skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The golden idea in autotools is test for features not for versions. Allow me to explain.

The problem autotools tries to solve is building your software on a wide array of operating systems and configurations. A very attractive alternative approach taken by most, including CMake[1], is to have a big giant database of systems and what each system can do at which version. Thus, if you want to use a library such as, say, Qt, CMake has a Qt module that looks for Qt libraries, checks their versions, and reports that back to you. These databases of system versions and what is available at each version are necessarily always outdated.

Autotools instead gives you tools to write tests. Do you need this library? Which functions do you need from this library? What should those functions do?

When you're running a ./configure script, that's what autotools is doing. It's checking to see what kind of C library you have, what kind of Unix tools are available, how do those Unix tools behave. It is not going to trust version strings or software names. Perhaps the OS reports that it's Debian but in fact it's some derivative of Debian that changed some things around. If you were relying on CMake's hypothetical database of Debian features, it would fail on this not-quite-Debian system.

Over time, these tests get shared around and become part of the core autotools libraries, which is the other problem: autotools is now checking for the absence of certain features that have not really been missing in any system since 1995.

---

[1] CMake can perform autoconf-like feature checks too, but this is not as common as relying on its databases of systems and features.
Quotes to save the clicks...

> The dietary supplement Ginkgo biloba was found to be ineffective in reducing the development of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease in older people

> The GEM study—the largest of its kind to date—was a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial of 3,069 community-dwelling adults aged 72 to 96,

> Compared with placebo, ginkgo did not lessen cognitive decline. Researchers found no evidence of an effect on cognitive decline in general, or on memory, attention, visual-spatial construction, language, or executive functions. There were no differences by age, sex, race, education, or baseline cognitive status.
Society requires minimally moral and responsible actors to function.

Shkreli has been under criminal investigation since January, pleaded the fifth, is the target of a civil lawsuit with some pretty strong allegations and made some pretty self-incriminating statements.

Political prosecutions are bad but this clearly isn't the case here
http://www.newsweek.com/martin-shkreli-drug-manipulation-dar...
Keep in mind that most new drugs are discovered and developed in the US. If you take a look at the countries with strict price controls, you'll see a lot fewer new drugs being discovered.
that is correct, I would also add that through the current Marco Civil law, the requests must be technically possible, if not they shouldn't be taken into consideration.
It's interesting that I've had the complete opposite experience as a white man. The older I get the more respect I get in public, for no apparent reason. The painting example was so apt. No one would dare step between me and a painting. It's a very odd thing, as I don't feel like I deserve any more respect than I did 20 years ago.
When keeping it real goes wrong.
US state accuses tech support firm of scamming users
Avast Premier 2016 Crack and Serial Key [Offline Installer] Download
Benchmarking Streaming Computation Engines at Yahoo
From Sleeping on a Couch to Making Millions Connecting People
That would be actually confusing as m/s usually refers to meters in second. I would intuitively assume that mps is miles per second, but it would feel strange.
Well you're definitely right that people throw around the word "sociopath."
The quickest marketing ideas
It kind of scares me that people with terminal or completely debilitating diseases don't have widespread access to whatever experimental treatments are available. Imagine watching yourself die and reading articles about promising treatments you are unable to obtain. That is scary.
90% of my queries are well served by DuckDuckGo. The rest I try with startpage.com. If this does not work too than Google. For me it's worth it since I do not sell most of my info to Google and show them that they are not doing it right in my opinion.

I wish YaCy would work good enough...
It's absolutely a relative question, which is why it's not asking for an objective answer. It's asking for self perception, which may also be problematic but is different from what you're implying. If you cite a single tweet claiming IQ is replicable (admittedly from a reputable source) you're only showing one side of the story while claiming "the left" rails against IQ without science behind it. Well, there is science behind it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mismeasure_of_Man
Logic programming from SICP: http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-comput...
Ruby 2.2.4 released
How many of those people would trade the portfolio of medications available today for those available in 1955?
By being developed and run internationally by foreign companies, WhatsApp and Facebook are, in a sense, not bound by local law in many countries. Even if Facebook, Inc. had a subsidiary branch in Brazil, the branch is hardly the entity developing and deploying the app.

This is part of the problem, in a way, and why - for example - Russia and China are developing their own versions of operating systems, so as not to have all their communications be snooped on by Microsoft and its host government's spooks. The latest Windows is a notorious privacy hog with nary a way to opt out anymore.

But notice the difference: facebook and WhatsApp are centralized by design and all traffic goes through their servers. Windows, on the other hand, is installed locally and only "phones home" as an auxiliary feature (for now). So, theoretically, once it is set up, you can install a DNS proxy between you and servers out-of-the-country and it will still work.

We need MORE open source software that anyone can install, inspect and administer. Perhaps Free software in the sense of FSF. We need this kind of software to run our social networks, on our own servers under our control. There is very little reason why messages between people in an African village or a cruise ship have to bounce halfway around the world through Facebook's satellites to its headquarters before going back. Also, a lot of document collaboration in classrooms would be faster if it used IPFS and intranets instead of Google Docs. And so forth.

Decentralize all the things! Then, the developers of the software would indeed not be bound by the law, but only the hosts. And the hosts would be small and distributed enough that only warrants issued to a specific host would be effective, and not general sniffing of all traffic on a social network!

If you want this future, we are building it: http://qbix.com/platform
Free Forex Signals by German Trader “AlgoX”
That was a nice explanation of what is both good and bad about Autotools. I would love to see the GNU project take that "golden idea" and use a better language (GNU Guile ;) because M4 just sucks.
Mosquitto, Open Source MQTT Broker
It was mentioned.

This has been pointed out to us, and having understood the
problem and after some research, we decided to reimplement
Math.random based on an algorithm called xorshift128+.

Hyperlink in the first sentence.

(Incidentally, the link is broken in your quote)
What about the rise of thrifting? Going into thrift stores/flea markets looking for high value, heritage menswear pieces for a fraction of their selling price isn't only budget friendly and guaranteed to have you looking good (if you're not an idiot and can find a fit that a tailor can polish off), but people do it because they don't want to buy into fast fashion and the planned obsolescence cycle of a lot of new clothes.

An easy parallel can be seen here with clothes and furniture. While younger people won't be dropping 6 mil on the desk from the article, they might consider buying an antique, well-made, durable night table instead of its flimsy ikea counterpart if they know it'll last and won't morph into wobbly garbage in a year. Doubly true for Chinese knock offs and walmart brand items.
Why Do UL and CE Certifications Matter for Anything That Connects to the Mains
As long as you're taking suggestions - i would like to see bigger fonts, syntax highlighted code and maybe more color contrast between sidebar/top/comments and the main content.
The quick suggestion at the end of buying your kid a mechanical clock and a screwdriver is great.

Going shopping later today.
Thanks very much. That was useful.

It still seems like there's a possibility that a large minority, who will vote against the bill no matter what, can attach a rider that appeals to a subset of the majority that's in favor of the bill but which will make the bill unpalatable to the rest of the supporting majority. But those kind of hypotheticals quickly devolve into complicated strategies, and it's not clear there's a better mechanism than the majority vote.
a governmental agency that is free from political control, i.e. the federal reserve

I'm not sure how much it affects the argument, but the Fed is not a governmental agency. It's a stand-alone corporation whose officers are appointed by the government.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve_System
I really liked SCons, but it seems like it never really hit critical mass.

Ubiquity is important for a build tool.
When taxable income is recorded for income taxes, does that bear much resemblance to reality?

Do people really pay sales tax on everything they buy online? And if we could make that happen, is that the kind of internet we'd want?

Land taxes are great because they tax something right out in the open that everyone can see. You might not have a perfect idea of the value, but you can get a pretty good idea by looking at surrounding parcels. Self-assessment, as noted below, is one feasible system out of many.

LVT can be avoided by not owning land, but all users of land will need to pay, and they cannot avoid it. But in effect they're simply renting from the government rather than a private landlord. The market rent doesn't change.

Under-assessment can open up the possibility of subleasing, however, just like when normal landlords fail to charge the full rent for whatever reason.
New Roofing and Skylights Installation in Middletown, Delaware
And what's the point of that if our single-planet civilization is going to get wiped out by the next big asteroid?
Is Reddit leaking?
I'm a chemical engineer and self taught programmer who turned strategy consultant. Graduated from my MBA a few weeks ago, so I might be a bit biased :)

I've found that different people find different things valuable in their MBA. We had an entrepreneurship prof who was also an investor who took us yoking from term sheets to buy outs. Found that super valuable, but yes, no doubt could read up more on this online as well.
Same for finance, which was a topic that I didn't know that well before. From a course perspective also got more out of strategy than I expected, but that seems to be very dependent on the prof teaching. (Read 'profit or growth' by bala if you want a book, but more suited for large corporates)

Above all though, i think you get more out of the MBA in personal development (leadership in group work, dealing with pressure, being confident with new material, etc.) and network (after 1-2 years you are at least well connected to a group of people that have high business ambitions, plus alumni). In that sense it's difficult to replace the full MBA experience with a set of MOOCs.

Finally, I've always found it powerful if someone in a room full of technical people knows more about business than any other tech guy in that room (or vice versa, being the only biz guy who understands tech or can program in a room full of biz guys). The MBA is one way for technical people to make that step.

realizing that I didn't answer the question... Here are some things I think would also be interesting, regardless of the paper for more tech oriented people:

- time value of money (finance)

- basics of accounting (p&l vs cash flow, you'd be amazed how many startups die by running out of cash even though their p&l is positive)

- understanding competitive advantage & successful market entry (strategy)

- basic operations: the difference between efficient and market responsive supply chains (right supply chain for right product, i.e. Don't typically airfreight toilet paper); and the newsfeed or model if you make real products

- lots around marketing (pricing, channels, etc.)

- some stuff on more executive lvl management (do executives have most impact by the decisions they make themselves, or by the premises they set for others in the organization within which they make decisions? If the latter, how do you work best as an exec?)

- negotiation 101: there are some great HBS cases available online, it's even fun as a Friday afternoon to negotiate between people and see what works best.

- governance and boards

- basics of investing, leveraged buyouts, private equity/VC
Many more people are living in to their 70's, 80's and 90's than previously in human history. While our lifespan may not have increased much, the proportion of people reaching the extreme ends of our lifespan continues to rise. It's not just about infant mortality (not to mention death from childbirth).
I have a retina-class screen and I didn't notice that there was a problem, because I zoomed here as I do for almost all sites.
First Round Capital Holiday Video 2015
Yes, it does. For example, the recent Hep-C breakthrough drug was created by Pharmasset, Inc. Pharmasset was founded by the inventors of the drug--two professors at Emory University. It was purchased by Gilead, who commercialized it.
The problem is most people who end up using autotools and other build/install/package tools are not interested in their internals or interested in working on them. They just want a tool that gets their job done and they get to do something else.

I realized this a while back, when I was advocating git at my company (maybe 5 or so years back...) some developers loved because they like the idea of it, they wanted to know how it works underneath etc., other group didn't care, didn't want to hear about internal they just wanted a list of commands to type to get their code committed.

Neither one is wrong or or bad, it just comes down to personalities or interests. Autotools is a bit in the same area.

A lot of people will complain about it, because they want to use it to get stuff done. But they will never the ones to start writing tools like it, because they do something else -- databases, graphics, numerical simulations etc.

So "start working on a successor if you don't like it" might not have the same effect for this project.
Jan also wrote about this http://jandemooij.nl/blog/2015/11/27/math-random-and-32-bit-... in the context of Spidermonkey.
You're inferring a lot of information based on stereotypes and also misunderstanding the OP. It's not talking about "sophisticated" art, it's asking whether you consider yourself to be sophisticated in art, i.e. you appreciate what makes good art good and enjoy experiencing art.

I don't think of myself as an ingenious, deep thinker just as I don't think of myself as an eater of burgers. I engage in deep thinking and discuss deep thinking with my colleagues and sure it defines me sometimes but other times I'll screw something obvious up and realize that I'm really just a fucking idiot. Everyone is in some way and anyone telling you otherwise is hiding something.
I haven't found this to be universal. If anything, I think it can warp your thinking in a way that can be beneficial in certain circumstances, but is really scary in others. By way of example:

I have a parent who teaches at a top-5 business school. A few years ago, I had the opportunity to travel to Japan on a trip where my parent acted as a faculty chaperone and was able to attend some of the meetings with Japanese business leaders. One of the trips was to a 400+ year-old sake brewer. After the tour of the brewery, there was a Q & A period with the president of the company. The business school students asked him question after question about expansion, new product lines, finding new markets, advertising campaigns...everything they could think about to achieve growth. His answer was always basically the same and to the effect of, "I'm happy with the current situation. I make a profit making the best sake in the world, just as my ancestors have made it for the past 400 years. I provide a comfortable life for my family and the families of the people who work for me. Why would I want to change?"

It was a profound experience for me to watch him try to explain what should be a completely reasonable position to a group of people that have had the ideal of growth beyond all else drilled into their head so thoroughly that they simply couldn't understand contentment with the status quo. On the ride home, the whole group was complaining about why they'd even wasted their time talking to someone so ignorant. Comments ranged from, "He'll be out of business in 10 years" to "At least we got to drink sake."

I worry that putting MBAs in charge of businesses puts a skewed view on risk and desired outcomes. Each and every one of their suggestions could have backfired immensely and most would have required taking on considerable debt. It's this way of thinking that gives people the unicorn-or-bust mentality and look down on those who try to build "lifestyle businesses" (I hate that term). The world would be a much better place with fewer unicorns and more lifestyle businesses. The hockey stick isn't necessary to be successful, at yet it seems to be all that MBAs understand.
Laser-armed fighter jets in US Air Force by 2020
It does. Big pharma constantly acquires research-focused junior companies to input into its pipeline for regulatory approval / commercialization.
The point is to not have a primary device, every device added to the pool should be able to sign in new devices.
Yes, although the cost bottleneck isn't the primary research to find drug candidates, but the clinical trials needed to see which of the hundred drug candidates i) works and ii) is safe. And public funding of medical research is nowhere near what would be necessary to fund current levels of clinical research, let alone expand to meet the enormous unmet demand. For instance, UK government medical research funding is significantly less than £1bn, and estimates are the the cost of clinical trials to demonstrate the safety and efficacy of just one drug costs £0.2-1bn. So the UK could divert all pure and early-stage research and develop only 1-5 drugs each year.

Agree about marketing, I think most people agree the purpose of the pharma industry is finding objective treatments for objective diseases, and not generating spurious demand. I think we could potentially optimize strongly for the first part if we heavily restricted the latter part.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/97-percent-consensus-robust....
For me it is called cmake.
This is a good example of Sayre's Law [1], which I only learned about from another HN post the other day. ;)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre%27s_law
Accounting is really important, but if you have the basics getting to the point you can see though accounting tricks has limited value and takes a lot of work.

It's like an extreme version of the 80:20 rule. You can get some basic c functions to compile in a few hours, but seeing though the winner of an obfuscated c contest on your own might take years.

Just remember, your not a specialist and becoming one takes a lot more effort than a few MBA classes.
Me too. A lot of those open standards still exist, but everyone has walled off their garden. It's infuriating. I don't mind using whatever protocol my contactee wants, but I'm not going to install 10 different messaging apps with various permissions just to communicate with them. Inter-connectivity is the name of the game, not exclusiveness.
Download Free OpenStreetMap Vector Tiles for World and Create Your Own Map
People overestimate the mental decline that comes with age dramatically. It's more sporadic: most people decline very little, while a few people (i.e. those with dementia) get hit very hard. Unfortunately, much of society forms its model of "old people" based on the "hit very hard" category, and not people like Jacques Barzun, who did his best work in his 80s and 90s.

There's something you observe with biological mental illness which is that it's more stigmatized than it deserves because people encounter the "raving, crazy" people with it (the worst-off 2%) and not the other 98% for whom depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, et al, are more accurately modeled as boring and often manageable health problems than as residence in an alternative universe. I think that the cognitive negatives of aging (typically mild to nonexistent, except in senescent brain diseases like Alzheimer's) get the same smear.

In fact, various studies have put the intellectual peak age (in healthy people) anywhere from 17 to 65 (except for in language acquisition, at which we peak in childhood). That's largely because the curve is so flat and individualized (e.g. some people peak early, some late) that it's impossible to tell.
Rare photos of Berlin Kreuzberg in the 70s and today
Not all cultures have this function in which worth is inversely proportional to age. It is something we are taught by society and choose (as individuals) to believe or reject. When you are young, it is inticing, because we are young and therefore this idea means we have great worth. The problem is most people hold on to the idea even when they are older and it becomes dysfunctional; they can't let it go and society tells them they are right to not let it go.

How we are regarded is largely a function of how we allow ourselves to be regarded. Rejecting other people's regard when it is based on faulty premises is one of the gifts of age, that, sadly, not everyone acquires.

Self regard is the cure for the disregard of others.
Seems like if you can kill Whales against the will of international courts, helping people wouldn't be a problem.
The society where "elders" were regarded as wells of wisdom probably never existed. In every society but our own, women after 40 were considered very old.

Helen Garner, born Nov. 1942, is 73 years old. She appears to be really full of herself, which is maybe how old people are.

She should be happy to be alive instead of complaining about young people being young.
It is the source. The link to that article is in TFA in the sentence "This has been pointed out to us...."
I think the right to privacy should not be absolute, it must be balanced against other rights.

Same goes for the right to free speech.

For example, if someone is broadcasting to 1 million people, their message should adhere to some standards. If something is really a popular message, it can be spread using "totally protected" speech to up to 1000 people at a time. I think giving a platform to ISIS and others to easily spread their mind virus and continually infect some susceptible 0.1% is irresponsible. Inciting violence on public television would have been unacceptable and regulated.

It's an economic concept known as the free rider problem. If you guarantee total protection to speech for ANY number of recipients, people and organizations will find ways to abuse it. The free tier should be limited.

Ideas replicating, on the other hand, is only limited by the amount of attention / allegiance any given person has. The only way we'll get a free rider problem there is when computers spread ideas among each other like computer viruses. And for that, we need to secure our protocols and implementations.
MOBILE APP MARKETING AGENCIES, NETWORKS AND PLATFORMS: WHAT ARE THE DIFFERENCES?