skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This is a failure of both our educational system and our culture. Our educational and cultural systems both underscore soft majors in the liberal arts realms and don't make STEM cool to average students as they might in China Russia or India.

Kids care too much about fitting in rather than making it in life with hard skills. You will have thousands working service jobs in LA with hopes of making it in entertainment. You don't see that emphasis in STEM in the US.
Can we link to the actual announcement instead of Techcrunch's regurgitation?

https://blogs.adobe.com/conversations/2017/07/adobe-flash-up...
End of an era.

We built the FarmVille-engine using AS3 and I still think it's one of the best programming languages I've ever used. Static typing, access modifiers, and performant. Low friction for new users (most people had the plugin, we could stream the main binary and assets)

0% chance we could have built the game using any other client-side tech stack available at the time.
Factually false, but statistically true.
> Not to mention the only browser outside of Microsoft's that's not a fork of chromium.

Safari is still a thing, if only on Apple's OSs.
"Necessary"? Its a world market for top-end talent, we just attract the cream of the crop. Even if Americans upped their game, everyone else would probably also and we'd still be in the same situation.
I just checked out that link you posted. The idea seems like it could introduce a certain "naturalness" to the gardens by resisting the temptation to exactly plant in rows. "Organic" planting plans! https://ibb.co/nfnQh5 (screenshot of one that I found particularly interesting).
> tools randomly losing functionality in an update because the developer felt that it should be removed for whatever reason.

More likely a Product Manager, rather than a developer, prioritizing certain "core" features in a rewrite/redesign to align with the product/corporate strategy better.

(Unless you meant "developer" in the very generic sense, or an indie developer.)
How about the power to customize every goddamn aspect of the UI? The power to make my browser behave the way I want it to behave?
This is what made Firefox worth the while for thirteen, fourteen years or however long it's been. I really have no idea where to go from here.
> What choices are any of us free to make? How long are we going to continue the probable charade of the existence of some ethereal "free will"?

I'm free not to smoke tobacco and not to get drunk. Some people aren't. No matter how philosophical you want to get about predestination, the difference between being addicted and not is real and obvious to everyone.

Granted, the addiction is only pathological if it's harmful to the individual. The fact that internet addiction isn't physically visible as harmful was my very point.
New details emerge on Fruitfly, a near-undetectable Mac backdoor
lixquid is talking about the old snipping tool, not the one attached to Win+Shift+S.

I agree that it's really unclear what happens when you use Win+Shift+S to grab the screen. No indication at all that the image is on the clipboard.

There needs to be a Win+Ctrl/Alt+Shift+S that automatically saves to the Screenshots directory or something.
I feel the same way, but it took time to get there. At first, it was more exciting to be plugged in... then you start to notice the patterns, and the lack of anything substantive. For some of us, that leads to disengagement, but maybe that's because we already prefer to focus on other issues?
This is delightful. As someone who uses AI/ML/MI/... for security, I find there is not nearly enough understanding for how attackers can subvert decision systems in practice.

Keep up the good work!
The use of what most HN users would consider an absurd number of tabs is shockingly (to me anyway) common among the non-tech-worker crowd. I'd say about half of my family members that don't work in tech have at least dozens and probably hundreds of tabs open at any given time.

I think it's the sort of thing where this works well enough for the same purpose that other people use a read-later or bookmarking system for, and it's reliable enough that people don't care to switch (or don't know there's an alternative).

It's good that Firefox is trying to adapt to the way people use technology, rather than trying to force people to adapt to how the technology works - I think that's a much faster road to widespread adoption, and it creates more goodwill on the part of their users.
How does a site find you are behind a VPN?
Is it possible to find if you are behind a VPN?
Yup, I had a painter friend who was painting a scene on Regent's canal and got kicked off by a couple of security guards saying it is private land.
Already CVC is going to make it difficult for some speakers to pronounce the words right.
Well in fairness I think they are doing just this. Aren't they building a tunnel at SpaceX HQ using the boring machine?
Ask HN: How do we end Advertising being the biggest consumer revenue model?
This question has been bugging me a long time, but has recently started to really aggravate me.

Specifically related to consumer software, it seems like the only way to make a multi-billion dollar company is by selling ads or ad space in some way. Enterprise is different, and I don't think the general population can behave the same way eg. buying software.

In the past, these thoughts were just "I wish there were a better/easier way to monetize [Insert] product."

More recently though those thoughts have turned into, "Would the consumer internet even be a place to make a living without advertising?"

If you look at the top consumer software companies, nearly all their revenue is based on ads. There are some outliers: Amazon, Spotify, Uber (maybe).

Would people pay to use Google, or Facebook or Snapchat if they started charging directly? How is it possible to sustain this much Advertising revenue being a major basis of the consumer software industry?

Is there a more sustainable way to charge for consumer software?
He's talking about the original design patterns book which is a book of OO patterns, it's hardly surprising that many OO patterns are either invisible or simpler in a functional language, functional languages have different design patterns. And yes, I know who Norvig is and I've read that article before.
Yeah, gravity seemed like a good way to do circle packing with different sizes. Also would be a way to place neatly in irregularly shaped (non-rectangular) beds.
I wonder if protecting Adobe Air isn't another reason.
I research many things (being a student and as part of my job). But I usually close useless tabs after reading them. I keep the main research tabs open, the trunk you could say, that trunk can always lead me back to the leafs.
I remember eagerly testing out the beta of safari for windows. It couldn't render bold text. Like it was literally invisible
I'm more interested in what happens to the brain with youth soccer. Bigger problem than a couple hundred pro athletes.
Whoops, my bad. You're absolutely right.
I don't think anyone is talking about worker shortage, but rather about qualified worker shortage.
Quite a lot of us soulless then.
In a more real-world sense, I think you can look at the current state of law enforcement around drug laws in the US for a solid guide to the sort of relationships you're describing. Eventually, the police and the thieves become the same thing; the state thieves.
True, I am beginning to think their CEO drives the company against the wall. One PR disaster and hostile behavior after another.
I know Ali and I'm very concerned for him. He teaches people to use privacy and cryptography tools and is a funny and friendly guy.

Apparently many governments are not feeling friendly toward this work lately. It's easy to forget that the equivalent of a Cryptoparty can land people in jail.

https://www.frontlinedefenders.org/en/case/ali-gharavi-detai...

https://www.frontlinedefenders.org/en/profile/ali-gharavi

https://www.eff.org/offline
good thing we nipped that one in the bud, and now we are not embracing another opaque, unsearchable mangle of blobs as the next new thing
You should try to publish some code for a change, as open source.
You can keep improving your skills but without having to worry about making money (thats what your job is for) and getting help/input from the community
Yegge critiquing OO for verbosity, that's a hoot; talk about the pot calling the kettle black.
Yes and no. I agree that standards make things easier, but standards probably make it harder or at least not easier to really come to an EOL for dated technology.

See how browsers still have to support non CSS styling and similar.

What I meant with standards making it harder to EOL technologies is that a standard leads to more implementations, which is a good thing, but certainly not for EOLing a technology.
Or the whole City of London, containing many organisations that you could argue were at the root of the financial crisis a few years back.
The issue that many of us have, myself included, with the H1B program is that is is primarily used to suppress local wages. It is easy to say you can't find candidates if you are pricing the job well below market wages.
why convert to coins ? why not just use stellar directly ?
This is possibly a function of which two pages you have open, and/or the Extensions you use.

I'm currently running >300 tabs on Firefox 54.0.1 spread across four Windows, on a 16 GB, 15-inch 2016 MacBook Pro, 2.9GHz Intel Core i7, under macOS Sierra.

The primary extensions I use to keep performance in check are Auto Unload Tab and Tree Style Tab. Post the two pages you are loading, and I'll check them out on my setup.

HTML5 games can ramp up the fan very quickly. For example, until Auto Unload Tab kicks in, Game of Bombs will pretty reliably chew up Firefox [1]. Most of my content that I keep open are text-heavy, and not crazy on Javascript ("crazy" to me is re-implementing the browser UI and taking over the entire screen experience with that; I don't mind the UI change, but heavy DOM manipulation with Javascript isn't kind to batteries or memory at this time).

[1] http://gameofbombs.com/landing#/play
No one has been reported of using the data, at least so far. The head of security went out and said this publicly, also that the military forces vehicles aren't registered there, just giving away even more information about national security for free. sigh

Some more trivia: the one responsible for the leak didn't even tell the the prime minister for _over a year_. And the security issues weren't even discussed by the team who hired IBM, they got a report from some people (some sort of service desk or something, who have nothing to do with security) that this was a bad idea and that building a cloud in Sweden would be a lot safer, the report they gave "mysteriously disappeared"
Maybe your experience differs from mine, but getting lots of applications has never been the problem. Finding the handful of those applicants who can actually program effectively is the hard part. I'm consistently stunned by how many candidates either have zero knowledge of specific things they list on their resume or truly can't even write basic code in languages they say they know.
Today's youth and amateur level competitors are tomorrow's professionals. I think there's a decent chance that in 50 years, American football will no longer be America's dominant sport simply because the player base may dry up. And I'm okay with that. I think it's telling when former NFL players discourage their own kids from playing football.
You're right that Arduinos are slower. I had things like the Raspberry Pi in mind.
I'd fix that with an air purifier. I have several at my lodge for keeping dust down and making sure those with sensitive allergies don't have issues. I did use it successfully for a funky odor in a bedroom once too before guests arrived (I think it was originating from a vent).

Anyway, sorry for your issues. It's a big let down especially overseas when you don't get what you think you are getting. Good points in the article. The reviews aren't usually that helpful. My wife would ask me how to rate our guests and I'd tell her "aren't you going to feel really stupid if they rate us unfairly and you let them get away with being a bad guest"?

Hosts and renters need to be authentic with the reviews. If you wouldn't rent to them again - they should not get a good review. If you're a renter and you wouldn't rent there again - unless it was as described and you got what you paid for - that host shouldn't get a good review either.

When I'm renting I make sure they have enough good reviews and I also look for the imperfect reviews and see what the issue was but more importantly how the host responds. If they show good faith and seem reasonable then I like that. If they get all angry and seem like they might be unaccommodating to real issues - then steer clear!
Elon Musk Says Mark Zuckerberg's Understanding of AI Is Limited
What's wrong with something like the Raspberry Pi? I'm working with it professionally (see my profile) and am very successful at using it in "production". Right now I don't have the need to build a custom board but if I should ever decide to take that path, there's the compute module which was designed for that. It is successfully used by NEC and at least one other display vendor that have a dedicated compute module slot. Also the Pi is still backwards compatible with even the first released Pi. Unlike other platform it's slow moving and you have some guarantee that your investment isn't wasted once some new shiny "board of the week" appears.
Well, I am. I often use tabs as my todo/toread list. I generally have ~100 of them open, on Firefox.
The Channel Tunnel is a good example of how it could be done safely. There are two tunnels for trains, and a third smaller tunnel in the middle for emergency use. In the event of a fire people can be (and have been - there have been a few fires) evacuated to the service tunnel, and then road vehicles are sent to collect them.

The Channel Tunnel is only 31.5 miles long vs 230 miles (driving) from New York to DC, but having an access shaft every 30 miles or so wouldn't be that bad.

I'm not sure how you'd deal with the vacuum issue though - I guess doors at regular intervals that can be sealed, so a section of the tunnel can be bought back to atmospheric pressure, and the emergency doors can be opened between the car-tunnel and tunnel-emergency tunnel.
Yes - I thought so too, but still haven't gotten around to it :)

For my use case this does not fall short. Although I'm sure you could come up with features I didn't know I needed.
This isn't true. It's a race to the bottom for cheap talent. There is definitely a race for top talent, but that comprises a small portion of all immigrants. It's all about cheap labor.
How is something not a shortage if noone can afford to buy it? When people talk about shortage they usually speak of some cohort's inability to acquire something, not simplistic assessments of inventory levels.

I'm all for the wage argument.... yes if you raise wages high enough they will come... but why take it to such extremes?

SV has done this to itself. It clusters around tiny, restricted geographic locations, which push out the locals, gentrify entire cities, and then these companies have the gall to complain about the cost of labor, which they helped to define the high prices of. More consideration is placed on proximity than prurient economic interests, because Business Interests Always Come First.
Meh DFW is the last person you ought to listen to for advice. [1] It's just demotivational-speak paraded around as if it were some profound wisdom, just to assuage ego of your average reader with Liberal arts degree. So that she/he can fool herself by believing that they are better than others because they "truly care"...

“truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them” is just meaningless babbling that you would expect from a writer who needs to sell empty wisdom to demotivated readers. In reality Power and Knowledge are essential if one aims to enable true change.

[1] http://www.vulture.com/2015/06/rewriting-of-david-foster-wal...
My captcha was too obtuse ;-) Please check the email again.
> Once a portable app shows up in the reports you are simply fired by blatant disregard for the rules and procedures you agreed to when signing your contract.

That seems to be a rather extreme clause; I doubt that a bank would care if a developer installed something that was not whitelisted. It would be a different story if the developer linked against code whose source was not easily attributable.
Vimperator is not possible in the new Web Extensions, it requires customizing the UI in a way that Web Extensions doesn't allow. I am supremely salty about this still.
> MSPaint potentially going away (I think MS back pedaled on it?) falls in the same category - powerful tools that pretty much can't be improved upon

MSPaint is a powerful tool? Do you also consider notepad a powerful editor?
Kong is an amazing piece of microservice architecture. I've been very happy with how it behaves.
I guess to each their own. I found it unnecessarily difficult to read the grey text on black background. It always seems strange to only use a 30% of a monitor for the main content and fill the rest with pictures.
I was a former web dev., and transitioned into project and product management. I'd like to transition back to dev work for the next decade or so...but eventually as I close in on retirement, I wouldn't mind moving to working on hardware for electric motorcycles...basically create the Tesla of motorcycles - both for high end luxury as well as for the everyday/how-can-i-get-the-cheapest-cycle-to-safely-commute-to-work-in.
How Capitalism Saved the Bees
You are right about the equipment (even though obviously only concussion vs concussion + skull fracture is a step forward!), but the difference between football and rugby goes way beyond the equipment. In the former there's no lateral passing, which means that the ball carrier will always be a target for the whole defense. In rugby you can pass the ball, which makes the defense spread wider and doesn't allow them to overcommit to a single player/tackle.
It's actually pretty weird that would stop distributing it, especially since they still distribute a Shockwave Player, and well, Shockwave has been completely dead for long time now.
Show HN: Progressive Enhancement to Emoji Domains
I was one of those people that was mocking him at one point... back when he started SpaceX. I honestly thought this guy was an idiot to be throwing his money away like this.

Once I realized I might be wrong about him, I started following him closely, watching all his interviews, and then seeing one success after another.

Nowadays, I'm flabbergasted by people that would mock his ideas when he's proven over and over again that his visions have a stubborn way of becoming reality, one way or another (sometimes late).

Can he stumble and be totally wrong and fail? Of course, I'm surprised it hasn't happened yet, but to mock him is just being plain ignorant.
Hi, I'm Jim and I'm a tabaholic. It's been 3 months since I cleaned-up my tabs
> But I live in one of those 195 experiments, and my fellows that share that with me, my countrymen, I support above the other 194. That's called being human.

Nice try, but nationalism is not an intrinsic trait of being a human.
This resonates strongly with me.

Let me offer a possible coping mechanism: realize that you are an artist. You are a true hacker.

For people like us, having ideas and making them real is the purpose of life. Since the 90s, there has been an immense pressure on our community put everything we do in get-rich-quick terms, which as been super destructive the psyches of many hackers. Be mindful of this, then cast it aside.

No matter what, keep having ideas and making them real.

Don't just take my word for it, ask Alan Watts: https://soundcloud.com/jeffreysource/above-beyond-ft-alan-wa...
I don't think it's as simple as that.

For all the vilifying of H1B and related visas, it is still a big burden for companies. Even big companies will use third party, specialized lawyers to deal with the bureaucracy.

In the case of H1B, there's a significant hiring lag. You apply in April and, if you are lucky, get the visa in October. Companies who abuse the system en masse (there are about 3 or 4 that do it) don't care about that and will use a shotgun approach, but if you are trying to fill a position, it's a very bad proposition.

Still, that gives you access to brains from the whole world. And yes, these brains may be willing to work for less, initially, compared to what a US citizen would get. There doesn't have to be foul play involved: they have less leverage. A similarly qualified US citizen would just name their price and tell the company to take a hike if that was not met. Restarting the whole visa process would be way more painful.
If empty list isn't "falsey", it's not Lisp. It's a "Lisp-like" at best.

Sussman and Steele had the good sense not to call Scheme "<something> Lisp", because they knew that it would "ring falsey".
They're both corporations. A thieves/police distinction has always been meaningless.

If you want content to be policed because policing content is a social good, make the government (the actual police) do it.

If you want content to be policed because it's profitable, the vertical integration of "thieves" and "police" lets you leverage synergies.
I assume OP means that education (to become "top-end talent") could be more widely available in the US.
I think Haxe (the language) is awesome, but the toolkit as a whole has too many moving pieces.

I tried to do some stuff with OpenFL back in 2014, and sometimes the problem was in the C++ backend, sometimes in OpenFL, sometimes in Lime...

It sounds nice on paper: write in Haxe and the magic will convert it to any target, but when each piece of a build chain that sustains the toolkit is maintained and developed independently (sometimes by a single dev) you really don't have assurances about long term support.
The majority of STEM workers by definition can't be top talent for the industry. Being a part of a world market for top talent makes sense. That's not what we have though. We don't even have enough people or average or mediocre talent. We're relying on a global labor market at the expense of our own citizens.
Tuning INTFACT CODE
>Whenever I see a corporate campus with a huge manicured lawn, it raises my blood pressure.

Obviously, a better use of the land would be a socialist wasteland. Looks a bit ugly, there's trash everywhere, an abandoned rotting car carcass or two, but at least it's owned by the proletariat, right, comrade?
In your scenario, you're no closer to MegaCorp than you would have been before the parks (because the land was all private anyway, apparently). Not that this matters; there's nothing dystopian about MegaCorp buying land to insulate itself from your protest. In a free society, you have the right to speak, and others have the right to avoid you.
Take a look at indeed, monster, or whatever your preferred job board is. Sample the tech jobs in an area, what they want in the position, and what they're willing to pay. When I was job hunting, many wanted a surgeon at nurse prices.
I thought that was the whole point of side projects.