skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I used to think the same as you, but I came around.

I am annoyed by the FSF dogma because they lay an exclusive claim on the word ethics when applied to software. I consider myself an ethical person even in software. But my definition of ethical is less strict than the RMS definition.
You can probably access it through google: https://www.google.co.uk/search?aq=f&hl=en&gl=uk&tbm=nws&btn...

It's not a new breach, rather a summary of all the medical record breaches for 2015. The FT title is a bit misleading.
This optimization exists for a reason. With macros, operator overloading or templates it's very easy to generate code like this:

if (!p) { return -1; } else { do something; }
if (!p) { return -1; } else { do something else; }
if (!p) { return -1; } else { do even more; }
...

And now, you want the compiler to remove all these redundant checks.

Moreover, you very likely don't want warnings here.
Yes, in the x86 world, things are not as rosy as they could be.

SPARC moved to a 64-bit address space a long time ago. 32 terabytes of memory in a single server? Sure, why not.

But as the other poster pointed out, this really isn't an issue given the approach they've taken, even on x86.
GCC has been designed specifically NOT to be extended.

Richard Stallman reasoned that by exposing an interface to other applications, or allowing other applications to access or modify intermediate code/trees, closed source proprietary applications could be built around GCC.

He was probably right ... but we all ended up with a worse compiler.
I'll remember that next time I'm having a discussion with an official and not some patent troll on an Internet forum.
I'll give my best... :)

1. Hardly anything will change. Maybe we'll start buying arm machines. Apple might also change from x86 to arm on laptops

2. Being a programmer will be much less glamorized. And we'll start to be blamed for half of world's problems

3. People will have multiple part-times. Remote jobs will start to be mainstream. A lot of people will do some hours a week for amazon turk and/or sharing economy businesses.

4. Our UIs/UX will be totally augmented with AI. Google glass on steroids. Also, our bodies will have a couple of sensors plugged-in. (Some people will still use emacs)
I've only used it briefly, but Mathematica: A Problem-Centered Approach (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1849962502) is a pretty good resource for learning practical (mathematical) Mathematica programming.
So what do you do when an index into an array is out of bounds at run-time. You can't perform a check every time because that would go against the C's principle, and at the same time it would degrade performance, making it less useful compared to newer languages.

How would you implement defined behavior without a significant (which is what an if check is at that level) overhead in this case?
There is no evidence that Square viewed and copied this dude's "novel invention".
Ok. So they basically use a namespace. Now, your objection is that the implementation of the builtin functions repeats Geo too much?

As a user, why should I care?
Now we just need Quantum Link ;)
IMHO claiming that a multi-faceted word like "freedom" is "trade-marked" to only mean one specific kind of freedom is a sure way to provoke misunderstandings and conflicts. Especially since it is generally seen as a good thing, so claiming other people don't respect it (because they mean something different when they use it) is going to piss them off.

See: every discussion of GPL and "freedom" in a public forum ever. One might think everybody is sick of these arguments already, especially since they are so predictable, but apparently it always stings some people enough.
Sorry, I meant that the project being compiled was closed source.
> Dereferencing NULL, in a C program, is ALWAYS undefined behavior.

1. you're not required to use C

2. an extension to the C standard can decide to define that behaviour
Ah, sorry, tab mixup on my end, the quote is from another article linked in the comments below; http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2014/06/thermal-efficiency-co...

Anyway, the question you pose is a good one.
* you're. Oh... Oh I see your point.
There's always phage therapy. It's harder to get FDA approval though. Every application is uniquely modified to target a specific bacteria. This means each treatment would need its own approval under the current rules.
I imagine it would be relatively easy to hook an ESP8266 board to the '64, and write a control interface for the ESP's AT command language - and those boards cost only a few pounds/dollars each.
He says this:

> Claim that a boring C compiler can't possibly support the desired system _performance_. Even if this were true (which I very much doubt), why would it be more important than system _correctness_?

If correctness is more important than performance, C is the wrong language. Consider a language with, at the very least, garbage-collection built into the core, as memory allocation and usage errors are the base of a lot of what goes badly wrong with C programs.

In short, his notion of "Boring C" seems to be Haskell or Common Lisp.
What Killed the Mammoths of Waco?
Don't add commentary to editorialize titles.
> Is my kid going to live in a post-apocalyptic world where a new Black Plague has wiped out 2/3 of the population because it is completely antibiotic resistant?

Yes, but briefly.
If you're looking for a new audio player on Windows, you may want to try out foobar2000. I've been using it for several years and have really enjoyed it.

https://www.foobar2000.org/
Way ahead of her time, but looks interesting!
If I could access my online music subscription service via a Winamp-like interface, I would be very happy.
Ask HN: How to kill Facebook?
So I made a bet with a friend 2 years ago that Facebook would go the way of MySpace by 2018. Not that I thought it should, more that I thought it would.

Now it seems I may lose $5, Is there any way to speed Facebook's demise? And, as a side note, now that Zuckerberg has pledged a lot of Facebook's value to the good of humanity should I still try to work towards this goal?

Pros/cons And strategies welcome
This reminds me a lot of Boxee. It basically did what it looks like Stremio did- aggregates video content from multiple streaming services. Maybe this will be more popular though because we definitely have more streaming options than we did back in 2008.

But why is it a desktop app? It looks like most of the content is available on the web. I think I'd rather just use that than download some app like this.
Are you planning to get the Android version compatible with Android TV? I bought an amazon fire TV for my dad, who can't handle tech very well, and a running streamio with subtitles working would be the greatest Christmas gift ever for a movie aficionado.
Math is for communication between mathematicians and programming languages are ultimately compromises for the purposes of precision and the limits of computers.

Trying to carry the precision necessary for implementation
throughout all notation quickly obscures the math beyond comprehension. Basically you're importing all the complexity that arises in programming (leaky abstractions, implementation details, etc) into math for little benefit.

For the same reason we still speak in languages full of vagaries and ambiguities instead of constructed languages: For the most part, they get the job done, and when more precision is necessary we have alternatives (legalese, mathematical notation, PL's).

For example, in the book "Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics," the authors choose more precise language (scheme code) to make common misconceptions of notation clearer.
>If one infinity can be said to be larger than another, then this admits the possibility of any single infinity expanding.

True, and that is the point I was trying to make.

My use of the word "logical" was perhaps a bit rushed, as another pointed out, more likely "intuitive" was a better word.
I still use WinAmp on Windows, although I have switched to using Sony Media Go to sync music to my Z1 compact. And while I used to use Winamp on my phone, Sony's Walkman music app blows away any other android music player I have come across.
It doesn't. The NTSC standard outputs scanline-by-scanline, and traditional CRT televisions are synced to the signal.
No it's just his same argument as ever. The GPL specifically addresses RMS' issues of software freedom. Choosing a different license ignores the topic of software freedom as defined by the FSF. That's all he is saying.

Look the GPL is a hard choice. It is very unfriendly to a developer who is looking to make a living on their code, since it makes selling that code as an artifact. It's not impossible but much more complex than if you just have a EULA.

That said if you remove that difficulty you neuter the GPL and weaken the point of software freedom.

I get why RMS pisses people off. He doesn't keep arguing for using the GPL to be an asshole, but because he thinks software users are more important than software developers. Perhaps most developers feel differently?
All in One Freelance Management App Open for Beta Testers
It's more reasonable that your stance here. You can quibble about how to define freedom, but given that RMS includes freedom from future vendor lock-in, it's entirely reasonable for him to say that other developers don't talk about freedom (as he means it) - because they don't. It's not hypothetical - BSD-derived code has been used in closed-source operating systems (both windows and notably macos) and lots of other software.

By using BSD over GPL you're choosing to make it easy for many people to use your code, even if that use eventually may support closed-source lock-in. Since most developers dabble in open source mostly as a prestige project, that's a reasonable choice - you're not doing it to prevent software monopolies or lock in, are you? So no, you don't care about freedom, exactly as RMS says. Most people are probably doing it for recognition by their peers and because they're interested in solving the problem at hand, and compromising on those two points for a slim chance that you might contribute to a more pervasively free software future sounds like a risky bet.

None of the two minor projects I wrote and support use (L)GPL.
There's no "easy science"

Also, knowing what's testable requires testing itself. Science has always been about incremental fraying at the edges of knowledge to answer 1 little question and open up 100 more. Things might not be perfectly testable today but that doesn't mean they won't be in the future or that we can't someone make progress with theory and models.
How about the most obvious solution: Stop keeping (farm) animals in conditions that require mass antibiotic feedings for the animals to survive?!
WinAmp? The MP3 player? What next, RealPlayer?
They very much are synced up, since the PPU needs to generate the video signal directly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picture_Processing_Unit

I'm not familiar with the NES in particular, but typically the software is synced with the video signal via hardware interrupts.
In the US, deposits are guaranteed up to $250K per ownership type, per customer, per bank. Ownership types include individual ownership, some retirement accounts, joint accounts, trust accounts, etc.
"Comes across as..." is, of course, subjective; to my eye, Chomsky comes across as justifiably skeptical at the outset, and reasonably irritated as the exchange continues. Doesn't, to me, seem anything like "rabid" (much less "overly rabid" -- a description that is quite odd, as it seems to suggest that there is an appropriate degree of "rabid"; when you've chosen "rabid" as your metaphor, you've kind of ruled out "overly" being a useful modifier.)
Pedantic much, but I agree. GCC support is deprecated, not GCC itself.
Ask HN: Why don't programming languages have special “commit comments”?
Upon a commit, these "commit comments" would be automatically combined into a single commit comment.

After the commit, the "commit comments" would be automatically removed from the source code.

In this way, you would not need to remember what changes you are committing in order to make up a commit comment. You just comment the code as you make the changes.

A special syntax would be used for commit comments so they are never confused with normal comments.

Note also that in the case of multiple changes being committed at once, these commit comments would give a more accurate mapping of the individual comments to the code changes they refer to.
It controls the CRT by issuing HBLANK and VBLANK signals.
I don't think the worry is that we will suffer a Black Plague again, but more than almost every instance of surgery or anything that leaves a person immunocompromised will lead directly to infection.

A lot of modern medicine suddenly becomes useless because the health benefits that it brings are nullified by the fact that an infection is sure to follow.

Organ transplants and chemotherapy are two big ones that become near impossible if antibiotics are useless.
Especially after clang showed the world how useful error messages look like.

And GCC has some serious limits when it comes to help other tools, because RMS (probably rightfully) fears that if GCC outputs to detailed backend information, people would start adding non-GPL software after it and build non-GPL compilers on top of GCC.

Which lead to the funny situation of people asking to include LLVM-based tools into Emacs, because LLVM allows to build code-analysis tools GCC just doesn't provide the info for.

IMHO clang's success and maybe even existence is clear result of GCCs restrictions, but removing these restrictions would undermine central principles.

And both compilers are better now than they would be if the other didn't exist, so good for everyone I guess? It doesn't seem possible to reach all goals with just one of them.
"In short the loan system is transferring the benefits of the education away from the students and allowing the institutions to take it for themselves instead."

That is by far the most concise summary I've ever read of the nature of the problem.

Would you say that the same thing is true to a lesser extent in the housing market? It's not as bad, but there's a huge amount of loan subsidy there that's driving the price of housing crazy.
Unless they fuck up sync again and all your locally stored Dropbox folders get wiped clean. Happened once. I'm pretty sure Dropbox is more than cautious about it, but it's still a possibility with them, and more so with everyone else.
The Forbes 50 Hottest Startups of 2015 – Ranked by Growth Score
Show HN: Awesome resources for writing cross-platform Node.js applications
Unemployed and semi-retired EE here. This is going to get much worse before it gets better. There's just too much low cost Electronics Engineering talent available worldwide. The only way that this would change is if there's another world war which bifurcates the talent base.

A possibility would be if the US goes to war with China or Russia. The US defence industry would end up "drafting" all of the EE's forced into retirement.
This needs to be done on a global scale and we haven't even made progress on that in the US. How do we start?
A few years back Ars did a nice longform piece on what happened to Winamp after the AOL acquisition. I think HN would like it:

"Winamp’s woes: how the greatest MP3 player undid itself"

http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/06/winamp-how-greatest-...
Show Your Work! by Austin Kleon

It's a short book with a bias toward action that's changed how I interact with my work and share it with others.

Key takeaways:

- good work doesn't market or promote itself [writing a great library doesn't matter if you don't have docs and examples to make it accessible to people]

- give people a convenient way to access your work [convince yourself that having a personal mailing list does not make you too self-important]

- share your side projects to create a feedback loop early [maybe they could help solve other people's problems too] / stop telling yourself "i'll ship this after i fix one more thing"

- let good ideas bubble up from "flow" to "stock" -- for example, a few well received tweets might lead to a blog post which might lead to a whole book

- reuse the things you create across projects and mediums

- life is messy and uncertain, but you choose how you crop and present your experiences [share the interesting parts!]

My full chapter-by-chapter notes: https://github.com/tedmiston/notes/blob/master/books/Show%20...
From what I've read, the antibiotics can be phased out, and then later, phased back in.

Because the competition is so high, the bacteria can't afford the energy/resources to continue resistance to antibiotics that aren't in use--they are out-competed.

Therefore, currently ineffective antibiotics will become effective again in the future.

That said, I did not read if this is being practiced already.
Wasn't RealPlayer the fore-front of streaming technology at some point? And then they never innovated and just stayed there...?

Their installer had so much extra shit in it...
if you're implying that everyone who usefully modifies source code or compiles with options is able to write the code from scratch, i would advise you rethink your position.

to put a finer point on it, the concept of "layers of abstraction" is fundamental to computers and software. i can know quite a bit about adjusting the pieces of a program without having the ability to build it as effectively as i modify it.
Event the greatest brains can fart, this proposal can be safely ignored.
Yeah I'm in a similar situation as in I can be 'the guy' for now but eventually they'll need to find another developer to maintain the app. But what could have been a decent alternative for a webapp + db setup? I don't think wordpress is suitable for that kind of project.
what is:

1) http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=H...

2) www.google.ca/patents/US8396808

3) http://pat2pdf.org/patents/pat8396808.pdf

if not publicly disclosed?
Unless you've personally memorized all the data in your head, you're trusting someone or something. Even if you've printed it all out on acid-free paper and stored it in a bank vault, you're trusting the bank, you're trusting your paper supplier, you're trusting the courier who transports it back and forth. If you've stored it on "your" servers you're still trusting your hard drive manufacturer, your RAID firmware, your OS code, your hosting company, your sysadmins.

For most values of "I have x hours and y dollars to safely store z gigabytes", a pure-cloud solution (possibly involving multiple independent cloud providers) has a lower chance of failure than one involving local storage.
First one, then the other.
Amen. Animal agriculture (innocuously referred to as "agriculture" in the article) has to be the single biggest contributor to the existence of these superbugs.
Harp actually is a static generator (didn't think it was, never used before).

And yes, Grav and Cockpit are self-hosted flat-file CMS, but now that you ask makes me confused. I was under the impression that Lektor was similar where you have a flat-file CMS and whenever a change is made, the static files are created.

My second guess is that this actually a CMS that exists locally and deploys static files when a change is made?
If a telnet or (preferably) ssh client exists, you could use tin on a remote machine.
It really whips the llama's ass. <3
Yep, sometimes I convert to DNG for that reason, but that seems like pushing the problem out...
You're not my mother.
I'm hoping new antibiotics like Teixobactin get to market quickly.

That said multiple comments have been made here on HN on how there are no incentives for the pharmaceutical industry to bring a new antibiotic to market. It would likely be prescribed as a last effort antibiotic, with a very low volume.
"Ray Ozzie sold out to Microsoft again, still doesn't get the world moves to Open Source" would be the better headline ;-)
By bank offer built-in online services that are pretty much identical to Mint's. I thought this was the standard in this day and age.
The book title made me think of why I still wake up at night from reliving a conversation I had with a developer when I was doing an interface, who was so proud I couldn't recalculate the data in a stored procedure that he could do in [image based language] and how he didn't think it was a problem that he didn't store his results thus denying and interface to another system that would cut the customer's check. It almost turned into a real crime scene.

That book looks quite cool, might have to pick it up. Thanks for the link.
I wonder what kind of world we would have if GNU were completely defeated, if no one released anything under the GPL anymore. Sure, free software would still exist, but nobody would call it "free software" and no one would prevent anyone else from creating non-free derivatives. Nearly all software would be "open core", with some free software here and there but with many or most of the interesting components non-free.

We're already very close to that world. Many people seem happy to see GNU losing ground every day. For myself, I am not sure that we are working towards the best possible future, but I'm not even sure what that future should be.
It's just like any other language. At first you're constantly looking at the docs to find the right function (perhaps library call is the better analogy here), but eventually you'll know what's important and where to look if you're trying to solve something new.
How is this comment relevant to this article? Or is your fanboy love for Sam Harris so deep that you can't help mention him as soon as you see the name "Noam Chomsky"?
> RMS wants user freedom, not developer freedom That is the point people always miss.

Or we reject his attempt to lay exclusive claim to a word as all-encompassing as "freedom" and to co-opt it to his personal pet ends. You know, either/or.
If you look at the comment history, you'll find I have recently argued why you don't want warnings for these kinds of things. But I agree with Regehr et al.'s proposal for a Friendly C, http://blog.regehr.org/archives/1180, which would disallow optimizing way those null-pointer checks. Any attempt for myself to justify why would just restate, poorly, what Regehr and company already state in that post and the ones linked to from it.

I think it's worth noting that some critical code, such as the Linux kernel, already opts out of such optimizations because they've been bitten by it in the past. My previous post talks about that.
Lambda in production: save $1000/month with a rewrite
Personally, I'm annoyed by RMS because it's annoying when someone I disagree with on so many things turns out to be right so often. I think they call that "cognitive dissonance."
I really love foobar's minimal approach, but I've had serious crash problems that lose my playlists rather frequently (and it doesn't automatically save them).
Lisp's evaluation strategy is based on a very particular category of rewriting systems known as the lambda calculus. Mathematica's is an abstract rewrite system with a broad set of evaluation strategies that are not easily represented in the lambda calculus (without first implementing a term rewriting system).
Order Oberon Station, copy-paste a couple of lines of instructions to flash a bitfile, and enjoy a nearly fully open environment.

A bit more tricky with or1200, but this way you'll get a fully functional Linux workstation.
Because programming languages have no awareness of version control. Nor should they.

This is also exactly what comments for commits through VC's are for. If you are changing a large amount of code in one commit you should rethink whether or not it should be done through multiple commits instead of all at once. If your code is well commented and your commit message makes sense - the commit will explain itself.

Unless I'm not understanding what you mean.
One of those people in your list is one of the most important thinkers of our time, the others are...not.