skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I... don't actually understand why you would ask that question. How do type classes help, one way or the other, when the discussion is "duck typing cannot (always) be replaced in static languages by having various types extend a common interface. True or false?".

They allow you do something else, something I would argue is better (and I explicitly said so, "The best solution I know of is type classes, in languages that support them."), but are entirely irrelevant to sanderjd's point and my answer.
The method is in the madness here. As the author himself suggests, estimating the LTV isn't easy and is actually a whole new discipline in itself.

The lesson that needs to be taken from here is the general idea of always being careful about the pitfalls of falling into the latest frenzy, and instead, focus on the REALISTIC value an investment is going to return us in the long-term.

And this "Latest frenzy vs Being realistic" concept isn't anything new, it has been going on since the era of Tulip Bulbs in the 1800s right up to the Home Loan crisis of 2008. What keeps changing and improvising, of course, are the methods of evaluating the "frenzies", or as the author suggests, "distinguishing donkeys against the unicorns"!
To me, it's a so-so language, with some bad parts, some ok. On the plus side, it's easy to pick up, and it gets the job done for many projects. Perhaps it's a bit like the Ikea of programming languages, if you will--no the best of furniture for sure, but when you need a table and some chairs with little efforts, it's nice to have, and they're not horrendous unless you couldn't build them correctly.
> "Ocean acidification however, is caused by the fact that the oceans absorb the excess of CO2 present in the atmosphere; and livestock are responsible for more CO2 production than all of transportation."

There's a common misconception that all CO2 is bad. CO2 is a natural part of the bio cycles found on Earth, what's bad about using fossil fuels is the rapid expansion of CO2 (and other gases) in the environment where life lives, which causes instability and damage as the Earth adapts.
"<!-- I have taught incarnations of this course fourteen times:
Spring 1999, Fall 2000, Spring 2001, Fall 2002, Spring 2004,
Fall 2005, Fall 2006, Spring 2007, Fall 2008, Spring 2009,
Spring 2010, Fall 2010, Fall 2012, Fall 2013, (Spring 2014),
and Fall 2014.-->" found in source
I am an experienced programmer but I've only touched PHP a few times, years ago. What are the best books or tutorials to get an overview of modern PHP?
Atom Editor: Activate Power Mode
That explanation is technically true but it's like blaming human error for factory workers being injured by a machine without safety guards. Since it happens so frequently you have to ask how the language could change to make it less common.

Most of it comes down to being developed ad-hoc with convenience for solving a simple problem right now as the main driving force.

Remember register globals? That was a minor convenience which took ages and millions of exploits to be removed – I remember lobbying for that in the late 90s.

Similarly, you mentioned SQL injection. Unlikely as this may seem now, there was a time when things like prepared statements were an exotic new feature with limited library support and a certain school of programmer thought they were probably too slow. The docs and most tutorials didn't mention things like validation or escaping prominently so most PHP developers were trained to slop everything into strings. When PDO came along, this persisted for too long as well and even after they started recommending placeholders you didn't get something like all of the mysql functions saying “Don't use this, it's unsafe”. I've heard that this has improved but it's been years since I needed to look.

Similarly, look at the lax attitudes toward error handling — errors are ignored by default, database errors or warnings have to be explicitly requested, etc. That's “easier”, saving whole seconds of learning at the expense of millions of successful exploits and hours spent debugging.
Music programming language Alda gets new features
http://www.amazon.com/Slack-Getting-Burnout-Busywork-Efficie...
That's how it's taught at the college I go to. About half the class already had experience with PHP/MySQL, and were a bit horrified.
Mob programming sounds rather inefficient to me, but I'll freely admit that I have never tried it myself. It might give good results if your team is disciplined and talented, but can't that be said of all approaches to team programming?
I'm battling procrastination for 15 years now. The three only things that really worked (as in "having effects beyond a few months") for me:

- Accepting procrastination as part of you & forgiving yourself:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10267564

- Tackling only one important task per day:
http://fourhourworkweek.com/2013/11/03/productivity-hacks/

- Tiny Habits:
http://tinyhabits.com/
6.16 acres is a really small town. That's practically a large lot in rural towns.
Let's say he's not the most patient person alive. I guess he sees HN as the new Slashdot.
Cast Media to Device in Edge Browser
The Code of Conduct they wrote is a nice touch.

https://github.com/bagder/curl/blob/master/docs/CODE_OF_COND...
GearPump Real-Time Streaming Engine Using Akka
2) And now you're carrying wings to orbit too. More dead mass that could be payload...

3) My comment was to compare liquid oxygen with liquid hydrogen which is 0.07 of water density, so you get 16 kg of oxygen for 1 kg of hydrogen for the same tank volume. Skylon uses loads of hydrogen. It's those hydrogen tanks that make it so big. Such tanks are also a lot of dead mass to carry to orbit... Also costs probably scale with dry mass, not wet mass.
Writing Resources and Thoughts
This is a source of pain in web dev, too - we convert uploaded images to srgb so they display as consistently as possible across devices - and generally clients save in srgb. It's when they upload Adobe rgb images that get auto-converted that the fun starts, as the effect is usually one of the image appearing "washed out".

Curious if anyone has come up with a clever solution to this one.
Have you seen this work? http://w3.impa.br/~diego/projects/GanEtAl14/
Knuckle Cracking Sound Triggered by Bubble Formation
Ways to break systems code using volatile (2010)
Don't assume FB never offered to purchase. Maybe they did, and Telegram turned them down. Then FB starts the dirty sabotage. We can only speculate if this is a retaliatory move by FB or not, but either way it's NOT ethical - and I'm very glad to hear many people are moving from WatsApp to Telegram against the foul play. Let's hope this is action #1 of FB driving their $19B purchase into the ground. They need to learn a lesson from this.
VTech hack: Data of 6.4M kids exposed
The library is C's fault. PHP is basically a scripting language around the standard C library. It's what makes it the fastest non-JIT scripting language, but also what makes it so inconsistent.
Please note that the article make the required time dependent on the field, whereas GP talks about persons.
> I urged him to switch to a sane framework like Laravel

...why didn't you taught him about PDO, so he can start with something more universal, not tied to one particular framework that happens to be popular nowadays?!

Then he can learn whichever OR/DM or DAL he might like need (Eloquent, Doctrine, Redbean, IdiORM/Paris etc.), and also be able to pop the hood and debug it when needed.

I never get it why so many otherwise-good PHP devs have their heads full of framework-specific knowledge and have a propensity to fall in love with heavy frameworks like Laravel, or worse, with leviathans like Symphony or Zend ...instead of playing to the language's advantages and using light-weight tools and libraries that would allow them to move faster.
What happened at DockerCon in Barcelona?
> From the sysadmin viewpoint, /var is managed through "retention" (scheduled rotation, scheduled flushing, logrotate, crons, etc), and "backups" where needed.

Right. And 'Docker for /var' would be something that made all that easier. It would make it really easy to set up live, secure, restorable, backups of essential data; to rotate, compress, and delete logs; to extract all important logs to a separate host, and aggregate and index them, etc. At the moment, a configuration management tool can help you set this up, but you still have to write the configuration management script by hand.
> 06:00 - 06:03

That's tight. Do you face any resistance and have to train your mind or does it come easy when you sleep timely ?
I agree, let's put the entire internet in Facebook. News like this just proves Zuckerberg knows best. /s
> Active Record Pattern is somehow controversial.

What is controversial about AR?
The true costs of hiring grads
The A/B test you didn't know you were running
The one thing I'd love to see is a native concurrency story with PHP. I'd put my vote in specifically to have Communicating Sequential Processes. I think that feature alone would take the language to another level. I know they've got stream_select, et al. and I've really enjoyed pecl event, reactphp, and of course there's HackLang's Async / Await if you want to convert, but having some modern / native constructs would be nice to have. Does anyone know if that's on the horizon?
Such as? Maybe the part about users, but I don't see anything else (some I don't know to be fair).
Gates managed to make people believe he somehow became a Saint after leaving Microsoft, even though he created and guided it to become pretty much the most evil IT company ever.

People just don't talk about it anymore, so he's all good now.

But there's obviously something shady about his dealings: http://newsjunkiepost.com/2013/06/07/bill-gates-big-pharma-b...
Disregard the other Superfish comments.

All 5 Lenovo Laptops we had (replaced since then) had a BIOS Rootkit by Lenovo.

NO clean Os, no fancy AV will be of any use. If your not in the mood to rewrite your bios Lenovo will (has proven to)use this backdoor to secretly install malware again and again as they have done again since superfish.

Furthermore it'll leave a big backdoor for everyone right to the core since they abused one of Microsofts Bios features.

Contrary to Lenovos statement: "(ThinkPad, ThinkCentre, Lenovo Desktop, ThinkStation, ThinkServer and System x products are not impacted.) "

The ARE infected, just not every single one.
The lesson they took from Superfish was to secretly install more spy/ad/crapware a couple months later.

I think it's safe to say that no Lenovo product can be trusted.
That's where iLO comes in. iLO is horrible, but you can ssh to it and set all manner of stuff.

When we didn't have PXE, we had a script that told iLO to boot from CD, and that the CD was located at http://something/bootme.iso. iLO would always have network, and would pass the .iso magically to the server as device to boot from.
> Do not permit their children to be friends with yours.

Seriously?
Compile OCaml to JavaScript, Run on Node
I agree with rejecting the elitist framing but … the web was decidedly not mostly static before PHP came along. Perl had many frameworks (e.g. PHP started as one), as did conventional languages like Java, Python, with deep server integration possible using things like mod_perl. There were also a bunch of web-specific dynamic platforms like Cold Fusion and classic ASP / me-too JSP. Finally, there was server-side JavaScript as one of Netscape's offerings in the mid-90s.

What PHP added was primarily ease of use with the ability to deploy code simply by creating a single file, suitable for mass deployment at ISPs in the era where everyone used shared servers, and the combination of comparative ease of use with enough performance to do serious projects. Cold Fusion was also easy but didn't support things like persistent connections (read: order of magnitude slower) and the core language was very, very slow and also quite limited and buggy. You could find much faster options if you wanted to build, debug and deploy a conventional language like C++ or Java but the cost and risk was so much higher that this was unfavorable unless you really needed performance.

EDIT: if you want a snapshot of what the 90s web was like, http://philip.greenspun.com/panda/ was quite popular in the day. I know at least one well-known business which still has a revenue-generating website built in TCL, too…
The point I think a lot of people are missing is that we've always used optimized libraries no matter what language we've used. C devs would use hand optimized assembly when speed was critical. There's no perfect language that just does everything.
As another posted said it makes complete sense. Psychology 101: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relative_income_hypothesis
Unless (1) the relevant library happens to be written in C and there are no python bindings and the problem is simple OR (2) there is an existing solution which is 95% complete in C and one needs to write from scratch in python. I've never come across situation (1) with a new project. Situation (2) is quite common.
The creator of Golang has said that most important is to pick the correct data structure and then choosing the optimal algorithm will be almost obvious
Cool stuff, PHP 7 looks very promising, especially when it comes to speed. In some cases even faster than HHVM.
What impresses you about it? I read through it last night, and came away unimpressed. Is there some hidden layer of meaning?
Or ArchLinux ARM: http://archlinuxarm.org/
Periods of heavy immigration correlate with periods of strong US economic growth
There's also a different 100 hour rule. 100 hours is enough time for someone to become dangerously competent: just competent enough to complete something, but not competent enough to complete it well.
hahaha, talk about missing the point
Sorry to the people who will defend free software unquestioningly, but the logos are bad. That emacs logo is just downright ugly. Even the other one, the stylized E in the circle that dkbrk talks about, is very bad. Both look like some high school student messing around in CorelDraw for a couple of days would come up with. The only reason I can see why the people involved in these projects wouldn't get a real designer (meaning: someone who designs for a living) is that they have a lot of technical skills, but very little design understanding. Or they just don't care, knowing that in the end its how good the code is that matters, and don't want to bother. This extends pretty much to the whole universe of Linux software and distros. So it doesn't matter much with Emacs, but it does matter when you want to make a distro that is user friendly.
I like the IKEA parallel as IKEA is cheap. So was php (to host), hence the popularity I guess. And as a result of that, there are lots of developers.. and many equals cheap. And the vicious circle continues. Doesn't make it a good language :)

(To be honest, I like IKEA, and I don't think it suck)
Why Web Developers Should Consider Paying for Tools
I'm not sure if you meant it that way, but for the record: politicians don't create jobs - entrepreneurs do.

The best thing politicians can do for the common good, is to get the hell out of the way and let productive people be productive.
Critical Rocket Launch Will Help Crown the Winner of the New Space Race
Reminds me of the book "The First 20 Hours" by Josh Kaufman. He gives examples of skills that you can learn fairly well in 20 hours. One of them is programming. I have some issues with the book but overall it's a fun read. Here's a TED talk he gave which lead me to buy the book:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MgBikgcWnY
again: what??
"I would say learning self-described fp-languages have made me a better programmer who values static typing more than before."

FP paradigm has indeed didactic value and the experience gained in a functional language may translate into a plus of productivity ...in other languages. When you have to get things done, the functional language's embedded arm-twisting (well, mind-twisting actually) doesn't help! That's when you'll either abandon the (idea of) "pure" functional language for a multi-paradigm language (that will allow you to keep a mainly functional style with limited deviations when the situation warrants it) or you'll keep pushing yourself and throw the blame on you for not being good enough with a language that wasn't designed from very beginning for much anything but the FP standpoint (for the sake of it).
Can you talk about the roles of people who enforce the standards? Is there just a typical QC role like in the medical device industry, or are there extra roles to verify more specialized standards, in addition to QA personnel?
Alien Megastructure? Probably Not. Exocomets More Likely
What does “auto converted” mean in this context?

If you know the image is Adobe RGB (e.g. it has an embedded color profile, or has an "Adobe RGB" metadata tag) then you should either keep that metadata around, or if you want to turn it into an sRGB image you’ll need to convert the colors of every pixel. Since the Adobe RGB gamut is larger than the sRGB gamut, for some images you’ll need to map out-of-gamut colors into the sRGB gamut, either by hard clipping them (I recommend clipping along constant hue/lightness lines in CIELAB or CIECAM02 space) or by doing a more sophisticated transformation. There are lots of possible choices to make when gamut mapping. If you’re interested in the details there was a ~1000 page book published on the subject a few years ago. :-) (Or the easy thing is to just let some existing color management software like Apple ColorSync, LittleCMS, or whatever Adobe’s thing is called handle the gamut mapping for you, though in my opinion they all do a relatively mediocre job, unfortunately.)

If you don’t know the image was Adobe RGB – i.e. the metadata was stripped out before it got to you – then there’s not a lot you can do, unless you want to examine the color content of the image and come up with some kind of heuristic for guessing the color space.
1) I'm not sure that I agree with your judgement of the significance of those events.

2) Doesn't it stand to reason that papers that are more significant than those that were previously published are almost certain to be published, given that papers of lesser importance were published?
Yeah seconding this. When my anxiety was really bad I had exactly what you described- being asleep but still thinking.
If you have to look it up anyway, what difference does it make if it's a global or namespaces? If you don't know, you don't know. As such, your point as stated doesn't counteract why polluting global namespaces is a bad thing. There are arguments that could be made (PHP VM specific), but "I didn't ever RTFM and/or retain it" doesn't fly to me personally.
I too had the same problem, but not any more.

What worked for me is this book: http://www.amazon.com/The-ONE-Thing-Surprisingly-Extraordina....

I started getting things done when I ask this question to myself: 'What is the one thing I can do now so that everything becomes easier?' and then do that task.
Show HN: Incrediibli simple shared lists
Ask HN: Is R an alternative to SQL?
I'm confused why one needs R or similar software to analyze complex data. Is there anything that can be done with R but not SQL?

For instance, I think R is used by biologists, http://www.genomebiology.com/2004/5/10/R80 can the same analysis be done with SQL?
Deepin 15. This could be the best Linux desktop distribution of the year
I'm actually excited for this release!

- Type declarations (this is a HUGE move forwards).

- Grouped use statements, not sure if I like how that looks

- ?? will shorten statements

- Anonymous classes seem a bit odd looking to me

- Unserialize filter is a nice security bump

Anxious to try it out and see the speed improvements I've been hearing about too.
I've been using this pattern for ages, but mainly for the amount of indentation that it saves me.
How to be like Steve Ballmer
Also available:

DietPi http://dietpi.net/

Minibian https://minibianpi.wordpress.com/

Both Raspbian-based

And, in just 80MB, Slitaz-ARM http://arm.slitaz.org/

Though I don't know if the latter has SSH enabled by default.
> I spent a good while trying to integrate Doctrine into my projects, and in the end I found it bloated and overly verbose and went back to PDO.

Were you integrating Doctrine, or were you integrating Doctrine/DBAL, as the parent poster recommends?

Doctrine/DBAL is a bunch of useful helpers around PDO which take out a lot of the repetitive coding (and let me delete many home-grown methods I'd created to 'help' PDO)
Mainly how easy it is to have zero clue that you're doing something horrible (SQL performance wise). Not positive that's what parent meant, but that's my guess.
Not the language?

PHP is the only lasting language where making code that allows SQL injection is easier than code that forbids it.

PHP includes all the worst practices you'll find on any languages. Javascript has the eval problem - PHP has it too; Perl have the too fluid type system where you can't specify anything - PHP too, except that it lacks Perl's tainted mode; Asp made it easier to create code subject to XSS than code that isn't and is subject to directory traversal - guess what, PHP copied it... and the list goes on and on.

This release fixes still some more problems, but PHP will never become a good language.
I wanted to, and tried to use it to watch the new season of Community that they made. Thanks to region locks, dated technology, ads, and a generally awful website, I gave up.
200km/h would be smoking fast in the US. Sadly.
Yes it is basic and simple and everything... but it proved to be really nice to get some stuff planning, where you can chip in ideas as a group.

It is shared and is updating on the spot!
> What is controversial about AR?

How it represents rows as objects. How it makes people think about them.

How it conflates modelling the domain with database structure.

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=activerecord+vs+datamapper
> I do not buy that you cannot make a good looking cell phone that is sturdy and allows for component replacement.

You absolutely can. And your competitor can build one that's a little bit smaller, a little bit lighter, a little bit more beautiful, and you'll be competing on sustainability while your competitor is competing on "new and cooler".

Unfortunately, I'd bet on your competitor in that scenario.
Almost all Dutch intercity trains run 140km/h, and that's fast enough (it's faster than cars, and goes city center to city center). Of course cities are close together here, but we are in Europe.

I'd certainly call 200km/h "decently fast".
Realtime app with websocket; without heavy lifting
I totally agree. I have had people blaming me for making them depressed when I was refuting someone saying 'you get out what was put into it', which I thought was complete bullshit the way he was saying it.

I was saying that a lot of success is due to chance, and that a lot of life events are due to chance. This got people some people saying that what I was saying was horribly depressing. The guy then proceeded to lecture me that my attitude was what was letting me down in something that I never did, and was irrelevant anyway. And that 'I may not have intended it, but that my actions are causing misery' (because I did apologize to people that saying that they were horribly depressed by me saying that life has chance in it, because I felt the need to be conciliatory).

That is what happened when I tried to be honest and disagree with someone spouting feel good bullshit or whatever else made him look good. A complete frigging cesspool.
Faults in human cognition aren't randomly distributed. While n versioning helps with these issues, it doesn't prevent them to the level one would assume. Nor does it correct for systemic flaws in the specification.