skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Often people try to justify DVCSs based on how they make feature branching easy. But that misses the issues of semantic conflicts. [If your features are built quickly, within a couple of days, then you'll run into less semantic conflicts (and if less than a day, then it's in effect the same as CI). However we don't see such short feature branches very often.]

Like anything else, feature branches can be abused, and require some discipline on the part of the developer to use correctly.

On git.git every feature is developed on its own branch. However, the maintainer integrates all the features into a single branch for testing and to prevent these sorts of semantic issues from creeping up. It's really only an issue where the feature branch is allowed to diverge too far from the main branch.

As a developer maintaining your own feature branch, there are generally two good practices to follow:

- Regularly integrate the main branch with your feature branch, review what's coming in from main, and test. Having a feature branch does not relieve you of being aware of what else is going on in the code base. Note that you'll generally do this on a throw-away branch, as you don't want to clutter your feature branch with test merges.

- Rebase your feature branch as needed if the changes in main invalidate any of your work so far. As part of rebasing, you'll have to account for those changes.

You can have a long-lived feature branch, the important thing is not to go into a cave with it. You need to keep it up-to-date wrt to mainline development.

For a shared feature branch, rebasing is a bit harder (but not impossible), so instead you will typically merge the main branch into your feature branch as needed. It is important to do these merges only when necessary if you wish to maintain a relatively clean development history, something that is important if you later need to track down the source of a bug or backout the feature.
I'm 1 week away from the final in the last semester of SICP at Berkeley. Wish me luck! haha
Because there are storage costs other than the literal cost of maintaining data on a server.

Is the data accurate and up-to-date? Are the links still viable? Do the citations check out? etc.

It's just like having a project with a huge number of lines of code. It's an important maintenance task to delete outdated or obsolete code - not because you will run out of disk space to store your .c files, but because unused, unmaintained code is very likely to be confusing or wrong.

Remember also the power rule for user contribution: 90% of all users do not contribute anything ever. 9% of users contribute at least once. 1% of users contribute everything else. If an article is not very notable, it's extremely likely that the person who originally contributes it will be the only person who ever contributes anything to the article, and contributing the original is very likely to be the only contribution to the subject they make. This will hold true even if there are some number of "long tail" readers interested in the article, because readers are drastically more common than writers, and infrequent writers drastically more common than writers who consistently attempt to improve the articles they read.

So: Articles with low notability are probably poorly maintained, out of date, and/or consisting entirely of the statements of a single person. Making them better imposes a cost which relatively few people in Wikipedia's community actually pay - the cost of taking time to edit something.

All of Wikipedia's pains and stretch marks will become much clearer if you restate the purpose and function of the site. If you approach Wikipedia as a server farm that takes in user contributions and produces a compilation of same, then it's strange to have any limits on contributions, since the cost of storing text data is extremely small. If you approach Wikipedia as a group of people that takes in the members' time and energy and produces agreement between the members, then you see where their problems come from.

Remember, a Wikipedia article gets to stay in a particular state only when everyone who potentially could change it agrees that no changes are necessary. Wikipedia produces consensus, not data. Its limiting factor is the time and patience of the people who work on edits.

If you need consensus - the kind that will not be repeatedly challenged by latecomers - and you are limited in the number of people who will voluntarily "meet" in the editing area to discuss a particular subject, then low-popularity articles are a cost with no benefit. The opinions of a single person - possibly an oddball, since they're the only one who submitted the article - will produce no agreement, and it will consume more time and energy to find people who could hammer out a lasting consensus.
It's easy to forget the United States is "only" 235 years old. Columbus sailed over TWICE as long ago.

Some countries would laugh at that http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=10+oldest+countries

(added: actually, wait a sec, Wolfram is very wrong, Portugal Italy and Spain all existed when Columbus first sailed)

Mechanical steam power, automobiles, airflight, television, computers and landing on the moon was all accomplished in that relatively tiny timeframe of US existence.
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(Thiel's Baby Geniuses) Candid Interviews With 5 Thiel Fellows
Ok, but I don't think typing is the point. What if we could just say it?

Isn't it much more intuitive to say to the computer "play 10 random country" than enunciate a succession of commands / menu items?

We now take all of those menu items for granted, but really, does it make any sense to have to do "File / Open" to play a song or continue to write something we started working on earlier?

In the real world the only things I ever open are books; I would open folders if I still had any, but I certainly never open any "file" (whatever that is). We open things that contain other things that we're interested in, at a conceptual level. A file does not contain anything (bits? characters? sentences?) -- it is the thing itself.

And "save"? Why does this have to be?? In the real world if I leave a paper on my desk I expect to find it in the exact same place and state the next day; but on the computer if I don't save it I lose it. And I need to give it a name, too! All of this is crazy (one way to see how crazy it is, is to try to teach it to old people).

I think iCloud is starting to address all of this. It's about time. But new interfaces and ways to interact with the computer shouldn't be dismissed right away. This guy could be onto something.
In the first web bubble, there was a lot of investment into companies giving stuff away at a loss. Eventually we all got too smart for that. Now there is a lot of investment into companies getting other companies to give stuff away at a loss. Just as unsustainable, but it'll drag out a bit longer before we all figure it out.
It's certainly easier for experts, but that was not his point. His thesis is that the command-line is really easier for everyone, and I just don't think that holds water.
No, I want to but I have not given a try..it seems like read when you have nothing to do..but I might never be in that state..
The larger assumption, I think, is that people will know precisely what they want to do.

How many people sit down to fire up some music and know exactly what they want to listen to?

One could trivially add a "list playlists" concept or "list country" or "browse artists" for the uninspired listener. But how many users prefer text to GUI for that sort of browsing/discovery experience?

To say nothing of the additional inefficiency generated by typing in what is now clearly going to be a total of several commands in many, if not most, cases.

I find the command line superior to the GUI for exactly one thing: firing off specific commands. As soon as you step outside of that, its advantages wane and disadvantages take over.

And it's an unfortunately-common mistake of technical users, to only consider use cases where the user knows precisely what they want to do and executes the process correctly.
Why is Pokemon "controversial"?

(disclaimer: I barely know what Pokemon is)
I get what he's saying about it destroying his creative process, but he's clearly forgotten what it's like not to be popular. Advertising yourself is the ONLY way to get fans. They do not just come to you automatically.
Not surprising in the least. We already know that the people who add content to wikipedia are not the same as the people in power. But worse than that there's a pervasive failure to understand that within the wikipedia moderator and management community.

The mods and admins have put a lot of their effort into pissing off the greater community with edit wars and rampant deletionism. It shouldn't come as a surprise that this would eventually take its toll on discouraging commenters.
Wow, this is amazing. I can't help but want to ask him questions -- what was DC like during and after the war? How did Marylanders view the assassination (after all, Booth hid out in MD for most of his run.) Did the huge numbers of Union troops make a lasting impact on DC? Did his family know people on both sides of the war? Did he see any of the heroes from war later on in his life? Attend a speech they made or a book-signing? Did he see Grant on any of his famous carriage rides through the city? Know anybody who had personally spoken with any of the presidents? (Back then you could just show up at the WH and ask for an audience.) What did he think of the many civil war reunions and joint parades that previous fighters from both sides participated in?

You know, there's a finite number of these questions, and they can be broken down into an ontology and recorded. You could even make such and information system interactive, and 3D. It's a shame we don't have startups that could record and organize this same type of information from present-day folks who witnessed history -- like those that saw the D-Day invasion, or the Civil Rights movement in the U.S. We are losing precious pieces of our past, and we have tech that could make a big difference here. We spend more time worrying about polygon counts on shooters and less time about capturing these incredible stories that are disappearing all around us.
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I know this is what is referred to in Midnight in Paris as "Golden Age Thinking," but I can't fight the feeling when I see television programs and interviews in the 50s and 60s that the level of "popular" discourse was much higher then than it is now. That is, interviewees of all ages are much more well spoken, articulate, and informed. I can't imagine the panel of American Idol judges (much less the audience) being able to drill down so quickly to a historical event like that, or even care to take a serious crack at it. Am I off?

Ex, a 60s era CBS documentary on rock--fair from and to both sides: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSq1ca__cRA
User Acquisition Advice for Startups
TL/DR: It's probably not him, it's you.

I think it's important to make the distinction between remote employees and remote teams. I think having a remote employee or two on a non-remote team is a challenge... I don't think the qualities required to work remotely are all that rare or require that much discipline. You could argue that it requires loads of discipline to come into work every day.. but you wouldn't, because it's second nature to us.. because we're judged on showing up.

Anyways, like I said.. being a remote worker on a non-remote team is pretty tricky. I've dealt with this challenge in the past and the best advice I can give is to allow/encourage your local employees to telecommute occasionally. The last team I was on that dealt with that virtually everyone started working from home one day a week and the group pretty quickly started adapting to different practices in terms of communication, expectations, and handing off work products. Was really beneficial all the way around, and it makes the odd completely-remote employee way less of a perceived rogue.
Yes, but how do I find out about "apropos"? I've been using Linux daily for 16 years now and this is -- really! -- the first time I've heard about this command.
This is either a joke or the stupidest thing I've heard all month.

Alas, this was a joke AND the stupidest thing you’ve heard all month. I will be more mindful of Poe’s Law (as suggested elsewhere) in the future.
If you want to read it and don't have a copy and want one in ePub format, you can snag it here: https://github.com/ieure/sicp
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That's really impressive numbers! Great post.
Unfortunately, that context (a survey of the difficulty of curriculums for CS programs across the country, per graduation class) would be very hard to collect.

However, we could try to look at CS school drop-out rates, and how many students picked-up or dropped the CS major. Nevertheless, it would be hard to separate "difficult courses" from "students who don't really love CS" as boit and pnathan suggested.
The area is also called stream computing. I work on a project in this area, which made HN a bit ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2442977

Note that the above article erroneously ties the Streams project with the Watson project - aside from coming from the same research lab, we have nothing to do with each other. My comment on Streams from that thread:

Why I find working on Streams exciting: we're designing a language and runtime system for a new programming model. Not just a new language (which we do have), but a new programming model. The way you write programs changes when you have essentially infinite streams of data coming through your system - you have to think in terms of operators that transform or filter individual pieces, and you have to keep in mind its inherent distributed nature. That is, you may write a chain of operators to process your data, but each operator can run in parallel with the others, even though you will probably design your application thinking of one particular piece of data marching through the system. The runtime system itself is, of course, distributed and fast.
To get an overview of this programming model, take a look at this paper: "SPADE: The System S Declarative Stream Processing Engine": http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.160....
Just keep in mind two things: the newest iteration of the language is called Streams Processing Language (SPL), and that it is a complete rewrite of Spade.

If you're interested in getting a feel for the programming model, here is a public getting started guide: http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/streams/v2r0/index....

And the language spec: http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/streams/v2r0/index....

I suppose I should put in the disclaimer that these are my views, and I do not represent IBM.
Looks awesome, but if I hear "A Heroku for..." about one more thing, I'm going to flip out.

It's closer to Urban Airship than Heroku. Just because they are both YC companies doesn't mean they have to be compared.
These guys are really onto something. Playing with their stuff for a little while was at once fun and annoying: I'd have killed to have this tech when I was an indie iOS dev, trying to scrape by knowing nothing about server development.

Seriously, I'd come up with cool features all the time, but have no idea how to get started building the server components they needed. Parse abstracts all that pain behind a few Objective-C methods that work just like all the other frameworks I use each day. I can store arbitrary data to the cloud and construct specific queries to pull it back down – without the mental overhead of learning or maintaining a new stack.

It's a simple idea but it's implemented with enough clarity and flexibility that you can accomplish a lot of neat stuff. Huge cheerleader for this team – I think they've got a lot to offer the many mobile developers who have ambitious projects and limited time/budget for outside server help.
What about Redbox? Surely they put more of a dent into blockbusters business then netflix did? I always assumed netflix was competing against walmart/best buy dvd sales, and not blockbuster rentals.
Some people say the site lost its way when each kind of Pokemon didn't have its own Wikipedia page.
It has always been my opinion that the high barrier to editing has prevented vandalism. It seems we are now getting to the point that it is preventing legitimate commits as well.
My point was the author's claim that the top of the top 1% is "involved in the financial services industry" is meaningless because of how he defines it. The only people who don't fit his description would be salaried employees.

To address your points - you're ignoring the difference in financial goals and economies of scale.

Joe is an employee. So his goal is to preserve the capital he earns, which is a service the retail bank offers. He earns a paltry interest on his money because 1. the bank lends his cash out very conservatively, and 2. he's not paying for the service of having it actively managed by a professional.

Rich people can not only afford professional money management, but very wealthy ones typical have access to higher quality investment vehicles than less wealthy rich. And since they have more capital (that they don't need) than Joe does, they tend to tolerate more risks. They also tend to get the rewards of that risk when its professionally managed.

At that scale of money, investment can have positive externalities. The capital invested in Facebook, Google, Apple, etc directly helped create jobs and expand the technology sector. Joe's money did comparatively little. Both are rewarded for their proportional economic impact. Capital gains is an incentive to keep rich people from parking their cash at a retail bank. Whether it works 100% effectively is definitely up for debate. But the general idea is that their cash can be deployed in a way that not only makes the rich richer, but the rest of society as well.
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Scientists find evidence of salt water flowing on Mars
How about another category: % of completed exercises? I read all of it but only did 1/3 of the exercises.
The only way I could see Apple and Microsoft doing a joint bid with Google is if they retained the ability to sue other players using these patents.

The way the patent worked w/o Google was that each party got a 100% perpetual license to use the patents. That is Android would be in the clear on the patents. They would also get a set of patents equal to x% of the patents. So you'd have a set of patents you could assert against anyone you wanted, except those in the deal.

So Android manufacturers would have been in the clear for everything Google produced. BUT, for example, skins on top of Android could still be attacked. And of course so could the HW.

Google should have went in on the deal and pushed stock Android to the phone manufacturers. Sure it hurts differentiation, but today the skins suck anyways, and it would reduce their patent surface (although clearly there are patents MS and Apple have that are outside of these deals).
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Really? I don't think for musicians that "Advertising yourself is the ONLY way to get fans". That's the fallacy of modern celebrity. For musicians the music should attract fans, not the musician talking about himself and his work.
Google refused because they wanted the patents for themselves

Google refused for any of a myriad of reasons which I doubt anyone here can even begin to know, nor can we begin to know what the terms of this offer were. However, seeing as MS is in fierce competition with Google and is already on the offensive in the patent war, I would not assume the offer was particularly amicable.

They were trying to portray a pattern of behavior on Microsoft's part by which they team up with competitors against Google, yet it turns out Microsoft actually offered to bid with Google.

MS did team up with competitors against Google. Possibly after offering to team up with Google, but so what? How are the two mutually exclusive? MS is a corporation, not a character in a story. They can have a dozen different interests at once, with no particular loyalties or moral consistency.
In a global economy, everything is a finite number of steps away from finance. That does not make everything in service of finance.
FYI ... these folks were at this year's TechCrunch Disrupt in NYC. There are a number of complications with the model including insurance, traffic tickets, etc. These guys impressed me quite a bit as they seemed to have these issues covered. Also, I think they won!
Confessions of a Code Muggle
I read it but didn't do most of the exercises, which amounts to 75% at most I guess
I took 6.01, in python. Just missed out on SICP, but I'm going through all the exercises now.
Does Wilson invest in people he hasn't met? What fraction of his investments are outside of his typical travel zone?

Yes, the entire world is a rival to SV, but that's not new. The relevant question is always what resources are available and how much they cost. Certain resources are very inexpensive in SV and very expensive elsewhere. (The same is true of NYC, but wrt different resources.)
Yup. At Northwestern, the first course covers the first three chapters. I later went back (~5 years after graduation) and did the fourth chapter and its exercises.

I now have an instructors' guide as well, but still haven't convinced myself to do the fifth chapter, mainly because all of my FP is in SML these days. But I really should...
When the FAQ appears to address something (selling at less than list price) and doesn't call out an exception for free, it's not an assumption. Companies do all sorts of things. I don't understand all the economics of amazon's business model, but I can read.
talked with a couple of guys from MIT who took 6.001, and asked them if they'd read SICP. They looked at each other and laughed, and said something along the lines of "Haha, ostensibly. I mean, we turned in our homework." Does that represent your experience as well?

If that's a legitimate indicator of wider behavior on campus, then I can see why the professors might question the utility of that book in that setting.
"Kinda started reading it but didn't get what the hype is all about".

I put it on my to-read list after reading Peter Norvig's review. I read maybe 2% of it and skimmed a lot more. While I'm sure I could learn quite a bit if I seriously studied the whole thing, I'm not sure it would be a good use of my time: most of the contents I already studied in college, though in a quite different approach. There are topics that I'm weak at, but if I decide to learn (say) compilation for real then I'd be better served by reading a book focused on compilation.

In other words, while SICP seems rather hardcore as an introduction to computer science, it feels rather unexciting as a review of my CS undergrad syllabus.
We seem to have indications that he was planning on continuing to scale up. If a car had been accelerating toward your house and crashed into a concrete barrier instead that might be a better analogy.
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