skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
He certainly believes he's the most famous programmer in the world.

At least Terry Davis could write code.

https://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/archive/show-them-the-code

https://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/archive/moral-compassed

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13147038

tptacek on Dec 10, 2016 [-]

I think we're all pretty sure ESR is not in fact a god, and that nothing could have occurred with ESR or his magic flute to have demonstrated to him that he was. Rather, the story is more broadly illustrative of a pretty extreme narcissism and --- challenging --- variant of self-awareness. For a more down to earth example, consider how many of us would non-ironically write the following passage:

I’m wondering about this because my wife Cathy asked me a simple question last night, and I realized I didn’t have an answer to it. “Are you” she asked “the most famous programmer in the world?”

This was a question which I had, believe it or not, never thought about before. But it’s a reasonable one to ask, given recent evidence – notably, the unexpected success of my Patreon page. This is relevant because Patreon is mainly an arts-funding site – it’s clearly not designed for or by techies.

It goes on in this vein. Here, by the way, is a link to his Patreon page:

[link redacted]

Apparently we value "the code that makes our digital world work" a bit less than we value the person who fries our french fries at McDonalds. If that sounds mean, well, it is, but it was also Eric Raymond who put forward the idea that his Patreon page may indicate that he's among the most famous programmers in the world.

For a nerdier take on ESR's merits, hunt down Terry Lambert's take on fetchmail. (You should know who Terry Lambert is, if you don't already).

[link provided to "A tangential diatribe on the unsuitability of fetchmail"]

https://markmail.org/thread/pmoqk6tuybncu2is

armitron on Dec 10, 2016 [-]

Not to mention that ESR was, at some point, a multi-millionaire. Pretty sure he still is, in which case that Patreon page of his would be nothing but a con.
That's beautiful, thanks for sharing your story.

I agree, the good parts of the Internet are more apparent if you know where to look. The darkest corners, however, are highlighted more by the news, perpetuating a cycle of negativity and pessimism.
No, those are rental services. Poshmark is an online upscale thrift store similar to the brick and mortar store Buffalo Exchange.
>> Instead, I think it's more likely that the difference in DC voltage can vary significantly.
>
>Why do you think this?

Because as per the linked article, the absolute voltage potential of the earth in a local area can vary significantly over time. This make me think that the difference between a small isolated system and the earth ground must vary significantly. As you point out, everything actually is coupled, there is a time constant involved, but at least immediately after a nearby lightning strike you should have a significant difference. Because of the small capacitance of the isolated system, I'd expect you might see a high initial value that would soon (scale depending on the meter and the capacitance) decay to zero. Do you disagree?

> House wiring is not limited in how much current it can put through you

Absolutely agreed. Per the article, I'm referring to the supposed safety of an isolated transformer used a "razors only" outlet. In addition to having an intentionally small transformer, this system also has an intentionally very small fuse.

> The reason why touching one wire is “safe” is because the return path for the current is usually very high resistance

Yes. I guess the part that I'm failing to make clear is that I'm asking about the articles differentiation between isolated transformers and US standard circuits. In both cases, in normal dry clothed circumstances, there is normally a high resistance to any return circuit through your body. I'm still having trouble seeing the difference between the safety of the isolated system and the standard system. Most of the answers here (including yours) would seem to apply equally to both cases. I feel I understand this, just not the way in which the article explains the safety of isolated transformers.
We've switched to on-premises MM from HipChat at the beginning of the year.

I miss the video conf functionality of HipChat, but other than that I think MM was the right decision for us. Everyone on the team seems to be happy with it.
You did understand me correctly :).

I agree with mathematics; I came to the same conclusion about five years ago; I realized understanding some basic type theory made a whole lot of programming easier for me.

It's kind of dry reading, but I've been trying to get into different process calculi lately; specifically the Pi Calculus and Join Calculus, since these things feel like a cool hybrid of computer-science and mathematics.
Non-paywalled link, anyone? NYtimes won’t let me read it in Firefox’s Private Mode.
Honestly on Java, I would stick to Bouncy Castle. It's tried and tested, has regular releases, good documentation and is regularly maintained.
Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20152534
Code reviews can be much better, faster, and friendlier if done in person.

It's also harder to ask people to spend half a day doing extra work on a whim in person.
I'd like to share a few interesting performance optimizations that allowed us to significantly increase MessagePack parsing speed at AppSpector.
With current msgpack-javascript version we can decode our payloads event faster than native JSON.parse!
At least for Europe, it is accurate. Frequency is actively changed to maintain 50Hz in long term: https://www.mainsfrequency.com/gridtime.php
Stop Trying to Be Perfect
Let's not forget The Realm, Sierra's entry into the exploding MMORPG genre at the time. Believe it or not, it's still alive and well, after having changed owners quite a few times. It hasn't changed much since the late 90's. This was my first MMORPG experience and I sunk many many hours into it!
I imagine you go for something more like the Falkirk wheel: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falkirk_Wheel
> Okay, followup question -- when was the last time anyone saw the key change and actually did freak out?

Every time. Well, "freak out" is a strong phrase. But I do check with knowledgeable member of team before continuing.
I completely agree.

Many times when someone asks me to change something without pointing to a previously agreed-on coding standard that all team members approved before, I just call it bullshit and let the PR sit there indefinitely while I get to my next task. If someone is interested why the PR is not released yet, I always point out that some people wanted to have changes but they were lazy to make those changes themselves even though the code base was accessible for the criticizer too. And I never fail to mention that I am already working on something else so going back is just the waste of my time and my time is as precious as the criticizer's.

Of course I am not this arrogant when there are agreed-on coding standards and the reviewer points out mistakes based on those standards (but that almost never happens). I am more than happy to make changes in that case.

So to sum it up: pull requests have become the prefect tool for workplace bullying.
That way you learn something, even when you're right.
You can use Intel PlaidML right now on OSX to utilize your metal supported GPU for machine learning. I have tried the python library with Keras and my GPU (Geforce 760) with no issues.
While I want to commemd this comment, it all seems to have lit a bonfire of programmer-tier anger, so will still retaliate:

People aren't using shit crypto, virtually no one is using anything other than what is highly vetted or otherwise google/apple/ms/etc is telling them to.

What is the actual argument here? That some $randompeople play around with new cryptosystems and then share them with friends?
The sheer derision that my original comment has directed at it is astounding, let the kids play with cryptography, who the fuck cares, I hope they roll all of the crypto themselves, the world will be a better place, who exactly is saying it should replace current elliptical curves decided so wholesomely for us all by NIST?

The simple clear fact is that Western countries do not like and are actively campaigning against modern cryptography. Lets pretend we have some dignity left please as human beings. The West used to represent something, now it feels like we are taking notes from oppressive regimes and playing catch-up.
Fair enough point; can't believe I forgot about that.
They also just described 3 services where you don't own the data.
Could you give an example of something you consider a megaproject in the past? Chances are similar projects are underway
Cryptographic Right Answers (2018)
1) Quite the contrary. And there is no "hope" - you either write code to recover or you throw an exception (and then there is a "hope" that some other code will catch it), it's just different approaches.

2) Yes, it's not so difficult. Writing tests, for example, also takes time - it's not a reason to don't write tests.
15 open-source fonts released based on historical research from 15th century
Try reading up this guide for a great intro into application level crypto...
https://tozny.com/security-guides/
IRC totally did have "booters" back in the old day, that would cause mass disconnects.
Miniaturization of CMOS
Easy, population control. Specifically with wolves and other hunting/pack animals, but really any imbalances can lead to major problems. Get enough of them and they'll consume the local wildlife and either starve or start looking for food in cities. Even animals that are fairly harmless such as Deer can be a threat though through wondering into roads.

While I'm no fan of 'sport' hunting, it does serve a purpose since we've already removed most of the big threats these animals would naturally face.
What else could they do?
Building multi- and hybrid-clouds with Istio
related symposium website: http://gotico-antiqua.anrt-nancy.fr/en
> madness

Yeah but that doesn't mean people don't do it. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/04/european-grid-di...
To Serif or Not to (Sans) Serif by Marvin Danig
Recently proved itself as an essential utility in Puerto Rico, right?
> So what you're telling me is that laborer's see the unemployed as both competition for their jobs

Afaik you're the only one defending this position.
> The Cathedral and the Bazaar and a few shorter essays

I think The New Hacker's Dictionary (aka The Jargon File) is the missing piece here. It's had an enormous cultural impact in a few different ways, and gave esr a voice and reputation among people who've never engaged with any of his other work.

First, it documented and popularized hacker culture to the point of being suggested as a gift by the NYT. Second, it became a formal source for everyone from the OED to NatGeo, which gave it a lot of indirect influence. Third, it actually helped shape a generation of coders; much like Neuromancer with cyberspace, the Portrait of J. Random Hacker was a partially self-fulfilling vision that motivated people to go out and emulate it.

It's obviously important to note that esr didn't write the Jargon File, or even create the first edited or printed version. But his 1991 version was the most popular, and the first to emphasize the ultimately more influential Unix culture over PDP-10. The people who document and popularize a culture pretty commonly become more notable than those most deeply involved in it, and I think esr is no exception.
That, together with his 1944 tour of the German autobahn.

EDIT: 1945, as observed down-thread.
Oh hey, this is essentially a plot point in Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle books.

Well, getting away from pirates, that is, but same idea.
A lot of them just aren't great ideas to start with.

This for example would create a lot of land but much of it would be pretty salty so wouldn't grow food very well. In addition the remaining water would slowly get saltier and saltier eventually probably dying similar to the Dead Sea, granted this would take a while but it's a definite negative, the Med is already saltier than most of the ocean because it's relatively isolated from the larger circulation of the Atlantic and Indian oceans with a large surface area where evaporation takes place.

Then there are some like the city mega-projects that require a huge amount of social infrastructure that's hard to build, take a look at some of China's mega construction where they've tried to build cities out of whole cloth but the people haven't really come so they're just empty.
But you just encrypt something with it and ask Alice to decrypt it with her private key and you ask her if she was able to.

Oh god but how do you ask her without a guarantee that she's really who said yes?

Even if you meet Alice in real life to ask, how can you be sure the meeting isn't a dream or a simulation and the Alice before your eyes isn't a chosen plaintext attack by a cosmic man in the middle?!

The entire science of cybersecurity is bankrupt and founded upon untenable foundations!!
I was part of a large layoff at a company when I was just out of college. Nobody knew it was coming. We had a few products that were struggling, but it felt like things were turning around.

They basically had an all hands meeting for everybody in our office. We went to the main auditorium and the CEO gets up and basically says, "The company has been struggling so we're closing this office. Please hand your ID to the security people as you leave. Details will follow about how to get your personal belongings mailed back to you."

And that was it. Pretty brutal to say the least. Some 400 jobs just evaporated in a few minutes. It was an eye opener for me on working for a medium sized company. You just never know when it could be your last day.
This article doesn't mention openssl or ssh-keygen. Are the standard commands we see in most articles for creating keys via these two popular tools compromised in any way?

I never roll my own encryption, and most developers don't (unless they're just playing with stuff and learning how to understand it; and not use it in production). I stick to standard tools and libraries like Legion of the Bouncy Castle and pypi RSA.

I wish this article covered the way most developers interact with RSA libraries and showing us those specific problems.
> Is it not authoritarianism if it's Our Guys?

Isn't this the argument that the concentration camps being run to detain refugees and separate their families aren't authoritarian because the government and their media allies say so?

The problem with the 2nd amendment approach is that a lot of the militia types are quite in favour of authoritarianism so long as it hits people they don't like.
Oh my bad, didn't mean to suggest it was intelligently designed. I didn't read that full page and didn't pick up on that context. I'll remove that link.
I don't see a difference there between 60 Hz and 50 Hz. One has 1/60 of a second between cycles and the other has 1/50 so as long as you can count to 50 instead of 60 it's the same, right?
Show HN: Rony Tobbins – The Motivation Coach of the New Generation
That's the whole point of the document - that we should simplify systems whenever possible, to avoid the dysfunctions listed.
Do You Remember Being Born?
Yeah, I also get mildly insulted by the "please". I get that it has friendly intentions, but still... I feel "managed", and it also feels non negotiable.

I often go with "I would align these variable definitions so they’re easier to read", to indicate it's a suggestion, but in the end it's up to you.
RetroRampage: Tutorial showing how to build a retro FPS from scratch in Swift
useful article but doesn't really contradict that claim, just that AOC uber exaggerated. the percentages reported align with the claim and it's reasonable to assume they are the bottom 5% as opposed to somewhere in the top or middle.
Tom Scott has a great video[0] about a similar attempt to dam the San Francisco Bay that got a lot closer to actually happening. So see if it was practical, the US Army Corps of Engineering built a giant scale model of the SF bay and put a dam on it to see what would happen.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i70wkxmumAw
Stuck in China's Panopticon
The praise here is over the top. Poshmark is a peer-to-peer clothing marketplace – think eBay, but focused mostly on used or one-off pieces of clothing.

Poshmark has incredible potential given the huge amount of quality clothing inventory, but in my opinion their product and marketing optimize for all the wrong things and make it hard to actually buy things.

What I want from Poshmark is to find and buy clothes I like that fit me. That's it.

What I get from Poshmark:

- They ignore "My Sizes" and show me a feed of women's clothes and incorrect sizes every time I login. I cannot understand how this is still a problem. Why would I buy clothes that are not in my size?

- No way to filter out "One Size" items. Good luck finding your size when shopping a brand that has accessories; you'll be drowning in watches, ties and hats

- Constant notifications for some type of event. Example: 'pm_editor has invited you to "Street Style Chic Party" Today at 7:00 PM' – I get multiple of these daily. I don't want to join a party, I just want to find clothes that fit on my own time and buy them.

- No way to set notifications when items that match my criteria are listed

- Constant promotional emails that are not relevant to me. Example: "Login to to get discounted shipping on your active offers, 4 hours only!" – when I have no active offers.

- Until recently, comments on items (e.g. questions and answers between buyer and seller) did not trigger notifications. So sellers would have no idea that potential buyers were asking questions on their items. I skipped many purchases because I couldn't confirm an important detail

- No option for returns. If I'm buying high-end used clothing, I want the ability to return it if it doesn't fit as expected. I'm happy to pay for return shipping, I just don't want to be stuck with something. I've skipped many many purchases because it was too expensive to commit to without trying it on.

- Disempowered support team. Each time I raise an issue with support, I get the sense they are measured entirely on how little they escalate to teams that can actually change things.

In summary: Poshmark has an incredible inventory of quality used clothing, but they focus on all sorts of features and activities that don't do anything to help me find and buy more items in their marketplace.
That's one of many possible interpretations.
> When I do technical interviews I assume the candidates code works (and it often doesn't, but that's not the point).

Why is that beside the point?
For me, as the candidate, if the evaluation is only subjective nonsense then the more important objective qualities aren’t valued in the exercise and probably in the office. That is a huge turn off to me.
Sincere question: what's the point of GitLab or Mattermost being open source when they clearly want to control/restrict/monopolize use of their applications?

IIRC GitLab is "open core" which just means it's not fully open source and Mattermost is not really fully open source either, it its own confusing way.

The purpose of open source was to give users full and unrestricted power. To free them from lock in and allow them to be the masters of the software they use.

It seems that these companies view open source as a marketing trick and perhaps a way to save on development costs. They're making a mockery of open source and should probably be shunned for it.
Amateur Radio is a lot like STEM. One of it's goals is to encourage people to get "into" thinking and planning for the situations where amateur radio is a useful public service. The hobby portion exists to give people the freedom to experiment and test their skills.

Part 97 of the CFR[0] actually gives the reason/spirit:

> (a) Recognition and enhancement of the value of the amateur service to the public as a voluntary noncommercial communication service, particularly with respect to providing emergency communications.

> (b) Continuation and extension of the amateur's proven ability to contribute to the advancement of the radio art.

> (c) Encouragement and improvement of the amateur service through rules which provide for advancing skills in both the communication and technical phases of the art.

> (d) Expansion of the existing reservoir within the amateur radio service of trained operators, technicians, and electronics experts.

> (e) Continuation and extension of the amateur's unique ability to enhance international goodwill.

[0]: https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?SID=d4b3c60d2d60000a14...
My feeling is almost exactly as you describe yours. I wish I could go back and relive the enjoyment I had when I was young, playing on the Tandy 1000 in my parents basement. I still feel very strong nostalgia and think about the games quite a bit, but then if I try to play them I get bored nearly instantly or start feeling guilty for not doing more important things with my time (wife & 2 kids). Oh well, I will always have the nostalgia I guess.
"But the vast majority of them will be a continuous flow of serial early adopters who surf from tech to tech, sniffing the best opportunity to gain a competitive advantage by being first to use a type of framework, language, or toolkit." - Oh god, that hit me so hard.
The idea is (in the cases I've researched it) that it supports dwindling populations of the wolves' prey. In some cases it actually makes sense, but not for any good reasons, so to speak. It's a bandaid solution. It's sort of like a top down solution to a regrettable ecological problem.

It's like when someone writes some terrible code and you write an external solution to one of the problems their code causes. Only in this case, instead of us doing a full rewrite, we need to leave nature alone and rewrite itself. Our intervening by culling predators is not sustainable because we can't properly calculate the effects and it has damaged predator populations so severely. We also didn't anticipate for example how diseased and disgusting deer would get without proper, natural, regular culling by their predators.

So yeah there are 'reasons' for doing it, but none of them are holistically wise choices for their respective ecosystems.
First thing before any code review is that your team/company needs to have a coding standard. This is the first rule of engagement and eliminates most problems. Without a coding standard, code reviews quickly devolve into crap.

Once you have a coding standard, then the reviewer needs to differentiate between opinion and fact. If you don't like the variable name but it conforms to the coding standard then it's not a valid review comment. The coding standard should give some guidance as to what a variable name or function name should be.

If there's a bug or if there are potential for issues then that's what I focus on.
Is it possible to simulate or go back in earlier days, maybe last 2 weeks? Best site ever, i personaly have seen for my special interests in weatherview. Very good visualised for a good perception. Easy to use. I love the differnt possibilities to view at and the option to personalize it.
Great work, let me say thank you.
Are we certain they will never change from opt-in to opt-out?
Because the NSA recommends still using RSA over ECC?

The NSA and NIST should, in a perfect world, have lost all credibility of any sort given the revelations of poisoned RNGs. It boggles my mind that they are still given any credence let alone still considered authoritative.
Does this move to 7nm with better ICP not count? The committed to supporting the AM4 form-factor for 5 years - I imagine we won't see anything more revolutionary until after that point, especially as they are getting close to parity (if they aren't already exceeding) with Intel.