skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think our experiences may differ. Just looking through stories I've seen on the front page recently, there's the following:

* A slave in Scotland

* They knew it was round, damn it

* Two hundred terabyte proof is largest ever (granted, the 200 TB is not what's really interesting here)

* How the ArXiv decides what's science

* Visiting Chelsea Manning in prison

* Hiroshima (1946)

This seems like a healthy mix of topics, and they don't seem to have been deemed worthless.

I have noted a certain amount of hostility to philosophical topics, but I would venture a guess that there's been hostility to philosophy in general at all periods in history.

I expect to see a certain percentage of comments in an HN thread about how the topic is presented. Everybody's got to let off some steam sometimes. I made my initial comment because I was surprised at how many comments addressed only how the topic was presented rather than that and the actual content.
Sometimes I miss Montréal and the music. I am back in Europa, and I long for the live music in this place.

Is this song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuHODi3Ry2o
Acceptable for the right pronounciation?
Grim Skunk- Mange d'la marde

Montréal is fortunately underrated (except by some maudit f....), I hope it will never become the new San Francisco.
HN censoring is terrifyingly rampant, dang is an extremely egotistic, and objectively biased moderator. I don't disagree that HN is capable of producing interesting conversations, but it's a very limited window imo. HN suffers greatly from one of the major problems that plagues Reddit, and that's the hivemind effect that threads seem to have. I was a great fan of Slashdot because it was possible to see multiple threads with different opinions from a parent topic, but on HN, whatever the hivemind agrees with floats the top and the rest sinks like a rock. That people think HN is even close to a balanced platform is somewhat concerning.
Is from the year 2014.
Yeah, because Reddit has turned out great, hasn't it? /s
Multiple scenarios that I've encountered.

1) company that creates custom modules for firms coal software; it always involves meeting the customer.
2) Open office layouts where customers are given a tour of the Office.
Well technically speaking, because of the way the Great Firewall works, you might still be able to get some packets if the server is fast enough.
For interested people, I recommend Your Mother's Tongue: A Book Of European Invective by Stephen Burgen. While it doesn't cover Quebec, it's an extremely funny and informative cross-continent compendium, and I think it reveals quite a lot of the culture of different countries and peoples.
> Not necessarily. Most insurers pretty much break even on the insurance, and make their money on investing the premiums. Auto in particular.

That's surprising to me. I'm not familiar with the industry but logically I'd expect that if the company is breaking even that means that after operating costs they are paying out the rest the money in claims, so what's left to invest?

If they're not just breaking even, and are building large cash deposits, surely they would be needed quickly in the event of a sudden burst of claims, so their investment options would have to be a lot of more liquid.
Monsanto Canada Inc v Schmeiser[1] is one datum.

The Schmeisers lost their heirloom corn they had been growing for generations when a neighbour grew Monsanto corn, which pollinated some of the Schmeiser's plants.

Because Monsanto had patented Roundup-ready corn, the Schmeisers lost the right to grow their unpatented family corn as some contained patented DNA. The court ruled 5% contamination was enough to assert IP rights and the Schmeisers could no longer grow their corn.

Seized ownership by genetic contamination is clearly a huge risk.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto_Canada_Inc_v_Schmei...
> If I remember right, Digg was a combination of changing the UI drastically in a way that most everyone hated

Although this is common belief, Digg was on the decline well before v4 was released. v4 was a response to the decline, not the cause of it.

They mistakenly attributed the site's decline to the rise of social media apps like Twitter, and v4's was their attempt to become the "Twitter for news".

It's true that Digg didn't do enough to foster a healthy community; threads were often toxic, and yes the top users had too much sway. What's forgotten is some of the dumb things they did to try and monetize, like that full-site ads (background image ads) that I'm pretty sure everyone hates.
Then I think the laws should be amended to allow physicians to respond to people commenting through verified accounts (and to respond with even fewer restrictions on information posted anonymously). Doctors have rights too, and it's important that our laws to recognize them.
Think about the bare minimum it would take a software developer not to get fired. It's actually quite low. Now realize how many people do the bare minimum at their job. Including politicians (bare minimum == get elected).
Seconded. The most important thing for me, when writing code, is whether or not I (or someone else) will be able to read it in 6 months. The second most important thing is whether I'll be able to throw this away and replace it with something else, which perhaps counterintuitively means I need to spend more time ensuring the code I'm writing doesn't wrap tendrils of interdependencies into the rest of the codebase. An important part of that is ensuring that any major interfaces/APIs (both internal and external) are simple, predictable, and well-documented.

Even following those two rules alone, you can avoid building these complex, black-box solutions that nobody is willing to touch.
This article is part of the problem. People care about seed patents and farmer suicides too, but I don't see any mention of those in the first half of the article.

It's a shame, because all this hate should be directed at the food industry more broadly, including Cargill, ADM, and their armies of lobbyists
Currently what's making me worry about being a bad programmer is a coworker. I have no idea what I did to him but the guy clearly has some kind of grudge against me. He questions my competence (sometimes subtly, sometimes outright) and doesn't want me changing the code even if I submit a 1-line code review removing an unused variable. He's a lot more lenient with other people and sometimes it's me who catches errors in code changes he's already put a "lgtm" on.

Going to work and having to sit next to someone like that every day is quickly making me think of jumping ship.
basically the same way. the system would still be balkanized and terrible, but you would have a full searchable copy. it would basically be the equiv of itunes. you bring it to all youdt docs and u put your records on it, then they keep them to(like they do now) but you have a program that generates visual correlations.

you could also use it to interface with healthkit and fitbit. all data one place.

what if you were unconscious?

i imagine it in a bracelet with emergency contact with password. not 100% sure. the medical system should have your files anyway, but it is hard to balance privacy with a total stranger finding you in a state where you cant communicate. not sure what they do now, presumably treat with as much info as they could get from the person.
> Just tax foreign holdings at say 3% per year as an AMT and suddenly all that money starts flowing again.

Now you have one of two problems. If the 3% goes against only cash and not other assets then it's completely ineffective, because they can just hold the money in whatever type of assets aren't included. But if it does include all foreign assets then US companies can no longer do business in foreign countries, because they won't be competitive with local companies that don't have to pay the same recurring tax on the plant and equipment and other business assets needed to operate there.
You're talking about "18 U.S. Code § 912 - Officer or employee of the United States." Good thing he left NSA before I did it. :P
How (and Why) to Log Your Entire Bash History
Live Streaming Is Hard: Scaling high quality live streams
Brazil is somewhat more... I want to say civilized but that seems overly mean. It's more modern in many respects than the rest of south and central america.
The state department & intelligence community loves hiring the right kind of liberal arts people as analysts.
Given that their fitness trackers routinely stopped working after 3-6 months and had to be replaced by them at their own cost... not surprised.

It's a dying bit of kit, easily replaced by more capable smart watches, and while single-function tools can be great there isn't enough they can do to compete at a high level, they'd have to make them almost disposable in cost.
I've wondered for a while if there's evil black hat PR agencies out there that charge protection money.

"There's going to be an anti-GMO backlash and everyone is going to pick a villain. Pay us and we can make sure it isn't you."

There are many agricultural biotechnology companies. Maybe Monsanto didn't pay.
I'm not trying to argue with what you said, but pointing at the weakness of the article's conclusions. As another commenter just wrote "How does the author explain the huge success of the original UNIX? It violates everything he says."
You're expected to haggle. I once walked into a rug store, looked at a rug and the guy said it was $13,000. I said, "that's way too much! Can you knock something off?"

He said, "OK, for you, $3,000."

I probably could've gotten him down under $2,000 if I really wanted the rug.
If you read the linked Wikipedia entry, the first paragraph makes it pretty clear that your re-telling of the story is, at the least, not fully accurate:

"The case drew worldwide attention and is widely misunderstood to concern what happens when farmers' fields are accidentally contaminated with patented seed. However by the time the case went to trial, all claims had been dropped that related to patented seed in the field that was contaminated in 1997; the court only considered the GM canola in Schmeiser's 1998 fields, which Schmeiser had intentionally concentrated and planted from his 1997 harvest. Regarding his 1998 crop, Schmeiser did not put forward any defence of accidental contamination."

Emphasis added. They did not put forward the defense of accidental contamination because it was indeed not accidental; instead, they were trying to add traits of the GM crop into their own. Where you stand on that practice may vary, but they certainly were [intentionally] taking advantage of the superior traits of the GM crop.

Whether or not it should be allowed to be intellectual property is a completely different thing, but given that it can be considered IP right now, the corporation would be foolish to not protect their IP and therefore their financial interests for their shareholders.
I don't think the description of the italian situation is quite correct: it seems to me that "regular" profanity is much less censored, nowadays.

On the other hand, "blasphemous" profanity (swearing at $DEITY) is still a no-no, even after midnight, and a sure way to get suspended from TV, even though you can easily hear people on the street saying that aloud in some regions (for example Tuscany, Veneto, Trentino and Friuli).

By the way, in Trentino we also say "osti" (host) as a plain exclamation, exactly as in Québec.
A customizable in-shoe arch support which form-fits to the exact shape/needs of each foot.

Years ago there used to be such a product from SuperFeet, which you would heat up then form to the foot & would hold its shape upon cooling. But apparently it's no longer available.
Mr. Godwin could also have mentioned Islam and Donald Trump's movement in the US. Two major movements which often get compared to Nazism even in well-established media.

I think personally think it is a sign of a combination of lack of tact, knowledge and an unwillingness to compromise.
It is not common, but I do it for various projects, and have also worked part time for others. On the hiring side, the projects are in maintenance mode and there just isn't 40 hours of work a week, esp. if you split (say) front end and backend. I also do PM consulting, and can manage a number of developers working only a few hours a day.

You have problems if you hire people who are not professional freelancers, or those who can't manage their time. I once broke that rule and hired someone with a full time job. They were pressured into OT at work, quality on my stuff dropped like a rock, and he was grateful to be fired. So unless you're a full time freelancer, I won't hire you. Others might, though!
The disposable key pair IS an identity in this case.

I dunno about the legal end, but it's hardly the same as giving a name to a barista.
You forgot IBM i (aka OS/400) and Unisys MCP (aka Burroughs B5000) and the myriad of embedded and real time OSes or bare metal runtimes.
The problem is that many people are vehemently against GMO without having a clue. I remember of a famous french actress protesting on TV that people were forced to eat GMO. And saying in disgust "It's disgusting, I don't even want to eat DNA!"

On GMO and Monsanto I recommand a recent .net rocks:

http://dotnetrocks.com/?show=1298
It's not anti-intellectual to complain about the presentation of an article. Shallow criticism, maybe, but it shows people were interested in reading it. If HN truly didn't care for this topic, it wouldn't have even surfaced from /newest.
Have you tried asking that co-worker directly in a tactful way? If you have, what about talking to a manager with whom you have a good relationship? If their behavior is a problem, then ignoring this will just let it fester.

You might also try to take a step back and see if their behavior actually matters, and treat it as a personality quirk. There are people like this everywhere, so even jumping ship may not exclude this or worse from happening at the next place.

Just don't mention that you're thinking about jumping ship to anyone. That doesn't help you or them.
Posts like that are why I come to HN. Even if my field of expertise have absolutely nothing to do with manufacturing, its nice to read about problems and solutions of huge industry explained in simple and clean language.
Great example. That combined with activity I've read on seed production and acquisitions is already enough to fight their existence.
CableOne Brags It Provides Worse Service to Bad Credit Customers
From reading through that thread it seems this is being done with JS, so the links still look like before but when you click them, something else happens to cause a redirect. IMHO that's not very honest behaviour, but fortunately sounds easy to block.

However, I have a feeling that some of the users will simply start rewriting links to not look like links.

http://superuser.com/questions/513323/how-to-open-hxxp-or-ot...
I'm sure the guy who thinks it's spelled "Plan-9" has some very insightful things to say. Maybe it's time for me to blog about Ruby/On/Rails, the latest web-dev hotness.
Are they allowed to do that under US law? Don't affiliate links have to be marked as such?

EDIT: Here's what the FTC says: https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/ftc...

> I’m an affiliate marketer with links to an online retailer on my website. When people read what I’ve written about a particular product and then click on those links and buy something from the retailer, I earn a commission from the retailer. What do I have to disclose? Where should the disclosure be?

> If you disclose your relationship to the retailer clearly and conspicuously on your site, readers can decide how much weight to give your endorsement.

> In some instances – like when the affiliate link is embedded in your product review – a single disclosure may be adequate. When the review has a clear and conspicuous disclosure of your relationship and the reader can see both the review containing that disclosure and the link at the same time, readers have the information they need. You could say something like, “I get commissions for purchases made through links in this post.” But if the product review containing the disclosure and the link are separated, readers may lose the connection.

> As for where to place a disclosure, the guiding principle is that it has to be clear and conspicuous. The closer it is to your recommendation, the better. Putting disclosures in obscure places – for example, buried on an ABOUT US or GENERAL INFO page, behind a poorly labeled hyperlink or in a “terms of service” agreement – isn’t good enough. Neither is placing it below your review or below the link to the online retailer so readers would have to keep scrolling after they finish reading. Consumers should be able to notice the disclosure easily. They shouldn’t have to hunt for it.

> Is “affiliate link” by itself an adequate disclosure? What about a “buy now” button?

> Consumers might not understand that “affiliate link” means that the person placing the link is getting paid for purchases through the link. Similarly, a “buy now” button would not be adequate.
> My view, which I've held for many decades now, is that glib and frivolous invocations of Hitler, or Nazis, or the Holocaust, are a kind of forgetting.

So true. I have myself observed / felt this several times. My experience is that the facts of any discussion are laid out pretty quickly at the beginning. There is something that prolongs the discussion and heats up the arguments on all sides and I believe it is our collective emotional baggage, or lack of it. Some twist their words to mean anything just to stay in the conversation, some dig in their heels in the hopes of never having to be proven wrong, some stick to the bare facts but ignore others' emotional investment, etc. And some just enjoy trolling as if it is a spectator sport where they flame both sides but without any meaningful contribution of their own towards a resolution.

Sadly, I have not found an approach that works better than to quit the discussion cold turkey.
What's also missing is how to actually make extensible designs. I have seen very, very few designs that were able to accommodate unforeseen changes, and none that resulted from good coding practices.

Most often I've observed that the more process and organization surrounds a development effort, the more likely that effort will outright fail (sometimes by never getting completed, more often by never actually fulfilling the function that was designed for, then abandoned. The difference is that the second kind is very much declared complete).

Recently a thorough focus on code hygiene (unit tests taken to a ridiculous levels, for instance) is one more warning sign that it's time to find something else to do. The biggest warning signs are project teams way bigger than they need to be, but ... Code hygiene nazis merely join the documentation madness of a few years back, PMs should control everything because Steve Jobs was a successful asshole, we need 5 design docs before even knowing what the problem is, ...
Rosetta's Comet Contains Ingredients for Life
I am in no way doubting the effects and seriousness of real diagnoses of ADD/ADHD. For those that actually need it, it works wonders.

But there is a serious percentage of college-aged ADHD diagnoses that are about as legitimate as most medical marijuana prescriptions. These kids are just snorting Adderall so they can cram for an exam or pull an all-nighter and finish a term paper. I've seen it first hand, and it's an incredibly wide-spread practice at some top-tier US universities.
I think code review can help here. Even genius developers' code should be reviewed and understood by other developers. This can help reduce the bus factor and level up other team members. The genius developer will learn to "dumb down" (hopefully in a good way) their code to reduce overhead to their productivity from long code reviews with many questions.
Mulitply this times (countries in the world) and you got a legal abyss the DAO is looking into.

At least german authorities will be interested since Slock.it UG is registered there.

NB: They do not even have a website that is conformant with german law. This is not a big deal, however, it does not strengthen my confidence that these guys are able to create code able to manage a few hundred million dollars crowdfunded capital.
> genius developer

Who writes unmaintainable, unreadable code? Not my definition of genius at all. I worked with one genius in my 20 year career. He was a marine biologist and knew more about computers than me. He was scary smart and all the advice I had from other people about working with him was - he thinks in steps 1, 6 and 20. You need to get him to explain how he got from 1 to 6, and then how he got from 6 to 20. Often this would take weeks to get out of him, but the though had just popped into his head (often while working on something else.) Very interesting man. One of his quirks was the he had no idea what time of day it was. We had to tell him to go home or eat his lunch, else he'd just think it was perpetually "about half nine"
GrimSkunk is quintessential quebecois through and through. They're rolling their r's a bit more than is usual for effect, the song has a humorous tone.
I really hope we don't become like San Francisco either, but the hipsterisation of the city is very palpable, unfortunately.
The music scene is still as awesome as ever though.
Is there a app for predicting setup-costs(time) using a repo?
If you fork a project on GitHub and get started with the work, there is always setup cost, which depends upon your system, your knowledge and which is quite hard to predict.
Is the a app for this?
Something that predicts with your knowledge data, past learning exp speed and how many layers (depth wise) are touched and how many additional components, the total time + average user stuck time ?
I know this is partially subjective- but maybe...
While the title and the introduction started seeming a bit click-bait-y and pretentious (the problems described aren't exactly new nor are a crisis creeping in), the entire post was well worth the read. Really good 'common sense' stuff that unfortunately is still needed to be spelt out for most 'senior engineers / managers'.

Really sound advice.
http://mdswanson.com/

I'm not famous and I don't work at a large company. I'm a software engineer based in Indianapolis and I work at a 100 person, 100% employee-owned development + design company.

I write semi-frequently about software, product development, and professional growth. I also review books I've read, which tend to be more tangential to software as I'm interesting in pulling in ideas from other fields/disciplines and applying them to software.
Ctrl-F "roundup". Ctrl-F "glyphosphate".... Hmm, nothing found - especially curious for a CATO author who berates the American public's scientific understanding.

In other, other apparently unreported news, Monsanto's GM foods were designed to be extra resistant to the pesticides they sell.

This pesticide, specifically: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/tx800218n

"Glyphosate Formulations Induce Apoptosis and Necrosis in Human Umbilical, Embryonic, and Placental Cells"

It's important to focus on the fact that the GMO plants themelves without the extra pesticides they were designed to sustain are totally, 100% safe, though.

Signed, CATO (Koch funded think tank, closely allied with Monsanto)
It's not just that, the new UI hooked the marketers directly in as feeds. So a blog or publication would be something you'd "follow" and upvotes/downvotes as you like. This scared the power users who were no longer the submitters, and also balkanized the experience and gave ghe users the impression they sold out to the actual content creators instead of the users.
Wake me up when the DAO does something interesting
Full Golang Bindings for Android NDK API and Examples
Clearly Trump can't be serious about everything he says either.