skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> Context: You have a method that takes a boolean which alters its behaviour

> Problem: Any time you see this you actually have two methods bundled into one. That boolean represents an opportunity to name a concept in your code.

This is only true if you're using literal booleans at you call sites. If the booleans are coming from somewhere else, like user input, you just moved your single if statement in the method out to every call site.

> Context: You are calling some other code, but you aren’t sure if the happy path will suceceed.

> Problem: These sort of if statements multiply each time you deal with the same object or data structure. They have a hidden coupling where ‘null’ means someting. Other objects may return other magic values that mean no result.

Passing a default value works, but in Java 8, returning an Optional is cleaner. And if you wanted a default value, you can still do

repository.getRecord(123).orElse("Not found");

Edit: Also, the coping strategy link [1] he gave to remove exceptions sounds a lot like restarts in Commons Lisp's condition system.

[1] https://silkandspinach.net/2014/11/06/on-paperboys-newsagent...
Bring the power of Postgresql to Nodejs
Though they have actually shipped a product, this Jobsian-no divulging obsession sounds like that other, recently imploded T-named startup...Th..th..eranos.

Worked for Apple because iPhone can't kill anyone. Not gonna fly, er drive, for Tesla. Tightly regulated market, good luck with maintaining that secrecy-based business plan.
I see a lot of promise in distributed Turing Complete blockchains like Ethereum giving a nonproprietary and decentralized alternative to centralized services. There is a positive feedback loop where the more smart contracts are uploaded to the blockchain, the more useful it becomes, and the more people upload their programs to it to utilize that functionality. All of these smart contracts necessarily make their code accessible to the public, in being hosted on a public blockchain, and are copyleft, since there's no way enforce IP law on their use.

It could conceivably neutralize the forces that enable big government and big business.
NetTrek in the high school computer lab was way too much fun.
also suspicious that none of the complainers went to law enforcement. you know, the way we as a society determime whether a true crime happened or not. innocent til proven guilty, trial, judge, etc. instead they took it to the public and smeared a man's name, directly. that itself is suspicous, as well as unethical.
I remember playing the original TF Quake 1 mod... that was a lot of fun back then... same for Doom 2, gkdm3 was my all time fav wad.
Re: NSA, state actors, billion dollar budgets... I think you're giving Appelbaum way too much credit here. While he's been splendid at marketing himself, consider that he might not actually be that important to the causes he's been championing. As others have pointed out: if said state actors wanted to hurt Tor and related projects, he'd be pretty far down the list of targets.
Look at all the water available in Canada, you can even see it on the map: https://www.google.com/maps/@50.6040128,-73.1500427,7z

Not all of Canada is like that, of course, but in parts they get a lot of rain
If someone would have told me I would suck at coding two years ago, I'd be thanking them immensely.
No idea, I remember playing around with 10-base-t coax a few times...
True. But i just wanted to give a, perhaps overly, simple example of growth not being capable of going on forever.

At some point you should be praising the fact that the other end of the bell curve has not kicked in, not worrying about growing further...
Is SpaceX Changing the Rocket Equation? (2012)
> It's using libsodium. This is an alarmist and false statement.

Really? Does libsodium support pairing base cryptography?

https://github.com/zcash/zcash/issues/714#issuecomment-21691...
That happens when your IP spams Google with too many queries too quickly.
Probably about 4 times per year on a long weekend, my mates and I still get together in someone's warehouse or garage and have a 3 day LAN. There's normally between 15-20 people, and we play a mix of CS:Source, Warcraft 3 custom maps, AoE, Dota 2, and whatever else the fashion is at the time. A recent one has been Spintires, which is a blast with 4 people!

That said, the amount of sleep and the quality of the food we eat has definitely improved in the last 15 years or so - no more fast food for all meals.
Exactly. And the bar they set for themselves is frustratingly low. Case in point: [Subaru's new "tablet-like" infotainment interface](http://www.theverge.com/2015/2/5/7982525/in-car-navigation-s...).
Larry Page has dueling flying car companies
An Android phone is running more than one operating system. A friend of mine who worked in the cell phone industry provided a bunch of details which I quoted on my blog: http://boston.conman.org/2013/01/22.2

TL;DR: Android phones have at least two separate CPUs, one to run the applications, the second one the actual phone portions, each running their own operating system.
How statist are startup empires built around the idea of flouting regulations? How statist are Uber, AirBnB, and the other members of sharing economy?

Granted, perhaps you can label them crony capitalists or some other epithet instead, for using government failings to their advantage instead of trying to do away with government (though some, such as Travis Kalanick, are notoriously big Ayn Rand fans). But when the folk definition for "libertarian" these days usually rests on the side of "-capitalist", and not "anarcho" - more Koch brothers (and Peter Thiel), than Gary Johnson (and Richard Stallman). When people usually talk about civil liberties groups, and Pirate parties, and hacker collectives, they think anarchists. When people talk about "neoliberals", or objectivist billionaires, they think libertarians.

Have a problem with that? Take the label back. Work to fix the public perception.
Likewise, all the doctors I know say Scrubs is the most realistic show about being a doctor.
I'm a technical user and I haven't installed an app in a month. I've probably gone a few months without apps. I've used a few mobile websites and zero mobile web apps.

I don't think it's fair to say that users who aren't installing any apps are actually going to mobile web apps instead. They're simply using what they already have. At some point I have all the apps I ever need for all the interactions I use my phone for.

> Actually you don't lose anyone because browser history and address bar autocomplete are your friends.

On the desktop sure, you might have a point, but interacting with a mobile browser to find stuff that way is not a good use experience. You think browser history and autocomplete is a substitute for a home screen icon? I don't know how to respond to that.
Collaborators undermining the rule of law and due process.

I doubt history will look kindly on these practices, and the story makes me even more eager to see RIM and its products in the dust bin.
In middle school, I helped organize a weekly "computer club" that met after hours in a school computer lab. It quickly degenerated into a giant Starcraft lan party every week, and became much more popular as a result.

In early high school, I played a lot of Tribes 1 (with some mod that I don't remember the name of) and Aliens vs Predator.

In later high school, CS 1.6 and Deus Ex multiplayer, still with Starcraft mixed in.

In college, it was "flavor of the month". We had a crazy file-sharing network, so the common in-dorm games switched around all the time. Warcraft 3, Counterstrike, Halflife 2-based mods, various open source FPSes, tons of Halo 2+3, and locally-hosted WoW servers are what stick in my mind.
I wonder what the consequences for refusing to sign the NDA would be? Under consumer law, they would still be responsible for fixing your car, especially if it's a safety issue.
Wealthy people are human and they can have persecution complexes just like the rest of us. When the wealthy and powerful believe they're being persecuted by the hoi polloi, that's terrifying because they have the power to do some really crazy stuff "in self defense."

Furthermore, the comparison between saying something mean about people in an income bracket and throwing a whole race of people into gas chambers is beyond offensive. If nothing else it trivializes and normalizes genocide.
> which scales linearly with the number of coins you want to mix with. Want to fully mix 1,000 coins together? You need a 30kb transaction

Actually, it does not scale linearly, it scales logarithmically in the worst case.

If you create a transaction to send 1543XMR, it splits it into 4 pieces: 1000, 500, 40, and 3, respectively. Each of these transactions are put into a ring signature, where the other transactions in the ring are selected from the pool of all other transactions of the same size, since the creation of the network. I'm not sure why you think that it scales linearly on the amount of coins sent.

Edit: Unless you mean, "to achieve perfect anonymity, you need to mix your coins with every other transaction of the same size, which scales linearly with the total number of transactions performed since the start of the network", in which case, yes. It is linear. But thats serious overkill, theres no reason to have a ring size that large.
> A growing problem I see is desire to persecute the wealthy, or lump them all into one "evil" class.

I don't see this happening in any substantial way but most importantly, I don't know. What I am sure of is that we need some data indicating a problem exists before we start thinking about its cause and consequences; otherwise it's just speculation built upon the foundation of more speculation about something that may not exist, and if it does exist it may be completely different than what we imagine.

I can think of a story where it doesn't exist, FWIW: Americans love success and praise the wealthy. Many working class people support the Republican Party, whose policies generally are aimed at helping the wealthy (e.g., reduced tax burdens), and its current billionaire presidential candidate who openly celebrates his wealth. A famous book from a few years ago was "What's the Matter with Kansas?", asking why these people apparently vote against their economic self-interest.
It's so nice to see that Appelbaum's defenders have finally found a woman they believe.
Larry Page Funding Flying Car Companies Zee.Aero and Kitty Hawk
You are indeed correct.

a is Spanish Spanish

por is Mexican Spanish
And I'll still keep not buying Blackberry!
Interesting. Would you mind elaborating?
I think it's just how colloquial definitions have taken over: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11873396
I hope you are correct. For my startup, I've assumed you are correct.

Since my startup is my first Web site, I'm no expert in the issues in the OP here. So, HELP!

Guys here who know more than I do about Web apps on different Web browsers on different client devices, which is nearly everyone on HN, help me out here -- am I on or off track? Where am I going wrong?

So, what I've built is just a Web site (Web app). For the code to run in production, it's about 20,000 programming language statements in about 80,000 lines of typing. It's nearly all in Visual Basic .NET 4.0 with ASP.NET and ADO.NET.

For the user's browser, the user interface (UI), and user experience (UX) the site is all old and simple, dirt simple.

My guess is that the Web pages should look fine on any device with a Web browser up to date as of 10+ years ago.

So, the site is just simple, standard, old HTML and a little really simple CSS. The CSS is all in the same file as the HTML.

Microsoft wrote a little JavaScript for me, but I never wrote a single line of it. There is no use of Ajax. So far there is no use of cookies.

So, for one Web page, what goes to a user is just one HTML file with CSS, a small JavaScript file, likely standard from Microsoft, and a file for each of the images.

The fonts are large and standard. The colors are simple with high contrast.

For images, there are ads in the two standard sizes, banner ads 720 pixels wide and 90 pixels high and other ads 300 pixels wide and 250 pixels high. Otherwise the images are just a few, simple, small PNG files for logos.

The only HTML controls are single line text boxes, buttons, and text with links.
There are no roll overs, pull downs, pop ups, or icons. There is no auto-complete.

The natural language on the site is all English, but it is all very simple, and the user interface is so simple that a person with no knowledge of English should be able to learn to use the site in less than 15 minutes.

The page layout is all done with just tables with all widths fixed. E.g., each Web page is exactly 800 pixels wide. Since there are both horizontal and vertical scroll bars, the Web pages should be usable in a window as narrow as 300 pixels wide and 200 pixels high.

Each Web page sends for about 400,000 bits (except for the ads from ad servers).

The reason for people to use the site is for the information it provides. The site is quite interactive, and there is an iterative, game aspect as in games where wander through tunnels with clues and looking for coveted prizes. Maybe for some users the site will have an addictive quality.

From what details I've given, is it likely that the Web pages are simple enough to work on nearly all current Web browsers on whatever client side devices?

Where am I going wrong?

Thanks.
AoE1 and 2 were such great games.

I owe some of my high school social life to the fact I could beat anyone there at aoe, so I made friends with some of the older kids by teaching them good builds.
> Arguing that private background checks are just as effective as government fingerprint checks is a nuanced point of view.

No, it's not. In this case there's no risk (see the majority of areas where taxi drivers are not fingerprinted and the lack of rape epidemics) so there's no benefit to any mitigation strategy.

You'd receive just as much value from an anti-rape charm bracelet.

If there was a real problem you could actually analyze it, knowing what we know of rapists, and see how much of a barrier each type of countermeasure would provide. Not "nuanced" but fact-based.

> Through their vote, they expressed more trust in the government's claim that fingerprint checks are more secure than private checks.

The same government that paid to build fear over a non-existent rape epidemic paid to tell them that their solution was better.

If I hire an expert and that expert lies to me, yes I'd probably be fooled. But having fooled me doesn't somehow vindicate the expert. Even if Uber was banned by an actual popular vote it would be meaningless at this point.
Your feedback is exactly the same that I get from others coming from that program. Thanks!
Again, I'm just saying you're comparing the perfect vs the better than almost anyone else (by your own admission). Paying well to you might mean 400k a year, I don't know. I think its eminently possible to get 100k-150k/yr as a senior developer and not work over 40 hours a week. Maybe not where you live though, but remote I'd imagine you could easily find something for 80k at 40hrs a week or less.

I do understand the drudgery of work, and how it can hold back cognitive development and just plain be unhealthy at times. I don't understand how you can compare against your mother and brother's experiences and still come out saying you won't take a job. I'm admittedly in a fine place right now, but I remember very clearly when I wasn't.
For us Age of Mythology, Age of Empires 2 and of course CS 1.6 :D
Sex the new currency on trading site Bunz
Creating drama in a community is harmful to the community as a whole by discouraging outsiders from joining, and encouraging people to leave. Those are all plausible goals of an attack regardless of the direct importance of Jacob Appelbaum himself.

Regardless of whether the allegations are true, false, or a mixture of both, the Tor community needs to find better ways of handling situations like this in the future to better protect both victims of abuse, and victims of false accusations, to make sure people in that community feel safe and can focus on their work.
Send your boss the link in an email hiding the address.

Problem solved.
Wait, so it's "Not uncommon"... so then it's..... ok got it.
Archaeologists discover massive Petra monument that could be 2,150 years old
> Maybe similarity to reality is a hallmark of excellent comedy. This is certainly true of one of my favorite comedy shows Louie, which is almost hyperrealistic.

Similarly medical professionals seem to agree Scrubs is much more closer to reality than the "dramatic" Grey's Anatomy. Another show that comes to mind is Malcolm in the Middle.
Added in a small edit for clarification, but yes, I don't think he was talking about genocide, which is obviously not happening at this point, but rather the attitude of hatred towards success, which was a large part of the propaganda used against Jews.
He's fairly closely aligned with the neoreactionary / dark enlightenment movement which does have some elements of libertarianism but is more focused on the rejection of democracy, taxes, and anything approaching egalitarianism.

He wrote an essay for Cato a few years ago that spells out his views fairly specifically:

http://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/education...

There are some stark quotes, "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible" or "Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women — two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians — have rendered the notion of “capitalist democracy” into an oxymoron.

In that sense, his support for Trump makes more sense.
I think it led to a good payoff of a server being on fire.
Lenovo phones get Tango augmented reality and snap-on modules
LAN parties were an interesting normative force at my high school. You always hear about the tension between jocks and geeks. But jocks like playing video games as much as geeks, who had the technical know-how to get networked games going. So the jocks at my high school were really interested in being friends with us nerds. We finally had something in common! Our LAN parties were this strange alternate universe where the captain of the football team hung out with the science fair nerds. We even had cheer leaders come to our LAN parties.

I graduated before the internet really obviated the need for LANs. From younger friends, I heard that when the Xbox 360/PS3 came out, LAN parties slowed down, and jocks ceased interactions with nerds. But there was that brief period in the early 2000s where we existed in harmony.
Silicon Valley isn't the birthplace of all high-tech.
It's set in Dallas. They're finally going to Silicon Valley in the yet to be released third season.
Help and Support Me
I think the "god you must be mad spy agencies wouldn't do that" argument went out the window a long time ago.
What many of these comments seem to be missing is that I don't think Doc Searls meant Linux the kernel when he said this. He meant Linux the OS (which some want to call GNU/Linux as he mentioned) with all these parts included.

All of these components played their part in the rise of the OS and benefited from each other. The Linux kernel as well as things like the GNU project were absolutely necessary for this ecosystem to becoming a reality and that is what OS X benefited from as well.
For anyone that likes this sort of thing, I found a few videos of old LAN parties from 1998-2001:

https://youtu.be/ch__Ah2iCtQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9X43soJt7jI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJ6bzgl6vKA

Also, this is much more recent but really captures the whole LAN party spirit. It's a basically bunch of guys playing sudden-death Minecraft.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUNF3_hO_no

There are some other LAN games on their channel that are fun as well.
I'd say that was the cleverest comment I've ever read, but I'm afraid the hyperbole, satire, and sarcasm might be overlooked.

I do admit that I usually think hyperbole is far too much overused here and on the Internet in general. My apologies to HN for this grievous oversight.
Just FYI, Vice has worked on advertising campaigns for Philip Morris. They potentially targeted middle and low income countries where youths are more vulnerable to these types of advertising. Since learning about Vice leveraging its youth market knowledge for big tobacco, I've decided to stop clicking to their content and related sites. http://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/may/20/walt-disney-vic...
Actual data: http://report.turing.io/
Google's Search Recommendation Seemingly Altered
This was even before LAN parties became a thing, but I still remember playing 'hunt' (IIRC) on pre-Solaris Sun 3/50 workstations in the math department computer lab.

Nothing quite like those slime bombs.

Found a bit more on this impossible to search for game: http://www.pcmag.com/slideshow/255131/the-internet-s-forgott...

And: http://www.acquerra.com.au/personal/bird/hunt/
Good point. This whole "dark enlightenment" stuff seems so ridiculous to me though. :-(
cough Facebook cough
Maru OS – Your phone is your PC
Of course it does. The claims define what a patent covers. Noting that the vast majority (95%+?) of patents go unused, it's reasonable to assume that they have some correlation with market usage. What other hypothesis would you posit for the over abundance of value-less patents? Mine is that most ideas have no market value terrible, hence most patents don't either.
I think that's a totally fair reason to ask for a takedown. Like they said, the music wasn't the subject of the analysis so I'd think it isn't fair use.

However I'd be interested to know if they contacted Lewis directly with good intentions before leaping to litigation.
Great! Now all that needs to be done is establish that anthropogenic CO2 is a significant risk. The jury's still very much out on that one.
I agree with you. This was clearly an over-the-top comparison, and in our politically correct universe that didn't go over well. The "rich" face nothing remotely close to the persecution that Jews faced in Nazi Germany.

That said, as someone who has inadvertently made over-the-top comparisons myself when something bothers me greatly, I don't think he deserved the backlash he received. The problem with the PC movement is that context is completely lost. If you interpret everything you see and hear literally, as the PC crowd does, you will find yourself outraged several times per day over nothing.

He was trying to say that there is a mob mentality when it comes to the richest people in the US. The public seems hate them but have no real justification for it. In that sense, hatred of the rich is no different than the hatred displayed by racists, anti-Semites, and other such closed-minded groups. The results of that hatred aren't as extreme - at least not yet - but the hatred itself is based in the same ignorance and flawed thinking.
GitHub Link: https://github.com/maruos/maruos
I mean, that payoff would have been there if the distinction hadn't been made explicit.
That's after it's huge. Uber 0.1 was probably just WhatsApp to a couple of drivers.
you're welcome!

I'm just glad I wasn't demonized by the PC/SJW folks and downvoted into negative oblivion (because that is a real thing they do, as well, I've observed, when it comes to the topic of "rape".)

Your comment makes me think I may take the risk of trying to write a longer post somewhere on this theme. Anonymously, of course, for my own safety. :-)
Wouldn't they necessarily pass those costs on to the consumer?
I had a weird one yesterday. I went to the New York Times using private browsing and read a single article in the relationship section (something about wedding speeches) and then noticed that the next page I went to 90% of the recommended articles were engagement announcements.

I guess things are hard when you only have a single data-point to base recommendations off.