skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I read through the recent thread on teaching kids to code (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13499626) and was mildly perplexed at how seemingly successful Scratch has been.

It wasn't until the 2nd or 3rd time I'd used it that I actually figured out how to make sense of it and run something (for Scratch's definition of "run").

To be honest I've progressed extremely slowly with CompSci/programming over the past 18 years I've been using them (got my first computer around 7-8) - I started with QBasic, been shouting at PHP for way too long, I have a basic understanding of C I badly need to develop, and I'm moving toward playing with Lua next - and I hardly consider myself a dyed-in-the-algorithms academic type with a brain that's unable to understand Scratch. (In fact, I'd argue that the best programming teachers would be precisely those types of people, and if they were unable to understand Scratch that would be a major problem.)

Rather, I firmly believe Scatch's UI is a disaster, and horribly unintuitive to use. Other languages are beset with grammatical idiosyncrasies; with Scratch you have to learn the UI before you can learn the... few parts of the language that are actually there.

I'm concerned that systems like Scratch are so widely used; I fear that it's an even worse mind-scrambler than the bad sides of BASIC. Of course, like BASIC, there are good sides, and it teaches the basics without presenting a Mt. Everest-sized learning curve. Perhaps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dartmouth_BASIC was the Scratch of 1964, and I'm just griping about the dilutory effects of educationally-targeted software in this day and age and "modern" GUI design.

Scratch is also really slow/laggy on my old laptop (Thinkpad T43), I can't imagine how bad it is for schools with limited hardware.
That's because there are 18 different ways to do it, and different pieces of software use different keys/formats. I can properly set up ssh, but not because it makes any sense.

Similarly I can use git, despite it's best efforts to be inscrutable.
No, those functions were transforming the wrapped value. If there were no need to transform anything, you wouldn't need map or flatMap.
The Pi calculator text just made me burst out laughing, waking my girlfriend + baby. Still worth it.
> The harsher the punishment for heroin use, the more likely people are to get it into their heads not to fucking start taking heroin in the first place.

Except it doesn't seem to work efficiently at that in the real world.

> On the other hand, if you make heroin addiction a free ticket to lots of health care and attention and "poor schnukkums" then you actually incentivise people who are already having a bad time to get on the heroin-addict train.

If it doesn't give any benefit beyond dealing with the harms of heroin addiction there is no actual incentive.
We're using it really successfully to power the entire data layer of Nylas Mail. I figure if it's good enough for an email app (with gigabytes of text, >300k objects) then it should work for other apps too!
I don't see any need for your derision towards the original poster, and I don't think low information, low effort comments like yours fit the decorum of hacker news.
Set up a VoIP system that records all calls. When you call the customer service department at any company, open with "I'm calling from a phone system where calls may be recorded, is that OK with you?". Unless you are in a universal single party consent country such as Canada.
But let's not forget that Spencer and various members of his social circle have - for years now - been expressing approval

Actual Nazis liked to be punched by their opponents and even arrested by the cops for their nonviolent activism in the 1920s and early 1930s. They like the publicity for the same reason Gandhi and MLK liked it: It makes them sympathetic by exposing the evil behaviors of those that hate them.

Punching Spencer is a huge win for Spencer and the things Spencer stands for.
I did not downvote you myself but Trump, as a political movement, is really close to fascism. Look yourself at the definition of fascism: http://www.favreau.info/misc/14-points-fascism.php, Trump checks almost all the marks there and it makes a lot of people afraid. It does not mean anything bad is going to happen and it does not mean anything either on Trump supporters, but it's still very concerning.
There's alot of meatspace stuff suggested, but I'm an American that's overseas until April. Anything I can do to make an impact when I can't physically protest? I've made donations to the ACLU and CAIR and sent emails to my representatives, but willing to do more if there is something.
This isn't political, it's just asking how to help people in trouble.
What kind of terminal apps do you write? I havent had the need for one yet and am wondering what this tool is used for.
Please don't misunderstand me as thinking this is a "better than them" type of thing. It actively denies opponents ammunition. I'm in full agreement that it's not enough on its own. People need to be engaged in political action as well. (Edit to add: And engaged as good, upstanding members of their own local communities.) I strongly believe one of the reasons the election was as problematic as it was all around is that there was too much name-calling and misrepresentation. It allowed people even more room to filter things to align with their own biases, which is going to happen anyway.

How many people strongly supported the candidate they ended up casting their ballot for? Both Trump and Clinton had historically low favorability ratings. If people think they're being attacked by one side or the other, it makes it all the harder for them to listen to reasoned debate, and much more likely that they'll be actively voting against a candidate.

Even this "other side" language is problematic, in my opinion. How are you going to find allies among those you don't already agree with when you think of them as "other"? How do you expect them to listen to you? People dig in, get defensive, when they feel they're being attacked. They're no longer listening. There are some people who will never listen to you, or even if they do listen to you, aren't going to end up agreeing with you. But that's not necessarily everyone you don't currently agree with. If you've already written off everyone who voted for a different candidate than you, then you're stuck with very few options. People are more complex than the effectively binary option that was the 2016 US Presidential Election admits.

It's not a "better than them" thing. It's a "what's actually going to make a difference" thing. Language alone isn't going to solve this, of course. But language used poorly can drive needless wedges between people.
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Not just students - I experience this in the workplace too, and it just boggles my mind. We hired a recent grad, and after about 10 days of watching him type a password into a terminal ~20 times a day I casually mention how he can use ssh keys. His response? No, I'm not interested in that.
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Uber is currently scabbing to break a taxi strike at JFK that is being done against this immigration ban. Kalanick is actively collaborating with Trump.
You are right and that is a difficult problem. When I was younger (15-20 years ago) I was against any government control; now that I met many people and read many books and lived a few decades more, I think the government should govern far more than it does; basically I became very sceptical about the ability of many people to run their lives in almost every way. I have no clue (as I am that programmer who does not exercise enough; diet is good though) how to have free people mixed with a despot(meaning the absolute ruler, not abusive ruler)-like control without it running into abuse fast. But yes, I would not be opposed forced exercise regimes for people like me. I do not believe that kind of freedom is good for me or anyone else. Besides the basic concept of freedom which great thing, but then you get into what you say; what do you and what don't you enforce.
You can be a loyal citizen to only one country. Maintaining two passports is an open declaration of disloyalty and lack of solidarity.

And immigrants shouldn't get special privileges that natural citizens cannot, especially special privileges conferred by foreign princes and potentates.
Duly noted. Thanks for sharing the rules. We will surely do that once our platform is live :)
ATT is deploying FTTH in some areas where Google Fiber is at. I know here in Austin their 1Gbit fiber is available in quite a number of apartments (including mine). Verizon isn't really expanding FIOS anymore. But overall, ATT and Verizon are selling off their legacy DSL lines and are focusing on fixed "5G" being the next step in home broadband. And then of course both have their wireless subsidiaries where they are pushing people to so they can charge $$$ per GB.
READY? Boycott Uber. Do not use under any circumstances.
Democracy is not a stable form of government in the long term. There are a lot more former democracy's than current ones, and the US seems to be heading down a very dark path.
Then we have a cause too, so why point the finger at us? Something else caused it!

Or, I have a better idea: point the finger at the people who cast the votes.
I see this comment as a statement about the helplessness of the average American citizen to stand up to their own government.
"From 1980 to 2004, more than one out of every four Iranian immigrants was a refugee or asylee." (Wikipedia page on Iranian-Americans).

Not sure how the numbers have evolved since then, but "one in four" is far from most. And this is for immigrants in general, not green card holders.
Building Pinterest’s video platform
A friend of mine once had such an experience with an e commerce company. He wrote a script using the facebook API to comment his problem on every Facebook post of the company. He was contacted soon by the company reps and his problem was taken care of.
Community letter from Stanford leadership on immigration
Wemo Mini Smart Plug – Affordable Home Automation
I wonder how easy it is to port all those libraries to mruby's mrbgems, so we can easily pack the Ruby-based CLI program as a single binary to get Go-like benefits.
I'm not sure that's the case, but the legality of a decision aside, there is a morality aspect that one may find reprehensible, and yes, if Trump violates your moral sensibilities, you would want to remove him from office because you don't "like" him.

As far as the legality, I believe that's being challenged in court as we speak.
There are also lots of people that don't use computers in the last year that are perfectly well integrated into society. I think you're overestimating the necessity of computers. I can't understand why a doctor would be required to use a computer.
>Trump is basically an insanely narcistic person who got the presidency, and it is a stress test of our instutions to see how well they resist illegal behavior.

I'd be grateful if you could cite the specific illegal - i.e., against specific sections of the US Code - actions President Trump has taken since he's been in office. Chapter and verse, please.

Keep in mind that just because you don't like what he's doing doesn't make it illegal.
Then that means they are persistently logging everywhere you go on the web.
Building a wifi driver from source requires memorization of facts. Fundamentals of theoretical computer science doesn't seem that way to me.
> If you look at the list and you see the top places Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan are all areas Obama inherited.

No one is denying that Bush set the stage for (most) of the conflicts, but quite frankly it was Clinton's bombing campaigns in Sudan and Saudi Arabia that stoked the fires of radicalism that led to 9/11. And then of course the entire region has never been given a chance to recover from the CIA's initial 1952 coup that overthrew Iran's first Democratically elected PM (who wanted to nationalize oil) so they could re-instate the Shah, a dictator: http://www.globalresearch.ca/a-timeline-of-cia-atrocities/53...

Most of the blame goes to the US and our allied coalitions (read: US), although some certainly falls on the Soviets and China a few decades ago. The current state of the region is mostly the fault of US Presidents, though.

It's perfectly sound to criticize Obama for not doing anything to improve the situation and to actually add new conflicts, instead of trying to wrap up our initial two as cleanly and quickly as possible (Afghanistan and Iraq). Campaign promises broken, lies, and millions of people have paid the price. And what are we left with? More radicalism than we ever had before (including a savage radical 'country' with non-negligible amounts of land). Obama is a failure at best -- a war criminal, at worst.
Here comes thrle libtards. I am an immigrant living in this great nation and very happy with his action and keeping his promise.
This is what all the anti-immigration people don't get. Chances are, when their ancestors came to this country they likely weren't wanted by the current residents. Basically every American racial/cultural slur you can think of arose during the time when that group was the majority immigrant group. Every group was discriminated against (Irish, Germans, Italians, Chinese/Japanese).
That last metaphor lost me... who are the Nazis, in this allegory?
The United States has a large enough internal economy and enough natural resources that it would do just fine without a single penny of import or export of goods or services taking place.

Specific oxes would be gored, but it would be a wash, overall.
Im not sure that's the best approach.

I thought this perspective was pretty interesting: https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/posteverything/wp/201...
suck a dicc
Tech scrambles after Trump issues immigration order
What most people don't realize is that most things with Trump's name on them are just licensing deals.
Which VOC detector do you have?

After I purchased my new house (USA, Georgia) I put in the detectors. My wife is from China where people are rightfully paranoid about formaldehyde - due to low quality building material. It's basically the same in the USA, except people are a lot less knowledgeable and informed about it. My cabinets, drywall, paint all had high level of formaldehyde. Had to always had the windows open...otherwise it would rise above OSHA approved levels.

In the USA, there's no regulated levels for residence..but there is for office. Funny, isn't it.
All I know is that sometimes when I play Geometry Dash, it's too fast for me, and other times it feels kind of slow.
Why are dissenting comments on HN displayed with light grey font color? In fact it seems rather odd that comments which seemingly go against the overwhelmingly uniform consensus on this site are highlighted at all.
The world is ridiculously overfull and Americans didn't make it that way. And the rest of the world is headed for rapid population increases to make it much worse. Americans shouldn't have to suffer for that; we've got a little space left and we should guard it jealously.

And just try driving in any major prosperous city at rush hour or riding the subway. Or renting an apartment in SF or NY. We can't expand housing or infrastructure in those cities and we're admitting millions of foreigners overfilling them even further.
> High school students work their asses off to get into highly selective colleges.

Not necessarily true. I never worked hard at anything in high school, and was accepted by several ivy league colleges. My experience was not unusual. I did not work all that hard in college, but was accepted at Stanford for grad school.

(I averaged maybe 30-40hrs a week on schoolwork in college, leaving plenty of time for other activities.)

There were some who did work their asses off, but they were in the minority and I felt rather sorry for them. Either they were working inefficiently, or just weren't cut out for that career path. It'd be like me trying to be a pro athlete. I could work my ass off, and never get anywhere, as I have worse than no aptitude for it.

Some also did no perceptible work and got straight As. I was a bit envious of them :-) they were amazing people.
> He's deeply unpopular

Maybe in your echo chamber he is unpopular. I could say the same of Obama in my neck of the woods.
> It's perfectly sound to criticize Obama

No such thing was done in any kind of fashion by OP. Critizing means articulating points. All OP did was throw out numbers without context or meaning.
Here the discussion between two programmers is being compared to a car being taken to a workshop (mostly to a person whom u dont interact with on a daily basis)

When a programmer says to another programmer it "does not work", there is usually some history between these programmers where they have some level of understanding between them. This article kinda ignores that aspect.

I had never heard someone complain that it "does not work" when there is a compilation error. That is just what a non-programmer or a beginner would say who is trying to get attention for help. This example doesnt fit with the point the article is trying to make.

When someone says it "does not work", it is usually followed by a long pause, where the programmer is still wondering why it is not working. The other programmer usually gets that and they patiently wait to hear the details or ask questions because they had been there themselves.

It all boils down to what level the two programmers had worked together before and having an idea of when someone would use such a phrase without giving any explanation. Usually the other programmer already has a context of what might not be working).

If your scenario does not fit with my explanations, all I can say is that, the other people is stuck and needs some input or someone to challenge his thinking to debug it better. If someone says that, all you have to do is reply back saying "what do you mean?" and you will get flooded with information.
I used to work at a retail pharmacy and we would have addicts come in to buy needles all the time. On the one hand I felt bad about supplying these people with what they needed to feed their habit, on the other hand I felt good that they were coming to us instead of sharing needles with their buddies.
What about squirrels? :)
And the United States would do just find without their pennies nor without the grace of their presence.

The categories of people who're affected by the travel ban tend to cost the United States money in terms of public assistance, et. al. My guess is that the net economic impact - especially when considering the cost of the crimes that demographic will no longer be able to commit within the United States - will be positive.
Blogspam of

http://www.scripps.edu/news/press/2017/20170127srinivasan.ht...
Another improvement would be to allow a H1B worker to change company more easily. Today, it is not difficult per se, but there are some legal procedures that often scare companies. Basically, it is as simple as filling a H1B petition that is guaranteed to be approved since the worker is already in the US (i.e. no lottery, it's a sure thing). We're talking a few grands in legal/processing fee. Much cheaper than a recruiter but a lot of companies just don't want to deal with this.
Dual citizenship doesn't really make sense to me... when past generations left Europe for example and came to the US, they had to pledge allegiance to the flag and abandon their foreign citizenship.
Occupational licensing laws, for starters. Even the Obama administration agreed: https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2016/0...
It's kinda cute that he thinks that "marching" is where change happens. Marching is just a mildly evolved form of impotently virtue signalling on Twitter.
Richard Spencer has openly declared his White Nationalist aspirations, and is on video exhorting his supporters to party like it's 1933 and exchanging nazi salutes with them, with arguments like 'for us, it is conquer or die.'

You can see some highlights(>!) of a recent speech here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1o6-bi3jlxk

I did not decide he was a nazi by making some theoretical extrapolation using Marxist calculus or somesuch. He's saying in plain English (and occasionally German) that he wants to engage in a race-based war of conquest in which the stakes are life and death.
I cannot overstress this or agree with you more. I genuinely don't care what people's internal monologue is. I fully understand a lot of altruism is for social credit.

All that is fine, so long as over time it forms a more free, open, and welcoming society for everyone.

No one is forgetting Uber is a company with a checkered past. This just fills in one of the good squares in contrast to the bad ones.
Agreed, we should take allies we can, and save the in-fighting for another day. Casting off people who are not pristine-perfect just sets you up to fail.
>Trump's rhetoric seems entirely targeted at people who have entered or stayed in the country illegally

This is factually incorrect. The recent executive order bans the return of legal residents with green cards (from Muslim majority countries) who were out of the country at the time the order was issued. See, for example, this story from the New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/28/us/refugees-detained-at-u...
They (the RIAA) have contractors that seed the torrents you've downloaded with permission from the copyright holders to do so.

Comcast is forwarding notices given to them by the RIAA.
I got a laugh out of this.

You used a circle to depict "box breathing"; when you could just as easily have utilized a box.
I think there will be plenty who protest, and I respect them.

I think something along the lines of 'nonviolent insistence' needs to go along with the nonviolent resistance. By actually taking care of somebody left in the cold by USGov policy, we can show that the US people are made out of better stuff than might be thought if you only look at the actions of the government.
Perhaps in this case we don't need metaphorical Nazis because American politics now has real people pushing an Americanized version of the Nazi agenda?
Federal Court stays immigration order
No, it wouldn't. Comparstive advantage (and thus, gains in experienced utility from trade) is real.
Yup! It's hard! All the things you point out are right on.

We don't have the visualizations for histograms yet (though you can chart specific percentiles), but for the reasons you mention, Honeycomb is perfectly suited to give you that kind of data. I can't say we'll get that out the door soon, but it's one of my pet most wanted features so as soon as I can convince myself it's actually more important than all the other mountain of things that need to get done, you'll get your histograms and your time over time comparisons.

I've been advocating for a heat map style presentation of histograms for a long time, but I hadn't considered the difficulty that creates when trying to show time over time. That's an interesting one to noodle on.

Thanks for articulating well the value and reasons for difficulty in implementing histograms!

(bias alert - I work on Honeycomb)
It's terrible that the actions of a few bad apples in the Middle East ruin it for good people like you. Maybe the countries in the Middle East can join us in the 21st century as far as the advancement of women's rights and then you have my blessing to complain about Trump.