skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> 5 billion years of evolution haven't given us solar powered animals that can run around.

Pretty much every animal that can run around is solar powered, consuming as fuel an energy storage medium for which the input energy is gathered by (mostly stationary) solar collectors. (Or consuming other animals, which are themselves fuel synthesized from such fuel or other animals, etc.)

> It seems like there are some significant hard limits on solar technology.

What hasn't been produced by evolution isn't strong evidence of hard limits of any technology, so even if the premise was true, that still wouldn't justify this conclusion.
Enrique: A case study of a gifted computer user (2000) [pdf]
In unexpected discovery, comet contains alcohol, sugar
No it is not. You continue to be more at risk of dying while crossing a street than you are by being near or even in a riot in Oaklamd.

Your lack of clarity has nothing to do with quibbles over location and everything to do with assessment of risk.

Also, if you dislike riots so much and dislike policies which you think might reward them, should San Francisco ban the Giants from competing in the World Series?
Or is it something you do because of something you are?
You're confused about de facto vs. de jure. It's a common thing to be ignorant about, but maybe in the future don't be all "No, no, you're exactly wrong!" before double-checking.
That's fair, but if you don't already present with a disease, I don't know how much WES can tell you. At least with a SNP chip, and the correct analysis, you can start speculating about what may happen down the road.
OK. It's about what I get, post-riot. What I've got, post-riot, is an inclination to support Oakland PD - horrifying record and all - over possibly-well-meaning rioters.

Reforming OPD seems much more tractable than addressing issues over which local politics hold little to no sway.
I get what you're saying, and I've tried both ways: using project structure to explicitly force modularity vs trying to instill culture and practices to preserve modularity within a monolith. I should mention I am a consultant, so I tend to work in enterprise environments with varying levels of practices and maturity.

My experience has been that lots of different people will touch a codebase over the lifetime of a piece of software, and they will have varying skill levels. Even if everyone on the team right now will avoid creating a ball of spaghetti, at some point everyone involved will be gone. Patches and new functionality end up getting bolted on and added to an ever growing list of technical debt (we'll get to it, we swear). 10 years down the line no one can maintain it because no one knows what the interactions are across the system.

Splitting code into separate services/codebases doesn't totally prevent this from happening, but it does make it a lot harder. First, adding coupling is no longer the path of least resistance when you "need to delivery yesterday". Second, each service is significantly easier to grok than a single legacy monolith, and therefore easier to refactor back to sanity.

Vaguely related, I also really like how microservices offer a non-insane approach to modernizing a large system. A lot of my clients have large highly-coupled mainframe applications written in Smalltalk/COBOL/etc. They want to migrate to a "modern" language (ie one with a workforce). Big bang migrations almost never work, so we end up carving off functionality, re-implementing it in the new framework, and then integrating it with the monolith via messaging/services. Microservices make it easier to pull out one piece and rewrite it, without having to also touch every client.
Bing profitable, Microsoft Revenue slips 12%
> Globalization because of technology before first world war was actually increasing and was only stopped by the two wars.

I have a slightly different view. The US had some very good presidents. Franklin D. Roosevelt was one of them. He did some serious reforms in the US and countered some of the capitalistic outgrowths. As much I understood, he really did fight for a more human society.

In my view, that was one of the main brakes against capital aggregation. An other of course where the two world wars. These factors where important for the rapid growth of social systems and wealth in many western nations.

The reversal came later with presidents like Reagan in the US and Thatcher in the UK.

---

In my opinion, yes, technology can bring capital aggregation and thus become a problem for democracy itself -- but good and brave statesmen can counter this trend. I see the few decades after the 2nd WW, which brought wealth to many people (not only the few), as example that technology needs not to be a money accumulating force.

Human decisions are also important -- but where to take brave politicians, when there are none? The problem is, that we are all already corrupted by money and easy living (and brainwashed by the tv).
I remember hearing people were super-excited about it, and I kept thinking "It's a theme-customizer for your web-browser. Neat, but why is everyone going crazy for it? What's the big deal?"

Sadly, I never looked into it to find out more until after it was canned.
Come on; all of the world is 'solar powered' by that stretch. Oil came from algae which grew from sunlight.

The point is valid: the density of solar exposure at the surface of earth, times the capture/conversion rate to chemical energy, is too low to support animal life. As demonstrated by billions of years of evolution.
What is the difference between writing that list directly in Notes app? Do I really need a bot to create a list from my list? Curious to see if there's any use case behind just formatting a list into a list.
Perhaps a 'republican' or conservative political ideology?

Certainly there aren't many (if any?) self-identified libertarians at any level local/state/federal of our government. And it's not particularly libertarian to maintain the same punishment structure while handing out government contracts to well connected profiteers?

Are the poor treated better by the criminal justice system in states with no privatized justice systems and strong correctional officer unions?
> 5 billion years of evolution haven't given us solar powered animals that can run around

Actually, that's exactly what evolution has given us. Nearly every living thing on the planet gets it's energy from the sun. Taking that a step further, nearly every bit of energy extracted from fossil fuels comes from stored solar energy.
Does medium want to be the facebook of text?
4 Google Chrome Browser Extensions I Use to Stay Focused and Be More Productive
A matter on which we will simply have to disagree, it seems.

And don't tempt me with the Giants.
Efor+GK+365+Erkek+Gömlek+14Y523G365+::+Çelik+Sipariş
My guess is that as manufacturing costs lower and competitors realize the market, the price will eventually go down. Even offices, schools and other public places could benefit from having this also.
I do freelance writing. Some of the writing I do needs to be positive and also not sound promotional. It's something I got feedback on to learn. It is surprisingly hard to be positive and genuine and hit the right note. It is possible that a first time attempt, with presumably no constructive feedback, just didn't come across as smoothly as what you were shooting for.

Also, I got interviewed in July by a reporter who sought me out. No article has materialized. I kind of suspect it got killed. So even if they come to you, it may not get published. It was a national paper. I get piddling amounts of traffic. I am incredibly bummed and have no idea what to do. I thought it would get published and make a big difference in my life.
Again, we can call oil 'solar powered' by that means. Of course 'solar powered' should mean 'directly powered by sunlight captured by the creature itself'. No animal can do this, because the light X capture efficiency is far too low.
> My friend has a rather large community house where he has offered me to stay for free for 2% equity (or something like that) per year...

Your "friend" isn't offering you anything "free."
I've worked in both types of environments and the companies where software is a cost center are just as bad if not worse than first class software companies with regard to latching onto a new technology or framework, half-assing an implementation, and then moving on to something else. The pattern seems to be to blame the framework rather than realizing the implementation was poor. "We made something and it sucked, must be the framework's fault!"
Predicting the Growth of Programming Languages
The more your system is broken down into smaller components the more you have to break an API to make a change. Unless all change consists of nothing but bug fixes and performance enhancements, changes to the API is as common as anything else.

If your need is respond quickly to changing requirements this setup falls flat.
I'm willing to retract that entire line of thinking, because the author never ever actually said anything about designing for Retina hardware, so why are we talking about it in the first place? Their explicit approach was to make Medium's typography work on as many platforms and devices as possible, and this OS X (not Retina, just OS X) bug was an edge case that they missed.
"Popcorn Time creators back away from copyrighted content with ‘Project Butter’"

http://thenextweb.com/apps/2015/10/23/popcorn-time-creators-...
I think that's a great argument. If someone mails the code, I hope to have the cleverness to suspect the encoding. However, I thought about a code repository or similar where this may be an issue, but most often is not. And I have seen some code where a wrong language character did not provoke a reasonable error, but some arbitrary parser error that went off in another line altogether (not necessarily C#).
The Four Kinds of SaaS Churn
That's true, and it's great if you can use it. I don't care for their content delivery.
Node.js Websockets for React: Automatically updates state and data
"- Each microservice has less than 150LOC"

Sounds like a nightmare, you know how much instances / vms you need if you spawn one thing for 150LOC?
True, and not necessarily a situation unique to India.
Problem is that you don't really know what matters or is valuable when you're getting started.
Yglesias is someone I'm pretty comfortable putting in the "neoliberal shill at first blush" category though, even if he's trolling
Co-founder of Open PlanIt
South African High Court issues interdiction against a hashtag (#FEESMUSTFALL)
‘Steve Jobs’ movie review: A surprisingly boring and uninspired film
There's some good stuff there, but this gets me:

WHAT IS THE NEW ROUND OF FUNDING?
(Required: Specify Seed, Series A, etc)
WHO ARE THE INVESTORS?
(Required)
HOW MUCH FUNDING (in $) DOES IT HAVE IN TOTAL?
(Required: Specify Seed, Series A, etc)

This suggests that really, the only thing they care about, is stories about people raising money. Like, that's the only thing that matters in the world.

In reality, who you're funded by is trivia. Yeah, I said it. It's fucking trivia. It's not going to make a difference in whether you succeed or not. IMO, to the extent that it matters, it's a microscopic factor.

You would think that a news outlet would be interested in the what of a company, less than "who's funding it?", ya know? I mean, if somebody has created a ground-breaking new app, (or something they think is ground-breaking) then the app either is news-worthy, or it isn't. You don't need to know who they're funded by, or if they're self-funded, to decide that.

I've said this before and I'll keep banging this drum until I drop... the goal of a startup is to make money, not to raise money. To the extent that you do the latter, it's in service of the former. But raising money is a tactical objective, not the end goal.
An easy way to integrate React JS and Node with Websockets. Provides a protocol for using websockets to call functions on the server from the client, run them through middleware, and return them to the client. It also automatically updates the clients state when the server says that data has changed.
Tech journalists keep ranting about the bad pitches they receive. They publish tips and guidelines. But even if you follow those, they still don't read the pitches. And rarely have any idea about technology http://web.bozho.net/?p=336
True. Interesting change in direction though for how things are changing.
That is a common misconception, but bears no resemblance to reality. As the other commenter noted, incognito mode (for any browser) only concerns with the local machine.

What you mentioned, "minimize traces of activity left behind on other computers as well", is a difficult task. Attempting to do so requires more advanced techniques that entail tough compromises. Consider using Tor, you are anonymous to the endpoint (e.g. the website you visit does not have your IP), but confidential data is not safe from prying eyes in the process. Alternatively you can use some sort of crypt to sign and encrypt your connection... your data is safe from prying eyes (potentially verified as well) but you are no longer anonymous. This can all be mitigated to some extent, but it is well outside the scope of a browser.
This guy has a megaphone that you are trying to rent.

Why are you trying to rent TC's megaphone? It is TC's megaphone right? Dude's got quite a few asks for being a rando-pseudo-journalist. So, I suggest you take that time and pipe it to figuring out what your market/marketing channel is so you can invest those cycles better. Do some research on exactly how many useful signups TC drives (spoiler: nearly 0, craigslist is probably better (LOL!)[0] ).

Is your target market is even reading TC? Probably not. Which market segments, exactly, read TC? I barely read it. I doubt most people read it, much less for actual insight or anything resembling journalism.

I would steer clear of accept-all startups du jour megaphones (signal:noise is crap) and instead concentrate on outlets your customers care about. BONUS: those will have less prima donna attitudes with silly headshots. GO!

[0] article referencing ironic LOL!. Enough internets for me for today :)
Violence, noun. Tertiary meaning, under the rubric of Law:

The unlawful exercise of physical force or intimidation by the exhibition of such force.

(Emphasis mine.)

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_eng...

Regulation is intimidation by the exhibition of force (the regulatory body's authority is an exhibition of the threat of violence that backs its ability to fine and imprison).
Beavers in wooden boxes, what could possibly go wrong!

In fact, dozens of them on an airplane, this should be turned into a prequel of the Airport film franchise: "Airport '50: Beavers on a Plane"

On a more serious note, the ropes keeping the boxes closed seem to be tensioned by the chutes, so the boxes were probably expected to open on impact. Note how the rope also passes through the inside of the box, so they may have hoped for a fallback via the mechanism of a terrified, trapped beaver gnawing on stuff for stress relief. I suspect that most of people involved knew more about the intricacies of beaver containment than about those of airdrops, so I'm more retrospectively concerned about the beavers' safe landing than about their subsequent escape from the return capsule.
Agreed. Developing a medical device is not cheap and unlike most consumer products, these devices need to go through rigorous safety testing to make sure it does what it says it does. A lot of capital is needed just to comply with FDA regulations.
Algol and Oberon were garbage collected, but Pascal and Modula-2 weren't. Not sure about others (Euler? Modula-3? Oberon-2?)

Nim feels a lot more like Python than one would think just reading the descriptions. I can't put my finger on why, exactly - maybe the type inference that gives an almost duck-type experience, maybe the incredibly helpful dogfooding community; I'm not sure.
Good news for WordPress 4.4: wp_rand() will be cryptographically secure
Solar power for electricity more closely resembles animals getting energy from plants which get energy from the sun, rather than animals which directly get energy from the sun. Aside from calculators and a couple other items, we don't put solar panels on our machines to power them, we connect solar panels to the electrical grid and connect machines to the grid too.

Fossil oil qualifies too, but the fact it's all ancient stored solar energy rather than solar energy captured now makes it vastly different. Oil produced by capturing solar power now should qualify as "solar power" just as much as photovoltaics.
I still do this for other kinds of things, even though I'm pretty good about using the iOS/OSX Reminders app.
Some skimmable commentary and summary with a bit of earlier discussions on LWN http://lwn.net/Articles/270081/
I find this really fascinating, mostly because I was at Google when Microsoft launched Bing. And watching Google's CPC numbers slide over the last 6 years while Bing's got better, my guess was that Bing would become profitable in 2016 (but they beat that by keeping costs down it seems).

So what that means for the search market is that it is being commoditized. And that is really bad news for Google if they can't find another market to sustain their margins.

For me, nothing is so amazing as watching the technology waves sweep through the world, leaving it changed in their wake.
Yeah, read an article about Etsy's #1 seller [0]. Her team makes some items, but a lot of what they sell is just stuff sourced in India that they embellish (or likely sell as sourced).

[0] http://www.fastcodesign.com/3042352/how-one-knitter-makes-al...
Yes, and just like the old days, when Windows admins tried to eradicate anything not Windows due to admin costs, it works both ways.
don't you think 150LOC is a bit extreme on the low side? I don't see how this is possible unless you compose services out of other services... and in that case it's probably a nightmare to debug anything. Can you elaborate a bit on types of things that this worked great for you?
Where, by using the subjunctive verb "may", they mean "is not".
Mobile apps can actually play an important role in polio eradication

http://www.polioeradication.org/Research/PolioPipeline/No7Wi...
Strip a user of choices. What font should I use? What size should it be? How should I format pull quotes? etc.

Medium answers all of those questions. You get what they offer - and it's overall pleasing enough to most people. The typography is easy to read, the UX is decent enough for a layman to pick it up, etc.

A few articles have popped on HN regarding this paradox of choice, Apple utilizing it, etc. I'd say Medium is popular because people can worry about writing and don't need to fret any other details.
August: Your Creative Space
TechCrunch is useless for many startups. I won't make a blanket statement that it's useless, because I think it does matter for some startups. If your "thing" is a new consumer facing web app or mobile app that needs to be presented to a lot of fairly tech-savvy "early adopter" types, then sure, TechCrunch is great, because those are the people who read TechCrunch.

But... if you're a B2B startup whose target customers are manufacturing companies, logistics companies, retail firms, finance companies, health-care companies, pharama companies, academia, etc., then TechCrunch likely isn't the best place to reach your potential customers. Sure, their base of readership is broad enough that some of your targets probably read it, but if I want to reach executives in the textiles industry, I'm better off getting something ran in "Textile Manufacturing Today" or a general purpose business publication like Forbes.
Actually the subs rewrite most of the journalists copy and fix all the grammar and spelling
Honest question: how familiar are you with the actual history of these problems, and the actual situation on the ground? Have you read anything beyond standard zeitgeist sources (sociology classes, NYTimes, Economist), etc?

The dominant social policy of the last 65 years has been that crime and disorder can be cured by addressing "root causes" which means material deprivation, lack of school funding, lack of housing, a school curriculum that was not culturally attuned, etc.

So first in the 50s, 60s and 70s they built public housing, upped welfare spending, eliminated corporal punishment in the schools, and greatly reduced punishment and police enforcement. Here is a poster from the time: http://www.newyork.com/articles/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/a...

This was a disaster. The welfare spending incentivized women to not get married and to stay on the dole, because you would lose benefits if you got married or got a job. The public housing was not policed at all and was destroyed by the rougher element in the population. Crime skyrocketed. Youths would commit muggings at gun point and end up back on the streets with nothing more than probation.

Then there was a ham-fisted backlash starting in the mid-1970s but really coming into effect in the 80s and 90s. Unfortunately, rather than emphasis consistent discipline and enforcement from the get go, the backlash was more about "three strikes" and using drug offenses as proxy crimes. Even in schools, getting tough meant suspensions, which is not much of a punishment to a roguish street urchin.

So if you look at the situation now, you have kids growing up in homes which are violent and where they don't get punished if they roam the streets and bully other kids. Then you have those kids go to schools that are full of disorder, and where if they cause trouble they just sent to the principals office and then go right back into the classroom. Or maybe they get suspended for a few days. Big whoop, that is only a punishment if you care about school. Gangs are allowed to openly sell drugs on the street. So by age 15 your role models are gang members, you have never been subject to real discipline, you have been fighting others or being assaulted your whole life. And then they commit some heinous crime. At that point, the 15-year-old cannot be permitted to coexist in normal society. Giving them money or something is not going to magically make them civilized when they have spent their live growing up in a barbarous environment. It's not the 15-year-old-murderers fault in the cosmic sense that he was born into such a wild environment. But the fact remains that he his too dangerous to be permitted to roam the streets freely.

But of course I absolutely agree that the problem needs to be addressed earlier. We need to figure out a way that these kids are an environment with order, that is with safety, security, and discipline from the day they are born.
Its the same as coding. People are good at writing code because they write a lot, however a person who is at the top of their game still might be benefited by taking a computer science course or two.
Oil is considered a non-renewable resource. Plants however are renewable, so they are fundamentally different.

You can consider the solar->plant->animal cycle to effectively be similar to using solar panels. Using solar panels directly would be inefficient without batteries anyways, so the solar->plant->animal cycle is directly analogous to how we would use solar panels.
It really puts the focus on the content, the reading experience, and the writing experience. I can read an article without any distraction or judgement based on your wordpress themes or plugins. That's a great thing for me as a reader (and for writers who want to be judged fairly by their actual content). As a writer, I'm forced into certain constraints that make me to focus on the content, but I'm also given an elegant writing interface.

*It doesn't directly let you use it for business, which is something you have to weigh when choosing to write there.