skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Author here. That's an interesting claim -- that the solstices and equinoxes used to fall on the first days of the month. (At least, I think that's what you're implying.) But I'm not sure that checks out: The Julian and Gregorian calendar diverge by 3 days every 400 hundred years. When the Gregorian calendar was adopted at various times in various countries, it skipped forward between 10 and 13 days (http://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/julian-gregorian-switch....). That's not enough days to explain why the equinoxes and solstices fall 20 or 21 days after the first of the month. Do you have a source for this?

Moreover, I argue that if you want to use astronomical seasons, it doesn't make much sense to begin them on the solstices and equinoxes -- they should begin near the "cross-quarter" days halfway in between (around the 7th of March, May, August, and November). And that is indeed how the seasons used to be defined in many cultures, such that Midsummer and Yule, the midwinter holiday, each came near the solstice.
Legalizing prostitution won't disempower them anymore than legalizing drugs will - they will prey on some other group, or the same group, or sell sex slaves alongside legal enterprise, or anything else they think of that can unfairly extract money from society. We could never legalize the full extent of their activities either - murder, extortion, kidnapping, slavery etc.

We've had legal brothels in my city (Brisbane, Australia) for decades and Wikipedia's estimating 90% of prostitution there is unregulated or illegal. It just co-exists alongside a legal market.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_in_Australia#Quee...
Cord cutting spreading from TV to Internet service
It would already be a step into the right direction if institutes using BOINC promise to release any research papers they do (not only the ones generated using BOINC) completely (without exception) under some creative commons license. If they already do, they should advertize this fact.

In other words: Volunteering computation time just to make Elsevier/Springer/Wiley rich or volunteering computation time to an institute which also supports projects that make Elsevier/Springer/Wiley rich is something that I'm dubious about.
Which do you enjoy more, applied math or computer science or something else?
Divvy just works for me. Really, the two most common shortcuts I use are "take up the right half" and "take up the left half". That accounts for 80% of my usage of anything like a tiling window manager. In third place is an alternative for "maximize" which isn't the OS X maximize. (Has a use for certain legacy programs, and also as an alternative to OS X fullscreen.) The next two most common operations are "take up the top half" and "take up the bottom half."

The devs were pretty responsive to my request, as well.
I'm not sure whether you're serious or not. I'm awake about 15 hours a day. Working for 12.7 out of those is not what I would call "having time for friends, family, and hobbies".
This is literally the worst chart I have ever seen in my life.
Just out of curiosity, what other languages do you have experience with?
This is an obvious false flag, typical state-planted bullshit. Wake up sheeple, NSA didn't hack Santa. Santa's elves are not outraged here.

Santa is complicit in NSA's spying. Probably not seen in any of the Snowden leaks, but anyone who has been paying attention the past couple decades has seen this coming from a mile away.

You're telling me you thought a single man could effectively build a meaningful dossier on what amounts to nearly everyone on the planet, working ALONE?

The government wants us to think that Santa didn't see this coming. I don't buy it. The more I think about it, this whole narrative of Santa doesn't make much sense at all. Something is seriously amiss here, but I can't put my finger on it.
The announcement is a bit misleading then:

> Linked cloning will happen automatically if your system supports it. Providers other than VirtualBox and VMware can be updated outside of Vagrant to support linked cloning automatically.
"The hard truth is internal and external politics in the organization were so toxic senior-level programmers who were more risk averse were pushed out."

I wish you'd go into a lot more detail than that.
I'm starting to think the same of healthcare software, except we call it "Hospital Grade"
/* Inline corresponding strlen file, temporary until new strcpy
implementation gets merged. */

git blame reveals this is from March 2013. "Temporary" indeed...
Real question, how is Mozilla flourishing when its main product, Firefox, has been declining in market share for years?
Sort of. The point is less primitive and more verifiable. A lot of the security kernels of the past were a decent size. So was Dijkstra's THE OS which pioneered the robust, construction processes. Hamilton's team's flawless code for Apollo certainly wasn't small either:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2e/Ma...

We tend to keep the TCB small as less code = less bugs. We simplify it because simpler code = easier verification. Usually... More important is you know what states or execution effects each component can have in a way that can be abstracted into analyzing those above it. So, the thing can be 4Kloc or 100Kloc, but it should be easily analyzed and composed modules.

One problem I noticed, though, is that systems without needed functionality get continuous, ad-hoc versions of that functionality from their developers. C and UNIX were perfect examples with all kinds of extensions there was a mess trying to cover stuff that came by default in prior languages and platforms. So, there was less safety & consistency anyway despite underlying tool being primitive.

This led me to shift from "simple & tiny as possible" to the simplest version of tools that make it as easy as possible to do right. Bernstein et al's Ethos & NaCl projects are perfect examples where internally they're a bit complex but interface is simple to use & securely. Just got to find the right balance.

A lot of good wisdom on such things is from Karger et al in the link below on high assurance virtualization. See "layered design" especially for verbal and visual explanation:

http://www.cse.psu.edu/~trj1/cse543-f06/papers/vax_vmm.pdf
At Userify[1], we just made our primary product (user and SSH key management for cloud servers) completely free. We're charging incrementals for feature upgrades, faster sync (from 3 minutes down to 10s), etc.

On the other hand, this hasn't slowed down our enterprise sales cycle at all; in fact, it seems to have sped it up, with five enterprise deals in the pipeline right now.

However, this approach is risky and it's really hard to get the balance right; companies that have raised rounds might have to answer to investors. Still, sometimes it's worth prioritizing long-term growth over short-term revenue.

My view is that we should always have something free or very cheap for the smaller technologist/hacker/startup. They tend to bring their favorite solutions to other larger companies. Goodwill is one of the best growth factors.

1. https://userify.com
12 Most Influential Books Every Software Engineer Needs to Read
From: http://betterexplained.com/static/articles/rethinking-arithm...

1 * x^2 = 9

"What transformation (“times x”), when applied twice, will turn 1 into 9?"

That's such a great way of thinking about algebra. The "understood" 1 is equivalent to, e.g., an understood "YOU" in the English language.
If you just want to program, then why are you leaving comments like this? You're passive aggressive behavior is more office politics.
Not actually, because in reality the coldest dates are different every year, and may change with global warming to boot. Start talking about meteorological seasons, and we can start arguing about what data to use. Does every climate region get their own definition of winter? Or do we use a one size fits all definition for an entire hemisphere? Do we go with an average of surface temperatures since they've been recorded, or do we use a running average of the last ten or twenty years? Do we use only surface temperatures, or should we take ocean temperatures into account as well?

And then you say, well, we'll just do an approximation and say Dec 1, but then you've chosen a truly arbitrary date that, again, is just as approximate to the "actual" meteorological date as Dec 22, and is off by close to the same amount.

Edit: because this post sounds pretty vehement, I just want to leaven it by saying that I recognize that all of these things are essentially arbitrary and this is not, in the end, a topic that is actually extremely important to me. I do think it's worthwhile to point out that the meteorological seasons are not as clearly better as this article makes them out to be. There are reasons for using astronomical winter, and they aren't really any worse than the reasons for using meteorological winter, as far as I can tell.
I still have hopes that an episode of _Person of Interest_ will reveal that The Machine was made at Santa's request.
I've been considering a patreon page, but the best way is to help share the site with people learning math (students, family friends, etc.). A genuine recommendation is one of the best things I can ask for. Thank you!
You should have at least a rough sense of direction. A defined goal and clear benefits are definitely not necessary and I believe I state that clearly ("expect that most ideas will fail," "nobody knows what types of projects eventually benefit your company").
I regularly use Pocket, and I think it'll keep growing in an age where you're constantly being blasted with interesting content and have to save it for later. I also see it having more potential than the other apps, with the new recommendations service and opportunity saving other media.

I wouldn't call it a "news reader" though, and don't think it belongs in this chart.
> I'm not sure I understand the distinction. You can always use something like Optional (Maybe) if you want a value.

I mean that the "value or error" that I get back from a function that returns Either is itself a value, that I can use in the normal way I would use a value. I can pull it out into a static field. More importantly I can pass it back and forth through generic functions without them having to do anything special about it (e.g. as a database load callback), because it's just a value. I notably can't do this with exceptions (or e.g. if I'm emulating Writer with a global or ThreadLocal variable), though checked exceptions will at least fail this at compile time.

> would never call the writer (like your first example, I believe)

Hmm. If you're willing to fix the order in which effects happen (and explicitly handle when you want to change it, as in your example) then you can write something much simpler than the usual monad transformers, so make sure you're comparing like with like.
Dart's optional typing and performance makes it a non starter as a replacement for Java.

Make no mistake: if Java is ever replaced as the main language on Android, it will be by a language that's at least as fast (which kind of implies that language has to be statically typed, at the very least).
right. Most ppl have no idea why they are being educated, what it means to be educated.
Looks like Santa wants the terrorists to win.
Every argument on radians you presented applies equally well to Tau as Pi.

My original point is that IMHO, mainstream radian educational materials should NOT use the lesser-known and niche 'tau' in lieu of the globally understood 'pi' (other than a possible footnote or sidebar). Ie - it can cause more confusion to the student, especially when connecting it back to the greater scope of their studies.
"18 months of credit monitoring? Crap, I've already got two of these."
I didn't realise the offer was negotiable. I always left a mince pie and sherry.
That would take a society that also cares about deeper principles, starting with parents etc., and not just "getting into university" and "getting a good job" (and that's when it's not just "make shitloads of money").
> Chuck the good thing about being in this role is you get to make some of the important decisions, the bad thing about being in this role is that you have to make the important decisions

I disagree that people make make the difference over the form. The role of CEO or product manager, or whatever, is a human invention. We as people created these roles.

Roles are designed to limit or enhance your skills. A senior role is an artificial multiplier and therefore a person's praise, or pay, or whatever, is artificially enhanced.

Imagine Musk, same as he is, in a different role, like a mailman. The FORM limits how we can contribute. LIMITS what he gets paid. and LIMITS who listens to him.

The workers of SpaceX don't listen to musk because they like the guy, they listen to him because he will fire them otherwise.

There are organizations that have different roles, and the idea of someone having so much power is a really stupid one. We decided this to be true in politics, why not other places?
Huh, I never use str(n)cat, because it's inefficient by design.
Ask HN: How did you come to know about HN?
I have been using HN for the past 5 odd years, but it occurred to me today, that HN/HN links don’t show up on google search. I realized, I came to know about HN through my workmate. Wonder If I would have found HN If it hadn’t been for that workmate. How did you find about HN ?
Beautiful way to put it! We aren't always explicit about the subject of the transformation. Similarly, when working with exponents, I think:

e^ix

is really

1 * e^ix

That is, we're starting with 1.0 and doing a transformation (rotation) on it.
I've found that I also need to understand the historical context/impetus... I need to be shown and eventually understand why something was developed when it was developed. I need chronology of thought and ideas.

For instance, learning about Gödel's theorems without having the Hilbert back-story explained. Learning about Leibniz's and Newton's calculus without learning about infinitesimals. And so on.

There's generally a reason _why_ concepts are born _when_ they are born. If you think about your maths classes, sometimes you're instructed to learn a method because it is useful and because it has real-world applications but it I don't think anybody is ever first taught algebraic geometry properly, if I may use that word. I don't think kids are taught the geometry is one thing and algebra is another and that different spaces can have different metrics. Am I making sense here? Do people see what I'm trying to get at?

Am I arguing for HADEPT? :) (Historical context, Analogy, Diagram, Example, Plain English explanation, and just then Technical definition)
Note that Iran captured a RQ-170 drone back in 2011, possibly using GPS spoofing, so obviously using the encrypted military GPS signal isn't a perfect solution.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93U.S._RQ-170_incid...

(How did they do it? Who knows. Maybe they jammed the encrypted channel, and spoofed the civilian channel, so when the drone fell back onto the unencrypted channel it was receiving bad navigation information)
> There is nothing wrong with node.js programmers, your implication that they're inferior is a broad-sweeping and baseless generalization.

Not the point I was making.

The point is there was a systemic cleansing of senior architects in favor of younger node.js programmers.

Mozilla had the creator of JS there. It's probably one of the offices in the world where the grayhairs could co-exist with the newer crowd.

I thank you for your reply. I don't agree with everything said above (servo has paid off, hacker ethic matured to something better), but will say Mozilla does has a diverse array of new projects.

I'm hoping for your success. I'm happy and encouraged by your optimism. I hope it doesn't come at the expense of insensitively ignoring those who were pushed out wrongly for reasons that had nothing to do with merit.
I think that 'iTerm2' in the corner is just the name of the currently focused window.
Here's another one:

Executives leave the company, and their replacements have lesser titles and are existing employees who have to continue to do their existing jobs in addition to whatever function they absorbed. Bonus points if the executive's function gets divided up among multiple employees.
The question inside the question is "Job for who?"

My sister dances and teaches and makes music and art. She's smart enough to program, but I doubt it would suit her temperament. Her muse is her muse, not my muse.

Architects can design buildings that last many years...much longer than most code. Does that make architecture more creative? Architects tend to design fewer buildings than programmers write programs. Does that make architecture less creative?
put the desc under the video
>> You realize that the level of environmental protection that we currently have in the US is only possible at the current level of consumption because we exported most of our polluting industry to China, right?

> This is absolutely untrue. Even in the US's manufacturing heyday we had strict environment laws.

Which, combined with wage laws, resulted in the offshoring of dirty industry. We still produce nearly as much as China, but our industries of choice are generally cleaner industries. It is cheaper to pollute China than to adhere to US manufacturing laws. We could not produce the same quantity of "dirty" goods here for prices that would allow for current levels of consumption. Arguing otherwise is a bit like saying manufacturing moved to China for no reason.
A versatile IRC bouncer for humans
Ask HN: How to get involved with AI as a non-AI programmer?
As someone interested in AI, but with no real technical knowledge of the field, I find it hard to dive in. I could certainly start learning AI programming, but the math involved seems a bit out of reach.

Are there any online courses or books that can teach you the basic concepts of AI? I'm trying to really look at different business and design opportunities with the AI field, and I'm wondering if that's possible without the technical understanding of knowing how to program AI.
I find The Mythical Man-Month to be greatly out-dated now. Same for Design Patterns, it was a great book when OO was everywhere, but I have the feeling that FP is now on the raise, and most of the described patterns are anti-patterns.

Pragmatic Programmer is good for very junior devs. I read it after spending almost 10 years in the industry and thought that it was just a compilation of self-evident things.
The stones you can pick-up from the ground aren't much use in construction other than for rubble-fill, which requires quantities vastly greater than available in free [position] material.

To gather them in kilotonnes you'll need to remove and sift the regolith layer. A lot more expensive than 'pick some up'.
Started campaig to help cennai peoples
Hey guys! Have started a #fundraiser for chennai, which I ve contributed to as well. So can u. Every amount matters. http://igg.me/at/9dkdOgdk5kw
I want to just program without all the backstabbing and treachery.

I mean, for someone who just wants to program you're creating an awful lot of drama.

I don't really buy your complaints, which come off as mostly baseless ranting. If I were to read a blog post that raised some of those issues in a constructive manner, I might have more confidence in your legitimacy. As it is, though… I don't really believe you.
Which holiday does Santa represent?

A non-denominational holiday?

Stop playing coy.

If you rename Christ-mas, you can have the government endorse Santa all you want and I won't complain.
I've never managed to work out of Santa keeps a list of _everyone_ on earth and then indexes them as either Nice or Naughty, or if I manage to get added to one of the two for doing something particulally noteworthy over the last year.

Or to put it another way, if _only_ the nice list gets leaked and I'm _not_ on it, does that mean I'm really naughty, or does it just mean I'm one of the 60% of people on earth who aren't Christian?
I just read the Tao Manifesto and - while I was skeptical at first - I have to agree that it is much easier.

Note that this is just my opinion, but I have kids and this gives me an alternative viewpoint when they have questions. I wonder what my more math oriented friends will think about Tau
The likelihood of them ever having the cryptographic components of ScreenOS competently audited is very low.

Most firms didn't even start getting basic software security assessments done until ~5 years ago, and almost nobody gets crypto reviews done (crypto reviews are nosebleed expensive, because only a tiny fraction of software security people can do them competently).
If you can't imagine a CEO going to bed at nine you don't have much of an imagination. I'll just leave it at that.
No no, just NoSQL. Even Santa has "Big Data" in the cloud.
I'd like to see it, too. Just not in this thread.
IMDb Data Visualization: DiCaprio Movie Popularity by State
Documentary on the situation around MH-17 crash in Ukraine
We just have to ask Bill Gates
Close.io is hiring a remote full-stack hacker
Build a Beowulf mini-supercomputer from Raspberry Pi 2s powered by computes.io
The Fast Rise of Ad Blockers
I think Gizmodo linked to some thing here a few years ago and I started obsessively coming here since.
Indeed: eyewitness accounts are notoriously inaccurate, whereas video can be replayed.
SolidFire acquired for $870m in cash
It's the same logical leap as legalizing alcohol during the prohibition era reduced violence [1]. See Figure 4 - Homicide Rate (1910 - 1944).

[1]: http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-157.html
Rudolph's "red nose" actually refers to his uncanny ability to sniff-out communist sympathizers. As you might imagine, Santa simply can't afford delays like labor strikes or communist revolutions.
Excellent, they can keep polluting as long as they add more mist cannons. Maybe gross polluters can buy mist credits!
Techcrunch lead me to ycombinator and ycombinator lead me to HN.
I believe in Santa terminology it would be "elfin" boots on the ground. This is the North Pole, not Middle Earth.
Using Elixir with Wercker CI
Great point. I find myself looking at the history of the idea when writing up a post. Did you realize negative numbers were only accepted in the late 1700s? That the Fourier Transform was originally rejected as untrue when first presented, by world-famous mathematicians even?

(Yet we require students to internalize it without issue in a single lecture.)

Historical context is huge. I think I'm now stuck with this ADEPT name but maybe it fits into the Plain English portion :).
And this is the core (if covert) problem with large class sizes. Not that a teacher can't instruct 30 kids vs. 20 kids - but that 150 kids per semester just leaves less time to interact with each student at a meaningful level.
I usually don't criticize in comments, but that article was very difficult to read and understand.
Bubble sort is the fastest sorting algorithm
Phew! As a Jew, I'm not in Santa's database.
You are precisely correct. Replacing Musk with someone else would lead to bigger changes than replacing the mailman.

But Why? It has nothing to do with Musk but everything to do with organizational form. He has an invention at his disposal called "Role of CEO". It is a magical invention that gives you the power to control what thousands of people do everyday. A mailman doesn't have this invention and obviously won't be able to decide what thousands of people do everyday.

There is nothing magical about Musk here. Since so few people get a chance at being CEO, it is hard to say if most people would be good or bad at it. And it is also hard to say how hard the work really is.
That's it, I'm clearing my Christmas cookies.