without waiting.

Why not simply rebind caps lock to escape? Caps lock is used awfully little, considering how prominent its position on the keyboard is. On Linux, you can rebind it by adding

setxkbmap -option caps:escape

to your .profile. If instead of an additional escape you prefer it to be swapped around, use

setxkbmap -option caps:swapescape

This is perhaps the most impactful change on my vim workflow.
You are the product. But apparently a poor one.
Also, since tax rules are so simple there are no ways to cheat, because that usually comes with complex and vague rules of tax deductions, which Singapore simply does not have.
> Funny how the discussion is never to simplify the code

Intuit would lobby against it.

http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/27/turbotax-maker-funnels-mill...
Monetization of the queries doesn't appear to be a significant revenue opportunity for either Google or Facebook - why would this be different for Twitter? Not that this can't be a revenue source, but how big is it?

An alternative: I agree with everyone that they should have turned the APIs back on - they just should have made it mandatory to carry advertising as part of the feeds in order to access the feeds. They could have also layered on federated advertising for anyone consuming the API - meaning, allow those folks to show their own advertising in-stream. They simply pay Twitter a cut. Both of these may have helped them both grow the audience and advertising at the same time.
We All Get ‘Free Stuff’ from the Government
How much of that is because they are Singapore, and so probably have draconian penalties for cheating?
Try it! If you learn about why semicolons were recommended for js, it's pretty easy to avoid writing code that would land you in trouble in the semicolon-free world. Most likely you wouldn't be getting in trouble in the first place since most of the examples had me thinking "why would I ever write code like this?". Besides, I think that recommendation maybe came from a time when the ASI was unreliable and linters were not common. My eslint is awesome at keeping me out of trouble.

For good reading, have a look at the linked articles at the bottom here http://eslint.org/docs/rules/semi.html
His point (although a little too blunt for me) was that Obama was this "hope and change" guy that was going to be transparent and all of that nonsense. Even though he's ultimately powerless in matters like this, if he were truly a man of character he would at least speak against it. The problem is the systems we have will not allow men of character to get within sniffing distance of that position.

There are the Cheneys of the world who seem to emit darkness and there are the Obamas of the world who offer an alternative but then do the same thing. Which one is worse?
> This kind of overcustomization is fine if you live in a basement and work on a project alone.

Hahahahaha! You trolling?

I wonder, you work like 5 people on the same computer or something? And if 'yes', the OS doesn't support multiple users?! I don't wanna ruin a happy relationship or anything, but it's 2015... ;-)
This design uses an $8 fish tank pump as a circulator.
Teaching Math to People Who Think They Hate It
I stopped using semicolons a year ago, have not had a single error because of it.
I am actually in favor of this because it will incentivize people to create an alternate network that the ISPs will not be able to manipulate.
WSJ.com important security message [pdf]
If there is only one thing I can complain about vim/vi, it's the esc key. The key is too far away to reach easily. It is most accessible with the little finger, which is our weakness finger. Coupled with the fact that it's likely the most important key in vim. I hate it.

So when I use a non-configured vim, it's the thing that I miss the most. The rest is trivial.

However, using someone else vim is completely different!

You must keep in mind that vim is much similar to a programming language. You can remap keys all over the place. You can create exotic combinations that do wonderful and/or terrible things with few key strokes. You can install plugins that argument and alter vim behaviours.

Jumping into a well tuned vim setup is not unsimilar to starting to use a new programming framework. It's hard to be productive right away.

In that case usually, I just rename .vimrc, remap <esc>, do my things and get out of the way.
* Regarding 'princess' dig, please see:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/05/27/your-prince...
Good tutorial. Looking forward to combing over my vimrc tomorrow when I have some time. It's similarly copied from somebody else's many moons ago, and there are things that it does that I don't really like but haven't been bothered to change (eg. sometimes I want 2 space indents instead of 4).
Still probably better than back-breaking agricultural work, which is why so many people move to the cities to work.
You would probably like Common Good then: http://www.commongood.org/
> Funny how the discussion is never to simplify the code

This has been the conversation in every political debate for (at least) the past decade. It could be the one broad sentiment shared across party lines.

Almost everyone agrees on simplifying the tax code, especially corporate tax, it just becomes more difficult when vested interests are adversely affected when the rubber meets the road.
Time flows. Literally
Yes, it's a nightmare.

Arduino LLC and arduino.cc are the original group. Genuino is a new trademark intended to be more clear, but they have an uphill marketing battle, to say the least.

Arduino SRL and arduino.org are the former member who independently (and without knowledge of the group) registered the Arduino trademark in Italy. He then refused to transfer it to the group, and was pushed out.

The story gets worse from there. I'm not a fan of blacklists, but I make a point of clarifying the .cc vs .org distinction to whomever will listen.

.cc is Completely Correct.
Top Open-Source Static Site Generators
Very few innovative startups have ever succeeded by declaring that "technology has its limits, we better work within them!"

To be successful, you usually have to do something outside the comfort limits of existing technology.
I would be grateful if people could now leak what's up with all the racist/misogynist terrorist bullying, which I constantly see when looking at Twitter responses. (I'm sure many would defend Twitter's actions despite getting fired, but there's gotta be a couple ethical people who wanted to seriously act.)
From what I've read, these are the good guys.

- http://www.zdnet.com/article/whats-in-a-name-the-battle-for-...

- http://makezine.com/2015/03/19/massimo-banzi-fighting-for-ar...

- http://hackaday.com/2015/02/25/arduino-v-arduino/

edited to add:

- http://hackaday.com/2015/07/23/hackaday-interviews-federico-...
Chrome and Safari extensions to view AMP versions on the desktop
An appeal is free, merely filling in a form and waiting for the PCN adjudicator to make a judgement.
The defaults are just fine. (As a sysadmin) I tend to work on systems that mostly aren't my own workstation and have never found it to be an issue (can't be arsed to push out my own config everywhere, not to mention other admins may not like what I like). I imagine it might be different for a coder...line numbers and pretty colors are nice I guess?
sure. There was what seems to be a correction in the PE market where funding become a bit more difficult to get a hold of. As such, an article came out suggesting that unicorns would have problems but cockroaches would survive. While the unicorn portion is a bit silly, the cockroach part is reasonable. Essentially, the companies with low burn rates and actual, real, cashflow will be more likely to survive.
Holy ish! Neovim has progressed so much. Exciting.
The Exemplary Narcissism of Snoopy
>I like to joke (only half-joke) Smalltalk-80 makes Java-2015 look somewhat primitive in comparison.

It's not a half-joke, it's a fact.

The only places I'd say Java is better is number of libraries (obviously) and compiler/GC (whose legacy comes from later Smalltalk-oriented works anyway).

If Smalltalk images could work in some hybrid mode, where you get all the regular benefits, but with a "normal" editor and/or IDE too, and in plain text, it would be golden.
> Initially I thought it was just a new database

It isn't? Apparently it has some new cool features but that's exactly what a new DB is about.
While I agree with you, with Twitter the opposite seems to hold true. Many people like Twitter and see it as an integrated part of how they work and interact and that has driven the evaluation of the company. Not once has I heard anyone in the tech press or end in the financial news question Twitter.

Twitter should never have been a publicly listed company. They don't have a business plan, there was never any prof that they would be profitable. But Silicon Vally types, news media and bankers liked using the platform so: hey presto Twitter is a billion dollar company.

Twitter could be profitable if each user paid just $10 per year, but sadly I don't think people like it enough to pay up.
> [...] especially because you can't type it anymore without waiting

This was my thought when I saw this mapping for the first time, and when I started customizing my vimrc I opted for using caps lock as well. It didn´t take long for me to change that and start using kj instead -- in the end it was more common for me to type constants in all-caps than typing "Reykjavik."
“All in all, it’s interesting, but the mechanism needs to be properly investigated,”

This is the type of academic bullsh@t that needs to stop. Of f@cking course more research needs to be done but let these people have their moment for advancing the field.

Life is literally too short to ruin it in this way.
Not to mention Twitter got a lot of its early success from making connections to media companies in television.

That may have worked for them, but I suspect it's filled the company with many media-only types in a toxic way similar to how Yahoo got hurt by thinking of themselves as only a media/ads company. That killed them against Google, who as Paul Graham pointed out, was a company that was still successful in feeling like a startup technology company well after becoming large.

Given Twitter's lack of technology innovations, I'm inclined to think they are more towards Yahoo than they are towards Google.