skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Better than doing nothing I suppose. Also, sometimes the research needs to be done to know whether we can do nothing or whether we can.
Embedding Guile does sound interesting, but the problem is I don't have any use-cases. I have looked into SBCL before, so I may check it out.

Chicken Lisp seems nice with its packaging system, but at the same time, that's the only experience I've had with it. I'll probably end up going with SBCL; I have seen it recommended many, many times for beginners wanting to use lisp.
It belongs to them now, but under the conditions that I agreed to. So, they have to keep the source free or they will have violated a legally binding agreement with me.
That's not true. If your project is licensed under "GPLv3 or later" then you can relicense the project under GPLv4 when it comes out. This is the whole point of the "or later" clause in the GPL. It is also not true for lax licenses like MIT or Apache, since they allow sublicensing.
I agree. As a casual Scala developer I feel like SBT has always been a disaster. Does anyone know why Gradle isn't more popular for Scala development? I've had generally very positive experiences using it with Java.
Interesting! My team in HCOM is all Scala, but more generally here and in our upstreams it is still quite niche.

Are you based in the UK? It would be interesting to compare notes. :)
To quote Marc Andreessen: They promised us flying cars and they gave us... flying cars.
The vast majority of tech conferences do not.
MySQL is insanely performant for simple primary key lookups, and has a lot of good knowns. It also has fewer tripups for things like vacuuming, (pretty much requiring) pgbouncer, pgbouncer pooling settings...

If you're doing things with replication logs, mysql replication logs are a heck of a lot simpler, and there's more tooling for them in the OSS world

That said, I do use postgres a lot :)
How Subarus Came to Be Seen as Cars for Lesbians
Every time I see a revelation of what a spy agency does, I see someone making a statement like this. I'm not sure it is very helpful to the discussion, because it treats the situation as expected and dismisses people's concerns about it. It's a cynical thing to do, and begets more cynicism. And cynicism is appealing, because the revelations keep coming, keep getting worse, and efforts to counter them are outnumbered by efforts to make the situation worse. But I don't think we should give up in trying to raise awareness and understanding, and trying to fix the damage.
Electron direct ingestion gives them an survival edge in harsh environment, but that does not represent at the same time a clear advantage in the normal environment, full of bacteria-eating organisms.
Is there a problem with having a 'revolving' population of 60M? That is, we are eating out of the population, and it is replacing itself (with our help)?

Assume we could feed all the meat-eaters on a revolving 60M cattle--would we then have solved the problem? Or are we supposed to maintain a smaller-than-original population?
The value in Delivering, not Persisting
I thought conferences typically wanted to know who was proposing talks so they could look up people's backgrounds and such. Many have speakers in mind and reach out to them, rather than waiting for proposals to come in. I don't recall seeing any that talked about blinding proposals so they could be chosen without knowledge of who was doing the proposing. I'm sure it's been done, but I don't think it's common.
It can be worse he can be sent to Guantamo, the no rights land maintained by the democracy and human rights defender US government, the same that says that waterboarding is a good investigation technique.
Hacking Blind: Defeating stack overflow canaries
They are not (generally) thread safe. Quoting http://doc.qt.io/qt-4.8/threads-reentrancy.html

> Many Qt classes are reentrant, but they are not made thread-safe, because making them thread-safe would incur the extra overhead of repeatedly locking and unlocking a QMutex. ...

> Some Qt classes and functions are thread-safe. These are mainly the thread-related classes (e.g. QMutex) and fundamental functions (e.g. QCoreApplication::postEvent()).
Depends on the BT headphones.

I've had 7+ hours of listening (normally don't go around wearing headphones for more than that in a day), and good audio quality with Parrot Zik (and they even use bluetooth 3, and not the lighter on battery and better 4 version).
> you avoid the "oh I put it in upside down, no wait, I was right the first time."

The same is true for USB-C

> For power and data.

The same is true for USB-C

> going on long trips in a car that's more than 2 years old

Lightning has maybe 2 years of existence on USB-C - that's a very small space of tech in-between microUSB and USB-C
Judging by its removal, no.
There's always statutory damages: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statutory_damages_for_copyrigh...
>In fact, there’s no single set of genes that all living things need in order to exist. ... They found that not a single gene is shared across all of life.

Isn't the current theory that all life on Earth has a common ancestor? Wouldn't this point put that into question and introduce the possibility that life has developed multiple times independently of each other or would this lack of shared genes eventually appear through divergent evolution? It seems like the former option would greatly increase the fl component in the Drake Equation meaning alien life is even more likely than previously thought.
Progress Towards 100% HTTPS, June 2016
NYC, DC, and Oklahoma City, among other places, have hosted a number of trials like this. Having just attended a conference on atmospheric transport and dispersion [0], I know multiple organizations use the resulting data to validate their transport models.

Subways are really interesting beasts from the point of view of people who try to model the transport and fate of airborne materials. The trains themselves pump material through the tubes, the cars entrain material in their wake, and the cars capture and carry material along with the passengers (meaning you can disperse material even after a car comes out from underground). All this is intermittent and bi-directional, following the train schedules. And then it's all tightly coupled to the city's above-ground airflow patterns, both because the train stations have massive ventilation exchange with the outdoors, and because there can be passive vents at street level.

Particles add another layer to the problem. As the article states, they deposit out of the air, and they can resuspend, e.g., due to human activity. They can also hitch a ride on people and things. They also get captured in ventilation system filters. Finally the rates at which they do all these things depends strongly on the particle size -- and the particle size can change due to things like coagulation.

[0] http://camp.cos.gmu.edu/20th-announcement.html
Copyright assignment isn't binary. It's a contractual agreement like anything else. You can make requirements like "it will always be under copyleft" (which is what the FSF and some Apache projects do). You should avoid projects that ask for blanket copyright assignment on a copylefted work.
Sorry but this gets my Goat.

ISRO saves lives. Their satellites, gave us early warning during the Cyclones 2-3 years ago, allowing for rapid evacuation and relief.

They put food on our plates and help poor farmers plan crops because those satellites are the ones giving us excellent, world class meteorological data.

It's done on a budget so tiny, that the ROI for this division is possibly better than any other government department in India. AND - ISRO launches make money for the organization.

It's an example of excellence in challenging conditions, and everything that Nehruvian style engineering stood for.

They do India proud, and naysayers can be safely ignored.
Maybe it's not the organizers, but the attendees are exhibiting self selection bias? Maybe males have a stronger urge to seek reputation/fame, so are more likely apply to conferences?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-selection_bias
>If you plot sales volume on the vertical axis and price on the horizontal axis, you get a line called the price elasticity curve. Very few price elasticity curves are linear.

That's why I've already mentioned "price elasticity complications" in my first comment -- and gave some examples of how those can play out in real life.
What if conferences are accidentally excluding women speakers? Is that still a bad thing?

Yes, we should chose speakers based entirely on their qualifications. But we don't. The problem is that people somehow assume that the current status quo of speakers almost always being men is what you get when you chose based entirely on qualifications, and any change from that must make things worse.

This is not about adding women by introducing gender bias. This is about adding women by reducing gender bias.
Application configuration. Code is data, data is code.
Tor Browser 6.0.2 is released
Multiple interpreters in the same process.
When you're talking about 175 different genes, there are far more combinations of genes than there are atoms in the universe.

Perhaps a quantum computer can tackle this kind of problem, but nothing we have today can brute-force the solution.
This is why I'm getting into promoting colonization of Mars and beyond. All human life could be wiped out forever by a single catastrophic event which is surely more important than most other problems.
I accept the charge of cynicism. I am not saying we shouldn't do anything about it, though. The distinction is important.

But it does beg the question: if we knew it then, and it bothered us, why didn't we do something about it then?
> What’s the functional reason to get rid of analog headphones? It’s not quality – analog headphones have excellent sound quality, and 99% of people won’t be able to tell the difference with ‘digital’ sound, right?

You have it backward - analog headphones are superior, generally speaking.

The signal chain is:

digital source > D/A converter > amplifier > transducer (speaker / headphone)

"Digital headphones" simply move the D/A converter, amplifier, and transducer into the headphone package.

In almost all cases, the higher-quality D/A converter and amplifier will be ones not crammed into your headphones; and the higher-quality transducers are not the ones packaged with a cheap DAC and low-power amplifier into your earbuds. The same holds true for speakers (exception being high-quality powered loudspeakers, still, keep the DACs out of the speakers).

And don't get me started about Bluetooth....
Turns out most software engineers are hypocrites
> The copyright assignment requirements in GNU projects point to the GPL not being good enough, thereby undermining it.

FSF copyright assignment for GNU projects is optional, and simply allows them to enforce the copyright on your behalf; most individuals don't have such resources available.
Having had to write in Scribble, Markdown, HTML, LaTeX, and a other similar environments, I'm very surprised everyone is that excited about Scribble. It's not bad, but it was never a game changer for me. Is it just because of the ability to use LISP macros? Is that really that big a deal for you? Personally, I really like Jinja2 for my dynamic sites, MarkDown for writing static documents quickly, and LaTeX for anything where a professional document should be created. What do you think is the major advantage of Scribble?
HomeKit works with non-Apple connected devices like lights, switches, cameras, locks, etc. Apple doesn't actually make any such devices themselves. But as far as I know, you need an iOS or tvOS device to actually run the HomeKit framework and connect the devices together.
...speaking of 'unhelpful' to the conversation, please explain what 'We' can do about it? Nothing. The fact is that CONgress actually legalized domestic propaganda (which is what this is).

'raising awareness' does nothing as the snowden incident showed us. 1984 is the SOP now.
Errr, what?

Python is the clear winner in the scientific computing space.
Dotcom is a New Zealand citizen facing charges within the borders of New Zealand. New Zealand just can't grab on of its citizens and toss them out.
Most GPL projects do this. I don't have access to my box, but if you did a search for licenses you'd find many use "or later" (and in fact a lot of code within Linux uses "or later" as well). So practically it's a very common upgrade path. And some people will actually email every contributor to ask to relicense the code.
Thanks! Hadn't heard of the Texas sharpshooter fallacy.
I'm not a security specialist, but I found this summary of a 2014 article accessible and fascinating. As best I understand it, processes include a secret 8-byte "canary" in each stack frame, so that they can detect buffer overflows and simply crash. Normally an 8-byte value is unguessable, but if the process runs under a supervisor the canary is not re-initialized after a crash (I don't understand why?), so if the attacker can perceive a crash vs not-crash, they can guess one byte at a time, which is much faster. It's like breaking a combination bike lock where you can feel if each individual number is right, so you don't have to guess the whole combo at once. Incidentally, isn't this how Hollywood always shows it happening in the movies?: the first number stops spinning, then the second, etc. That has always bugged me, but perhaps they aren't so far off. :-)
Niche languages overwhelming only have people saying good things about them, because very few people care about any complaints.

Well used languages have large numbers of people complaining about them, because a) change is harder b) more people care about the result, so you get heard more c) they are more likely to be forced by circumstance to use the language.

Reviews of languages are generally a rubbish metric for deciding if it's any good.
The atmosphere is thinner toward the poles. The partial pressure of oxygen at the summit of Denali in Alaska (6,000m) is about the same as at the summit of a 7,000m peak in the Himalayas.
My sincere apologies in advance for being completely off topic here, but I'll share this in case someone needs a good chuckle . This is from one of my favorite episodes of Arrested Development "Beef Consomme".

http://i.imgur.com/oE8rlAE.gif

It is entirely impossible for me to not think of this when anyone mentions "Bees".
> I consider you the fork. Without hostility.

Nano has been part of the GNU Project since 2001, and Benno has been contributing to that project for years.
Simple Postgres for Node.js
Guile programmer here. I highly recommend extending Guile rather than embedding it within another program. For example, the GNU Guix package manager provides a suite of tools, but it's also a collection of Guile modules so that other programs can use it as a library.

I know quite a few SBCL users now from the Lisp games community, so if you are enticed by CLOS and such then that also seems like a fine road to travel down. Good luck on your Lisp journey!
Cellular automata comes to mind. I'll think on it.

This AMA has really been neat, thanks so much for doing it.
Can we get an experiment done immediately to see if they will survive off of the electricity inside a vacuum?
If that happened, people could fork the projects immediately and continue under the old licenses. Sure, the FSF would be able to distribute code in an unfriendly license, but the community backlash would be so bad they wouldn't even consider doing that.
I'll just leave this here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTMxfAkxfQ0
New Dropbox Productivity Features Released Today
Why Alibaba fired its top two salespeople
It makes almost no difference in any practical scenario, because conventional pin-tumbler locks are comprehensively broken. They can be opened instantly by an unskilled person using a $5 bump key.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5fLgxqWvJQ

Impressioning from a photo only poses a meaningful threat to genuinely high-security lock systems like the Abloy Protec or the ASSA Twin.
Well that's nonsense. Do you honestly think most countries would rather let the charges expire rather than agreeing to do an interview outside of their jurisdiction.
Can a machine surprise you? We believe so. (SoundCloud)
Is there any work being done on being able to easily switch out standards?

That way when https is found to lack some feature, we can easily upgrade to httpz almost immediately?
I'm going to let the term "Passenger drone" slide, but I will feel a hint of aggravation when CNN reports on "Manned UAVs"
Actually, a lot of code in the Linux kernel is GPLv2-or-later. Its just that there's a lot of GPLv2-only code that means the final product is GPLv2-only. In fact there was a time when Linus asked people to show their opinion on the licensing exactly by doing that and specifying in every file what the author licensed their changes under.
Yes that was a concern of mine as well. They stated that if they do go out of business they would open source everything so that we could build our own solution. That's basically what convinced me to go all in with their product.
I've read that the 2013 NDAA passed by Congress removed the ban on propaganda targeted at domestic audiences.

I'm not entirely sure if that's true, but there are several places online claiming this. Wikipedia mentions it as well [0].

Anecdotally, around that time Google News started indexing Voice of America, which is funded by the US government [1].

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Defense_Authorizati...

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_of_America
Years ago I read an interesting paper comparing the types of subsystems found in the Linux kernel with subsystems found in biology (or what we understand of them currently).

There is a lot of redundancy in biology, which allows for biological systems to be pretty robust, adaptable and fault tolerant. Of course this also means it's really hard to fix that biological process when things go horribly wrong, such as in many forms of cancer.

Paper: “Comparing genomes to computer operating systems in terms of the topology and evolution of their regulatory control networks.” By Koon-Kiu Yan, Gang Fang, Nitin Bhardwaj, Roger Alexander, Mark Gerstein. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 107 No. 18, May 4, 2010.
I am trying to look at it from a business perspective. Instead of having a handful of monoliths that are managed, how do you scale the operations side to handle hundreds or thousands of micro services.

See http://highscalability.com/blog/2014/4/8/microservices-not-a...
This 9to5 article is a bad summary of the original. Follow this thread instead, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11953204
> Is there any reason why a replacement wire with a lightning connection on one end wouldn't be possible?

Good luck getting "piece of replacement wire" approved by the MFi program. Apple will only let you sell a complete device (because otherwise someone could just buy lots of these replacement wires and bypass their licensing program)
Extremophiles have evolved and live around volcanic vents, so I wouldn't put it past nature.
For iOS developers -- Does this present any feature opportunities for you, or has Apple locked down access to the kernel in such a way as this is purely a security/research opportunity?
Tech companies being required to enforce regulatory burdens is not only impractical but it's also a very slippery slope to the orwellian future we claim to not want. Airbnb shouldn't be any more responsible for making users follow housing law than Tesla should be responsible for making people obey speed limits or home automation companies making people follow water usage rules.

There's plenty of valid criticism to be made about Airbnb not properly vetting their users when they offer up properties, but enforcing rental/hotel law shouldn't be one of them. It's not Airbnb's problem, it's the landlord's, as we're now seeing.
> By bragging about things like these we merely betray our jingoism. And what's more when a real technological feat happens it would be drowned out because we gloated over things like this.

Yes exactly. So much gloating for so many things. Only if it were media, but our prime minister tweeting so much about this one event, its not proper. At least @isro has not joined this circlejerk.

Anyway its better to ignore these press-releases and focus on the people who does the real work. So does ISRO have tech blog or something where they go in detail ?
> They took what was a trivial to implement, obviously correct (in the sense of program correctness) fix: double the block limit.

Not to mention, 2MB was a compromise from 8MB which was a compromise from 20MB.

Where's the compromise from the other side?
A very fair point, but in this case installing filters or a reasonable hope for decontamination isn't really an option; the only thing we can do is prevent, detect, and evacuate.
The linked thread has no comments, whereas this has three. In fact the only useful link is the one it points to, which to save people's time is

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601748/apple-opens-up-iph...
Nissan announces next version of Leaf will go 200 miles on a charge
Let us not make wide sweeping statements about the journalistic relationship between one of the world's largest news organizations and one of the world's largest nations. Seems a bit blunt.
Once you transfer your copyright to someone, the creative work is entirely theirs.

Note that in jurisdictions like Germany, it's impossible to sign away our version of copyright ('Urheberrecht', creator's rights): At most, you can grant exclusive usage rights.
Gruber practically begs the question by assuming that 3.5mm is a legacy port in need of replacement, lumping it together with other short-lived artifacts of the PC era like VGA, ADB, and the 30-pin dock connector.

As for quotes, cherry picked or otherwise, here are some that jump out:

> But I say at some point [3.5mm] will go away

> Apple has proven to be very good at timing the removal of established legacy ports.

> If it weren’t for Apple we’d probably still be using computers with VGA and serial ports.

> surely removing the deep headphone socket can only leave more room for a larger battery

> in five years we’ll look at analog headphone jacks the way we look at all the other legacy ports we’ve abandoned.
I might be very stupid but can someone tell me if it's something common in FOSS operating systems to have unencrypted kernel, or is this really something unique and potentially very risky?

(ND: I know macOS is far from FOSS, but it's just to have a comparison point. Shouldn't FOSS kernel be open by definition?
Liberty Mutual Unveils Video Claim Filing
Animal products are constantly snuck into processed, preserved and packaged foods. I'd find it funny, but wouldn't be surprised, to find that something derived from an animal found its way into a jar of pickles 'for flavor'.
It's at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11803165.
I'd just note that blind evaluation could be hard because of systematic discrimination biasing how you evaluate a candidate. For example, if you look at who has spoken at conferences before in your blind evaluation, it's blind, but biased by previous discrimination. it's the same sort of issue that crops up regularly in machine learning, where people assume that the data isn't the result of bias.

I'd say the correct way to avoid bias is to set a blind baseline of expectations (Like 3+ years in industry working with the topic) and then reach out to minorities. That said, even someone who doesn't have experience can be a good presenter if given the right support, I've seen great conference talk made by total newbies to a technology who were encouraged to write code making use of a new feature. They presented what they learned, problem spots that they found that might trip up someone new to the technology, and open sourced their app as a learning tool.
If that's unhelpful to the discussion, why should we discuss it at all? Isn't the point of discussing a problem finding a solution to it?