skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"To the grumbler who complains about the unfairness of the market system only one piece of advice can be given: If you want to acquire wealth, then try to satisfy the public by offering them something that is cheaper or which they like better. Try to supersede Pinkapinka by mixing another beverage. Equality under the law gives you the power to challenge every millionaire. In a market not sabotaged by government-imposed restrictions it is exclusively your fault if you do not outstrip the chocolate king, the movie star and the boxing champion." - Ludwig von Mises, The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality

Giving the poor something better and cheaper cannot be immoral by any definition of the word. If you are charging "too much" then why can't a competitor come in and undercut your outrageously high prices?
What annoys me about many OOP people is that they think designing class hierarchies are more important than making the code actually do what it needs to, it's like they get bonus points for every new class they introduce. I know sometimes this is the way to go, but most of them to it prematurely and in the end all they have is more code to refactor.

I once had an algorithm composed of 3 functions that had immutable inputs and outputs, it was easy to understand and easy to debug, now a coworker took that and rewrote it into a class, which was mutable for no reason. The results: he had a code that was 5 times larger than the original, and was way harder to understand and debug.

OOP is cool and enterprisish and all that but some people really need to understand that it's not the only way and in many cases it's certainly not the best way.

I think making a code as short as possible without obfuscating it is one of the best ways to start out, all the extra layers can be added later on if required.
Google Reader's awesome loading animation
Makes the think of "Stop writing good software; Start writing good solutions."
I do agree that large profit margins mean something is wrong, though I'm not sure the blame should necessarily fall on the person making the profit. It's the kind of situation where one should ask: why are profit margins high, especially if persistently high? Classic economic theory would predict that large profit margins shouldn't persist for more than a short time, because competitors will enter the market, whether the initial company wants them to or not. So then a question would be what's keeping the market uncompetitive.

Sometimes it might be the fault of the entrepreneur in question, especially if he/she has government connections: there are situations where a company is maintaining large profit margins serving the poor because their potential competitors keep running into licensing roadblocks. Other times it's something to do with patents, or network effects, or who knows what else.
That design process is great, and I'll bet it gets rid of a lot of premature errors that might end up needing too much code; etc.
A Seriously Good Hustle to start his Biz
Bumads Reklam Platformu ile Binlerce Bloga Ulaşın
If you're not committed to using precisely the curses library for the text UI, there is also Newt[1], a front-end to Slang. It was used in the text-based installer of Red Hat Linux. I once used it for a one-off Python script and it was OK.

1. http://gnewt.sourceforge.net/tutorial.html
It is a fallacious nerd narrative that LEOs want super powers to keep track of what kind of anime porn you watch. They don't care.

It depends on who you classify as LEO. One of the big paradigms the US Intelligence Community is into, aside from Open Source Intelligence, is behavior patterning and such mundane things as what anime porn you like do play into that.

This is why they mass-collect cell phone & financial records -- not only to see if you're buying a lot of ammonium nitrate, but to data mine everything you're buying and try to assemble a behavior patterning prediction system.
New and improved 2011 version:

https://www.cs50.net/lectures/
why do i have to "install an app" to be re-directed to an article?
these tactics just seem to me as "creative" ways to get people to agree to have more information about them published. I've yet to say "yes" to any such prompt on Facebook.
Google sniper: a successful affiliate marketing product
Not talking about the poster specifically, but in my expert opinion (irony intended), questions such as this one are a sure sign on a new/inexperienced programmer, obsessed with the wrong things. (Likewise for questions about whether i-- is faster than i++ in a C for loop, etc).

Such people hear, for example, that assembly is lower level than C, and as such can be faster, and have grand visions of rewriting operating systems and even mail clients in assembly.

Or talk about "bloat" regarding the size of executables, not realizing that the 400MB of, say, Pages.app is mostly template images, and that the real executable is like 1/10th the size.

Or, also that parts of code not needed are not even loaded from disk, so it doesn't matter if the raw executable code is 10MB, only how much of it is needed and how well it was written for speed.
I'm a current cs major at Harvard so I might be qualified to comment on the structure of Harvard's classes. If you are an undergrad and physically present at the lectures, then the instruction and individual attention are both phenomenal. In that regard, I would say that Stanford and Harvard classes are equivalent.

As far as online classes, I would say Harvard is fairly behind Stanford. While Harvard films nearly all of its lectures so that students in the extension school can still take regular courses, there is little if not zero attention given to them in lectures and assignments. In one class I took last year, a professor actually made fun of a few of the submissions from extension school students in front of the class.

Furthermore, attending office hours as an extension student is nigh out of the question. I'm unsure if some of our TF's (TA's) are available for extension school students are not. Probably so, but I've never witnessed it.
All that is to say, from the AI lectures from Stanford I've watched, I would say their online instruction is superior to Harvard.

edit: formatting
Bizarre.

Do you really need to make a dozen interwoven classes, when it’s possible just a hundred or so lines in one class will do fine?

The 100-line simple solution is better code. Complex solutions with clever object topologies are not "good code".

Instead of a ton of object dependencies where one change means having to find the references to it in all of your objects, you simply change what needs to be changed, knowing there’s no extra dependencies in your code for the sake of having beautiful code.

Dependencies are innately ugly, not "beautiful". Again, the code the OP describes is not "good code".

I agree with what the OP is saying. I just think the definition of "good code" he's using is bizarre, because I can't think of anyone who would call endlessly complex code "good". I think it's better to say, "stop writing clever code; start writing useful and maintainable software".
And there is one in Kelvedon Hatch outside London (accessible by underground + town bus): http://www.secretnuclearbunker.com/.
I hope that's just a bug.
The game where protestors deliberately work as hard as they possibly can in order to provoke a police response, and then whine about the police response. This is a game the police can't possibly win, and the protestors know it; that's why they play it.

The protesters should adopt this tactic widely: sit on the ground, link arms, and force the hand of the police: "pepper spray me, I dare you". The police are entitled, indeed obligated to arrest them, after all.
"Even tiny little programs like "Hello World" take up several KB when written in C and compiled with GCC."

That would only be a real problem if it kept happening proportionaly as programs grow in lines of code.

A 86 byte raw source program -> 3K can seem like a huge jump.

A 300,000 line, 1MB raw source program -> 1MB + 3K, or similar, would be insignificant.

You can always strip debugging symbols, remove libs you don't use, etc.
Thanks for your comment! I should have defined it better; I work with tons of people who view that as good code. More objects, more code, more everything. Then it's good code. It's a super-OOP methodology that I think many of them couldn't get out of. So if they look at a class of mine that doesn't make use of a ton of objects, that's 'bad code'. The definition of 'good code' in this article strictly pertains to those people who view it that way. By the title, I meant if you think tons of objects and extra stuff is good code, then stop writing good code, and focus on the software, the end result for the user.
I've only read as far as the first example, and wow, it's beautiful -- you don't even need to read the proof, the diagram says it all.
> Recommending that people don't sell the poor food or that we never lend the poor money, what in immoral thing to say.

I never even came close to saying that...

All I was pointing out was that when one side of a transaction is coerced into doing something, then the assumptions of a free market have been broken. Maybe "rational" is the wrong way to describe it, but when it comes to dealing with the poor, there are definitely issues of this kind.

Anyway, thanks for the troll!
Touching multiple files for micro-changes, eh?

Don't knock on OOP cause your colleague does not understand encapsulation or basic principles like SRP (Single responsibility principle).
Drinkify is a nice chuckle for 5 seconds. But that's all there is. It's like those short-lived YouTube celebrities.
Something I'm starting to notice is I'm spending less time actually browsing Facebook. I still check my notifications several times a day to see if anything pertains to me, but I don't scroll through my newsfeed or peoples' pages as much. I log in, check messages, respond, and dip out.

If they start to spam the notifications too, it's over. (Nick read a story on Washington Post that we think you would like!)
Yeah, you should swap those two steps
Watch Toronto Maple Leafs vs Washington Capitals live stream nhl 2011
Author's definition of good code is wrong.
"I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time." - Blaise Pascal

Writing short, well working code often require a lot of thinking, redesign and reworking. That is mostly not the case with longer code. I personally find such short code far more beautiful than generic and expandable object oriented frameworks. I usually find that making things generic is futile, because later requirements most often becomes something entirely different from what you thought. Then the generality just get in the way. Unfortunately a lot of people seems to disagree with that.
Exploit Round Up: Calibre Fiasco & LD_AUDIT
"""I do agree that large profit margins mean something is wrong, though I'm not sure the blame should necessarily fall on the person making the profit."""

Well, if that person is you, though, then you have the morality question to answer, not the market. It doesn't matter, morality wise, if the profit happens because the market is inefficient or for some other reason.

An easy example would be, because you have a patent for the thing you sell, so no one else can get into the market while it holds.
That's essentially what big pharma does

(they justify it with the "we fund future research" line, which I call BS. If you can save more people now, do it, instead of invoking vague future benefits. Else, even when that future drugs are available, you'll just screw the people of the future needing them, with the exact same argument about more future research).
Who says anything about paying/not paying? The point is, if you're waiting for an official distribution outside of the US, 99% of the fan websites become complete spoilers.

You can't be a dedicated fan of a US show outside the US and thoroughly enjoy it without pirating it first (...and then, buy the DVD). The only other option is to only watch DVDs and never talk with anyone online about the show, for fear of spoilers.

Didn't they learn anything from the Phantom Menace fiasco? The movie was the first highly and universally anticipated movie since highspeed internet became available. It was released 5 months later in France. It was a total fiasco. Instant surge of piracy, a specific screener became widespread and the only way for Star Wars fan to "survive" a five-months online lockout from their passion. This event was the origin of worldwide releases of blockbusters by movie studios, and the reason why movies nowadays get translated/localized before they are released in their own countries.
awesome, I'm reading Applied Cryptography and this will be a good supplement. The MIT OCW course doesn't have a lot of resources http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-comput...

Does anyone know from the AI course the quality of the lectures & videos?
Economists vs Traders: Fighting a false forecasting war
Didn't you see the comment I put above the article? I should have defined it better; I work with tons of people who view that as good code. More objects, more code, more everything. Then it's good code. It's a super-OOP methodology that I think many of them couldn't get out of. So if they look at a class of mine that doesn't make use of a ton of objects, that's 'bad code'. The definition of 'good code' in this article strictly pertains to those people who view it that way. By the title, I meant if you think tons of objects and extra stuff is good code, then stop writing good code, and focus on the software, the end result for the user.
GPS Saves the World — But Who’ll Save GPS?
Reminds me of one of the dev managers at my first "real job" -- this was in the 1990s -- who would say "get the data model right, and the code will almost write itself" and I have found in most cases (certainly for most "business" apps) that is true.
Netflix: A Cautionary Tale for Spotify
Of course this is a false dichotomy, but one I encounter quite a lot. It usually comes from younger inexperienced coders, or procedurally-minded coders who never took the time to understand OOP.

The false assumption is that "good code" takes longer to write than "good software." In reality "good code" only takes longer if you don't know what you're doing. If you haven't internalized good OOP, and you haven't applied good OOP principles enough to be efficient and judicious in your application of those principles, then yes, you'll probably do more harm than good, and you'll take longer to get there.

If that's the experience level your team has, then you're faced with two bad options: 1) write a lot of duplicated, procedural-style code that you'll despise in 3 months and be begging the Software Gods for 6 weeks of clear time just to clean that crap up; or 2) attempt to design some nice DRY-ed up, SRP classes with all the right GOF patterns applied, more than likely get it wrong and really end up in the same place as 1).

But if you understand and have experience (there's the rub) with good design (see: POEAA, GOF, Clean Code, Effective Java, etc.) then there's no choice to make, because it's much faster to write clean, well-architected code. It's must faster now, it will be much faster later.

Of course there will always be that guy on the team that doesn't think in OOP and still writes 600 line methods and glazes over if there's interfaces or abstractions involved. That guy is just as bad as Hey Look At My Handy Dandy Patterns Guy.

The solution to over-architecture is not bad architecture. It's understanding architecture and developing experience with it. While I have encountered OP's situation often, even more often I've encountered the consequences of haphazard design for those very same projects that "shipped fast": two guys in a back room refactoring for six weeks so that -- please please dear God -- we can get our bug rates down and start shipping features "like we used to."
I work full time and I am taking AI and ML. Fortunately, I am allowed to spend some time doing this at work, but it is still taking my weekends. I think one class is ok, two is a bit too much but doable. I wouldn't do three.
What's immoral is to abuse pricing leverage.

A proper exchange generates value. The value gets divided between the parties. Divided how? Usually the richer party makes an offer and the poorer party can take or leave it. Taking the lion's share of the value this way is immoral.

To be concrete, if a man is starving and has a mountain of gold, offering a scrap of stale bread for the entire mountain is immoral.
5y German Bunds Yields Chart
I think the plan is to have a complete Master's degree, but there haven't been any announcements regarding this.
Don't ever let your physical health be compromised, or you can lose the hyperfocus component (discomfort distracts you before you can enter it and/or prevents you from staying in it).

When this happens, it's a tragic, if personal, loss.

GUARD YOUR PHYSICAL HEALTH. If a situation threatens to compromise it, get out.
Firefly (as some-one mentioned underneath) are perfect examples of shows that would thrive under Netflix.

I have to disagree with this, Firefly is not the type of show Netflix should be focusing on. They need shows with low production costs with broad - lowest common denominator appeal. Expensive shows catering to a niche market (which they pretty much already have captured) is not what they're trying to do here.

There's a few ways they can go, sitcoms and short form comedies are going to be much more profitable for them at this point so Better off Ted is a much better fit.

Then there's the Showtime/HBO premium market (which folks are already paying for as a premium service). But even here I think they'd play it safe short term - more Sopranos and True Blood type mass appeal then Boardwalk Empire and The Wire (both are great, but much more focused market).
You will receive a statement from the Professor, but I believe they have to be careful about avoiding the perception that it is a certificate from Stanford university.
I know it sounds bad, but it is the truth: as very rational people, we find it a bit hard to understand women. And I say this as a person who has many more close women friends than guy friends!
Limits (iOS App) - Helps you stay below the drink driving limit
Beyond “Steve Jobs” – Users, Not Customers
Took me a few plays of the video to figure out what was going on. I finally noticed it in the bottom right corner. That said, it is pretty and unique. Haven't seen a loader like that before.
Depends on the ads I suppose.
I'm surprised that there aren't any services that say "hey , we're going to make you watch ads but we'll let you choose what categories of adverts you get"

That way I don't get constant adverts for women's skincare products and get stuff about new video games instead.
The Stanford online classes are way better. See the top comment by roman_v
I recall weekly hour long status meetings that could have been replaced by five minutes of well-coordinated email or bulletin board type activity.
I wrote my own mpd client with dmenu and a few lines of shell:

https://github.com/technomancy/dotfiles/blob/master/bin/musi...

This lets you just type just enough letters to uniquely identify the album you want to play, then hit enter to queue it up. Yay Unix!
Agreed. Good OOP is all about creating decoupled components that can be understood independent of the rest of the code. That's why it's so hard.
Nice discussion. I agree whole-heartedly, when it comes to full systems and programs. As in the article, when it comes to a simple plug-in to a system however, rewriting an entirely new version of an API just for the plugin was simply unnecessary.
Will reading text/programming on a 40" TV reduce eye strain?
I've been noticing that programming has quite unpleasant negative effects for the eyes.

Do you think its worth it to get a large monitor/TV for reading/writing text?

Second, do any of you spend 1 hour hacking, take a 5 minute mandatory break, rinse & repeat, etc?

Thanks!
Cyber security firm aims to plug document leaks
Node.js is good for solving problems I don’t have
It seems to conflate Big-O and Theta, but if you're asking for a plain English definition I guess that's a quibble.
This is great. The only nitpicky thing I have is this line:

This new proof was created by a friend of mine called Stanley Tennenbaum, who has since dropped out of mathematics.

There's kind of a snobbery in mathematics that goes along the lines of Pure Mathematics > Applicable Math > Applied Math > Programming the Math. Theoretical Comp Sci falls somewhere around Applicable. Why is it that he "dropped out of mathematics" and not "decided he liked [whatever he does now]"?

Otherwise, a great read. Math is so much cooler than high school calculus drills make it seem.
The killer feature of itunes for me is the library management — I drag & drop the mp3's, if they're tagged correctly it will handle them at ease, auto organizing the directory and files and copying them at the right place.
If some other tool can do this, even CLI ones, I would gladly hear about them !
Healthcare Breach Exposes Nearly 4 Million Patients' Data
Functionality and Philosophy of a New Operating System
And your bitching all over this thread is off topic on all the counts.

Especially the topic of this thread, which is not "What is or is not on topic on HN".

GET OFF MY LAWN!
Agreed, YAGNI is just as important as SRP. That's good design too. But hopefully if you do eventually need an API, your design was good enough to allow easy interface extraction, etc.
Dog Biscuit
I found the link interesting and am glad it was posted on here. If not the content itself, then certainly the ensuing conversation is relevant to HN. The fact that sexuality is so taboo in our culture yet motivates humans at the most basic level is fascinating. Others question why this link and not others get so much attention, which is another HN relevant issue. Maybe more people saw it at the same time and the sudden influx of upvotes sent it on its way.
Are the course videos online somewhere?

I know the database class was basically an organized walkthrough with extra assignments for videos that were mostly already public.
Same here .. i just want to click the link and be taken to the article to read it.

This is a behavior we all are used to. Why make something simple more complicated for your users???

For me i just highlight the title of article and go thru google to read it.
Motl clearly knows far more physics than I do, but my impression is that he has misunderstood the paper he is criticizing. For instance,

a commenter in the fast comments reminds me that \(\lambda\) is indeed
meant to be a non-quantum "ontological state" of hidden variables, so
the very usage of \(\lambda\) means that they violate the basic rules
of quantum mechanics: but the text makes it clear that they believe
that they are allowed to do so

I have not fully understood the paper, but my fairly clear understanding from the introduction is that it is addressing precisely the question of whether there is a (\lambda) which provides a more informative/predictive description of the physical system. I also think he misunderstood the Einstein quote at the beginning, ("...even Albert Einstein is accused of being too probabilistic!") Einstein was implying that he believes there is a more informative (\lambda) still to be found. The quote is completely consistent with the hypothesis of the EPR experiment.

The controversy is laid out very clearly and nicely in an essay[1] by E. T. Jaynes, whom they also quote from. (Incidentally, Jaynes was a physicist at WashU in St Louis. I accept that he could be a "crackpot" despite this, but I think Motl should lay off the personal attacks, or at least do a little more research before he goes on the warpath.)

[1] Pg 1011 of http://omega.albany.edu:8008/ETJ-PS/cc10i.ps section beginning "But What About Quantum Theory?"

EDIT: They didn't actually quote from that essay, they quoted from Complexity, Entropy and the Physics of Information, but it's the same message.