skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This "hands-off, leave it to the police" approach is largely naive. There are sites more like this on the web and they're not as successful as Facebook because they're not the experiences many want when online.

Yes, Facebook is going to be managing/filtering/curating/policing the site to some extent and yes, they want to show ads, as that's how they make money, not only to make a profit, but to run the site where this activity is happening. And some of the site management is about maintaining some level of decency or decorum, which will likely be inviting to more users, which indirectly leads to more ad impressions. It's not all directly about ad funneling and manipulation. Facebook the company is made up of people, and assuming that everything they're doing is purely to maximize profit at the cost of all else. To make such an assumption would be similar to me assuming everything you're posting has some ulterior motive, something beyond having a civil constructive discussion. I don't think that's a fair assumption to make. Is it?

Perhaps you're arguing that Facebook shouldn't exist? If that's the case, just say so.
For reference: http://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=CNY&to=USD&view=1D
> "fired on the spot"

is this just rhetoric or are you serious? there are some rhetorical devices that shouldn't be used.
I have a friend who builds kite buggies out of carbon fiber. Amazing, gifted inventor and craftsman, zero love for computers. Going to build a raspi based automatic tempering and ventilation system with him as well as seeing to getting him some crowdfunding.

Other than that, I really want to turn my, ahem, indoor flower growing project into a test environment to familiarise myself with sensor based programming. Thinking something like a bubbleponics setup with automatic nutritient dispensing and stuff. Zero human input being the goal.
Storage Primer
Being downvoted for expressing an unpopular opinion here is the equivalent of being shoved out of a circle of friends.

You should learn to take feedback less personally.

It doesn't feel good and I don't come here to feel like crap.

If someone uses emotionally charged language to denigrate you, then I think you have a valid complaint. But the interpretation you assign to a downvote is just that - your interpretation.
Po (lateral_thinking)
buf = calloc(huge, huge);
if (errno) perror("calloc failed");
printf("calloc(huge, huge) returned: %p\n", buf);
free(buf);

This has a flaw. errno doesn't magically get reset to zero. You should check the return value of calloc, then use errno. Checking if(errno) is not the right way to determine if there was an error.
Uber Bets on Artificial Intelligence with Acquisition and New Lab
You haven't proven it wrong.

Here's the earliest implementation in that repo (in Research UNIX V6; your link in V7): https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/Researc...

calloc(n, s)
{
return(alloc(n*s));
}

There are several interesting things we learn from poking around V6 though:

- `calloc` originated not on UNIX, but as part of Mike Lesk's "iolib", which was written to make it easier to write C programs portable across PDP 11 UNIX, Honeywell 6000 GCOS, and IBM 370 OS[0]. Presumably the reason calloc is the-way-it-is is hidden in the history of the implementation for GCOS or IBM 370 OS, not UNIX. Unfortunately, I can't seem to track down a copy of Bell Labs "Computing Science Technical Report #31", which seems to be the appropriate reference.

- `calloc` predates `malloc`. As you can see, there was a `malloc`-like function called just `alloc` (though there were also several other functions named `alloc` that allocated things other than memory). (Ok, fine, since V5 the kernel's internal memory allocator happened to be named `malloc`, but it worked differently[1]).

[0]: https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/Researc... (format with `nroff -ms usr/doc/iolib/iolib`)

[1]: https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/Researc...
No force is affecting the sociopolitical landscape more than technology. Ignoring this weakens the community.

Carl Sagan, Buckminster Fuller, Thoreau, MLK and many others all spoke about how our technological development is far outpacing our sociopolitical development, to our own demise.

Arbitrarily attempting to censor and separate the two is grossly negligent.
Thanks for the archive link, can also confirm that actual link doesn't work on my Shaw Canada connection either.
> I feel like people use them as an agree/disagree vote in political threads, whereas they serve as an informed/uninformed vote normally.

That's the rub: political disagreements tend to go beyond facts and into the realm of values, at which point it's no longer a matter of informedness. This phase change in the debate can be hard to detect, as even the debaters might not realize they are no longer arguing from facts (since their deeply held values may 'feel like facts'), but IMO it's the reason political discussions tend to decay in quality at a certain point, because one side is no longer honoring the previous terms of the debate, knowingly or not.

For what it's worth, I think political debates on HN are worth having and can be very productive, because my subjective sense of the HN population is that a higher percentage of us are open to reevaluating our beliefs (and potentially our values) in the face of new information than the human population at large.
> try to frustrate your candidates and ditch the ones with short tempers

There's a Mitchell & Webb sketch which seems almost obligatory here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRtBvo9grLw

"Derek is here to provide what we call 'extreme negative feedback', so that we can assess your ability to cope with stressful situations. Is that okay with you?"
Resume writer and ~20 year tech recruiter here. Just a comment to readers about the author's estimate that your resume is being reviewed for 5 minutes. It's not, so be sure not to write your resume as if it is going to get that much attention.

Don't save the good stuff for the ending, thinking "the reader will get to that." Interview or delete decisions are often made in under thirty seconds, at least for things like a quick phone screen. If you start out the resume too slow, many readers are not getting to page two.
I don't consider inclusivity necessary for respect. To me, respect is politeness, not assuming or attributing ill will to others without evidence, and the willingness to communicate effectively and honestly. As for your second point, I do have a problem with putting the community before the project. If a fantastic open source project has a one man/woman dictatorship I don't care. The quality and ease of use is all that matters to me. I really only subscribe to one rule apart from that, which is don't be an asshole. I understand why some projects would want the community focus that the CC provides, I was merely articulating my issues with it.
As someone who teaches introductory-level programming in the data science/visualization domain, I think R is undoubtedly easier for getting non-programmers from CSV/Excel data to great visualizations via ggplot2. In fact, I keep R up-to-date on my own machine for when I need to do visualizations that I can't easily hack in Matplotlib+seaborn.

But I stick to teaching Python because my priority is that students become general-purpose programmer/hackers, and data science is a very small part of what they might use programming for in their careers. Python's pandas is definitely not as elegant as R's tidyverse, where the conventions and data structures are more baked into the language. But numpy+pandas is manageable enough for novices (and just fine for experienced programmers). It's a small tradeoff for all the things you can do in Python, whether it is build and deploy a web app with Flask/Django/etc, or integrate with AWS via boto, or more specific things like manipulate video with moviepy.

That said, obviously not every stats-focused person wants to or needs to become an all-purpose engineer. I think R has basically become the lingua franca for folks in poli sci and similar departments who want to do statistical analysis, and it seems to be a huge step up from doing things in SPSS or Excel.
They don't chart until the market is open. Its still before 7 AM in BJ.
Nope, get back on narrative! If it involves tracking me it's dystopian and literally 1984, especially if I've voluntarily signed myself up to be tracked
I don't understand how your conclusion follows from the rest. The fact that your "uncontroversial critiques of the status quo" get down voted is evidence that we can't have unbiased and productive political discussions on HN.
I'm not sure how I feel about the idea. [Rumination Required]

However, I definitely like that you're trying it out.
Your Job Is Political: Tech Money in Politics
Sure you'll be able to upgrade this with more efficient turbines or something, but you'll also be able to put those more efficient turbines in a hydro-electric dam or wind turbine, or coal burning plant. I'm not seeing the magical potential for improvements in concentrated solar that you wouldn't get from any other type of generator.
A nit: the way you're quoting here makes it difficult to distinguish between quoted text and your own commentary. I encourage you to use another method, such as adding quotation marks or new lines.
How Design Impacts the Psychology of Sales
What I really fear is that simple statements of fact, e.g. "average global temperatures are increasing", will be flagged as being (scare quotes) political (end scare quotes).
definitely not my forte. Im just relaying the points referenced.
I've never heard this "rule" before, do you have a source? "Cost" is a pretty flimsy concept.
> I consider inclusivity a minimum standard of mutual respect, do you not?

I do not. I don't know what this "inclusivity" stands for.
Removing votes will transform this in something like the comment threads of youtube. The vote system is not perfect, but in technical discussions it usually is helpful to make the good comments float to the top.
Servers definitely have SAS drive bays but many of the drives are SATA. And Cisco/Dell/HPE drives are rebranded from Intel/Micron/Samsung/Seagate/etc.
Hello everyone, I'm the guy in the video!

SPOILER ALERT

If you watch you will notice I do a really sneaky thing where it's possible that I'm comparing the two in order to show the folly of saying that it's R vs Python... :) If you have any questions, I'll do my best to be around! Cheers.
This is not hyperbole.

http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/11/20/donal...

> Donald J. Trump, who earlier in the week said he was open to requiring Muslims in the United States to register in a database, said on Thursday night that he “would certainly implement that — absolutely.” Mr. Trump was asked about the issue by an NBC News reporter and pressed on whether all Muslims in the country would be forced to register. “They have to be,” he said. “They have to be.’’
...
Asked later, as he signed autographs, how such a database would be different from Jews having to register in Nazi Germany, Mr. Trump repeatedly said, “You tell me,” until he stopped responding to the question.
This news reminded me of this gem, from back in the day (I think 1996-ish):

http://www.markheadrick.com/midi/absmfaq.txt

In section 1.4 they very emphatically state that "with current
technology, IT CAN'T BE DONE."

They conclude: "Think of it this way: If you don't mind spending more than the US national debt on computer equipment and waiting a few years for the job to complete,
you can have a system that MIGHT accurately convert the digital waveform
data of a 5 minute song into a small, compact MIDI file.

Otherwise, you can blow a couple of thousand dollars hiring a professional
band of studio musicians and engineers who can probably give you what you
want in about one day."

It is humorous for its emphatic-ness, but also educational for being a picture into how we've historically thought about this problem.
Lex Luther would be a killer name for a support library.
These project aim at the bleeding edge so if a maintainer sets the bar high, then it's expected to keep up with other aspects as well. Your work as a maintainer doesn't stop when the /src folder is full of code. Then comes the boring part.

These things change from project to project and if a project gets more traction other people will join to fill the missing gaps.

We can expect developers to contain themselves, but some just can't. They are precisely the ones who can't be stopped with any policy. Some are just in a bad mood and they also have graphomania, some are constructive some are mean. I think it's fine as is.
No matter what sort of disaster of a thread one finds oneself in, commenting like this is right out of the question. We're hasty to ban accounts that post like this here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Amazon to open a chain of 2000 grocery stores
The major point of frustration was JSX preprocessing for React.

Need JSX? You have to use Babel. There is no zero configuration for Babel anymore, so you have to spend time learning it and resolving numerous build conflicts with cryptic error messages.

Todo list example with React+Redux+Babel6 takes 14 JS files, Babel configuration file, Webpack configuration file and Node package file to be written anew. This is what "Javascript fatigue" is about: when you get to the working first example from the documentation, you will be completely exhausted.

The amount of boilerplate with this "standard" setup is worse than with Java/Maven, and this is quite an accomplishment. :(
When I got stuck with Linux or C during my Barnes and Noble learning days, I just went on IRC
i member.
I think the author's point is opportunistic optimization. He didn't ask us to rely on this behavior.
Sorting by responses just makes the controversial ones go to the top.
I'm waiting for Amazon Yak, for all your shaving needs. Or maybe yacc. For your syntax tree parsing needs.

Seriously though, Lex is an old school tokenizer for parsing problems.
Check out https://juliabox.com/, which despite the name also supports Python.

(Disclaimer: service is run by my employer)
Docker only, which is a shame.
Restoring Git force push from GitHub without the commits locally
Yes. My main supermarket (a former Safeway in the UK) has one person looking after 20 self-checkout stations. I guess most of us have learned the system by now.....

Self-checkout works well for half a dozen items in a hand basket. If you have a trolley full of a week's shopping, you're going to use a cashier. In fact, in this supermarket, you can't even get a trolley into the self-checkout area.

My local M&S store has three different checkout areas. (1) traditional, for people with trolleys. (2) Self-checkout area for people with baskets. (3) Really fast (but very narrow) lane for people just holding a few items in their hands. You almost never see people using the "wrong" area.

What's interesting is that I usually pick the one with the longest queue, ie line 3. The cashiers are really fast so you don't have to wait long.

One other factor is that a lot of us in line 3 are using contactless (Wave & Pay) cards, so the payment process doesn't slow things down. People who don't usually use the waiting time to get their cash ready.
> For one week, political stories are off-topic. Please flag them. Please also flag political threads on non-political stories. For our part, we'll kill such stories and threads when we see them. Then we'll watch together to see what happens.

Okay, I've flagged this one thread titled "Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week". It was this strange and laborious screed about how political speech is harmful or something?

Privileging "non-political" speech is an implicit endorsement of the status-quo, and thereby, an incredibly political action.
Technology is inherently political, you cannot separate hackers from politics, and to try is a fools errand.

That being said, I think I understand where this is coming from, so I have empathy with dang and the hn team about it, but I disagree with this move on principle, especially now, at a time when some very important techno-political moves are being made.

For example, the FBI now claims to have the ability to use 0-days to hack thousands of computers on a single search warrant! It's completely unconstitutional, and that is a huge deal, technologically, and politically, that I haven't seen addressed by any crowd very well, and it's the kind of discussion HN needs to have, not to avoid. To suddenly have a non-political week when some of the most important things, time sensitive things, are happening right now is not good at all.

The timing of this also feels suspicious, and there is something else that feels suspicious to me as well, and that's the algorithm that controls what is on the front page. I've seen repeatedly, enough to no longer call it just coincidence, that stories of techno-political important, like the FBI one, get ~250/500+ points and have ~100/300 comments, that are completely off the front page long before is normal for more mundane stuff. I think the hn userbase deserve more transparency on this front.

HN is an American based forum, so while I understand the want to lean towards a type of globalistic technocratic neutrality, I think that is a mistake and fails to take into account the primary user-base, and I think the hackers and geeks of the world, but in particular America, have a duty to participate in the political discussion that is going to be needed to steer policy of our American system, because the revolutionary nature of technology is quickly getting out of control for ordinary citizens and politicians, and our system impacts the rest of the world.

We need more politics, not less, but we need it in the unique HN style where people can have good manners on the discourse, which is much more conducive to intellectual conversation than just about any other internet forum I can think of other than slashdot in it's heyday.

With the increasing totalitarian surveillance society that we as hackers have handed to the politicians through technology, I think we have a duty to also protect the citizen-victims of our technology run amok in the hands of others. We can't, and shouldn't, hand a technological nuclear weapon to nation states and just walk away and say, but we just want to talk about the technology of the thing. It's a naive and fundamentally flawed process of thinking. I also think it's time for the HN team and it's users to have a more serious discussion about how they want to participate in the future of the internet, and the dystopian society it is enabling, piece by piece.

I also have a single question for the HN team:

Have you been pressured by the US government in any way shape or form on this subject?

In protest of this move, I will not be participating on HN until the week is up.
There can be a debate about how much global warming would happen or even, potentially, whether or not there are highly complex forces at work that could potentially cause it to be null. And, there's also the potential question of how much the climate would change given a certain amount of increased energy in the system (global warming just means that there's increased energy in the system). However, it seems like, from the measurements we have seen, there is quite a bit of warming from this and that the climate change is likely to be severe. We're already seeing quite a lot of it and we'll almost certainly see a lot more.

So, sure, there are questions about how bad it'll be. But those questions are just: will this be bad or really bad. They're not: is global warming occurring or not?
I think you're taking these downvotes way too personally.

Also, yes, in a strongly charged political thread, up and downvotes are used very differently (compared to the wide variety of ways people use up/down otherwise, definitely not just "un/informed", take a breath and a step back and you can see that). I've seen it, and it seemed mostly there was wild voting going on, and if it changes the meaning in any sense, only to make the votes less meaningful, so just don't worry about it.

I've personally seen maybe two of those threads, cause as a non-US citizen I don't have much of a beef in it. I think stuff like that is what prompted this detox-week.

But from what I saw, the up/downvotes really went both ways. I know for sure, because that's when I realized the voting was going wild, reasonable comments on both sides voted in to greyness.

BTW the recent discussions about the new Macbook being sufficiently "Pro" or not, followed pretty much the same pattern and I'd love to have a detox week for those as well.

edit: Hey. So, we were explicitly not talking about our personal political points of view, but just about dealing with opposing views and reactions there on. Now I see you're getting greyed out. While I'm getting mad upvotes (you guys). Can we maybe agree that it's maybe perhaps not the political points of view that make the difference here, but rather the earlier-mentioned S2B ratio?
There are at least functional programming languages that try to let you get by without or at least less GC:

ATS: https://bluishcoder.co.nz/2011/02/27/linear-datatypes-in-ats...

Stalin does global static life time analysis and MLKit uses GC only to augment it's region based scheme, but you can turn it off (at the cost of guaranteed space safety).

Of course Rust is a bastard child of ML as well.
I was not aware that MPLS provides for encapsulation of Layer 2 frames.
Those might just be today's lucky 10,000[0] who haven't seen the discussion up to that point, and a small price to pay for being able to discuss it at all.

I know I just learned something from this meta discussion, about the argument that the economy can't support UBI based on GDP numbers, and I'm eager to go read more. Most arguments I have seen say it won't work because of moral hazards and I haven't seen an argument that says it flat out can't be done, because there are so many different approaches and different ways it could play out.

[0]https://xkcd.com/1053/
This is a trivially easy problem if you have stereo cameras, just like humans.
Find traces of bad guys in evidence
My understanding of the current coding bootcamps is that they're becoming a finishing school. Most people have some basic programming before they come in, and they are learning the basics of current web development processes on their dime rather than the company. The company then is taking a smaller risk compared to someone with no vetting and no experience.

I have a friend who realized academia wasn't for them after their Ph.D/postdoc. It would be asinine for them to go back for a Computer Science undergrad, but they're in their mid-thirties and essentially are making a career change from academia. They have all the internal skills for becoming a developer or QE, but need some social signaling that they have a chance of doing the job.

I think of that person as someone for whom the bootcamp is valuable. Spend a few months learning to code, then apply to the bootcamp as a finishing school/paid recruiter.

(As an aside, getting off the academia path for those in the humanities is rather difficult at this point. We have really smart people stuck in terrible jobs.)