skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> I just think this is a perfect illustration of how backwards-incompatibilities that means users can't just upgrade and keep working introduce friction against upgrading, and once you get too much friction significant portions of your userbase will stop upgrading at all.

I definitely understand and respect your point.

In fact, I've lost about 80% of my userbase (about 80,000 users) to older versions (and forks galore) of my emulation software. And that's mostly due to lacking backward-compatibility with older game ROM formats.

I've since made efforts to accommodate using older media types, but the damage is done, so to speak.

> I think there is actually a very good chance that an a.out binary compiled for Linux 0.01 would still work today.

... seriously?? Jesus.

I don't even see how it's possible to produce good software that way. We don't know what we really want until we iterate over the design a few times. At least, that's the way it is with me. My first drafts have never been anything close to my ultimate designs.

You should see how amazingly better my GUI abstraction library (think wxWidgets but more like Qt with reference counting memory management and C++11 features) has gotten since the first version. I couldn't imagine being stuck with that first version in the name of backward compatibility. I'd rather be the only user of it than have that first version be it, and be as popular as wxWidgets is today.

I mean, I'm very much ashamed of xkas v06, and wish my name wasn't attached to it.
Google is doing another mistake....
It's Saudi Arabia's World. Big Oil Just Lives in It
> IOW, taking their claims at face value, a Nvidia card or Xeon Phi would be expected to smoke one of these, although you might be able to run N of these in the same power envelope.

That seems unlikely, right? GPGPU software beating an ASIC? I guess it depends on just how abstract and adaptable the TPU IC is. Sounds like they use a custom number representation -- if they can squeeze it into less than half precision (IEEE FP16) then it would be super hard for a Phi or GPU to beat it.

But ultimately it all comes down to specific applications' bottlenecks. If they don't have to go off-card ever and their workset fits into the on-die memory, then they'd have no real advantage by using a PCIe GPU with GDDRx on it.
Depends on whether the pinhead is of the steel or investor variety.
No - when they sell you a security, the assumption is they were long until then (holding it) and then either disposed of their entire long position or disposed part of it (in which case they continue holding it long.)

The case where they are selling you something and are SHORT the product is a special case which requires more work usually. The most egregious case was the ABACUS deal (http://www.theworkingeconomy.com/simple-explanations-of-econ...) where Goldman was actively short the product and needed a dumb customer to unload the other side (enter Fabulous Fab and his widows orphans: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-goldman-emails-idUSTRE63O2...)
This is nice, I can see myself using it instead of OSSEC and may have to look at making a clone for Windows, based on the equivalent APIs/tools in the ETW stack.
On one hand, yes please.

On the other, the experience is way better lately.

Do you remember the "expired link"?
I just shaved off another 3 bytes so LoadJS is now 503 bytes (minified + gzipped). HN - If you see a way to get below 500 bytes please let me know!

https://github.com/muicss/loadjs/blob/master/src/loadjs.js
I don't think you need to apologize. the nomenclature is common, but the usage was new to me. I like neologisms so I'm filing the numbers off your usage and stealing it :)
Or so say those who disagree and consider themselves better connoisseurs...

Because otherwise, he is a well respected Whisky writer with a long history in the trade, and lots of achievements.
Industrial research in CS is in a very bad state. This makes faculty jobs even that more competitive. Honestly, as a professional researcher, I do not recommend a PhD for anyone at this point.
I had the same difficulty looking at the code. Do we count import lines and variable defs? Seems sort of lame.

J of course has a different problem; only a handful of people can even parse it, much less opine on correctness.
You got to be an Amazonian to understand the culture there and it's impact.

Jeff B is pretty smart to have recognized the mortal significance of focusing on culture, especially as a company grows.

Employees are oft-reminded of the importance of it's cultural values and is a reason why Amazon continues to disruptively innovate.

This is a very short article though that does not do justice to the entirety of the company. Maybe I'll write a post someday.
Check out some contracts and see for yourself!
Here are some good, bad, and ugly examples of sponsored content
> Their 10-year old bottling is a bit nicer, but almost twice the price.

I'm a bit confused by this statement. At least when I've seen it, the Quarter Cask is noticeably more expensive then the 10 year. $60 vs. $45. Which now that you point out it is aged half as long does not make a lot of sense.

http://www.bevmo.com/laphroaig-quarter-cask--750-ml-.html
http://www.bevmo.com/laphroaig-scotch-10-year--750-ml-.html
I'm sure their insurance is still paid up.
One of the main places that LendingClub loan investors discuss the company is in a forum hosted by the site LendAcademy[0] Starting in January of this year someone claiming to be from a hedge fund was in the forum saying they had shorted the stock and trying to convince everyone the company was garbage and generally causing a ruckus[1]. After the news about the CEO resigning broke last week another hedge fund guy went on Bloomberg to trash LC. [2]

[0] http://www.lendacademy.com/forum/index.php
[1] http://www.lendacademy.com/forum/index.php?topic=3606.0
[2] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-12/jim-chanos...
Sure. I don't have anything to link on the spot but this was/is/has been foreseeable for some time. Although it's all very cool and shiny - most business applications of machine learning remain squarely in the territory of classic algos like GLM & forests (random, boosted trees etc. etc.). As a fun note, advances like these highlight that data scientists etc. will not be beaten by more complex automated methods, but simply by speed. Much like the filing system that 'runs' whatever you're using to see these words (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKWGGDXe5MA).

Edit: to elaborate... single model training runs are possible to do quite fast now, but knowing how to tune hyper parameters remains the 'voodoo' of the field. But the best hyper params are also possible to discover through brute force: try every combination you can! Today, you can use various heuristics to improve this process, but either way, being able to train whatever X times faster just means we can search hyper parameter space that much faster. The robots are coming :)
Beware criticising a Newyorker article round here, they'll never let it go.
Long term caffeine use seems to reduce risk of Parkinson's:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23879665
I'm quite aware of what is acceptable to release in a medical context; this was not that.

I'm sure you'll be able to cite the regulation that was broken, then.
I am one of the many stalwarts whose bookshelf contains a prominent copy of K&R C. But over the last 10 years or so I find myself referring to it less and less often. It's a huge problem that it stopped at the second edition. The 2nd ed was great in 1999. It is not great in 2016, it is only good.

> "You're right, but you're wrong that their code is bad." I cannot fathom how a group of people who are supposedly so intelligent and geared toward rational thought can hold in their head the idea that I can be wrong, and also right at the same time.

Zed, you're right, period. But I think you probably just hurt people's feelings because they revere Kernighan and Ritchie and this is one prominent item of their legacy.

> But C? C's dead. It's the language for old programmers who want to debate section A.6.2 paragraph 4 of the undefined behavior of pointers. Good riddance. I'm going to go learn Go (or Rust, or Swift, or anything else).

Amen. The union of those three are likely to address all use cases that C handled in the past.

BTW the blog post would be clearer if titled: " 'Deconstructing K&R C' is dead". Gotta love mixing up C with natural language operator precedence ambiguity. :)
> The Ethereum virtual machine has to be completely error free if any sane person is going to put their money into it. I just don't see that happening.

Bitcoin also has a mini VM and scripting language (transactions are verified by "concatenating" the script of an output with the script of an input and running it). One big difference is that Bitcoin's scripting language isn't turing complete (e.g. you can't have loops or recursion) and there are other limitations like a per block limit on expensive operations (signature operations to be precise).
All Bands Powerful14 Antennas Cell Phone Jammer Kit
My first "big" application I wrote and got paid for was a MS Access SQL VB hack I wrote for a company I worked for.

I fully expected the thing to crash in a few weeks after I left and they would move on to something else, but no 8 years later and I'm told it is still running strong.
And, having your pipe overloaded by things other than Netflix. I have two kids watching Youtube on pads and a wife watching TV in another room. With my fake Uverse (DSL) the TV uses the internet connection so, we are often streaming four different videos at the same time.
I'd suggest it isn't even a Minimum Viable Product. That at least implies some sort of working diagnostic.
You could run your writes as transactions that increments a count wherever you need one.
> I know this might be a silly question but what exactly do you do in an academic research position?

Are you a professor? Then you do whatever you want. If you're not a professor, you do whatever the professor wants.

> How do you choose a topic to look at?

The intersection of what interests you, what you can actually execute on, and what you can publish.

> What do you study on this topic and what is the output supposed to look like?

You figure things out and tell a story.

> I'm assuming I can't just bring in a flash drive and say "Yea I did some reading and did some stuff, here is the implementation of my new X for the Linux kernel. It speeds things up by a factor of BIG_NUMBER."

That's a systems paper! You have to write up a bunch of stuff about what your implementation does and why it's cool, why it's correct, why it's safe, perhaps prove those things, and empirically evaluate BIG_NUMBER in a well controlled and designed experiment.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11723133
Georgette Packaging (W16) is hiring a developer in Kitchener-Waterloo
We are a mechanical-engineer-founded, Kitchener/Waterloo startup fresh from Y Combinator (W2016). We make it possible for brands to buy custom packaging in low quantities – and grow their business.

We’re on the verge of hitting $1 million in sales, we work with 150 businesses across North America, and have been growing 36% per month.

Our goal is to play a leading role in modernizing the $186 billion North American packaging industry. This sector is on the verge of a transformation; Georgette Packaging is first on the scene. Our ability to scale from $1m to $100m in sales rests heavily on the raw talent, commitment, and design sensibility of our early technical team.

ABOUT US
We know our customers and suppliers better than anybody. We’re building a brand that bridges heavy manufacturing with small business; this is not only weird and awesome, but it means there are very few precedents for us. It's a big job, and to do it right, we're building a team that is inventive, energetic, and formidable.

We’re poised to fundamentally change an industry that represents 1.2% of GDP.

ABOUT YOU
We’re looking for our first in-house software developer. Our web platform is built using ReactJS and Javascript, with Node.js on backend. Our back end runs on AWS. As the sole software person on the team, we’re excited to learn from you! We’re counting on you to develop the sophisticated structure needed to accelerate and empower our strong, organic growth.

WE OFFER
- Base salary
- Equity
- A lively, ambitious culture
- Our office is at the Velocity Garage, in Kitchener. It's a fun environment to work and we've been known to play a few board games but we're mainly looking for someone who wants a big challenge and has the skills to pull it off.

TO APPLY
Please send me a one-minute video explaining why you’re the person for us, and your CV! sarah@georgettepackaging.com
The next Microsoft and apple
>Only if the person actually plants a tree for every fire they burn.

But wouldn't a tree be more likely to grow, and in the long run the expected number of trees in a forest be unaffected by the felling of any given tree? (the same can't necessarily be said for the felling of hundreds of trees of course).
A web browser and no software updates sounds like a great way to get your phone hacked to me.
That's exactly what they eventually did. I wouldn't have, if I thought a copyright claim against me were truly bogus. Maybe they decided it wasn't bogus.
Transporting power isn't cheap. If you can generate the power where you need it, then you eliminate the need to transport it.
Full paper:

http://3e8.org/pub/scheme/doc/lisp-pointers/v1i3/p17-white.p...
Hope this is not as disappointing as Onhub, it would be helpful if they have a rich api to start with and not promise that the APIs are coming later...
Cheap Heathrow Airport Car Parking
I've never understood why these samples were maintained. I don't find "some ruthless super-criminal or rogue government might be working on a new smallpox" compelling - if some rogue government develops a new smallpox and releases it, we'll have plenty of samples to work with.
Shouldn't CMS be doing that?

The article mentions CMS threatening to revoke their license, it seems like they would be inviting in a law enforcement investigation if they felt it was warranted.
https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/12493-hacker-news-folding-...

I wrote a userscript that is simple and works well.
http://www.realmendrinkwhiskey.com/jim-murrays-whisky-bible/

http://whiskeyreviewer.com/2015/11/jim-murrays-whisky-bible-...

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/calgary-whisky-expert-...

I could go on...
Display ads will need to be replaced with something, and I think that sponsored content will fill that void. Once the best form gets found, we will see at less of that ugly version.

Remember there was a time with flashy banner ads. Good thing that time has ended.
Because the government always trots out drugs and terrorism as the defense. Americans hate drugs and terrorists. Therefore we need to stop their funding!

Fortunately this family of stories are getting more ink and video. John Oliver did a show on it. Local stories popup about small time business owner trying to buy a truck getting screwed.

So we are seeing two things America likes hitting heads: fighting terror and small businesses getting screwed.

https://youtu.be/3kEpZWGgJks
Inferno: A compact OS for building cross-platform distributed systems
joke? the author is self-important in precisely the way that K&R weren't.
For Firebase/Google Cloud Platform engineer: does it mean Google Cloud Endpoints is being phased out? if i'm already using Google Cloud Endpoints, should i move to Firebase? what's the advantage?
Introducing Pilot, the $130 in ear language translator
We were told the easiest option was to select gender. Other traits were going to be harder/more expensive/uncertain outcomes.

Intelligence. I would've selected/edited for intelligence if it had been a sure thing. Life is hard, and while I don't care much for superficial traits (hair/eye color, height), I want to metaphorically lift my child as high as I can against his/her peers.
> I cannot help old programmers.

Unfortunate he uses this categorization. The problem is a mindset that can exist in any generation.
Japanese police also stand outside their police box or station with a big stick doing "ritsuban" i.e. http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/03/20/reference/police...
which is I suppose the opposite of a motorised patrol where you stand still and the community moves around you whilst you project "the police are watching you". This for me now makes sense of the same practice at airports where there is a guy on a platform with a big stick, just being there, a bit intimidating.
When I first read the blog post earlier in the day, it actually said they were using 8-bits. I remember it because it seem quite small to me.
They also gave it away to a lot of S7 buyers. So most people have it for 0$.
How flipping awesome is it that some very large portion (90% or so?) could probably all be one nice contiguous block of mine from x86_64 userspace with a quick mmap() and mlockall().
Contractors are second-class citizens at best, at any places so what was she expecting exactly? I don't mean to deride the writer but I'm honestly not sure if the janitors would think that working at FB is the opportunity of a lifetime, and I place more values at keeping places clean and tidy than curating news with an obvious bias (hint - I don't read them). There is nothing world-changing about picking out articles as a stepping stone for being replaced by algorithms. If you can't speak up, it means you are weak, the environment is toxic or both. So do something about it, or walk away like what the men do.
Putting data in the hands of your company is super important, especially for your non technical team members. It gives them both insights and power to get the data they need.

That is why we made Bintel. https://bintel.chat. Graph your data directly within Slack. We strive to be even more than just dashboards. You can include variables in your queries to let your team mates get the data they need.
It is incredible to me that not only does that site still exist, but it has an Alexa ranking of 124,967 as of Feb 2016
What your issue with the people of Malibu? Or with the city of Malibu?
You're right but the next few years will likely bring cloud offerings with non-volatile-memory-on-DIMM like 3Dxpoint.
> There's no money in developing self-contained, off-line speech recognition system

Nonsense. Self-hosting is highly valued in the enterprise sector. But we're not talking about the sort of products that could be sold to consumers for a few hundred dollars here.
Analysis of CVE-2016-1886, SETFKEY FreeBSD Kernel Vulnerability
Yeah, the challenge is that it seems to rely on Google services (not just libraries) at the app layer in a way that screams lock-in.
Do it. Your post sounds like me when I started. I have completed two MS degrees while working full time, and it is well known that I am neither brilliant nor a workaholic. I started as a non-degree student but promptly switched over after a class or two. By then the professors knew me and there was no issue getting admitted.

Some classes will be better than others but all provide great mental stimulation that I find lacking in the corporate world. Even now, after taking several MOOC classes, I am contemplating a 3rd MS.

PS: I wish I could do the PhD but part time programs are hard to come by. Also, it is much easier to get your employer to contribute towards your MS than a PhD.
True. ML applications are well-suited to analog computation not only because they can tolerate errors, they also have an ability to adapt to errors, provided training algorithms are ran in hardware.
Nadim had a legitimate and reasonable question.

For those who don't know, here was Thomas Ptacek recently joking about Nadim's penis:
https://mobile.twitter.com/tqbf/status/705825790529662976

Here he is telling Nadim "go fuck yourself, forever": https://mobile.twitter.com/tqbf/status/705900243313758208

This is unprofessional. That kind of bullying is especially unacceptable coming from someone who has a lot of money and a pretty big audience, directed at someone who is young and just starting out.

I think Hacker News should be better than this.
* Have your company liquidated around you while being told "everything is fine", right up until the day you arrive at work and the office locks have been changed.
The key word there is initially. Echo didn't have an SDK when it was first released either neither did Google Now for a while. That's Google's MO for new services and APIs, limited initial release to iron out the bugs and not flood with low effort apps/services.
> about contract clauses interacting unexpectedly and screwing some party or other.

At the same, there's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrivener#Doctrine_of_.22scriv... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_person .
> Why would you do that?

Nostalgia?

> Are you a masochist?

I hope not.

> The 'music' is just awful,

Some is sure but on the whole melodic/surf punk is far from the worst genre, I've heard a lot worse and I only listen to certain tracks.

Also I gave explicit instructions not to judge me, man :)
>Zed, you're right, period. But I think you probably just hurt people's feelings because they revere Kernighan and Ritchie and this is one prominent item of their legacy.

This is hilarious, because programmers by and large love to pride themselves about being stoic, logical, and practical in lieu of letting emotion dictate what they do.

Since when do programmers give a shit if people's precious fee-fees contradict what is technically correct? (The best kind of correct!)
I can confirm that's not and could never be a HIPAA violation. The information that Doctor X once ordered a blood test for John or Jane Doe with Result Z is totally fine. There's no non-HIPAA violating metadata that could make that information useful.
Naively, that's $200 million to $800 million per line of code.
Low level languages are tough. Gaining a mastery of C does require knowing quite a few strange rules and quirks and it's certainly a bit harder than learning Python. The C FAQ does a good job of illustrating some of the more confusing parts. Sure, I wish I could write Go instead, but that isn't going to happen on the many embedded systems I work on.

This is a rather strange and insulting article. I'm not sure why Zed can't help "old programmers" nor do I understand why he's angered that individuals know about undefined behavior in C. Is there any background to this or did he have the misfortune of being insulted on IRC?

Edit -- I googled for a bit and discovered this was in response to someone doing a pretty good job technically reviewing the book for free! http://hentenaar.com/dont-learn-c-the-wrong-way Perhaps the title was a bit inflammatory.

Zed's rebuttal is at https://zedshaw.com/2015/09/28/taking-down-tim-hentenaar/ and is a great example of how not to react to constructive criticism. My favorite part is his safercopy function and the lack of size_t.

And finally, to leave us all with a quote from Zed's rebuttal:

"Over this next week I’m going to systematically take down more of my detractors as I’ve collected a large amount of information on them, their actual skill levels, and how they treat beginners. Stay tuned for more."

Wow.
There are over twenty. Half are international and the other half are smaller ones including my local airport.

https://www.tsa.gov/for-industry/screening-partnerships
Guava ImmutableList offers awful performance in some cases (2014)
NFL star Patrick Willis is thriving in retirement at Silicon Valley
Same argument for enterprises can be had here. Way too risky to let the existing house of cards (stack) to perch atop a product that can be discontinued at anytime (I'm looking at you, Microsoft!). Google needs more revenues since ad money is shrinking so they would make sure that you get vendor-locked. Once shit happens, you are provided with a more expensive alternative, or consultancy services provided by certified vendors (again, looking at you, Microsoft!).