skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
So it has leds.

Is this enough to get kids interested in computers and programming? I have the feeling that they would need something where the distance between what they can do as users and as developers is much smaller. Otherwise they still may not see it as "the same thing". The iPad will still be an opaque thing they use to consume content.

I'm coming from growing up in the 80s with a ZX Spectrum. The distance between users and developers was so much smaller - you turned on the Spectrum and landed on a BASIC interpreter. A device that "has leds" and you need to program using some IDE outside of the device fails to convey the idea that "using" and "programming" are not separate things, but different points of a continuous spectrum (pun not intended).

I'm all for demystifying programming and computers for kids. There's this false belief that kids nowadays are "so good with tech" because they're 4 and they an use an iPad, but makes kids no better at tech than using a remote control makes them good at cinematography.

Maybe what we need is more like the Spectrum Next? http://www.specnext.com

EDIT: This may be closer to what I have in mind: http://uk.kano.me/products/kano-kit
And with Android N that work takes a big step forward.

By default any device have the ability to split the screen in two, and show apps side by side (apparently you can even have two Chrome "windows" up side by side, each with its own tabs).

And if the OEM so wants, they can enable floating windows, making Android behave very close to that of a traditional desktop.
Well, Total Information Awareness won't build itself, you know. Not yet, anyway.
> Multi Level Marketing coughpyramidschemecough company similar to Herbalife

Definitely could be Utah county, but

> one of the better tech opportunities in an area with very few

Probably not Utah county. The greater than 4000 tech companies[1] in and around Utah County cannot hire software engineers fast enough.

[1]: http://siliconslopes.com/about/utah-economy/
As someone just learning programming, I found the first few chapters to be super helpful, and ridiculously easy to understand. Honestly, if you want a pretty funny, and really simple book on algorithms, I could not recommend this enough.

Here is a free article on Dijkstra's Algorithm, written by the author, for those who want to get a taste of what the book is like.:

http://freecontent.manning.com/wp-content/uploads/grokking-a...
Personally, I love the idea, but please double check the EULA before using - [1] is eyeopening.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10888760
Rent is around twice as high, but your salary will also big twice bigger, or more. If all you care about is money, then California is a no brainer.
No problem.

You should setup a Twitter or a blog or something. But I'm sure I'm not the first person to suggest this. Or even better write a book.
Some may consider avoiding taxes to be unethical, others might say not avoiding them would violate a fiduciary duty.
Tab autocomplete will show everything, and showing a screen full of name is not particularly useful. Most of the time I use ls it's something like "ls (asterisk)foo(asterisk)".

How do I escape asterisk on HN? :O
It was a bad situation when I worked there a few years ago. Looking at the answers, things haven't changed.

I encourage you to take employment in US, if that's a possibility for you.
Say hello to ChromeOS, that has been aimed at this very issue for some years.

Never mind that moving forward, ChromeOS will be able to run Android apps.
Even if you succeed, that's anecdotal. Telling others to do the same wouldn't be good advice, in the same way as a lottery winner telling others to play wouldn't.
Does it have a name like a rejected Asterix character by any chance?
Oh, I would believe that. They'll make it easy for you to add charges on, and make it confusing as to whether it charges you (if you aren't familiar with the page), they just don't generally have them defaulted to on in my experience (and I buy a lot of tickets from them). They're very good at being just annoying enough to use that you don't like them, but generally not so annoying that you'll refuse to use them, which combined with their existing market dominance keeps them on top.
> The long term solution for Tor Browser is to build on Chromium + Containers/VM + Isolating proxy

Surely text-mode gopher would also be more secure? (Only half-joking)
It seems as if this is where mainstream Android is going, anyway. They may find a market in "retrofit" installations on PCs since I doubt Google would make an official PC release. But hardware like Pixel C is is going to be a better way to blend mobile and desktop computing.

I'll probably try it on an old laptop.
Welcome to the age of DAO
If you don't want to figure out Linux, why would you want to figure out Android hacked for desktop which it was not designed to do?
> ... I suspect it would be purchased in an orderly fashion

"Orderly fashion" and trading (algorithmic or otherwise) are oil and water, surely.
A better solution for that problem is to not screw around with personal garbage on work computers.
This is complementary:

https://www.twilio.com/blog/2016/02/patrick-mckenzie-on-sala...
It would be an interesting case if someone tried this with the venerable TV industry: rent/borrow/buy our special HDMI cable/tuner, let us replace your ads, and we'll pay half your cable bill if you let us put our ads up instead.

Methinks the broadcasters would pounce down like a ton of bricks and their lawyers would use every loose corner of the law to bury you perpetually `a la Aereo.`
> you never get more than one writer

Is this a file system issue (because only one file is used) or a SQLite problem? Like, file systems only allow one writer to a file, even if they would write at different locations.
It's called the "gold standard".
The simplest hack to build awesome teams
I once had a conversation with someone who had worked on surface-to-surface missile guidance.

He did it because he didn't make the connection between the circuits and the software in front of him and the deaths they caused.

Then there was a war and he saw the missiles on the news with pictures of casualties, and suddenly it was "Holy fuck - this stuff actually kills people!"

Some people think small picture, and he just couldn't get from the work on his desk to dead bodies without the help of front-line footage.

Of course there are also people who are just fine with that kind of work. I don't understand that ethical space at all - but from what I've seen they simply don't understand why anyone would have a problem with what they do.
There is no reason why you cannot do concurrent transactional writes in embedded database library and there are many embedded databases that can do that.

MySQL is probably only opensource client-server RDBMS whose server is based on relatively tightly coupled threads. PostgreSQL uses separate processes with well defined IPC interface between them, for long time the postmaster process mostly served to initialize and teardown this IPC interface (apart from spawning postgres processes for incomming connections), which was mostly needed because SysV IPC is brain-dead, hacking PostgreSQL into embedded library is probably not advisable, but perfectly doable. Firebird's architecture is similar, but in addition explicitly supports use as embedded library and stores whole database in single file, that can be used by both server daemon and embedded library at the same time (and the file can even reside on windows share without compromising transactional semantics).

Main problem with doing fine grained locking in embedded library (apart from complexity of fine grained locking itself) is with various non-standard situations like crash recovery. Another problem is that when processes that access the database data run under different users, there is real possibility of data corruption caused by wrong permissions or some similar misconfiguration (perfect example of this were first versions of subversion with Berkeley DB backend).
I worked in the user experience team at that one big American domain company (that's well known for mostly the wrong reasons.) Similar situation as the story: great coworkers, great pay, & great perks.

One of the products I was assigned was the interface for customers to configure those sites that are intended to monetize a domain with filler content meant to fool a visitor just enough to milk them for a few cents with seemingly legitimate articles/posts and an e-commerce feature that was essentially a storefront built entirely from affiliate links.

Unlike the individual in the story, it was immediately clear what my task was: make spamming the Internet as user-friendly as possible. Unfortunately there was no mental gymnastics I could do to reconcile that.

Especially since the second product I had was domain auctions, which alone is nothing more than virtual real estate, but together with the first product is the makings of a thinly-veiled means to skim money off the top of online purchases made by ignorant users AND to fool people into believing they could profit from otherwise idle domains (by first paying the company for the monetizing product first, of course.)

And a tiny fraction of our customers did make a good income with those 2 offerings but the significant majority would never net a dime.

Aside from the pay and perks, the only professional payoff was also having the company's support site in my charge. I was proud of the work I did on that and it was a feature of my portfolio. But it wasn't enough and I was too disillusioned and discouraged overall by the day to day work. It wasn't long before I let it get to me, my performance began to suffer, and I needed to get out of there. (Admittedly, the nature of the job wasn't well-suited to my strengths either so it was probably fortunate I lasted as long as I did...)

I was able to cash in quite nicely on the experience gained there with a good offer on an out-of-state position with a generous relocation package. So, no, it wasn't all bad and, like the person in the story, the coworkers were largely really great (some going to work for large, well-known tech companies) and though I value the experience overall, it revealed just how much money can be made if you're willing to profit from people's ignorance and greed, just by framing your product or service in a particular way.
Ask HN: Reporting major security/privacy flaw etiquette?
There's a popular website which I'm sure a lot of people here will have used. It sells products. When you checkout as a guest you must give an email address to associate your purchases with.

If you later sign up, your purchase history associated with your email address can be accessed in your account (helpful!).

And when you sign up, you don't need to verify your email address right away (also helpful!). You're automatically logged in.

As a result, you can sign up with anybody's email address and view the entire purchase history associated with that email address. You can even use their unused products, initiate refunds, etc.

I contacted the company directly and spoke to someone (although it took a couple of hours to get their attention). I also happen to know someone who works for the company and let them know. They spoke to the dev/security team.

It's been about 24 hours since I reported the flaw to both, and the flaw is still there. I worry they may not be taking it very seriously since it stems from intended behavior. Perhaps they don't understand the security and privacy implications?

This is a large company with tens of million of monthly customers.

How would you deal with this situation?

And how long is too long for this flaw to remain unpatched? I've only worked in small companies where this would be fixed in seconds, and I understand they may have more complex protocols for pushing changes to the live site, but it seems disproportionately slow.
A lot of times I want to go back and look in which directory I was executing some command.
so they're trying to revive AOL's business model with a little yellow pages thrown in?
Yes, this is an open question (and a very hard one). As a good first step, just use Tor.

Tor does not protect you against the NSA - or, against, say CMU with a million in funding - but it's both fairly practical and a good first step towards a complete solution.
So you are of course not taking any advantage of Pension tax reliefs in your 401K and IRA's ?
>I usually don't like it

Have you made or are making an exception in this case?
I Got Death Threats for Reporting on a Video Game Delay
Anny illegal terms in a contract are void.
Very exciting! I wonder how the short-term nature of the pilot program might have some inherent biases compared to the long-term study? Presumably there would be less dramatic changes in behavior / lifestyle?
At the very least, you can always talk through your thought process. "I can't remember if the order of operations is..."
I wanted it originally because Amazon didn't have a Kindle app for Linux. I could read in browser, but I thought this would be the easiest way to download and read.
I've been to a Python Meetup there previously, nice office, nice tech talks. Their sponsor overview certainly didn't disclose what they actually did.

Makes me wonder about the other ad platforms in town.
As opposed to the current situation:

"In other news, John Spinnerman of Conglomerate News Network has stepped down after fabricating the story of the latest major scandal, in a sequence of events Beltway insiders are now calling Gategate..."
When a Robot Books Your Airline Ticket
Too late to edit but I agree with the other poster about not installing add-ons, if you're serious about privacy. However I just use TorBroswer as a quick proxy to bypass my network's blacklists.
HDInsight – Azure’s Hadoop Big Data Service
There's a different repository for every version :P

https://github.com/liblfds?tab=repositories
sqlite4 is completely different from sqlite3. The design is interesting in its own right but it's for a completely different product.
I don't think UB is bad. It's a reasonable thing to do when someone invokes an operation with bad input.

For instance, what should `sqrt(-1)` be? Or `head([])`?

You can define all behavior and say "bad input will throw an exception" or "bad input will abort the entire program" but who really cares what it does since it's a malformed program in the first place? Just say it's undefined and it's up to the programmer to make sure it never happens. Otherwise you're littering your code with countless checks for things that should never happen in a properly coded program.

Programmer error is distinct from operational error. There is no sane thing to do in a program error. Constantly checking for programmer error at runtime is wasteful.
I understand the sentiment of the post, but it's just not realistic. If we could get rid of the problem, that would obviously be preferable, but it's not going anywhere. It's just too pervasive and exploits psychology too well.

We should encourage people to do those things and break free, and some will be able to. Many people, however, lack the willpower to do so. If we can find a way to make people learn and feel fulfilled while in a short-attention-span environment, that would be an improvement from where we are now.
That's correct -- it's really not our goal though to try and answer the main research questions with the pilot; it's meant to help us figure out the mechanics of doing the larger study.
I interviewed for a co-op position there and was turned down. I guess they saved me some time.
Or moving backwards, the study will findout.
This is the world I'd like to live in. I'm looking forward to the day that Haiku OS is at a place where I can use it as my daily driver.
One major difference is that Facebook and Google also provide value to their users. They do good and bad things. The company in the article did only bad things.
My thought is essentially a synthesis of Kay and Thiel.

Namely; much of the low hanging fruit has been ignored and much of the world is in a technological stagnation.

Separately they could be made to sound pessimistic, but together there is much reason for optimism.
We haven't sacrificed our industrial sector:

https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/INDPRO
> global poverty and inequality has plunged rapidly during that time

Can you show that this is the case (for some measure of inequality), and that the US is responsible?
I listened to a podcast interview with Richard Hipp (the main SQLite developer) recently:
http://5by5.tv/changelog/201

It was really good. One of the things he mentioned is how they're planning to support SQLite until 2050 because of an agreement with Airbus (apparently that's the life of one of their recent plane models, and SQLite is used for some aspect of the software). Crazy!
Alternative an view that does not require backends, Minimum Viable Product is not a Product:

http://www.themacro.com/articles/2016/01/minimum-viable-prod...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10957479
> I'd love for us to pull back from a lot of these areas, but let's face it, when one country invades another, they don't call France, Ireland, or Norway to help them do they?

1. This makes it sound like you are talking about the invading country calling for help. Which is probably not what you intend.

2. In point of fact, if its in Africa, the boots on the ground for any call for help (whether the problem which provoked it is internal fighting or international conflict) are more likely to be French than American.
North Korea praises Trump and urges US voters to reject 'dull Hillary'
Fandom Is Broken
Succinctly, sqlite3 uses database locks for write transactions. This means only one writer can exist at a time, limiting concurrency.

Secondly, sqlite is an embedded database and doesn't have a separate server process.
I definitely agree with the premise that cookies are inherently insecure. With sessionStorage it's unclear to me if there's a clean way to send the secret with every http request. Does that mean binding to every link / button click event?

Also you mentioned this, but disappearing on tab-close makes it less of a drop-in replacement for cookies since that breaks existing behavior.

Interesting idea though! Enjoyed the read.
He should find an independent girl-friend that has her own side project.

They could code side by side on their laptops in the park.
>Except now I have to jump through hoops with HR (let's just assume they'd be OK with this, which they almost certainly won't), get the contract in place, work with IT to get your environment set up, and bring you up to speed (so really I may get one full day of actual work)... just to realize that I don't want to hire you.

There are two major reveals in that sentence. One, HR rules your hiring practice and therefore you and your department, and you just advise them. Two, your company is so soul-suckingly bureaucratic, I couldn't imagine a good, creative, problem solving developer would ever want to work there. Both are red flags.
Hmm. I'm currently employed in Canada as a Web Developer. Are there many opportunities for Web developer in US ? I have 1.5 year experience and not so confident I can get a good job in US. I'm thinking about that since my family is moving to the states.
High Level language statements can be easily translated to ARM assembly language(http://www.toves.org/books/arm/), easier than x86 in my opinion. 11/12 year olds should have no problem understanding it, after they've played around with the provided options for programming the micro bit. (https://www.microbit.co.uk/create-code)
The argument isn't that it's illegal, but that it wasn't properly agreed to.
I made the same submission here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11806509

Maybe they should be merged.
That sounds awesome! "Tonight, I want Google to think that I'm a duck watcher that is interested in skydiving and cooking at low altitudes!" and you just combine your profile to be whatever you want.

You could even use that as a purchasing advantage. "Well, I'm interested in knowing what a gamer would buy in this situation. So, I'm going to use a 23 year old gamer geek profile." or "I wonder what you would buy a photographer for Christmas.." then you just seed it with photographer data and let it suggest you things then you pick something haha
When your life depends on holding a job, you are less likely to question the system that provides said job.

Similarly, "homeowners" are less likely to riot...
I remember seeing mostly same paragraph 10 years ago, only with 3->2 and 4->3 :)
I had never heard about the (3) link and what Google was caught doing. Wow.
I'm a Senior Javascript Developer in downtown Toronto making 75k.

Blatant promotion: My company is hiring more people for the same position. We're a very small company and we build apps for hospitals and healthcare providers around the world. Email us at careers@qochealth.com for more info :)
Think about that, the jihadists get the nice jail, because they are rehabilitatable

This is infinitely more humane than the current US strategy of drone strikes, "kills terrorists" never mind the collateral damage and disruption it causes. Hell our DOC could learn a few things. Here, if you are ever once a criminal, you're a criminal for life.
If you're afraid of negative feedback, you will never do anything, and you will never learn anything.

In this case, I'm astonished at just how many bad practices the author has engaged in.
Do most software projects have structs / functions / whatever where the names are versioned?

It's one thing for TempleOS to invent his own OS, build system, programming language, GUI, etc. He made some odd choices, but at least he's clear he doesn't care (much) about other people using his code. And, it's clear his code works, and does something useful.

The author of this library has invented many of his own programming practices... which are clearly worse than current industry practices. Why? I can't say. But I can say that they are worse.

I just don't understand this attitude that all feedback has to be couched carefully to avoid hurting anyones feelings. If it's bad, it's bad.

Perhaps you could be productive, and post your review of his code. If it's in any way negative, (by your standards), I should jump on the review as being overly negative, and "you're the reason why people don't do open source."

Adults should be able to take criticism. If they can't, I have very little sympathy for them.
The library also uses some absurdly long identifiers which are bound to clutter your code one way or another. To iterate a binary tree, use

while(lfds710_btree_au_get_by_absolute_position_and_then_by_relative_position(state, &element, LFDS710_BTREE_AU_SMALLEST_IN_TREE, LFDS710_BTREE_AU_INORDER_WALK_FROM_SMALLEST_TO_LARGEST))

It's not going to be possible to remember what names to use when you need to iterate. Or, take the initialization routine. You first call

lfds710_btree_au_init_valid_on_current_logical_core( &state, key_compare_function, LFDS710_BTREE_AU_EXISTING_KEY_FAIL, NULL );

on one core, which is perhaps reasonable, but then you call

LFDS710_MISC_MAKE_VALID_ON_CURRENT_LOGICAL_CORE_INITS_COMPLETED_BEFORE_NOW_ON_ANY_OTHER_LOGICAL_CORE()

on other cores. That is one hell of a #define, and it's not even clear from the name what it's doing. It seems like "LFDS710_MISC_SYNC_INITS" or something along those lines would be clearer and easier to remember.
In zsh, you can complete a glob.
Adding a new phrase with a new meaning would add a substantial amount of complexity to what's already a very complex standard.
Keystone Assembler Framework 1.0
Also, let's not forget privacy as we know it is a distinctly modern idea.

Well, yes. But that's not because the phenomenon is new, but because detailed personal logging is new. Privacy used to be a natural right: no one could possibly know what you did last summer unless you told them or they were there with you. It only started to be an issue when we started following people around and preserving that data.
Because saying someone looks 16 is an insult?