skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
These stories are always interesting to me, both from the author and the target (in this case Google's) perspective.

The author goes out of their way to paint Google as a sort of tone deaf entity with baskets of money spending a small amount on security to hassle and threaten the "lesser" people who, through no fault of their own, find themselves penniless and sitting on sidewalks near them.

The question though is a lot different. What, if any, responsibility does Google have to the homeless? And what responsibility does Google have to its employees?

I think the responsibility for collecting funds from everyone in the form of taxes and applying it the collective homeless problem, is that of the Government. That is in part why we elect people to represent our neighborhoods and our cities, so that they will use our taxes to address the issues the city (or county) faces.

Google has the responsibility for making a safe and enjoyable workspace for its employees. And pretty much that is it.

If we want to use Google's capital to help the homeless, the way we do that is we tax them in the city, we take that tax money, and we apply it to the homeless problem that the city faces.

Easy to say, hard to do. Many people will say that the great dumping of mental patients into the streets[1] in the 1970's was a mistake. While the mentally ill are not the majority of the population of homeless, they are the most impactful on city services and on the perception of the homeless issue.

It sounded from the article that Google was going to far in trying to improve their employee's perception of safety, and the author was going to far in implying that Google's wealth made them responsible to fix the problem. It also sounds like the city councilman is in Google's employ :-) which tells you perhaps the voters can have an impact here.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/1984/10/30/science/how-release-of-men...
Safari lacks WebRTC support in a manner that would play nice with Wire features. Thus no support for now.
>Even basic principles of clean code are often neglected or never taught, in large part due to the lack of professional experience in academic circles.

There's a lack of experience in professional circles too.

One of the questions I always ask during programming interviews (on either side) is "is your code clean? if so, why?". Invariably the answer is a variant along the lines of "if it passes the linter it's clean", which is stupid.

I'd like to say that's an automatic fail or automatic "don't work at this company" but it's just far too common.
LuaJIT. It's a cutting-edge JIT with remarkably understandable algorithms and source. Every single piece of it is well thought out. Even the asm interpreters are pretty clean and explain why they work the way they do.

Mike Pall is a demigod.
This kind of simpler design is available in modern SOCs. The thing is that most of the hobbyist boards are built with cell phone application processors because those devices support a wide variety of hobbyist use cases.

If you look at evaluation kits for TI's Cortex R4 SOCs, for instance, those kits don't support USB because that's not the typical use case for an R4.

It sounds like you're really looking for something with basic I2C and SPI support, which are fairly modern interfaces with simple state machines.
That is pretty epic
Not sure if this is what you're looking for, but from the UX side, Square Cash.

Does one thing, does it well with large responsive colorful UI that still displays everything you need to know. Is minimally invasive (debit card instead of bank account verification). Uses your existing contacts, so everything "just works" by default.
TeX and Metafont. It'd be hard to find anything even matching these gems.
vmctl(8) docs don't mention send/receive commands.

Curious what exactly those do.

http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi/OpenBSD-current/man8/...
this stuff isn't mine, but a big source of inspiration for me has been the stuff casjam.com has put up. Check out his blog/podcast. You can also find some webinars he's done on youtube. You'll find some golden nuggets in there
Why wouldn't cryptographic signatures be enough?
Grand central dispatch is so beautifully designed. Both its API and just general use. It clicked with me the first time it got introduced and I abandoned bothering with NSOperarion
STB's? Forgot what that one meant.
I'm genuinely puzzled. What can be beautiful anywhere in the JVM?!?
Maybe they should put that effort into their documentation ;)
A quick look shows this is storing void* pointers only. My excitement was quickly over as I was expecting something with _Generic macros or ability to manage memory for any type.

https://github.com/srdja/Collections-C/blob/master/src/hasht... shows the container is manually configurable. Look at the defines at the bottom. This would mean the container file source-header pair, would have to be duplicated for every type, which is somewhat manageable.

Why isn't this written in the readme?
Alternatively, consider charging by the day. It's unconventional, but it makes sense for a number of reasons.
> I love seeing applications of 3d printing.

So do we over at Additively (your post made me signup after just reading HN for a while). We publish showcases such as the commercial application of the posted aligners on our site - more curated showcases will be published soon.

https://www.additively.com/en/showcase

Edit: That's the commercial 3d printing use case mentioned (Invisalign isn't the only one):

https://www.additively.com/en/showcase/en/steiner-werkzeugma...
The parent didn't say that. The comment was an expression of confoundedness ("I'm also weirded out ..."), not condemnation.
Career Advice No One Tells You
Practical tips for surviving an unconference from jonobacon
Are you arguing against the claim that it's much harder to design hardware than software to solve a problem? That's the main claim.
True, but parsing is still a facinating and active research subject. It should really be its own course, perhaps taught using Grune Jacobs [1]

[1] http://www.springer.com/fr/book/9780387202488
How else when you know when to duel?

But seriously, look up how time zones work in China. The whole country is on Beijing time so the western areas essentially maintain two clocks because the "official" clock is so far off the day/night cycle.
If you like the Tarsnap code, you should read the spiped code. Tarsnap is made ugly in places by needing to work with/around the original tar code it's based on; spiped is code entirely written by me.
Microsoft seems to be working hard to keep the forces of the universe balanced. Whatever good will is generated by their foray into oss must be immediately offset by ill will produced by windows 10.
Yes. This book (free online): http://www.smallmemory.com/book.html

http://www.smallmemory.com/6_AllocationChapter.pdf
I had windows 7 set to ask permission before installing updates. This morning it downloaded an update and without warning it shut down all my software and tried to restart to install it. I was able to cancel the restart but now I have a nag window that only lets me put off the restart for 4 hours.

This is a work machine and I am absolutely livid. I can't use windows 10 to do the work I need to do, and any time I spend on this is time I am not able to earn my living. As far as I'm concerned Microsoft is trying to steal my legally purchased copy of windows 7 from me.
OT: What's with using monotype for quotes? That's breaks line wrapping and makes it hard to read on mobile or small screens. I don't get why people do it.
I don't have a lot of experience with software services but when I was a consultant (IT industry analyst), most of the work that we did was fixed price. Sometimes this was straightforward because the time was explicitly capped (e.g. an advisory day). Other times, it was a standard deliverable of a type we had done many times before (e.g. a paper); these could take more or less time in a given case but they were pretty predictable. And sometimes, it wasn't all that standard but we knew the day rate we were aiming for and could take a pretty good swag at the time required; here is was very important to spend time up front scoping the work.

(And sometimes, we really weren't sure, in which case we wouldn't do the job for a fixed fee.)
When the HN headline mentioned "DK frontman" and "goes after the modern music industry" I was kind of incredulous because the original singer Jello Biafra had a reputation of taking advantage of his fellow bandmates through the Alternative Tentacles record label he controlled (which released all of the DK records). I admired Biafra's caustic lyrics which nailed so many things that are wrong with our government and society (then and now) but it seemed a bit hypocritical for him to take the moral high ground on the ills of the music industry.

Turns out "frontman" in the article is now guitarist East Bay Ray working with a pretty much reformed band. No mention of Jello or the other 70s/80s members, but you can get an idea of the convoluted history here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Kennedys
This is apropo for me. I just purchased a wiiu for my children and was getting a bit choked up looking through the virtual console list. I actually had a conversation with my wife about it after the kids were in bed.

We all did a 6 hour tour of super metroid, it was great. There is something to this for sure. Hearing original Zelda music transports me back to being a kid instantly.
Latest Mobile App Trends in 2016
1) This was back when the economy was much worse than it is today.

2) I was a young desperate 20 something who didn't know better. ;)
MS isn't respecting the update settings I choose allready. I no longer trust any of the so called "solutions" they are offering.

Edit: in my particular case I tracked it down to a third party install that was forcing a windows update, so it wasn't directly an issue with MS in this case.
"Not only did I begin viewing creativity as a limited resource I create and have access to over time, but I noticed that some activities, like reading about science, listening to music, and walking around town actually increase the rate at which the well fills up."

+1, many times over.

Taking breaks and having fun are very important to maintaining high productivity and creativity when I am working. Unfortunately it's in stark contrast to the mantras I often hear suggesting "there's someone out there who is working harder than you on the same thing and they're going to win if you let up." That mentality is unhealthy and leads to depression/exhaustion.
Even then you'd want proper logging and panicking over a segfault (the likely result).
Looks good in desktop browsers.
Back in 2000, I worked for a forklift company, developing a transmission controller. I spent a lot of time driving the forklift around outside, with my laptop zip-tied to a platform they welded on for me next to the steering wheel. I would put a load on the forks and do things like go up hills, lift the load, hit the brakes, flip from reverse to forward at full speed, etc., and evaluate how the truck responded. Based on that, I then stopped the truck wherever I happened to be (on the company owned test area), altered the source code, compiled, downloaded, and did the test again. It was a lot of fun.

So I imagine your best bet is to develop firmware for vehicles, drones, or robots for land, air, or sea. There will be testing and modifications to be done in real-world (outside) conditions.
"He reasoned that the government had to have a gadget that masqueraded as a cell tower, tricking his AirCard into handing over its IMSI, which was then matched up to the IMSI connected to all his online phony tax filings. It was all inference, at first, but if it was true, that would be enough for him to make the case that what was done to his AirCard was an illegal search."

I'll bet all my money he'd have been called a crazy conspiracy theorist before Snowden, etc.

Drives me nuts. When the government starts embodying the worst of conspiracy theories, I become a lot less comfortable dismissing conspiracy theories.
This is an awesome way to do it in software:

int BitCount(unsigned int u)
{
unsigned int uCount;

uCount = u – ((u >> 1) & 033333333333) – ((u >> 2) & 011111111111);
return ((uCount + (uCount >> 3)) & 030707070707) % 63;
}

O(1) solution

This explains why it works.

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/jeuge/2005/06/08/bit-fiddli...
It's funny to read what people think are beautiful apps here.

IMHO, the most beautiful software are always games and entertainment titles... After all that is the purpose.

Office 2013? It's very useful! I use a classic menu template and got rid of the ribbon, since the functionality is the same, but in my preferred format. Beauty does not come into play with office...

I can use it for creating beautiful PowerPoint and excel spreadsheets.

Code is never 'beautiful'. It's either concise, well-written and formatted well, or it isn't.
Yes, 4 years is the standard.
Does the Pi even have enough RAM to run Atom? I can't imagine that being a pleasant experience.
Show HN: Atom – All Times, You Know
Yes, that makes sense - it would be protected at rest. (I guess the reason why I don't feel the need is that "at rest" for my specific laptop means nobody is using it and it's disconnected from the LAN/Internet)
He made $30k for losing that game, so I don't feel too sorry for him.
The way I understand it, it's not there, currently, more like something they want to support eventually.
I've found that I really appreciate my editor's (aoeui) use of blue and black foreground colors for matching up parentheses and other brackets. Keyword highlighting is less useful apart from being a cue for correct spelling.
> Dolphins are about as intelligent as us, too. Are dolphins amoral? Do they delegitimize Beethoven, Tesla, Gödel, Einstein, and da Vinci?

If we invented dolphins, and they began to replace and displace us, then maybe? I don't think it is about the intelligence, but in how we use it of course. Dolphins don't really have any control of my life or those around me.

That sounded a lot more paranoid than I meant, I actually agree with what I think you are saying
Ask HN: Been toying with a model for running a company. Critique me please
I've been running a SAAS company for the last 13 years. Its successful but stale due to being too old.
We're relaunching it from scratch now, using our experience from those years. All that is just background.

I've been toying with an idea on how to run the new incarnation of the company, drawing
from my 20 years experience launching and working with Internet start ups, and I've
drawn up a set of ideas that I think could make this fun and successful.
None are ground breaking or never been done before.

1. There is no office. Temporary shared space (e.g. WeWork and co.) can be
arranged. Saves lease/rent etc.

2. No geographical boundaries. You can be anywhere on the planet.
You can be traveling through India as much as I care.

3. No fixed working hours, but you do have tasks and those are measurable.
I don't believe working 8 hours a day equates to 8 hours of productivity.
Its half that at best. More important that a task is done by a agreed date.

4. Once or twice a year we can bring everyone together, to sync up and have some fun.

5. Foster an appreciation for work/life balance.

6. An employee's contribution to the company is directly related to these guidelines
being successful.

7. Rules are important but rules that cannot be broken if needed are not worth having.
Including those above. Pragmatism should always prevails.

The ideas is that this requires the right people who can actually work under those
conditions but when found, I believe they would like this arrangement to continue
and will contribute just the best of their productivity to make this a success.
I also think hiring should be done on as needed basis and not to accommodate some
grandiose dreams of uber growth or without a solid requirement for the role.

What do you think? I've been thinking about this so much I probably can't spot
my own pitfalls here. Could this model work?
How about this one: the invention of the concept of a written contract with authenticating signatures and seals, allowing business to take place. (Together with a legal system for enforcing contracts.) Courts and documents themselves don't produce tangible value.

Insurance doesn't product value, but it protects. It has monetary value, demonstrated by the fact that people make premium payments to maintain it. Many never collect a dime over the life of an insurance term.

All kinds of infrastructure is an indirect example.
My intuition (and it's really only just that) is that Go space is large enough that AI would be able to outplay humans while still not even beginning to approach "perfect" play. If so, then I would also expect that humans should be able to follow the lead of AI into new areas of Go space, and outplay the AI (at least until the AI has a chance to learn and catch up).

We'll know if this is the case in a couple of years, if the competition between human and AI goes back-and-forth (unlike Chess, where after AI was good enough to beat humans, it could do so reliably).

Either way, it's interesting to note that AlphaGo had literally thousands of games to learn from to find weaknesses in human play, but Lee Sedol seems to have only needed 3 before he was able to find weaknesses in AlphaGo's play.
Hence the suggestion to go out and film this.

If this is indeed such a common occurrence it wouldn't be hard to gather evidence.
Beautiful code: graph search in prolog. So much in as few lines as possible[1]

[1]: http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~billw/cs9414/notes/prolog/path-t...
Native MS-DOS user here: why would you need subdirectories in a filesystem that break up file names into multiple words?
It also comes off a little entitled of the company. So what if you have some distribution? Maybe I don't agree with you about where I fall in the distribution.

A policy to set salaries without considering how far above average the candidate is is unsettling. It speaks of seeing people as fungible cogs. If one person won't accept our distribution-based-standard-offer, oh well, next...

As a candidate I would see that and then begin to question whether other good people turned them down, and what caliber is the team I'd actually join.
I do understand the tactile feedback is nice. A long time ago I got an HTC pocketpc with slide-out keyboard for the same reasons, but I felt the clicking also slowed me down. For the small screen on that particular device the tedious stylus and finger entry was slower, so the keyboard was a plus. But with bigger mobile screens nowadays finger or stylus entry is less of an issue (especially with smart entry hacks). For keyboard entry for typing longer e-mails or ssh access I now only use an external keyboard where I can use 10 fingers instead of 2 thumbs - for the same reason I prefer a frogpad to a twiddler for one-handed entry.
One size certainly does not fit all, however, my one take away is that this is huge benefit to paying close attention to what works best for you and optimizing your life around that. When you focus on productivity and happiness (often the 2 are linked) ignoring, when possible, schedules dictated upon you your quality of life will improve.
For a long time punk rock industry vet his arguments sure sound a lot like my dad's.

"Modern music is garbage and you kids today don't know anything."

I don't know where this guy is, but I don't think it's a controversial statement to say that more music is being made now by more diverse groups of people with better technology than at any other time in history.

I'm not saying garbage isn't being made and bought, but to ignore the actual musical revolution going on at the same time is just damned shortsighted.

And ironically for an aging punk rocker the exact same thing people said about his music when he was still young.
Highlighting of errors is, for me, something distinct; a background parse / compile process that reports line numbers is sufficient. It doesn't need deep integration with the editor. A keyboard shortcut to go to the next error and you're pretty much all set.

I'm also not a big fan of overly eager syntax checking because I tend to compose abstractions on the fly, leaving a statement incomplete while I flesh out a dependency, or vice versa. Syntax aware indenting usually breaks badly in this situation - I generally prefer dumb indenting, with an opt-in block or file format option for where I want to fix code over a large area. I've had big fights with Emacs over this; it almost always does the wrong thing by default, whether it's indent location, continuation indent, mixing tabs and spaces in the indent, etc. About half my .emacs is replacement indentation functionality and configuration per mode.

I also don't like auto-completing parentheses, because it puts text ahead of the cursor on the current line. That's a PITA because the editor almost invariably doesn't know when I want to complete the expression or how. Eclipse is the worst at this (it's actually not possible to turn off in a sane way). It interprets RET as completing the expression when I want a line break inside the parens, and I'm constantly having to go back and forth to work around its mistakes.
My experience with "dentists these days" matches yours. I go in for a checkup, and instead I'm getting sales pitches for mouth guards and alignment thinggys, and electric toothbrushes and all sorts of obviously high-margin dental accessories. And then there's the "well we usually recommend quarterly visits, but will accept twice a year" when I explicitly tell them my insurance only allows one visit a year. I basically say no to everything, and they try to guilt trip me into a bunch of optional procedures for a half an hour. Finally, eventually, they grudgingly clean my teeth.

It's like a shady auto mechanic for people who don't know anything about cars. You go in for an oil change, and they of course identify all sorts of optional repairs, making them sound super scary. "I'm not saying this small oil pan gasket leak will leave you by the side of the road, but you don't want to get behind on preventative maintenance!" Same tactic.

The icing on the cake is when, fast forward a few months, my insurance company sends me notice that they won't cover the visit because the dentist wrote the work up as "orthodontic prep" instead of "standard cleaning" so I need to contact them to get it corrected... and on and on...

I remember when you could go to the dentist, get a cleaning, be out of there in 45 minutes and be down about $100.
How timely. I recently visited parents, and while going thru super Nintendo games remembers some of the music from final fantasy 3. Then I started listening to it at work. Then I downloaded the game now I'm 17 hours in. Kefka here I come...
No, he was not specific about what the 4 hours of work included. However, working on code consumed about 90% of our time. Meetings were held once a week for 30 minutes. The time spent on emails and updating bug tracker usually varied anywhere between 0 minutes to 45 minutes per day.
Unfortunately, it looks like that same tool could make it a bit too easy to disable Windows Updates altogether, which is not a good idea.

I'd rather endure some pain with going through the registry route, but apply a fix that addresses only one particular behavior.
Turbo Pascal for DOS. Simple, compact, quick, well documented, reasonably easy to learn, and not too expensive.

I think that bloat is the enemy of beauty, so we're probably likely to find beauty in software that does a few things well.