skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ah foxpro.

That was a great interview around dbase (EDIT: foxpro does not build on top of dbase I was wrong). I played around a lot with dbase in my early days. It was very cool. I never felt out of my league.

I've seen some of the ugliest yet most functional software done in foxpro. Incredibly easy to build feature rich software that unfortunately looked like dog poop.

Which has let them to either profit enough for a modern rewrite in .net, or disappear.

Most of the shops that moved to .net highly missed how productive they were with tiny teams in foxpro, and how expensive the move to .net had been.

If only foxpro had remained a viable option similar to VB, history might have gone a different way.

You have to respect how productive people were in those time. We really took a dive. Budgets blew up, so did team sizes, and here we are.

Stacks like foxpro and dbase allowed people like my uncle in his basement to start a massive business, or maintain the list of shirts he sent to the dry cleaners.
There’s a authoritarian law you don’t like, so you hope to seize power and pass the opposite authoritarian law.

How about trying for a truce instead?
The downvotes and flags were correct. You took the thread on a classic generic flamewar tangent. The guidelines specifically ask you not to do that: "Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

Then you broke them again ("Did you know the mRNA shots") and again ("Pfizer tried to hide their clinical data") and again ("Downvotes are [etc.]") and again ("you're so reactive emotionally"), and so on, pouring fuel on the fire and taking the thread extremely offtopic. All that is obviously against the rules and amounts to vandalism.

We've been asking you to follow the site guidelines for years now:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30197457 (Feb 2022)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26116840 (Feb 2021)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22274517 (Feb 2020)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21195104 (Oct 2019)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19815709 (May 2019)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18132361 (Oct 2018)

... yet you've continued to do it regularly:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32668726 (Aug 2022)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32453743 (Aug 2022)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32207241 (July 2022)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32206640 (July 2022)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32040335 (July 2022)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31706537 (June 2022)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31706382 (June 2022)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31635513 (June 2022)

In fact I'm finding it hard to find a recent comment by your account that isn't political battle, breaking the site guidelines, or (most often) both.

You're way into bannable territory. I'm not going to ban you right now, but if you keep this up we're going to have to. HN is trying to be a specific type of website. You're not just using it against the intended spirit, you're contributing to destroying it. We can't allow that, so please stop doing it.
> times they did it wound up causing every tinpot dictatorship to show up on their doorstep and demand they do the same for people that hadn't done anything wrong except piss off the wrong dictator

Which they wielded their unlimited power to ignore.
Pretty crazy turnaround. I really liked the pretty clear and reasoned abuse policy[1] they put out recently, and I don't envy the position they are in. On one hand, yes, this specific site is terrible. But they are trying very hard to not become the arbiters of what is terrible and what isn't terrible, and I respect them for that.

It's not an easy line to take, and other companies like Google and Facebook have not made that same choice to stay neutral.

> Some argue that we should terminate these services to content we find reprehensible so that others can launch attacks to knock it offline. That is the equivalent argument in the physical world that the fire department shouldn't respond to fires in the homes of people who do not possess sufficient moral character

1. https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflares-abuse-policies-and-a...
If you are looking for more substantial technical information, they are found in the ElixirConf ‘19 keynote speech and demo when Lumen was announced.

https://youtu.be/uMgTIlgYB-U
Pick's "multi-value database" is essentially just a flat-file database. I don't see how – if we put aside the marketing – it was really any more "database-oriented" than your average mainframe/minicomputer operating system with a record-oriented filesystem, such as MVS (especially VSAM), VM/CMS, OpenVMS (in particular its Files-11 RMS component), etc.
Not all of that older epistemology is horrible. Mathematics and logic and proof are ancient.
I don't understand, isn't the BEAM just a software runtime that provides a lightweight thread implementation that OTP can use? Why couldn't they implement an alternative that runs on WASI?

I agree that Elixir without OTP becomes much less useful, but there could be some changes to the language to enable in-process state changes so that you wouldn't be limited to a single process and the immutability restrictions that would make that very difficult to do anything useful with. I'm sure they thought of this problem and have a solution in some form.
Did they provide CDN services? Then they store files and I would interpret that as hosting.
The salaries are a symptom of the problem, not the cause. Most companies in the world (though Europe in particular has no excuse) don't understand that software is a strategic (and existential) issue, so pay for it like any other thing in their BOM.

cf my long comment on this subject.
"""
At Level 1, a kernel provides low-level OS services such as device drivers and memory management. At Level 2, a distributed DBMS runs on those services. At Level 3, we build high-level OS services such as a distributed file system, cluster scheduler, and distributed inter-process communication (IPC) subsystem on top of the DBMS. At Level 4, users write applications.
"""
How would it be different from installing today's kernel and then installing postgres, Gluster, docker and etcd on top of it?
https://twitter.com/keffals/status/1566153033586810885?s=20&...
Many databases implement their own filesystem internally that are heavily optimized for database-y use cases and access patterns while missing standard POSIX and other features a "real" filesystem would have. When this filesystem is installed on top of the OS filesystem, there is a cost due to duplication of effort, design impedance mismatch, limitations of the OS filesystem, etc. This is partially mitigated by turning the files in the OS filesystem into a giant block store to minimize interaction with the OS filesystem.

Some database filesystems can be installed directly on raw block devices if you desire with no OS filesystem in the middle. This usually offers significant performance and efficiency gains since everything above the raw hardware is purpose-built for the requirements of optimal database performance.
cloudflare’s servers were hosting and redistributing abusive material and private information non-consensually leading to suicides?

KF is still on the internet, they’re free to handle their own traffic and find a cdn willing to take their (apparently blatantly neonazi named) operating company’s money
Except, you know, when they were literally hosting the “site is down“ pages that contained anti-trans jokes.
They make up for it in their ElixirConf keynotes and presentations.
Wait, what's wrong with joining regular traffic?

I join traffic (on single carriageways up to 60mph), as does my 6yo daughter, accompanied. If we didn't, we'd never get anywhere.

This idea that roads are for cars has to die. The guidance here in the UK has recently been adjusted to emphasise that you're responsible for the safety of vulnerable road users around you, but that's long been the letter of the law. Educating people (and police) to follow that law is still catching up.
> 2 trips on psilocybe (one month apart), proper set & setting & guide & a lot of talking about it later with a trusted person

What does "proper set & setting & guide" mean? Clinical? Or friend/shaman type thing?
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I recently had my Amazon package stolen off my porch by a neighbor who brazenly opened the box, took the expresso machine I had ordered and left the Amazon box (with my name on it) and the packaging outside their house for me to see! At least they could have hidden the box, the balls!

I called the police via non emergency number and all they could do, when they finally showed up, was write a report. I understand the limitations of policing, resources and priorities that come with it - but it seems like thieves are truly emboldened now knowing that unless you steal from a corporation - police are inclined not to pursue the case at all.

It’s truly frustrating and my experience matches the OP.
when I see that many letters, I just think Law and Order.
It's a forum dedicated pretty much entirely to doxxing, swatting, stalking and harrassment. It's also where the Christchurch New Zealand mass shooter's live stream and manifesto were hosted.
Used for meatspace attacks on people they didn't like. It had transitioned to the "sticks and stones" stage.
Technically that’s literally how it works.

Legally? Do you have evidence to support that theory?
What the hell is this travesty. Now any old nobody can kill a site by larping drama on fucking twitter.

You should all think about the people dying in dictatorships before you give up a free and open Internet over some paedophile using twitter clout to ban a gossip forum
I guess I crossed that milestone too, without thinking much about it. My brother was in college, taking CS classes, and then my high school offered a course in BASIC so I signed up, in 1981. Meanwhile, my mom had started taking night classes in programming at a community college, and ended up being asked to teach the introductory course. We were in the Detroit area, and the car companies were using PL/1, so that was what the colleges taught, until everybody switched to Pascal. My mom's students were getting decent jobs after 1 year in her course. She bought a couple of computers out of her own pocket and started a zeroth hour programming class at the high school where she was a science teacher.

There were lots of family debates about programming. My mom thought that the job market for programmers would soon be flooded, and that in any event, it was too easy to justify 4 years of college study. I was interested in a variety of things and ended up majoring in math and physics. I got a summer internship at a computing facility, and formed the impression that an actual programming job would ultimately be boring. But programming, in the service of physics and electronics, was exciting! At my college, the professors who embraced personal computers and were doing cool things with them, were in the math and science departments.

Of course that's all hindsight, but interesting to see how my opinions have held up over the years. I think programming turned out to be harder than imagined, for people to learn, and we don't know precisely why. Views about how programming requires this or that kind of thinking, don't seem to hold water. Yet there's a shortage of programmers relative to investor interest in software development.

Is it boring? Was I right about that? I watch the programmers at my workplace doing their jobs, but at the same time, maybe they think my job is boring. That's a matter of personal preference, and all jobs have some amount of drudge work.

I'm still interested in programming, but on my own terms. I'm one of those dreaded "scientific" programmers, who uses programming as a problem solving tool, rather than for creating software for widespread use.
There were no good choices for Cloudflare here, and everyone across the internet who jams their fingers in their ears and shouts their position repeatedly is just contributing to the problem.

Private companies should not be the de facto moderators of free speech in our society. They are forced into that position by woefully inadequate governance by legal authorities operating multiple decades behind the current landscape.

Given that they should never be in this position, Cloudflare is choosing between "platforming the bad guys" and "censoring free speech". They have navigated this imperfectly, but have done better than most would, I think.

I truly hope that those unsatisfied with this outcome (which I suspect will be literally everybody) can take this as an opportunity to go help pressure their respective governments to figure out what the hell should be done, systematically, about hate speech on the internet. It's only 25 years overdue at this point.
Or a trajectroy in case of tech adoption.
What are you talking about? Cloudflare didn't host the website. They provided ddos protection via reverse proxy. That is different from hosting.
I think you need some kind of framework in order to utilize psychedelics properly. Buddhist or other meditation oriented practices are very popular, but not the only path.

The important thing is to have something you can cultivate because otherwise what might happen is that you accidentally heighten your existing feedback loops, which are likely negative, leading to a bad trip and in the worst case possibly psychosis.

Having strong foundational positive feedback loops that you can use as a anchor or bedrock are useful not only during chemically altered brain states, but in general life as well in protecting your mind (a Patronus for your “defense against the dark arts” you might say).
From the available information it sounds like backchanneling or another less charged term, not lobbying. Lobbying isn't some low-caliber word to point at any old conversation. It has a specific meaning and implications that so far aren't in evidence here.
>The policy we articulated last Wednesday remains our policy.

>have our cake and eat it too.

I don't get this corporate reverse speak.

They literally went against the policies stated on Wednesday and then plainly say "But this violation of that policy doesn't reflect on our policies overall."

I get that Kiwifarms is hated, that doesn't make black turn to white and up turn to down.

Cloudflare reneged on everything they said Wednesday, there isn't two ways about it.

They are self-stated as 'internet infrastructure', and this is definitely a censorship tactic.

It looks like it's time for a government to step in with over-sight, since they want to be an infrastructure player.
Drug experience: Never been this productive in my life
> The entire point of the internet is to be uncensorable

I find this interesting, is this the point of the internet, Or is this a personal value or feature people overlay on the internet? At a history/protocol level I’d be pressed to say the internet was designed to be uncensorsble, fault tolerant perhaps at best
I don't think you quite understand how awful Kiwi Farms is
We are also not taking this action directly because of the pressure campaign.

Oh, guess it's those one of those Cloudflare Coincidences (tm).
> The entire point of the internet is to be uncensorable

That isn't the point, the internet protocol is designed as a distributed networking system that was adopted by corporations; if you want censorship resistance or privacy that isn't part of that specific protocol. (For example check alternatives such a CJDNS, GNUnet, Yggdrasil, etc; or application-layer protocols such as I2P/IPFS/TOR)

Additionally the Internet Protocol is not resistant to intermediation. (Or in the words of the P2P Foundiation: it is not counter-anti-desintermediation: https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Counter-Anti-Disintermediatio...)

> The idea of disintermediation was central to the emancipatory visions of the Internet, yet the landscape today is more mediated than ever before. If we are to understand the consequences of an increasingly centralized Internet, we need to start by addressing the root cause of this concentration. Centralization is required to capture profit. Disintermediating platforms were ultimately reintermediated by way of capitalist investors dictating that communications systems be designed to capture profit.
I genuinely believe that it's entirely possible to be seen as very neutral and also just ban nazi sites, troll farms, etc. because you choose not to do business with them.
Does the California state public defender represent people in federal court?
We're using Blender to pre-render 3D assets into 2D ones for our upcoming top-down survival horror arpg. (Link in bio for the curious.) It's worked well for us overall. That said, it definitely adds a lot of complexity, and if you're ultimately making a 2D game it adds a whole new, complex tool to learn and integrate. Case in point the incredible efforts described in this article to create the cube map or depth buffer!

I will say, we solved the draw order problem a different, easier way by adopting a fixed ortho perspective and rendering objects as spritesheets/tiles. We can then author levels using conventional 2D methods. Objects now sort by their pivot's Y value, more or less, so walking behind things isn't an issue.

Seeing the Cave Story screenshot has me thinking, there might be an especially good opportunity for pre-rendered side-scrollers... Just entirely eliminate whole classes of problems, plus you easily bring back some of that animation-inspired back/mid/foreground goodness.
How is this censorship? They are a company and can do business with whoever they please. They are drawing the line at imminent threats to human life. The site has already led to the deaths of multiple people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiwi_Farms#Suicides_of_harassm...
Caching doesn't count as hosting legally. In a literal, technical sense, sure, it's temporary hosting, but practically it's not.
They muffed it. They were proving to the world how reliable they could be and repairing the damage from the Stormfront debacle, and again they just showed how prone to caving to pressure they can be. What a joke.

I will never use CF for anything I want kept online in the face of angry people.
Drone strikes and domestic spying have always had huge literal and figurative blast radiuses. Ask someone who is on the no fly list because they have the exceedingly common name of Mohammad.

Comparing the removal of 3 sites, all associated with terrorism and lone wolves, from one commercial provider to the atrocity that is imperial US might is an absurd juxtaposition.
Disagree, IBM i uses files: how do you create a database table in it? CRTPF command ("Create Physical File"). You create a file.

And I don't know what you mean by "catalogs", in the context of IBM i. Are you talking about DB2 catalog views? (Which exist in DB2 on every other platform, and most other RDBMS have something equivalent, such as the ANSI standard INFORMATION_SCHEMA)

Or are you confusing IBM i with MVS (in which the OS contains databases called "catalogs", in which you lookup a file name or file name prefix to find out which disk volume a file is stored on?)
Even this, what you are saying about "virtual arms", has been tried. Inverse-kinematic self-avatars were a big thing within the industry about 5 years ago. And it was... largely not that important. Without a tracking point for the elbow, it's nearly impossible to do IK for limbs. Remember, a double-pendulum is a chaotic system. A small perturbance can lead to dramatic divergence between simulated and actual state in chaotic systems.

That said, it's still possible to get body sense in VR, for the head, main torso, arms, and especially hands. It's hard to do. And when things are hard like this, there are economics of scale to consider. For example, the Quest 2 has native hand tracking built in, but not a lot of other VR systems do, and the ones that do often have dramatically different APIs (though OpenXR helps a lot here, which shifts the problem to whether or not the system in question has an OpenXR-compliant driver). Do you go all in on one platform and support its input modalities to the maximum degree? Or do you try to target the common denominator between a broader swath of the market.

Non-VR consumer software developers get to develop their software in an environment of operating systems that have well-established UI and UX metaphors. You make a button in WxWidgets or UWP or SwiftUI or HTML and that button comes with a LOT of functionality that you don't have to program yourself. We don't have that in VR. To make a button in a game engine for a VR game you basically have to implement that entire thing yourself. Oh, the game engine probably gives you a raycaster to be able to find objects, but you have to program up where that raycaster should be firing, which objects you should be interested in, and what interactions hitting the buttons on your controller map to how the button in the view reacts. To a large degree, every VR developer has to reinvent the world when they make something. We're working on the very edge of performance that these systems can eke out.

We don't have shared UI metaphors, but not for lack of trying. There are several projects underway attempting to do just that. MRTK and StereoKit in particular have put a lot of work into just that. But they aren't for everyone. They can't do everything. It'd be like expecting Call of Duty to be implemented strictly in Win32 controls. And the input modalities are so much more diverse and non-standardized than desktop mouse-and-keyboard that I doubt there will ever be a one-size-fits-all UI toolkit for VR.

I reassert that you are not being fair to the VR industry. Everything you have talked about so far has been tried and either found to not be worth the complexity or not possible to do within the current constraints.
Dexedrine has less stimulating effects and more smoother side effects, still an amphetamine like Adderall. Check it out with a doctor.
> I've seen some of the ugliest yet most functional software done in this. Incredibly easy to build feature rich software that unfortunately looked like dog poop.

Can you find any screenshots to illustrate this? I'm curious about how you make the IBM PC 80x25 text screen look like poop. :)