skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Wow, this really took me back!

My first real experience with coding was the NeHe OpenGL Tutorials (which are still available online ironically). At the time I was writing a visualization plugin for an early version of Winamp, and I downloaded all NeHe's tutorials and saved them offline, as well as the OpenGL reference and Visual C++ CHM help file.

I would then go down to spend time with my grandparents in Southern Ohio, without any kind of Internet access, no cell phone back in those days, and a barely Pentium laptop. I later hauled my desktop down there, but most of the time was spent out on the deck with my shitty laptop.

It was amazing.

I would just spend the entire day coding and learning, while my grandmother read her book, out in the wilderness, looking out over a picturesque lake every now and then to clear my mind and think about a problem I was having, or to ponder the next steps in what I wanted to learn or do. Especially hard problems would require a nature walk while I thought about how to best represent things in the real world and grasped 3D graphics concepts for the first time.

In between breaks we would take turns getting up and making tea for one another, and every now and then I would make something cool, or learn something for the first time, and excitedly have to show my grandmother, who would immediately tell me I was "so smart" and shake her head in amazement of "modern technology".

Towards the end my grandfather put up speakers and we listened to old 50's and 60's big bands out on that deck during these trips. I think more than anything these were the shared experiences that got me into coding and really opened my mind up to the possibilities.

These days, this kind of situation and environment is hard to replicate. Things are just so unnecessarily complex and now all our tools expect an Internet connection to work. It makes me sad that today's generation will probably never know the kind of experience I had. There is something about not having the Internet at your fingertips that forces you to reason through things on your own and find your own powerful source of creativity rather than the route search/download someone else's code that we all do now.
I like the idea around Lojban[0]. Esperanto feels like another standard to replace the 99 others where lojban seems to be more than that. I don't like inconsistency in structured language and there's always glaring inconsistency in natural spoken language. If I learn a linguistic rule that is only applicable in ~70% of cases, its becomes a mental stressor.

However, I'm not certain any secondary language can ever really become a universal language. Until there's direct economic force behind adoption, I see it as a hobby language. I am also not sure any constructed language can remain pure when it becomes popular. Languages, dialects, idioms etc. like to drift between isolated or semi-isolated groups. As communication and transportation become cheaper though, who knows how prevalent that will be in the future.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lojban
We create a forensic and pentesting container for your docker hub
docker pull aurelien2a/archstrike
What was to be expected?

It makes reddit unusable for a lot of things (free & open communication being one of them). If you have something important to say then you don't say it on Reddit.

If you have cat pictures or want to talk about train sets then reddit.
Other people get to 'decide' at appeal time: I were the judge / on a jury on a case were the complainant was tactically dropping charges with the aim of bankrupting the other party rather than seeking justice, I'd probably decide against them. I find using the justice system in pursuit of revenge at the cost of actual justice rather perverse.
We create a free distro container of Parbola GNU / Linux-libre
docker run -it quay.io/paradock/parabola bash
Customizable IoT button can be programmed to do anything
Of course not; hardcore, laissez faire capitalism like there is in the United States would correct that, and the salaries would go down. However, as it stands, there is an overabundance of humanities & arts majors, and way too little engineers and scientists; meanwhile, the industry has been almost completely off-shored over the last 60 years. The only thing left for those people to do is work in the service industry, if they are lucky. But when too many compete for a limited resource, selection kicks in, and overabundance drops the wages. Education won't help with that, as we see, but it might help with organizing oneself, or "going at it on one's own" and opening a business.

A good lesson to learn from that would be that hard core, laissez faire capitalism is just as destructive as a totalitarian communist system. In order for the population to be able to live comfortably, capitalism must be enhanced with socialist safeguards and a system of checks and balances built in, like Sweden, Austria, Norway, Denmark, and Switzerland did it. Switzerland for example has low taxes and respects private property, and especially protects and fosters enterpreneurship, making it very corporate friendly, but it also has a very strong welfare safety net. One would think that would make a lot of Swiss draw on unemployment and disability, but Swiss work 42 hours per week minimum (compare and contrast to France, where they work 35 to 37), and unemployment in Switzerland is among the lowest in the world.
> The virtue of fairness is at odds with the financial benefits of controversial wording.

Agreed. You said someone was "painting all Chinese with a single stroke". I don't see that. Which words specifically do you find controversial?

Or, do you just dislike the premise of the article? In that case, if you could rewrite an article like this, how would you write it, generally speaking?
Sorry for the meta post but I don't understand why your comment was down voted. It seems a few people in this thread have been down voting any criticism of DDG, which is a misuse of the feature.
>It is underhanded because, at the very least, it violates an expected principle of the civil suit system. This signals that the goal of the suit is not to compensate Hulk for damages, but to put Gawker out of business.

I'm genuinely curious, where did you learn that the only goal of the civil suit system is to compensate the damaged party? It would seem odd to me that punitive damages would be a thing that exists, distinct from compensatory damages, if they're not meant to be a part of the system. I don't see how there was an "expected principle" of that at all.

>Punitive damages or exemplary damages are damages intended to reform or deter the defendant and others from engaging in conduct similar to that which formed the basis of the lawsuit. Although the purpose of punitive damages is not to compensate the plaintiff, the plaintiff will receive all or some portion of the punitive damage award.
In technology, programming work is about looking up, composing, and debugging code. I yet have to meet one person who learned it at school.

In the school environment, the emphasis is, has always been, and will always be, to repeat things from memory.

If the IT teacher were good at looking up, composing, and debugging, and given the kind of salaries you that get when you are good at that, he would not be teaching. He would seek to multiply his income often ten times by actually doing it, instead of teaching it.

In fact, you can only learn from people who are doing it themselves. Everybody else does not really know how to do it.

Therefore, the teacher is only good at what will give you beautiful credentials: repeating from memory. That is also what he will seek to perpetuate with his own students.

Formal education does not only NOT fix poverty. Formal education actively creates it. Instead of spending your formative years learning the skill that will make you gain income, you learn to repeat from memory. There is not one industry where this would be of value.

You need to be able to produce things of value, just to survive. It is exceedingly dangerous to spend all your time on things that will never produce any value at all.
We formerly had laws on the books banning this very thing.. Read into champerty:

http://qz.com/692312/billionaire-peter-thiels-attack-on-gawk...
Thanks for brilliantly putting in to words what I had trouble trying to communicate these years. I remember learning C++ as a teenager confused by boreland manuals and meaning of obscure terms like "file handle" and cryptic errors. Now all it takes in right click + inspect element to open a JS console.

This is just the beginning.
> In my experience with software, sharing opaque binary blobs is a Bad Thing

And yet you don't know why.

This is called dogma, and dogma is bad: It leads people to make stupid decisions over and over, all the while repeating that the alternative is worse.
When I programmed in university pre-2000, I used gopher in place of google.

Applicable matches were limited to source code file search, which gave examples of function calling out in the wild. There were no books of use available, and the documentation was often vague and incomplete man pages.
This isn't entirely true. Freedom of speech describes the relationship between the government and the people, not between two people. Furthermore, the Supreme Court has decided that freedom of speech in the strictest sense only applies to political speech.
I've seen the direct links get redirected to the non-direct page on desktop.

It appears to still happen if, e.g., the link is on Twitter - random example https://twitter.com/SilentRENE/status/735732252877819904 (seems to be inconsistent - first time I was redirected, but now it goes directly to the image. Opening the Twitter page in another browser also resulted in a redirect)
You are assuming "that reproducibility is good".

I believe this assumption needs to be challenged.
Amazon Web Services IoT Button is a physical button for software developers, that can be programmed to control Internet of Things devices.

The button is aimed at software developers who want to utilize AWS IoT services without having to write device-specific code. Instead they can simply connect the button to wifi and create an Amazon Web Services account. Then, they can program the button to perform different functions in response to different commands. For example, a single click for on and a double click for off. The device, which can be integrated with third party APIs like Twitter, Facebook and Slack, has seemingly endless possible uses. It can be used to open a garage door, order an Uber, call a designated person, turn on the coffee machine in the morning, or work as a check-in device for Airbnb guests.
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Examples of services that typically would have been written in C/C++ but are written in Go: Docker, YouTube Vitess (a MySQL proxy), CockroachDB (a distributed and strongly consistent SQL database).

Other examples of companies using Go for network services: Dropbox (most backend), CloudFlare (Railgun and other things), Uber (geofencing), Bitly (messaging with NSQ), Disqus (realtime commenting), DigitalOcean, Heroku, SoundCloud, Dailymotion.
What is your point about a candelabra incandescent lamp?

That concerns only lamps which use a "candelabra screw base as described in ANSI C81.61–2006, Specifications for Electric Bases, common designations E11 and E12." Moreover, that is from a section which specifically allows them to be incandescent, so long as they don't exceed a given power limit.

You also seem to have missed the part where it says:

> The rulemaking— (I) shall not be limited to incandescent lamp technologies; and (II) shall include consideration of a minimum efficacy standard of 45 lumens per watt.

or the "Backstop requirement":

> If the Secretary fails to complete a rulemaking in accordance with clauses (i) through (iv) or if the final rule does not produce savings that are greater than or equal to the savings from a minimum efficacy standard of 45 lumens per watt, effective beginning January 1, 2020, the Secretary shall prohibit the sale of any general service lamp that emits less than 300 percent of the average lumens per watt emitted by a 100-watt incandescent general service lamp that is commercially available on the date of enactment of this clause.

This allows incandescent bulbs so long as they are significantly more efficient than those sold before 2007.

As to why UK newspapers writers are supposed to understand the details of domestic US law, and why UK newspaper readers are supposed to care, in order to get an extra moment of irony - well, that seems like a lot of work for very little gain. Especially when the EU has very similar laws, so UK readers may default to think that the US is already in the same boat, so there's little to no irony available.
Well, maybe not Bash, but it seems a dozen years ago referring to Perl as a systems language would not have caused anybody to blink ;)

I apologize for how glib my remark above was, it didn't add much to the conversation, and was more a knee jerk response to the notion that "Systems Language" is now, or ever has been, well defined.

I brought up the handling of signals, because process management is, in practice, a pretty big deal in what I would consider systems programming. But I don't think it's important to all systems programming. Much like I don't think avoiding garbage collection is necessary for all systems programming, though it's clearly an issue for some applications.

What I do find odd is the notion that it is necessary to not have garbage collection, but not having a solid story behind handling signals from the OS receives a pass.

Rust can handle signals, but its implementation is very platform specific (even the currently recommended crate lacks Windows support), and ultimately calls out the FFI. So it seems that saying Rust has support for signals is like saying Go supports manual memory management because you can call C.malloc and C.free...
Wasn't aware of this, thanks.

Reading the site though, it seems poorly adopted? And also not automated (the user has to actively install SearchProviders? Most users don't bother.)
> Greeks even estimated the circumference of the thing.

That's not a problem, the story was that the Greeks knew but those European barbarians didn't believe them until Columbus claimed that he reached India.
Whatever sympathies you want to arouse for Pvt Manning for political purposes, however wordily and clumsily expressed, try to keep in mind that throughout all of history, in all contexts, regardless of rank, Manning would have been summarily hanged as a spy and/or traitor rather than merely imprisoned. Manning got off nice and easy.

That said, it was a total failure of the system to allow someone so mentally unstable to have any kind of clearance. Manning's AFQT score was probably 99 at a time when the army had trouble getting anyone literate to join. And so there wasn't a discharge. Here's an interesting interview about Manning's (near) discharge:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/may/28/bradley-manning...
On the other hand it let reddit offload most of their bandwidth to Imgur, and I don't think they lost much ad revenue over it.
...or do I ;-) ?
It's fun how occasionally people suggest that a graphical form of programming is the future. Whereas, this article shows that an industry that had a graphical language to express logic, got rid of it and never looked back.

It's not just that the layout of the chip started being done by computers, but also, the circuit design switched from graphical to symbolic.

Once we get to a complexity level beyond toy examples, then it seems we are better doing our abstract logic manipulation symbolically than graphically.

As one of my colleagues said when comparing C with Simulink (a graphical programming language), "The thing is, I can review a C file by starting at the top. When I get to the bottom I know I've read everything".
> Once your code compiles, you’ll find (at least I have) that it is much more likely to be correct (i.e., do the right thing) than if you tried to write similar C, C++, or Go code.

What issues in Go do this sentence refer to?
"According to the National Center for Education Statistics, humanities majors account for about 12 percent of recent graduates, and art history majors are so rare they’re lost in the noise. They account for less than 0.2 percent of working adults with college degrees, a number that is probably about right for recent graduates, too. Yet somehow art history has become the go-to example for people bemoaning the state of higher education."

From http://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2012-01-06/postrel-ho.... See also https://medium.com/i-m-h-o/stem-still-no-shortage-c6f6eed505....

(Yes, I get that you're not talking about art history majors, per se, but I still think the sentiment is such that these are apt discussions to link to)
> Does Rust have a compose function? I hope so.

Rust itself does not have a compose function. But a closure works fine, so `|fname| to_buff_reader(check_err(open_file(fname)))` would work. If you want to go further, a nightly Rust allows for this kind of construction:

#![feature(unboxed_closures, fn_traits)] // that's why we cannot use stable (yet)

struct Composed<F, G>(pub F, pub G);

impl<F, G, T, U, V> FnOnce<T> for Composed<F, G>
where F: FnOnce<T, Output=U>, G: FnOnce<(U,), Output=V> {
type Output = V;
extern "rust-call" fn call_once(self, args: T) -> V { self.1(self.0.call_once(args)) }
}

impl<F, G, T, U, V> FnMut<T> for Composed<F, G>
where F: FnMut<T, Output=U>, G: FnMut<(U,), Output=V> {
extern "rust-call" fn call_mut(&mut self, args: T) -> V { self.1(self.0.call_mut(args)) }
}

impl<F, G, T, U, V> Fn<T> for Composed<F, G>
where F: Fn<T, Output=U>, G: Fn<(U,), Output=V> {
extern "rust-call" fn call(&self, args: T) -> V { self.1(self.0.call(args)) }
}

fn main() {
println!("{}", Composed(|x| x+3, |y| y*4)(5)); // 32
}
there are far more jobs that require non-engineering skills than those that do. lawyer, manager, masseuse, interior decorator, barista, ceo, journalist, teacher, non-profit grant writer, truck driver, events planner, politician, secretary, banker, chef, farmer, firefighter, fashion designer, etc. etc. etc. the demand for service sector jobs is steadily rising, as well, as people get more disposable income and more production is off-shored.
> Random place in SF: https://www.google.com/maps/@37.7718267,-122.4388549,3a,75y,...

What is that really narrow, darkly painted building? Is that a house? Whatever it is, it sure looks peculiar (but I like it!)
I've always thought the smartest people study humanities, and this post just confirmed how dumb the engineering mindset can be.
That's why it should be a separate button, so that it never assumes you want to manage braking unless you specifically turn the system off. Just pressing the brake pedal doesn't mean you want automatic braking to go away.
agreed the "meds are working" was a bad thing. but the rest of his comment was gold, was signal. I applaud you for trying to uphold a high S/N ratio on HN recently, but through the vast majority of HN experience a reader has had to become used to a vast sea of asshole-ish or humblebrag comments, in order to keep coming back. it's become an HN trademark. whereas this particular comment truly delivers some signal, despite this one flaw.
That sounds so incredible. Coding purely for the enjoyment of it. Coding just for the value of the learning. Kind of the most pure way to enjoy something.
Even at Amazon's cheapest posted bandwidth tier you're paying $50+ per terabyte for bandwidth.

Any dedicated hosting company (OVH, Hetzner, etc...) will cost less than 3% of that (and that's on the high end).

Bandwidth is cheap, but AWS marks it up roughly 30x-50x what you'd pay in a dedicated environment.
The boxes with lots of disk and memory are much more expensive when rented vs buying. SSDs are super expensive to rent, for example.

I made a Skylake Xeon system with all enterprise components for $2k. You can't even rent Skylake Xeons anywhere right now.
I've used my own variant of the heat method:
http://www.newmalecontraception.org/heat-methods/

I verified with a microscope - the amscope 150 (iirc) was not quite $100 with some slides. I should have bought the microscope first.
Xiaomi Mi Drone poses price challenge to DJI
Beautiful Data and Human Behavior
What's your replacement for Python REPLs like bpython or ptpython?
Wouldn't be a great idea a VLOG of someone coding without internet at all ,and talking about the pros and cons?

Once I moved to a small town , and I didn't have too much money for proper broadband , so I had 2 hours of dial-up every day.

I remember using that time much more efficiently and trying to download PDFs and such for the following hours , a lot of the things I've read in books/PDFs then I still remember today after 10 years. (Basic unix IPC and others)

Some of the things I've read online yesterday I don't remember today ha!
Android Notifications – A year in review
What's really amazing is how calumny works: the bigger the better.

It's very likely nobody, since men walked the earth, who gave it a moment's thought ever believed the earth to be flat; it's absolutely certain nobody in Europe or the Middle East post Aristotle ever believed it either (as many comments already point out).

And yet, a myth invented in the 19th century to make fun of "medieval times" and the Catholic Church is still around today, and needs to be constantly refuted.

I think it works because it flatters us, making us feel sooo superior to those ancient characters that must have been sooo stupid and smug. Well, in this case at least, we're the smugs and the stupids.
I don't think that's it, quite exactly. I think it's more that when people see stats for lots of eyeballs they too often think "if we monetize those to the max, think of the money we could make" and then that shifts into thinking they're leaving money on the table.
> How do you recommend applying security updates to the image, short of running (for example) `apt-get dist-upgrade`?

That's exactly how I recommend applying patches.

If it breaks things you can fix it.

You don't do this on a live system: If you're smart and your live systems are ephemeral you can copy your image, get it working, verify it interactively, and once you have a working image, you spin up new instances using the new system, and start shutting down the old systems.
I wonder how much technology has to do with this. A lot of jobs that existed a few years ago don't any more, and the wealth/time saved isn't going back to the people; work hours are not shorter, and low-end jobs aren't better paid.

I would guess not a trivial amount. Which is sad. Keeping people employed is much more important in the grand scheme of things than whatever percentage efficiency gain some of this tech brings.
I'm guessing with the amount of money that the U.S. invests in each soldier, there's a pretty overriding impetus to not disqualify people from positions that need people to fill them.
I saw that but it seems really complicated for something that should be straightforward. Or it just looks so?
(coming from c#)
Perhaps that is true. Humanities & arts majors have very high social intelligence, which often lands them into management positions, but then both they and the company start suffering from the Peter's principle, and the results have been devastating throughout history of mankind, as good networking and personal skills are woefully inadequate at solving hard problems which require lots of knowledge, creativity and logic.

Those who do not study history, and do not learn from it (as is ironically often the case with history majors) are doomed to repeat it, and re-invent it, poorly.

Still, engineering mindset aside, how do you explain that so many people with college degrees are poor, while the engineers don't feel that pain?