skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The cynical view is that these people are simply using the attacks as a way to push through legislation that they wanted to push through regardless.

I agree. However, I believe the reason for this is more legislative laziness than anything else.

In the wake of a terrorist attack, the public demands that laws be changed to make them safer. The executive's law enforcement and intelligence agencies typically have a wish list that they repeatedly ask the legislature to enact, because it would make their jobs easier. The legislature, under tremendous pressure to do anything and fast, does not attempt to really analyze the legislation, but rather uses every parliamentary trick to rush it through.

The executive uses these expanded powers to check off national security goals it already had in mind (see e.g. the hundreds of arrests during the French state of emergency.)

The end result is threefold:

First the executive is emboldened to at least look like they're increasing security at home and abroad. At its worst, it either draws the nation into a war on territory chosen by the terrorists (see e.g. Afghanistan, the rock upon which the Soviet military machine shattered), or needless wars of choice which drain economic and military effectiveness (see e.g. Iraq)

Second, the country experiences an economic shock far out proportion to the actual attack, due to the fear of the populace, which directly and indirectly depresses multiple sectors of the economy.

Third, the country produces highly visible, although not necessarily highly effective, responses at the expense of sacrifice of civil liberties and personal convenience.

What's more is that terrorists count on this reaction.

They know that the costs of the response will vastly outweigh the actual damage of the attack.These particular non-state actors are deemed "terrorists" for a reason. Because their most powerful weapons are not airliners, or bombs, or assault rifles.

Their most powerful weapon is fear.

They use that fear to cause nations to make poor decisions, then exploit those decisions to advance their causes. The only solution which I can devise is simply not let fear arbitrate our decisions.

We must announce, as one voice, that we are no longer afraid.
They both look neat to me.

let SimpleComponent = () => <div>
<p>I am a component!</p>
<p className="someClass">
I have <strong>bold</strong> <span style={{color: 'red'}}>and red</span> text.
</p>
</div>

Not having to manage commas all the time is a strong point of both vs. what we were doing with nested JavaScript objects/arrays/function calls before JSX.
CSS3 is not proven to be turing complete
When their requests lack clarity and specificity, they definitely do.
ROS developers and lovers: What are your greatest challenges working with ROS?
A honest question from deep ROS lovers

We use ROS in our daily robot development and really love the way it´s generally working. So please ROS fans, fanatics and lovers don´t get us wrong. This little open survey is not about shitstorming, blaming or wise welding.

In lot´s of our internal discussions or chats with you – the ROS community – we got under the impression that you are struggeling with the same issues like we do. So let´s collect these thoughts and experiences and try to summarize them into a huge feedback page for all of us.

http://proboter.com/index.php/en/2015/12/03/ros-open-survey/
> I'm afraid this is a glimpse into the not so distant future. And that puts software developers next in line after taxi and truck drivers - uncertain if their skills will be required in a decade from now.

I'm fairly sure that programmers will be employable for the foreseeable future but in a way this is fair play, we - the programmers - did this to an immense number of people it would seem that we ourselves should not be immune to becoming superfluous as well at some point. After all programmer is not some kind of protected status, if it's ok for programmers to automate away whole segments of the job market why should programmers expect that their jobs could never be automated away? If anything we should be more aware of such risks having been in the drivers seat on this one for the last 50 years.
We are not edging up to a mass extinction
Procrastination, Memory, and Sleep: An Interview with Terry Sejnowski [video]
So they are now better because they stopped discriminating against one group and advocate instead discriminating against another group?

I'm against discrimination in all its form, I'm against amalgamating a group of people and generalizing that the faults of a small minority are the faults of everyone in that group. Terrorist attacks were awful but they're a small minority of fanatics.
I do hope you're not American. I'd be embarrassed to find one of my countrymen being so dense and so ungrateful all at once.
there you go: http://tiffzhang.com/startup/index.html

keep reloading the url to get random startup landing pages.
Does this mean we can now also use expressions such as (pseudocode) "height: (x+1-y)px"?
If I was younger, and cheaper, I'd consider working as a freelancer with these guys. Seems like a possible way to funnel in work while offloading a lot of the PM responsibilities.

I will say one thing though - fixed pricing on projects is tricky. I would be interested to see how they set and meet expectations, while also not charging for overages. It seems like the developer might have to be the one to eat the costs if it goes over.
30 Minutes with AirBnBs Data
The more cynical view is that the government perpetrates the attack to provide the opportunity, ala 9/11 conspiracy theories.
The idea here seems to be that the value is in the management. Or owning the problem and delivering the solution rather than having to act as the manager of your project.

Gigster places itself in two areas which independent developers often fall down. Selling their services and managing the project. What often ends up happening is that neither the client nor the developer are able to manage their parts and the gap in the middle is the disaster.

In return for taking these spots, Gigster is removing the ability for the developers to build their own businesses. For many of the faceless contractors who compete with each other on Odesk and Elance, this might be a good thing.

Even if this model were to blow up, it still doesn't touch the top X percent of agencies / developers who can manage the entire process, deliver and demonstrably contribute to the bottom line.

If you are going to be an outsourcer, you need to keep your game moving. There are too many people out there who shouldn't even be landing gigs. Those of you who are solid, keep rolling.
Because the status is gained through people trusting his/her programming skills, not political opinions.

As a side-note, yes, I also think it's an abuse of power when movie-stars make comments on what cause to support, therefore, IMHO, messing with peoples priorities.

In short, yes it's perfectly fine from a legal* and social (as long as you agree with them) standpoint that they do so but to me it feels like abuse.

* I am not a lawyer.
I know a full browser isn't the same as a GUI toolkit, I'm trying to understand why you're drawing a line that you're OK with some software that uses some libraries, but you're not OK with software that uses others.

Not sure exactly what you mean by "a webview" (is this a specific library you're referring to?) but, as far as I know, software like atom does use a renderer to display HTML - that's the whole point.
I'd double check what it is meant by "sales booked": is it any different to "sales executed"?

If the product they are selling is paid in, say, instalments in the future, or if there is any contingency on the payments, there is a way to inflate your sales numbers by playing with your payment projections and assumptions.
No, that's the insane view.
I don't subscribe to that view. There is enough misery in the world that you can always find a suitable event without having to concoct your own. All it takes is the press to magnify an event out of proportion and voila: instant crisis.
I think, therefore...wtf?
"I'm telling you, the man and the dog are definitely working together".. but of course, "let us never tolerate outrageous conspiracy theories".
Managing configuration of a distributed system with Apache ZooKeeper
Or coffee shops were you get password printed on a bill after you order something, the same with hotels and motels, you get wifi password after registering for a room.
Please predict how many people could die from a terrorist outrage - the kind that a terrorist might dream of in their sickest moments?

Hardly convenient but you can remove the possibility of death by traffic or alcohol.

Does anyone seriously doubt that the following, even if fabricated (no reason to suppose it is) does not represent such a fantasy.

"The ISIS laptop contains a 19-page document in Arabic on how to develop biological weapons and how to weaponize the bubonic plague from infected animals. “The advantage of biological weapons is that they do not cost a lot of money, while the human casualties can be huge,” the document states.”
Please predict how many people could die from a terrorist outrage - the kind that a terrorist might dream of in their sickest moments?

No, it would hardly be convenient but if you insist, you can remove yourself from the possibility (or lessen the chances) of death by traffic or alcohol.

Does anyone seriously doubt that the following, even if fabricated (no reason to suppose it is) does not represent such a fantasy in some minds.

"The ISIS laptop contains a 19-page document in Arabic on how to develop biological weapons and how to weaponize the bubonic plague from infected animals. “The advantage of biological weapons is that they do not cost a lot of money, while the human casualties can be huge,” the document states.”
This isn't Roger Dickey's first time starting a business so that certainly helps. Estimating the cost of their service to be around $5k, to reach $1 million in sales would mean 200 apps shipped. That seems like a reasonable feat as long as he plays his cards right.
72 Dept. Of Homeland Security Employees on Terrorist Watch List
This article is very misleading when it talkes about interest rates.

Look at the pictures of the app on google play, one of the example loans is borrow 3500, repay 3500 + 384 4 weeks later.

That is only 11% 'interest' , but it is over 1 month instead of 1 year as we commonly call interest. So really, the rate is more like 130%+.

This is not radically different than a payday loan which will typically charge 10$-20$ fees per 100$ borrowed.
> In the wake of a terrorist attack, the public demands that laws be changed to make them safer.

Ah, but therein lies a little problem: we probably can't be made safer and eventually this will become obvious to the general population as well. Terrorists have it super easy in soft bellied countries like the west. We have but two choices: change our societies drastically for the worse or accept the fact that complete safety and societies such as the ones that we live in are mutually incompatible.
Should be software eats project manager. the code is still done by people.
Actually the first sentence shows a loop-hole doesn't it?

> E-Prime, a prescriptive version of the English language, excludes all forms of the verb to be.

Doesn't the part parenthesised in commas have a kind of implicit 'is'?

For example E' is supposed to stop me saying things like 'Terminator is a good film and is 2 hours long', but I can say 'Terminator, a good film, lasts for 2 hours'.
Honestly I'm fed up with the French bashing. I'm not responsible for what happened in WW2 where you and I didn't even exist. Are you 100% sure you wouldn't raise a white flag when far away from your keyboard and shells exploding around you ?

Now for the present situation, like most democratic country on earth we are at the mercy of a small political elite that will do whatever it wants since they are in power and when we vote them out their twins from the other branch of the unique party apply the same politic with minor cosmetic change.
Gigster + https://stamplay.com/ (Drag and Drop backends) + A front end automator is going to lead to the commoditization of the software developer.
There is a theory that Romans destroyed many records and artifacts of it. They were subject to the Etruscan kings early in its history and were not very fond of that aspect of their hostory.
especially when you use MIT graduates to do the actual work. lol...
Definitely, using "to be" seems more efficient and understandable for expressions like this, but a lot of other expressions become clearer and more active. I personally wouldn't force myself to only use E-Prime, but I can see the value in trying to avoid "to be" as much as possible, within reason.
see JSLINT license ( https://github.com/douglascrockford/JSLint/blob/master/jslin... "The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil." )

Only one documented exceptions : Douglas Crockford “I give permission for IBM, its customers, partners, and minions, to use JSLint for evil.” http://dev.hasenj.org/post/3272592502/ibm-and-its-minions

More info - see HN archivum : JSLINT + EVIL https://hn.algolia.com/?query=jslint%20evil&sort=byPopularit...
From a pure economic division-of-labor standpoint it makes sense. However I thought the modern business approach was to move away from strictly defined boxes of job roles and have everyone involved with everything (with some fuzzy focus on a particular role). With the hope that some cross pollination of ideas results in some synergistic result where the sum is greater than the individual parts.

However the upshot of this seems to me that now people can focus on ideas and idea generation instead of having to worry about maintaining programmers. Like what cloud did for hardware/computing.

What we need now is a simple program that takes normal human text and outputs a program. Input "write me a program that adds the numbers 1 to 100" and you would get a program that did that. Then what we need is to hook that up to an artificial neural network that takes human text and outputs new ideas for apps.

Hey andreesen I'll be taking my $10mm check now. Thanks.
At my last job, we were still supporting .NET 1.1 apps using Visual Studio 2003.
How will you read books in 50 years? How will you play violin in 25 years? How will you paint on canvas in 75 years? How will you steep tea 150 years? This generation that grew up watching the Jetsons is obsessed with this idea of "evolving" to the point of not doing anything.
Depends on whether you think better precision with worse accuracy due to highly exaggerated lows is better than worse precision but better accuracy.
>There are huge numbers of laws in place to try and minimise road deaths,

4600 road deaths/year sounds like those laws should try harder.
More automation more of the time! The world needs to focus on how we collectively become more efficient while working less / relaxing more.

Having said that, I think automation of software development has a long way to go before it's particularly effective. Though it's certainly going to be an interesting space to watch. It's somehow weird to imagine a future in which we disrupt ourselves.
Yeah, broke the immersion for me.
In terminal VIM with local compilers/interpreters.
I suppose string handling isn't Fortran's strong point!
How do they determine/handle junk mail?

Does this increase/decrease cost?
Sure, but being unaffordable to live in doesn't stop a city being crowded. I work in zone 1 and commute in from zone 6, adding to the congestion. I suppose the overcrowding only reduces when it's not only unaffordable to live in London, but also to commute in.
Knowing what is realistic with currently understood science, makes the fantastical even more fantastic. Authors who get this can craft exceeding pleasing stories and plot hooks.
Rosalia – a build automation tool that allows writing tasks in C#
Well, "yes" and "no" are (or should be) only a part of a more (logically) complete answer that is usually implied and therefore not mentioned. Derived from your example:

"(Are you) hungry?" - "Yes(, I am hungry)!"/"No(, I am not hungry)!"

I assume that the adverbs "yes" and "no" initially occurred as optional parts of an answer (only to later cast their supplementary part of the answer as the optional one). Curious enough, now when I'm thinking about it, I remember utterances with the usage of "yes" in the questions themselves (especially on some immigrants) - like "Hungry, yes?" I wonder what will this evolve into down the road...
Part of my brain.
Automation is constantly eating the need for human labor, but every time that happens, the entrepreneurship barrier to entry is reduced.

We spent the last 50 years working to making the biggest barrier to entry for entrepreneurship (wrangling labor) irrelevant.

Time was, you needed a factory and a labor force. For the last 10 years, you needed a laptop and coding skills. Soon, you won't even need that.
Should be possible using `calc()`.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Web/CSS/calc
On Dealing with a Video Games Addiction
Nanowire “metacages” block light from entering or escaping
Now if someone would do this for the desktop...
What you describe with the states is called Federalism not a Democracy, but whatever makes you feel good
Bootstrapping App Development with Mobile Back End Services
All those working on AI are effectively working very hard to put themselves out of business, it's a funny version of poetic justice.
Weather Company CIO says informed IT leaders are open to open source
The rest of the body of course.

And if you are into it: The sum of all your connections to others and the traces you leave in their minds.
Movavi: le convertisseur vidéo facile
Westpac (one of the big 4 banks in Australia) recently added "View contacts" as an Android app permission. Uninstall time.
Your knowledge of history is quite terrible as well as your definition of words
Send Gigster your app idea and it sends you back that app.

So you don't have to talk to developers and they know exactly what you want from your written description of your idea? What could possibly go wrong?
I would have preferred the title "Company reaps karma for abrupt termination of critical Sysadmin"
How to Use It for the Maximum Entertainment Rokucom
Back end-less client notifications
I like the idea of integrated payments and login - I use Auth0 and ChargeBee at the moment. I hope you know what you are getting yourself in to :-) these are two highly complex areas.

The best chance of succeeding in this I would guess is to get funding and scale quickly. I've seen people attack this area before and they basically run out of money and the project hangs. You need to project a lot of confidence and stability while moving fast - so adequate funding will be key.

Good luck, if you nail this hundreds of SaaS startups will be very grateful.

PS: pricing is way too generous, think in terms of revenue.

So a SaaS with 1000 users is getting something like $20K gross a month, with 10K users that's $200K gross.

I'd change your levels to something like

100, 500, 1000, 5000, Contact Us
The COBOL vision lives on..
Nice. The next logical step would be to generate the ProductHunt listing
I will properly be programming much like now, but with Julia instead of Python.
Street pastors calm down drunken aggro after closing time
As much as I want to snark in this thread as well – it's an audacious goal.

When I was in school at Georgia Tech, one of my professors talked a lot about SmallTalk and Alice. Both were ways to make coding more accessible to a larger audience.

I can't help but think that the future is going to continue to make development more accessible to people. I definitely think Gigster has their work cut out for them; nevertheless, I'm one for the fact that it would be pretty awesome if I was never asked to 'build a webpage' again.
Thanks for the heads up, uninstalling right now!
> I'm afraid this is a glimpse into the not so distant future where software developers are next in line after taxi and truck drivers - uncertain if their skills will be required in a decade from now.

That might be true, but I don't see how this article supports that hypothesis. There are still real programmers behind the apps that Gigster:

> The company finds top-notch freelance developers, designers, and project managers with pedigrees from MIT, CalTech, Google, and Stripe, and only accepts 5% of applicants.

Looks like they are mostly automating the estimating and scheduling process.

I think it's a leap to go from automated scheduled to automated programming, especially in the next decade.
So, instead of "X is Y", we now we have to say "the equality relation has member (X,Y)".

Very handy.
I bemoan rather than beatify prescriptionists who bequeath their own bespoke English upon the world, befuddled when the rest of us find it somewhere between befouling and beleaguering rather than bewitching. Belike I belabor the point; I can begrudgingly believe avoiding "to be" might bestow a little clarity, sometimes. But betwixt you and I, in excess it bewilders me.
Electrolux's American Breakdown
The real problems with this idea (which isn't new) come after a project has been delivered: It looks nice but you find a bug. What now? What's the turnaround time for getting that bug fixed? What's the cost? What about adding new features? What about scaling? And if you ever want to hire your own developers they have to learn a codebase that you yourself don't even understand.
"You know what I've noticed? Nobody panics when things go "according to plan." Even if the plan is horrifying! If, tomorrow, I tell the press that, like, a gang banger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics, because it's all "part of the plan". But when I say that one little old mayor will die, well then everyone loses their minds!"
State of Clojure 2015
Why? Pseudo-Operations are a thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_Flag#Pseudo-operations

>Similar false flag tactics were also employed during the Algerian civil war, starting in the middle of 1994. Death squads composed of Département du Renseignement et de la Sécurité (DRS) security forces disguised themselves as Islamist terrorists and committed false flag terror attacks.
> The company finds top-notch freelance developers, designers, and project managers with pedigrees from MIT, CalTech, Google, and Stripe, and only accepts 5% of applicants.

The AI engine makes a price quote and comes up with the production schedule. Those are two things I'd gladly hand off to AI. Quality engineers will still be in demand.
Well, many individual people, not just "states", fear terrorists more than car accidents and while it's statistically irrational given the number of fatalities due to each cause at a normal year, there is something rational about it.

Someone killing a hundred people who would gladly kill a hundred million if they could, and who's presumably constantly looking for a way to do it, is more frightening than a car accident, because there can't be a huge sudden increase in the rate of car accidents, but there can be and there more than once was a huge sudden increase in the amount of people killed by enemy combatants.

(Whether you think terror could ever escalate into a full-blown war is another question, and many don't think that, or they think that it is the common countermeasures against terror that result in full-blown wars rather than terror itself, etc. My only point is if it's legitimate to fear paperclip maximizers because they're "strong AI" and always achieve their goals, it should be legitimate to fear dead-people-like-you maximizers because they're a form of wetware intelligence with a good track record of achieving its goals, and they specifically want to kill you, rather than it being a likely subgoal of "make more paperclips". From a citizen's point of view, the state is equally powerless against terror and car accidents, and still the dead-people-like-you maximizer is way more frightening for many and it's not stupid to think that.)