skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> GPL works well to protect the freedom of its users.

As do the BSD and especially(?) the Apache Software License.

What possibly can be said in favour of GPL is that it:

* make the code more resistant to forks, esp. less free

* opens an option for the original author of code to do dual-licensing

* provides an opportunity for the authors to prevent certain uses of the code

Case in point : there is nothing in either the ASL, BSD or MIT that allows you to go back and make already licensed code less free. The original authors can choose to license their new or existing code under another license as well, as can coders using GPL.

Personally I would be happy if everyone could stop pretending that GPL is more free or respects users more, - as I have tried to show above it does not.

There might still be ideological and even practical reasons to use GPL, but it is NOT more free, possibly less.
Show HN: Elixir Back end Logger for Logentries, online log collation service
I love watching Shakespeare master classes online. Wonderful material.
I couldn't get on with that book, there seemed to be a lack of anything useful in it, for me anyway.
Self-referential functions and the design of options (2014)
> Are you intentionally dishonest or just plain stupid?

Personal attacks are not allowed on HN. We ban accounts that do this, so please don't.
I haven't used OpenCL before. This library seemed sort of reasonable but I had some questions about whether it was really that much better than the native OpenCL API. So I found an OpenCL "hello world" program here: http://developer.amd.com/tools-and-sdks/opencl-zone/opencl-r...

Holy crap. The "kernel" code is basically the same, but the native API setup code (which that tutorial even calls "boiler plate") is insane, starting with the fact that the source code for the CL on-device program has to be passed as a string. There is no API to pass a filename--only a string containing the entire program source!
Researcher Who Found Instagram Vulnerabilities Says FB Threatened Legal Action
Anonymous publication is in all probability impractical, but the concept also has serious flaws. Identifying authorship is important not only to give credit (or blame) where it's due, but also for historical reasons, to know how research developed among particular threads in a given disciplines.

Naming authors is necessary to verify results, e.g., when authors admit to faking results (not a rarity), other articles by those authors are suspect as they should be. Publishing anonymously makes it hard or even impossible to know the legitimacy of reports especially as time since publication gets longer.

While anonymous publication is highly unlikely to happen, IMO there are a few things that would materially improve the process. I think peer review and perhaps editing itself should be done anonymously. That way much of the "politics" is eliminated because anonymous review would have to accept/reject a manuscript only on its merit. In line with principles of full disclosure, an accepted paper would be published under its authors' names.

It might also help to reduce political pressures associated with publishing. One change to consider is encouraging reports of research findings or results, but discouraging premature "conclusions", i.e., when effectively authors' speculations. In many fields data is lacking or inadequate to support conclusions, it's hard to say what data mean until there's enough such that clear patterns emerge. Constraining the urge to be the first to reach a conclusion could reduce unnecessary competitiveness in research communities.

Contributing to the community is important in science, but contribution has a value that needs to be recognized or rewarded if we are to see it continue. Publishing a scientific report is an accomplishment to be proud of, certainly not selfish to enjoy being known for having done something worthy.
Climate change does make for difficult reading, I just finished Don't Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change by George Marshall. It was a fascinating read but pretty grim.
The problem is with the "curation". At least, that's one of the problems.
I don't think that would be true, I recall yellowdog linux was running on macs at the same time.
Which also reminds me of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOS_Technology_6502#Origins_at...
(Do note that many things in the paper have changed, for example, the hidden service design.)
This exists: http://newsdiffs.org/
I feel that if you hide the text you need to type to insert a symbol, learning a new language might be hard.

For instance, some languages use != and others use ~=. If both of those look the same, you're going to have one hell of a time learning a language.
Likewise. I'm not 30 but at this point I've cracked through a wall where I'm blessed to be surrounded by a large number of contacts who can give me a job should I ask. As a small addendum to this. It's a two way street. I've made a lot of matches between those looking for the job and those looking for someone to fill the job role. Participated in tech meetups in a supportive role (organising, giving talks), and have met and helped startups and other tech people through feedback and the occasional 'introduction' to someone else. This has all generated a large network of people whom I interact with on a casual basis. We don't look at only getting favours from each other. Instead we've become a group of friends that can grab a coffee at any time and chill out as well.

Downside to that. It was NOT overnight.

So with respect to the OP's question and regarding the informational interview approach, there's one thing I have discovered that surprised me. How many acquaintances I haven't spoken with in years are actually willing to jump in and help me if I open up to them asking for it. Pretty amazing that :)
Xv6: MIT's Re-Implementation of Unix Version 6
Perhaps because formal-education's relationship to programming-savvy appears more tenuous than some other disciplines?
Does MacOS still support multiple format variants of copy/paste? Sounds like a small add on, in that case?
Sorry a little too drunk to scan your post, but have considered this before.

I think Archive dot org as they said on Science Friday podcast are not legal archive or otherwise final word, just trying to help out with archiving humanity. If I want to delete some old posts for whatever unsupported reason (or if takeover of domain new robots.txt) then that's how it should go.

IMO.
Much more detailed than I expected, and yet somewhat lacking in reach. It stops with Ash'ari and ignores further intellectually repressive trends that developed over the next thousand years, notably Wahhabism which has led to much of the problematic fundamentalists we currently have.

(Note: Not a Muslim, or much of a theological scholar, just an occasional student of interesting historical stuff.)
Imagined quality differences shouldn't be recognised where don't actually exist. To quote the story:

"in David and Goliath, Malcolm Gladwell draws upon research that shows it’s actually more advantageous for a student to attend a college where they can be in the top 10% rather than in the bottom half of the class. It’s the top students at every college who receive the kind of attention from faculty and access to special programs that pave the way to more opportunity after college."
"Diabulimia" is one search term you can use.

http://www.joslin.org/info/Eating_Disorders_Diabulimia_in_Ty...

> > Women with eating disorders and [type one] diabetes typically struggle with symptoms similar to those of women with eating disorders who do not have diabetes. However, they exhibit a very dangerous symptom of calorie purging in the form of insulin restriction.

> but was unable to turn up any suggestion as to how one would go about deliberately using either excess or insufficient levels of insulin to reduce body weight.

Well, if you think about it in terms of "eating disorder" rather than "staying thin" it makes more sense. People with eating disorder do a bunch of stuff with the aim of staying slim that doesn't have that affect. People with bulimia tend to be overweight; we know that laxatives do nothing to promote thinness; etc.
The problem with high estimates, if accepted by the stakeholders, is the risk of over-engineering. When given lots of time, development teams often will find ways to use that time which don't add to the value of the features being delivered: over-testing, making things "re-usable", a chance to try something new. And the project is late anyway.

Maybe optimistic estimates are a motivating factor for teams. The desire to finish faster, to be more efficient than you were before, a commitment with a challenge.

In my experience, it takes a strong product owner and a mature development team to meet deadlines. Shipping on-time is always a game of tradeoffs. Accuracy in estimates is usually the result of doing things in a known, measurable way. And by keeping the stakeholders close, you can make critical decisions together to keep a project on track.
That's not really true. Back in the 1980s most small and medium businesses still used paper based journals. All the people who were employed to do that are gone - one person now can do the job of about 6 people in the 1980s.

Before the 1980s you had to do everything by post, not even fax. So you needed to follow up a lot more and talk a lot more on the phone.

Better technology doesn't necessarily mean that people will be "replaced" but it generally has meant that fewer people can do the same job.
The Wassenaar Arrangement’s intent fallacy [pdf]
http://lesswrong.com/lw/mqz/how_to_win_the_ai_box_experiment...
Low tech but not low cost - move.
Well, it is an American news outlet. I'm pretty sure media outlets in other countries report stuff from that country's point of view...
Yeah, "this" as they say.

People tend to think about job-destruction from AI in terms of when AI can replace everyone doing that job, but the real negative (in terms of job growth) impact comes a long time before that.

If AI is good enough to let 1 person do the job 5 used to do, that's already a huge economic impact -- 80% reduction is huge.
Actually, there is a one in twenty chance that a normal person would generate the results in question. Not the same thing.
Trademarks are industry-specific. I don't see how people would sign up for this thinking it was for a travel site.
It's still 10x the cost. Costs of the light system can be further reduced by instead of installing a computer at the light, have the computer centrally located to serve any number of lights. Since the cameras are already network connected, this is practical.

I've been in countries that are comfortable with roundabouts. They also still have traffic lights everywhere. Something is missing in your analysis that explains this choice.
The very first vignette in the very first link (http://fusion.net/story/49806/beware-houseguests-cheap-home-...) is about someone who was spied on when staying for free at some person's apartment. Not AirBnB.

Journalists often concoct an "ongoing" narrative to make it sound like there is a big trend when there are only one or two anecdotes. Write a weak article with one example, follow it up with a second article with a second example, then write a third article proclaiming that something is "sweeping the nation," linking to what "we previously reported."

The linked title could just as well have said "when you're staying in a stranger's home," but that doesn't carry as much currency as "AirBnB." I think that's clickbait, albeit subtle.
One of the co-authors of that Atlantic article is Richard Sander, who's the leading proponent of the mismatch hypothesis and routinely overstates the evidence for it. His original study is based on outcomes for law students who started law school in 1991 -- not necessarily applicable, I'd argue, to undergraduates starting college in 2015 -- and his methodology has been pretty much discredited anyway (see the amicus brief that doctorpangloss cites).

This is off-topic from the original post, but I think the whole mismatch controversy has been kind of a scary illustration of how one determined academic can shape the narrative around an issue: because he's a professor, and because media outlets trust professors (and like controversy), he can easily find a platform to represent the debate in a way that's favorable to his side (e.g. [0]). I don't think it's a crazy hypothesis or anything, and it's definitely worth debating, but I'd be skeptical of claims coming from someone who's staked so much of his career on its validity.

</rant>

[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201...
The obvious solution is probably the best: Use an asynchronous framework (like node.js or asyncio) for the REST interface and wait for the completion of the task to return a response.

That process wouldn't handle all the details of the task, but it can wait for notification of the task via other means (celery, rabbitmq, redis, whatever...).

Personally I think REST is the best paradigm for most microservices. There is one exception: Data streams are inherently stateful and some kind of websocket/message passing is a lot more useful in that case.
It's great to see a hybrid approach. Modern compilers seem to be much easier to build but still hard to get widely used. A cursory look at the language reminded me of JavaScript. How are you doing your static analysis from this syntax? I'm working on a visualization project and particularly interested in visualizing the data flow aspects of imperative languages, so it'd be interesting to hear how you're typing data flows in reagent. Especially since it sounds like you're targeting ports from imperative languages.

Also, do you think the type system / syntax could be implemented in something like Julia by a combination of macros and types?
Just have them delivered to your office, or have them hold the packages at the post office?
Why do you assume they're underpaid? :)
I just love the way that consultancies are selling micro services as though it's some big thing that will revolutionise their business. Like big data or the cloud before it.

Looking at the article it seems that you've got an event driven system at the end with some components / pieces of code handling events e.g. Update inventory, inventory updated.
Nearly half of my hours involve sitting down with clients to discuss their needs. I don't go anywhere near courtrooms. Having to draft a legal brief for a court, or even having to write a demand letter, means I have failed. I have yet to see any hint of AI capable of making such judgment calls on even simple matters.

How about this typical question: We shot a car commercial last month, but just noticed a McDonalds logo visible behind the car. The commercial is only being seen locally. Is it worth spending the money to pull the commercial and edit out the logo? (Spitting out trademark caselaw isn't an answer.)
This makes me think about low tech solutions to the problem. What about a simple box (maybe 1 meter cube) that is unlocked until it is closed. Once closed, it must be opened with a key. A simple plate on the top can explain to the delivery man to place close the door when a package is placed inside, not very complicated. It doesn't scale to >1 package a day, but it is something.
I worked building a bank once where a detail cost us a bunch of heartburn estimating and building. Having the architect stop by, look at it, and say "I had no idea if you guys could build that" was infuriating.
+ Finding or creating suitable functional interface for passing the function
There is no Mac OS 8.6.2. Thinking about it, Blue Box running on NuKernel with Copland-style background server apps would probably not have been bad, especially with the use of Pascal instead of C strings which helped security.
Maybe they could actually help the poor?
If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/05/15... http://goo.gl/bdvGlL
Here's what England's NICE say about diagnosing hypertension. COmpare the difference between ambulatory measurement, and home measurement.

We know that most people can't even take their medication properly (many organ transplants fail because people don't comply with the medication regime, for example) so easier blood pressure monitoring would probably be useful. Especially if you combine it with something that can lower blood pressure.

http://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/cg127/chapter/Key-priorities...

> Diagnosing hypertension

> If the clinic blood pressure is 140/90 mmHg or higher, offer ambulatory blood pressure monitoring (ABPM) to confirm the diagnosis of hypertension. [new 2011]

> When using ABPM to confirm a diagnosis of hypertension, ensure that at least two measurements per hour are taken during the person's usual waking hours (for example, between 08:00 and 22:00).

> Use the average value of at least 14 measurements taken during the person's usual waking hours to confirm a diagnosis of hypertension. [new 2011]

> When using home blood pressure monitoring (HBPM) to confirm a diagnosis of hypertension, ensure that:

> for each blood pressure recording, two consecutive measurements are taken, at least 1 minute apart and with the person seated and

> blood pressure is recorded twice daily, ideally in the morning and evening and

> blood pressure recording continues for at least 4 days, ideally for 7 days.

> Discard the measurements taken on the first day and use the average value of all the remaining measurements to confirm a diagnosis of hypertension. [new 2011]
This looks really interesting and extremely useful for a program of mine. Has anyone tried this in OS X?
Do you not like Inconsolata?

https://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/Inconsolata
You took the right decision.
Make It Happen
Much as i don't want to cause any further depression in an already quite depressing thread, but if you follow Joseph Tainters work on The Collapse of Complex Societies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0R09YzyuCI

a) Complexity has killed off pretty much every major society prior to ours.

b) People's innate desire to problem solve increases complexity.

c) Cheap energy has enabled this process.

So there's an argument, an unlimited source of free energy would actually be a major problem because

1) It would enable more complexity, which is already pretty unmanagable.

2) You've still the problem of out of control resource usage.
Power failures and unreliable power delivery in general is not a renewable energy problem (or rather, it is but it's not an unfixable one), it's a Costa Rica problem due to insuficient infrastructure to handle it. Other nations with very large percentages of green power (Denmark and Portugal come to mind) don't suffer from those.
Digital Transformation of Business and Society
Go play a game of ping pong. Saving yourself from RSI and carpel tunnel is considered productive in my book.
Pivot point of exponential change: a point in history where humanity will change more in the next twenty years than in the previous 300.
It seems to me that he just re-invented the enterprise service bus.
Quantitative
Here's what you're missing: I do a lot of online shopping, but packages getting stolen have cost me, personally, $0. Your proposal would cost me > $0. Why should I participate?
I like this anecdote because it contains a non-sexist but inappropriate statement. It also shows that there are at least two possible mindsets:

* I talk to my coworkers like they are my mother

and your colleague's

* I talk to my coworkers like they are my friends

The fact that the statement was non-sexist hints at the problem being the second mindset; as for me, I make sure not to say sexist (and racist and so on) things to anyone but I am okay with talking about sex and other personal-jovial matters with my actual friends.

The "mother" analogy still has some flaws, though -- for instance, you can talk to your mother about financial, health-related and personal troubles, whereas your coworkers will feel uneasy with such information. Another thing is politics -- I try to politely argue against my mother's political views (say anti-immigration), but I think doing so in the workplace is a very bad idea.
The article doesn't provide any reasoning to support the conclusion. No matter, I agree with the conclusion, because in my experience, users solve problems in Excel when their IT department and/or vendors don't provide a solution.
a neighborhood in South Jordan, Utah is doing this exact thing.

http://abcnews.go.com/Weird/wireStory/utah-community-leaves-...
You seem to believe I am a staunch proponent of hydroelectric, but I am just asking you to give examples that most dams have a life span of "decades or less".

Your own link, says "Nowadays, from what structural engineers tell me, the typical design life is more like 100 years".
Neomania and vintage projects
Admins, how did this dupe https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10764870 (11 hours ago)?
The Platform War Is Over and Android Won
It's useful to try to understand what's going on with the blood testing stuff, because it shows how hard it is for people in public health to get accurate messages across.

Some people think more information is always good. We see healthy people without any symptoms will sometimes pay for "whole body MRI scans".

Some people think that if you have an illness it's going to be seen in the blood.

Frequent traditional blood tests are time consuming and not that pleasant.

Theranos claims that they don't need that much blood; that they can do a blood test with just a drop.

This means people don't need to see a phlebotomist nurse to have blood taken, they can just blot a drop of blood on a stick.

So, the claim goes that people can have very many blood tests all the time, and that will give us more data, and that data is always good.

Theranos plays into some deeply entrenched stuff, so while it's alarming they got so much money it shouldn't really be that surprising.
Lazy? Try spoon-fed. This whole piece stinks of astroturf.
Terrible branding!
Google Chrome and Lego
10 New Bank of America Cryptocurrency Patents Published
It's a shame the C/C++ standards committee(s) didn't just copy Verilog's base-n notation when they added the "0b" prefix. It's nice to be able to write large constants with optional underscores every four or eight digits, e.g. 32'hffff_0867_5309_beef, or 12'b1101_1110_1010.
A C++ / Witty alternative:
https://github.com/epoupon/lms
Sure, but as long as there are projects where estimation is needed, estimation won't die.
> For the Clojure code, after you've added enough comments to explain what you're doing, so that the code can be reasonably maintained, then it's the same size as the Java code, but without the type safety.

Funny, I feel the same about design patterns. So you bothered to find an abstraction in the code, you described it, gave it a name, and yet - you didn't tell the computer - here I am using this abstraction! And you rely on other humans to correctly infer what abstraction you used from reading your code, instead of just telling them.

So what should really be done, design patterns, once identified, should be replaced with proper abstractions in the programming language (mostly functions?) and die. Frankly, most of them are just really fancy names for trivial things.
My addin works with quandl too, but avoids using any VBA or GUI. All the HTTP GETs are done on a background thread in C#, the result being your quandl downloads can be far more automated than with quandl's own addin.

https://github.com/SpreadServe/SSAddin
That's not what happened at all.

The knowledge graph is much, much more than Freebase. The Freebase data is still available to download, and they are moving it to Wikidata.