skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Dying sooner than one would like is a form of severe disutility just like pain is. While I do accept that prolonging misery can be a bad trade-off (especially for a cancer patient where near-term demise is inevitable), adding a possibility of extended life with little or no cost in added pain should be considered a very good trade-off by the exact same logic.

Cryonics doesn't involve any additional pain, so it should be an easy decision even to someone who just wants it all to end. Hitchens made a mistake in not accepting this option.

We can know it was a mistake rather than a rational decision to end his life due to a lack of desire for life, because he did in fact want to live longer -- he underwent a very painful cancer treatment towards that end, and wrote that the option of not existing had no appeal to him on a rational level.

He was also very sharp in his last days, had plenty of money to do it, and would have been respected for his decision by the vast majority of his friends and following.
Thanks a lot Rob! Not to worry, I am sure we will be back in a few months! :)
The article makes a lot more sense if you think of "science" not as the idealized process, but the actual process as practiced by people at Pfizer, Merck, etc. Read the Hume reference not as a criticism of the scientific method, but rather as a reminder of something we already know (correlation != causation), but that we in practice assume all the time in order to apply science to certain problems.

He's saying not that the method is bad, but that things are getting complex enough, at least in medicine, where we're hitting some limits on how easily we can practice science to the necessary level of rigor and precision.
I for one am ashamed that my country has mistreated them.
Agree that the author's extrapolations of the problems of medicine to science are cringe-worthy. The focus on medicine though makes me think it was just a bad editorial decision for the headline.

That said, I think he is correct in his critique of medicine/pharma. The cost of drug development has gone astronomically high these past decades, with billion dollar pipelines to account for the cost of failure.

The pharma drug development model has not really evolved beyond a lottery system of testing random compounds to treat diseases, and going back/forth until the right permutation of a compound is found. This might have worked before for initial "easy" diseases (that had easy drug targets, or single gene mutations), but the problems we face now (Alzheimers, Cancer) are too complex for our lottery-based drug development system.
If the goal is to allow the introduction of new keywords, then it's fairly simple. Don't parse anything in the form __[a-z0-9$_] as anything but a keyword.

Problem solved. Instead, they did something awkward by trying to carve out namespaces for the stdlib too but quite frequently don't adhere to their own rules.
Funny, it was a typo :)
unpossible
CEO and Founder
mind have been blow that this is how this breaks...

but the magnet armor would still be cooler
I've wanted this since forever - it's so awkward to ask for addresses and keep all of them sorted. Thank you for building this!
`lsof' is a nice front-end to this particular usage of /proc, and also works on other Unixes (/proc is, I think, a Linux innovation, and absent at least on OS X).
I am usually not one to appeal to authority, but I do find it amusing the number of people attempting to argue with somebody like phk over stylings of the C language. Most people on here would be overwhelmed with pride to have written a fraction of the important code he has.
Underscore-capital has been a reserved identifier prefix for many, many years. It's rather late to begin complaining about it. The side note about name-mangling on some platforms also using a leading underscore only shows that you can use a tool for years and still not understand it; that issue is completely orthogonal. I assure you, everyone on the committee is perfectly clear on the difference between name mangling and the reserved namespace.

The section on stack size is where it actually goes off the rails. C does not require that there be a stack. (Actually, the standard does not even contain the word "stack".) From that perspective, being able to control the "stack size" of a thread is nonsensical.

I'd be the first to agree that there have been some questionable additions to the C language, but this criticism comes off as half-baked at best. If you really care about this stuff, you should get involved with the standards process, or at least provide this feedback directly to the committee members--they are, for the most part, a very reasonable and thoughtful group of people.
> You should be thinking -- does a tabular view add value to your app?

I think the point of the article was that the author never thought this, but presupposed the answer was always 'yes'. It wasn't until looking at alternative implementations that this question popped up.

I've done the same myself. I once implemented sortable live lists (lists that may be updated with added/removed items in the background, with only part of the list shown and the rest retrieved from the server). I wondered, 'how should this work?' and cast around for other examples. At first I used the (old) Google Reader model: two lists, one is 'All items', the other is 'New items'. But then I realised that, actually, sorting doesn't add anything, and indeed might confuse people who expect predictable order in their lists. Problem solved: don't allow sorting, instead provide a canonical order.
I think that's the problem he's pointing out though with medicine: that we're unable to account for all the side-effects, that our hypotheses are often wrong (in drug development, its practically like a lottery if you start at pre-clinical), and that these gambles on drug development are getting way to costly for the healthcare system.

I think there needs to be revision of the experimental method overall, as the models of drug development in the 20th century simply aren't sustainable or efficient for the diseases of the 21st century.
I use LLVM mainly for the ability to put ivars in a class extension. I.E.

@interface MyClass() {
MyNewIvar *ivar
}

@end
Zuckerberg Supports Facebook Competitor Path
having worked with engineers who claims to not 'get' visual stuff...

...and designers who, when pointed out why he forgot something obvious like logoff links, just claims they do not fit the design...

...all i can say is that both are slackers and lazy.

the Engineer is just avoiding painful tedious work.

the Designer is just avoiding painful tedious work.

I not even a good coder nor a good designer. But heck i can identify slackers using only common sense.
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I use Clang (IMO you should rename LLVM Compiler to Clang).
I find putting ivars in my implementation files keeps my headers extremely clean.
I agree with the premise. However, the whole world runs on sloppy, inelegant, and downright ugly code. I strive to write pretty code but the truth is it doesn't matter that much. Just getting it done and out the door counts for so much more.
wikiHow is a really cool place to "hang out" on the web. There's ALWAYS something new to learn... something interesting / fun / odd to read. It's no wonder that it gets so many visitors!
And frankly? Who cares if it's a "lifestyle" company? It's now MY lifestyle to check the site several times per day... which can only be a good thing as far as advertisers are concerned.
Very true. As a current CS student, I couldn't agree more.

From what I've seen thus far, most school assignments are pretty easy to stumble through without really understanding what you're doing. As much useful stuff as I've learned in class, it's been personal projects that have really solidified things and taught me the most valuable lessons.
Are AMD's Llano shortages over?
And what's the 2012 twist of the x86 drama?
On the contrary, I don't really think that it is the University's job to teach "programming". University traditionally focuses around teaching the skills to do research. Higher level skills such as analysis and problem solving. Consider learning history. It is expected that you "know" how to write an essay. You may be critiqued on it, but it is not the primary motivation for your study of that subject.

My personal opinion is that university is not a place to learn tools (i.e. programming), but to learn to apply knowledge to form solutions to complex problems. We learn about algorithms, data structures and techniques because that is what we need to know to learn to solve hard problems. Programming, while not separate from this (i.e. you can hardly build anything without knowing how to use a screwdriver) is something that is assumed knowledge. Teaching it at university would waste valuable time in courses that are already too packed to give rigorous treatment of all topics covered.
Why not just use C++ without namespace nesting, default arguments, and other ++isms?
Bike ride (edge of a cliff)...nail biting (video)
I think the point is reasonable, but there is no "agile done wrong"; it's simply "not agile development". If a team claims to follow well-defined principles then it's everyone's responsibility to know them and identify any deviations. In this case, treating a date as more important than any other goal should have been a red flag. The team should never have allowed it to reach the point of longer hours over holiday breaks.
The problem is that you need to connect with the person who is traveling at exactly the right time. too soon and you lose mind-share, too late and it's no longer necessary. you need to figure out the delivery mechanism that works well. Maybe see if you can partner up with groupon travel destinations as an adder and offer them a split of it. so if groupon sells a hotel package in Chicago you should be offering your Chicago package. I think living social offers vacation packages too.

You can offer a few different levels of service too: default is web/you print at home. You can offer a full color printed version with the order if you want as well. logistically this is harder but it seems like more of a deal.

There is also the fandango way of doing it too. offer the ability to prepay for the tickets and take a small commission off the top for that. that's tougher to sell to the consumer because you don't have the trust relationship and might leave them stranded at the venue with no valid tickets. It would be slick to have this so that they didn't have to wait in line at all. make it opt in though and let them select what they want to actually go to see/do.

An iPhone app that has everything integrated would be great but it could also be as easy as just an interface for the pdf. If you got it into the appstore you would increase your visibility a bit especially if you target the "what should I do in x" queries with adwords that linked to a specific version of your app. you could also have inapp purchases that would download a new guide. cross selling in your apps is a good thing in this case.

pretty interesting idea. I'd probably buy the sf one if I go there ever but you have to reach me at the right time....
> C's "add seemingly randomly named include files to the top of your code to use different parts of the standard library" is pointless

But doesn't most languages do this? Like java's imports (only a really small subset is included by default) or python. I would have thought that namespace separation is a good thing.
Minor nit: Zynga has far more than 30mm MAU or uniques. They are somewhere in the range of 100mm - 300mm, depending on how you deduplicate.
What if the North Koreans knew that they were starving and that the rest of the world wasn't?

What if ten of thousands of balloons descended on North Korea, each carrying small, portable radios, a chocolate bar, and photos of life in the west.

Would that change anything?
How to diffuse a landmine with a pocketknife and a stick
Your time is not worth that much
I mostly had the same experience as the author in university, with the sole exception of the C++ class. That class was brutal -- you had the match the style guide exactly, have good variable names, good comments, const-correctness, etc.

When I've taught programming to beginners, I try and demonstrate good code and when I see ugly code I point them in a better direction. I have, however, had students be stubbornly focused on the output of their code and ignore all my advice. No matter how ugly and hard to debug their code was, they refused to believe it mattered.
I don't think generalist's are as rare as this article makes out; I think most people are born like this. However I'm certain that when we go to work we are incentivised into becoming specialists. My assumption is that at scale businesses will consider any variance in employees more trouble than it is worth. As a result of this, if somebody wishes to market themselves to the majority of the employment market they are more successful if they find a niche to excel in. (Presumably once you've done this you start to think of yourself as a specialist and forget your underlying potential to learn multiple ways of thinking.)

Startups almost certainly would do well by hiring generalists but I doubt it's often that they seek them. The demand for specialists will have altered the supply of generalists in a way that probably makes searching for them costly.

I am a generalist although not a "Desingineer" as I haven't picked up very many design-related skills. I personally disagree with many people in this thread on what being a generalist means. Being a generalist does not mean you have several discrete skills, and it does not mean you are a good a programmer as a "programmer" or as good a marketer as a "marketer", etc. I think this separation is a projection of a formal education. Instead I would describe generalism as about having one big formless ability accrued from every discipline you have studied. This is a potent skill as it gives you a broader understanding of how things work and sometimes the cross-pollination of ideas allows you to make much better decisions, and act in a way that others consider wildly creative.

Of course, that's not to say that being a generalist is somehow better than being a specialist. Unless you're a genius [1], specialists will often outperform you in their area of expertise. It can also be a little depressing. Sometimes it feels like you've taken 100 steps in a 100 directions and ended up very close to where you started. However, it definitely has its pros -- for me, it satisfies a thirst for all kinds of knowledge.

Ultimately the rigid distinction between specialist and generalist is artificial. Few are pure generalists and few are pure specialists. I don't worry that I will be held back by other's difficulty in fitting me into a role. I might have multiple abilities but like most of you I have some which I am slightly better at. I doubt that even the most fervent self-proclaimed generalists can avoid becoming a little specialist at something. ;)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymath
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Calling it obsolete is hyperbole. A standard definition of obsolete is something that was once common but no longer is. Just last week I had to revert a number of ext4 filesystems back to ext3 due to performance problems on RHEL5, so I'm afraid that ext3 will be in common use for years to come.

(The performance problems aren't present in Fedora 16, so you could argue that RHEL5 is obsolete.)
WikiHow is a great story, but the word 'bootstrap' doesn't appear in the original article headline or text, because the origin story is a little more convoluted than a simple incremental bootstrap.

Essentially the wikiHow founders bought Web-1.0 also-ran eHow for cheap, turned it around with new content, SEO, and AdSense, and flipped it to Demand Media, keeping the wikiHow sideline as something unique and personally interesting.

There are some scrappy bootstrap elements there, but also, as Herrick is quoted saying in the article, "It was like a microcap turnaround." It's also clear that the "very nice deal" with Demand Media has allowed a patience with wikiHow that might not be available to every bootstrapping team.
Charging or not charging for an infringing work isn't relevant. Personally I hope they give him a job with a hefty options grant.
tl;dr: They spent $14,800 on two weeks worth of advertising and got 8507 clicks, some feedback and a few connections with people they didn't have the creative juice to figure out a way to connect with. The app is 'free for the holidays', so one can't relate that to CPA.

It is a very pretty looking polished app. I'm not sure I'd spend money to buy it myself, but maybe others would. I suspect it will take a long time to make back the $15k in advertising.
> in the dominant Silicon Valley mythology, building a "lifestyle" company is seen as a less macho and ambitious path than building a VC-backed company

To be fair, I think this is not so much about the common mythology in the valley. It's more about how the valley PR sites most commonly talk about.

There's so many bad companies in the tech scene, that we often look at the VC/angel scene as the filter for whats worth looking at.

I'd argue (as a creator a lifestyle business) that there are even more uninteresting startups with that fall into the lifestyle label - by that I mean not very pressworthy - not that its a bad business. The companies that are trying to do big things, usually require capital and that often comes with getting press and attention.

It's also important to note that most "lifestyle" companies aren't really startups anyway.. more small businesses... and they aren't the type of companies that need VC in the first place.

But as soon as any lifestyle business becomes successful, they get a ton of praise. Especially on HN. Just like any acquisition or exit.
Clang is the future. GCC is obsolete, and LLVM-GCC was just a temporary technology to help migrate from GCC to Clang. All new projects should absolutely be using Clang now, and any old projects that haven't already switched should seriously consider doing so.
Only if they operate in jurisdictions that can apply such force, and only if they make a connection between their online presence and their offline presence. An escrow agency could operate pseudonymously online without having an offline presence, as long as they built a trusted reputation around their online pseudonym and cryptographic identity.
Very cool. Just bought a recording to a show from 1987 for $5. Looks like they send you a zip file from S3.

Interesting idea... If you want to pay a different price (lower or higher) you have to click a link tell them why. "Please tell us why (in 40 characters or more)"
I disagree, I often see people in the CS program who haven't done a lick of programming outside assignments and don't bother teaching themselves anything beyond whats required for class.
Decided not to go to college; Went through a seed incubator; Built a profitable product (helpjuice.com) which I live off of. Then, I turned 19.
There is a difference between "self-taught" and "polishing skills with experience".

Whatever you study in school, you will never be 100% prepeared to work.

That being said, code/program design IS a very important skill that seems to be hard to teach in school.
This is the response I got from one of the reps I contacted. I also posted it to HN a while back: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3253611

"""
Thank you for writing to me regarding S. 968, the PROTECT IP Act of 2011. I understand your concerns.
I am a cosponsor of this legislation because I believe that we must protect American intellectual property against foreign websites that infringe upon our rights. By empowering the Attorney General of the United States to go after foreign infringing websites, this legislation becomes a necessary tool to ensure that U.S. companies remain competitive in the world marketplace. I recognize that there are technical concerns with the enforcement of this bill that need to be addressed. I am committed to working with my colleagues in the United States Senate to ensure that this legislation protects the Constitutional rights of Americans and does not stifle lawful free speech or innovation on the internet.

Thank you again for writing to express your concerns, and I hope that you keep in touch with my office regarding future legislation. For more information on this and other important issues, please visit my website at http://gillibrand.senate.gov and sign up for my e-newsletter.

Sincerely, Kirsten E. Gillibrand United States Senator
"""

Total cookie cutter stuff.
I don't think it's an issue of educating senators on the "issues." The ones who are pushing this bill forward simply want to turn the internet into cable tv.
The thing about coding is that you have to be self taught. Languages, techniques, and technology in general moves so fast that by the time you get a degree everything you've learned as far as coding goes is already being replaced.

I learned simple HTML when I was 11 and have been self teaching myself ever since. I'm not in my second year of a degree in CS and what I've found is that the language and the code itself is not important. What's important are the concepts. Types, objects, methods, the theories behind programming, and all of those less tangible things are what's important because that is the basic foundation of programming.

Programming is different than other skills. It's as much of an art as it is a science. The science is relatively unchanging but the art does. Your code is always evolving and there's always the potential for you to make yourself obsolete if you don't continue to teach yourself. I focus on the web and in working in web design in particular I'm seeing a trend that speaks to the idea that you must always be teaching yourself. There are oodles and oodles of web design/development firms out there that have been around since the late 90's that you can tell have been around since the late 90's. Their work looks dated in terms of design and their techniques look like they're right out of 1997! The guys working there used to be young and up on the latest trends but it's obvious they've stopped learning and young guys are passing them up easily. Even people with less than half their experience are writing better code and have prettier output.

I think you can tell who got into programming just to get a job and who got into it out of passion by looking at their work. If it continually improves they've got passion, if it plateaus at a certain point then they're just employed and nothing more.

In the end being self taught is a requirement and never an option in this field. Once you have the foundational knowledge of programming then everything else is just a matter of keeping up with new tech and learning some new syntax every so often.
> Also it states that there exists a program, such that if you give it something that is a proof of a theorem it'll return something that is a proof of the same theorem, for all possible theorems imaginable. Let's that thought sink for a while: for all possible theorems imaginable.

> Ignoring ⊥, in all forms, we can see that there's only a proof that's isomorphic to any given proof, namely the same given proof. In other words, the only program implements a → a is the identity:

It doesn't necessarily follow that the program is the identity for all types: it could be the identity for all types but, say, Int, where instead it returns 5. In Haskell this is not possible without FlexibleInstances, but we haven't assumed that property of the types-as-theorems model. (To interpret things literally, if I imagine a computer where I type in a proof of something and it prints out a proof of the same thing, I don't intuitively expect that it can't introspect on what I typed in.)