skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Primarily because BitBucket is slowly getting better and I would rather be on the native platform? Plus, we have all of our tickets in BBucket ATM and I'm not too keen on moving them over (I would probably hire a VA to do it, but still...).
"The Internet's success is it's ability to facilitate connections, making them easier, more personal and more meaningful"

I agree that the internet can better facilitate connections but in what regard do you feel that the internet has made interpersonal relationships more personal and meaningful? In my opinion it has done dramatically the opposite. In fact Id argue that the internet doesn't have a role in having a personal and meaningful relationship with someone.
Book Review: Ikigai by Sebastian Marshall
Stephen Hawking marks 70th birthday with speech to leading cosmologists
I often feel like I'm a 12-year-old trying to operate an overgrown body. Youth has passed me by. My intellectual prime was when I was 12-14. That's when I started questioning the concept of god, contemplated existence, the universe, the purpose, function, and meaning of life, and made up my core philosophical and political beliefs influenced by John Lennon. I still secretly read young adult fiction from time to time.

I don't think anyone really grows up - people just get older. Adults are just kids with money. The difference between men and boys is the price of their toys, as the saying goes. I never feel any different on my birthday.

“I don’t know if I’ve come of age, but I’m certainly older now. I feel shrunken. As if there’s a tiny, ancient Oliver Tate inside me operating the levers of a life sized Oliver-shaped shell. A shell on which a decrepit picture show replays the same handful of images.” — Oliver Tate, Submarine
Interesting idea! I wonder how they think to address performance (one data query needs many requests to different nodes if I understand it well) and availability (if one node is down, I can't access my data?).
The thing I don't like about Super in Unity is that the feature doesn't learn you're most used applications. I used to use gnome-do and it was awesome for that.

For instance, if you want to get to the calculator, I type calc. The first option is LibreOffice Calc. I have to either use the arrow keys or mouse to navigate to the calculator which is the second option. I know that If I type ca or cal, calculator is first, but I tend to type calc and it doesn't learn.

I also use VirtualBox. In gnome-do, I can start typing the name of my VM and I can launch it immediately. Using Super in Unity, I need to open VirtualBox first. Then start the VM through VirtualBox.
The article describe the problem of not having a clean cross-platform workflow programmers running Visual Studio and Mono Develop can use to seamlessly collaborate on the same codebase, something that's really easy for just about anything else.

This sort of non-conventional workflow has traditionally been a problem with Microsoft's developer tools. If you go too far outside the use cases they have designed for, the tools start to work against you.

I've noticed a reversal in this trend with things like ASP.NET MVC and Entity Framework. The people I know at Microsoft developer tools seem to "get it" and want to make things that are more ecosystem-friendly and less prescriptive.

This particular case (using heterogeneous tools on different platforms to work on the same codebase) isn't just difficult on .NET. Lots of people feel your pain.
MakerBot's 3-D Printers Let Consumers Dream Up Prototypes Of Almost Anything
The C99 standard specifies that the stdlib.h header should be provided with amongst other things malloc()/free(). So, C99 provides heap allocation functions.

Also, some people will argue that 'asking' an array on the stack is also allocation ;).
It's not really backwards to tackle the hard problems first to prove they can be solved, but it is counter-intuitive. Thanks for this tip.
Apple Patent Stashes Passwords in Chargers
I wonder how much of an impact it would be if Scala simply had better documentation. I love the terseness of the code and the complex things you can do, but I'll be damned if I could ever glean ideas from looking at method definitions rather than code examples.
Two-color Makerbot released
And then /64s or /48s become tainted.
> Further, why are we talking in terms of the actual command-line commands? (...) I'd much prefer you tell me the name of the popular Windows/Mac client and walk me through the workflow I'll actually use on a day-to-day basis.

To be perfectly clear, the command line tools ARE the popular client. The only widely used GUI I'm aware of is the one specific to Github. There are others but they generally expect you to be familiar with the command line workflow. Perhaps this is because Git is easily integrated into IDEs in a way that makes sense for that particular IDE; perhaps it's because the command line interface is actually very good, with features like spelling suggestions (if you've mistyped a command name) and autocompletion scripts (sort of like IntelliSense).

By the way, I can't speak for Windows users but the overwhelming majority of Mac and Linux developers are well aware that their shiny GUIs are thin layers over the gross 70s Unix parts underneath. In this world there's no stigma concerning beards or the 70s, and your dismissal of the command line comes across as backwards and absurd. It's a bit like badmouthing non-Hollywood filmmakers because a lot of them work in foreign languages and you "don't want to read some German thing for four hours" when you go to the movies.
I see the same responses in the comments thread of this blog. "$40 worth desk holding gadgets worth $4000? Seriously?" This line of reasoning makes no sense to me.

Why does the cost of a desk need to match that of the stuff on it? Are you suggesting this home-made desk is not stable, that it puts the contents of it at risk? Sure looks stable to me.

He might be able to justify $2000 on a Macbook Air because there may not be an alternative (depending on his work) or it may be justified with the perceived costs of the device.

There's no point spending $800 on a desk if $40 does the job adequately. Cost is only loosely correlated to quality and value. It's the same line of thinking that goes "well you spend a third of your life sleeping so why do you spend only $200 on a mattress?" Perhaps because a cheap bed and mattress is perfectly comfortable for most people.
Are you aware that the website has layout issues with JavaScript turned off? How about adding a few CSS rules?

Other than that it's an awesome site, though. Nice work Eldarion!
Google Body becomes Zygote Body; built on open source 3D viewer
I think that mostly things on thumbtack just seem rather static, whereas craigslist is fluid. Craigslist is pretty close to pure UGC. On thumbtack the leads come in kind of slow (0-3 a month) and everyone competes with static profiles and a chance to write a short note (which is nice, but also can feel stale, and untimely)

I want to go to the website and connect with people ready to work together right now, or at least communicate with people in real-time. If you are active on craigslist and have the time you can email people until this happens, and it usually doesnt take that long.
...I don't think I would be any happier standing continuously than sitting continuously.

I came to the same conclusion after switching to a standing desk for a few months.

Now I'm using a yoga ball and it's amazing. It's immediately intuitive: just sit on it and shift to another comfortable position if you've been in one place too long. My core is even getting stronger from balancing (although it doesn't feel like a workout). I have a 65cm one for desk-height and a 75cm one for counter-height. I highly recommend it.
"As a pragmatic user of Scala I don't see why the fact that you _can_ do some amazing but cryptic things with the language is a detriment."

Because you hit the cryptic too soon, and you can't really avoid it. And I generalize this to any such language that has this characteristic, not just Scala. You can't use C++ for very long without having to know huge swathes of it if you want to use the libraries created by others, and you want to be able to debug why they don't work perfectly. (Bearing in mind "working perfectly" also includes you having a correct mental model of how they work, which is tricky if you only have a subset of the language in your head!) Same for Haskell. Compare with Python, where you basically can learn a reduced subset of the language, yet still use libraries fairly effectively. You need to know the basics of having objects and calling methods. You don't need to know how to write your own iterator, any of the double-underscore methods or the resulting protocols, you probably don't need to know decorators (and even if you do, probably just how to use them, because they are unlikely to bite you in odd ways if you just copy-paste instances of them), you don't need to know metaclasses, etc.

Type systems of almost any kind are very hard to satisfy without understanding. In some sense, this is one of the very constraints the stronger ones are trying to enforce.
I am a long time perl user looking to pick up python this year. How much value would this conf be to someone like myself who knows a lot about programming but practically nothing about python?

I see that there are some intro-talks.... are they worth the overall admission price?
Make a tutorial that follows the workflow of a bad developer, and you can get a lot of people on board. Show us how to undo terrible mistakes. Show us how to work with other bad developers and working with their terrible mistakes.

To get people on board with Git, you gotta show that anyone can use it, efficiently. That's how you get the most number of people to adopt - when they can easily see themselves using and trusting Git.
"Bring in the nerds" - we're headed to DC to testify about SOPA/PIPA
Thanks! Since this is only a fun project the script took about 2 evenings of (casual) coding.
There's another point of view regarding this issue. Complex applications tend to evolve towards an 'inner platform'/'duck programming' state because serious power users want to avoid repetitive point/click operations. They demand a programmatic way to macro common tasks that they wish to apply to large amounts of data.

One might say at this point ok, the application should provide an API, and the power user should hire a part-time programmer to write a plugin. But that may not be feasible, and it misses the point that the user may not want to hire programmers and learn about API's.

The deeper question it seems to me is, is it always a sin to allow an end-user to have access to a Turing-complete, user-domain set of tools that are effectively a programming platform?

An answer of yes to this question smacks a bit of elitism: we are the priests of code; users must forever be relegated to pointy-clicky automatons.
Well, the site is getting hammered. It's nearly inaccessible.
This is a really good point, actually. (I'm hypothesizing here) Since to so many people so much of what they call "science" is basically magic, all of it seems much too dangerous. Especially now that most things in a halfway decent chemistry kit are probably banned or closely scrutinized by the government.
How does it being an unavoidable side-effect negate it as a legitimate problem? I don't see how the two traits are mutually exclusive.
The body can be considered as a system of many redundant components, with aging as the result of progressive unrepaired damage to those components. This is a model that works very well. For further reading, you might look at the application of reliability theory to aging:

http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2010/05/applying-reliabil...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliability_theory_of_aging_and...

Once you start to think along the lines of damage and repair, you inevitably end up in the SENS camp. It's the logical place to be.

http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2006/11/the-engineers-vie...

Bodies are complex systems and all complex systems can be prolonged in their period of prime operation by sufficiently diligent incremental repair. Developing a toolkit to do that for humans is the point of SENS the research program, with the point of SENS the advocacy program being to help people understand that the scientific community well understands in detail what needs repairing.

For more on the biochemistry of damage-that-causes-aging, explained for laypeople, you might look here:

http://www.sens.org/sens-research/research-themes
Will Lean Startups Make Academia Irrelevant? Big Data & the Future of Knowledge
The original claim made was "If tory policy is even more insane (scrapping all employment law, anyone* ?)", "* - no, really, from one of Cameron's advisers."

According to the article this was never Tory policy, so that is false. The Huffington Post are a second hand source here, reporting on something in the Telegraph. The details of course aren't available in either, but what is in the Telegraph (who actually saw the thing) look more reasonable (whether one agrees with the gist of it is another thing).

It's also rather misleading to say "one of Cameron's advisors" which implies this is a paid employee, rather than a successful businessman who has been asked to make a report (I imagine the government ask for and receive many reports most of which they ignore or only take elements of).
I think whether an open source project improves you, technically, depends on the scope of each project. For example, you could make 100 simple CRUD web applications in the same way, and not learn anything from it.

For the projects I tend to work on, reading 100s of pages of documentation is necessary. To create a good solution, I must understand the domain well. I spend many evenings reading books on kernel construction, networking, algorithms and so on. This is improving me technically. When I go into work, the knowledge then helps to make better software.
The virtue of price discrimination
I don't think it's a matter of programmers being productive per se. The greatest benefits of command line are the ability to easily store, share and reproduce actions. It's just text. You don't need screenshots to explain something, and everything is scriptable.
Riviera de Antalya - O segredo mais bem guardado da Turquia
I don't think there is much gzip can do on the base64 representation of a png file, the data is already highly variable. So now all you've done is increase the load time as well as the cpu decompression time for all your sprites.
Cobra Wants You to Tag and Find Your Lost Stuff
Completely agree. To use a different analogy, this is like writing ObjC code using XCode and talking about how hard it is to compile outside the Apple world of tools (perhaps using GNUStep). It is no less open source.
Note that source control in particular is particularly amenable to the command line, since the output of source control commands is blobs of text that refers to text files on disk; grepping around in it and wanting to access, process, or modify those files by name is a common operation.
Based on reading the documentation, I think Hibernate for Java would qualify. I've never used it, though, so I can't be sure. SQLAlchemy for Python also looks good, but I've also never had the opportunity to use it.
The biggest problem with Git is the insistence of using command line. Just so you know, when you install the software it provides a simple GUI where you can, you know, click on buttons instead of memorizing commands.
While the title of the article is true, the content doesn't really support the idiom. Lack of familiarity with tools and utilities seems to be the theme here. It would help if MonoDevelop and Visual Studio played well together, but they don't. Portability across platforms with .Net isn't easy, that's for sure.

For OSS .net projects I've been involved with, we've made conscious decisions about code distribution. Those included unit tests (we chose nUnit) and builds (VS sln files). Did we forego all those mono developers? Well, yes and no. Yes, in theory; no, in terms of anyone who was using our code in a Mono environment. To bridge the gap, we rolled a MonoDevelop project file, and put up some info about it on our wiki. To date, we never had anyone ask for build assistance in Mono.

While I get the sentiment, it's not nearly as big a problem as getting .Net developers engaged in more OSS projects.
I think this guide needs some general explanation of what git is, and what the thinking behind it is (like here: http://progit.org/book/ch1-3.html).

Of course you can get started with this guide, but you have no clue what you are doing. It's learning by following the recipe versus learning by understanding.
All other things being equal, yes, it's better to get in on the next thing early than to get in on the current thing late.

But the variables that go into a) when you came up with your idea and b) how convinced you are that the idea is worth pursuing are Not Independent of the wave functions discussed in the article!

Part of the reason you're convinced that your social networking idea is sound is that there are concrete examples of successful businesses operating in the space.

At the end of the day, you either believe in your idea's potential to create value for investors in virtue of creating new/increased value for users, or you don't.

If you do, go for it and live with the wave phase you're dealt.

If you don't, waiting around hoping to pitch it in Next Thing terms probably isn't going to help you.
Nicely done. Thanks a lot.
Actually no, it's a little more complex than that:

Regardless of reproductive lifespan, in a population that is in equilibrium (not increasing or decreasing significantly), the average number of (surviving and reproducing) children per individual is going to be 2. So supposing we could live to be 1000 years old, and still reproduce at that age, we'd have an average of 2 generations per 1000 years.
Right. Pollution was an unavoidable side effect of the Industrial Revolution, and spoilage is an unavoidable side effect of long-distance transport of perishable goods, and heat is an unavoidable side effect of pretty much everything, but all are still legitimate problems.
It's a press release, not "blog spam". I'm not yahoo...
I seem to remember it being that you could see anyone at your college. Which made it defacto public because strangers had access to your profile. (You had no access control with your profile). As long as I had a college email I could see anyone else's profile if they were at the same college. Networks were college based.

People were up in arms when anyone with an email address could get in and see their stuff. They wanted to expand their market. I think that was 2005. So in response they hacked in some not very good privacy features.

Maybe I am misremembering, however.
Here’s Google’s Homepage 1999 vs. 2012. Can You Tell The Difference?
"No. I did not imply that."

I think you did the minute you made that analogy.
The core entrepreneurial skills mentioned in Daniel's article do need to be present in some combination on the founding team. This team could include various blends of founders, advisors, employees, contractors, and directors.

Some core skills are orders of magnitude more valuable than others. For instance, raising $100,000 of capital in 1,000 hours is worth exactly $100/hour. Doing entry level marketing coordinator work is worth approximately $18/hour. The higher-impact activity in this context is obvious, especially if getting deals done is the driving force in a founder or co-founder's DNA.

Daniel's article is on the money when it comes to creating a list of the core entrepreneurial skills that CAN and should be learned in order to increase the odds of startup success, so let's continue this discussion over the coming weeks.
I don't understand why this comment is being downvoted. He makes a valid argument against the tyranny of the (uninformed) majority.

A significant number of Americans thought defaulting on our debt was a good idea and ignored every expert and economist shouting this would be catastrophic. Their argument was simply "we don't believe you" without supporting evidence, and without any desire to listen to counter-arguments. There is plenty of legitimate controversy over monetary policy, but basically everyone agreed defaulting on the debt was not a good idea.

I'm not arguing for elitism or benevolent dictatorship, but there are definitely times when "average Joe" has no idea what the fuck he is talking about.
Ironically the site features don't work in IE8.
You did it with a faulty analogy. The analogy compared a permanent physical harm to an indefinite harm. Two things have to be analogous to fit an analogy.
اسعار الحديد والاسمنت فى مصر اليوم الثلاثاء 10 يناير
Paul Ryan Comes Out Against SOPA After Reddit Pumps Up Opposing Candidate
Medical Developments
That's awesome, and requires great research into the interpretation of lead blobs.
It's an unavoidable side-effect of having easy and cheap duplication ...

I've been trying to accumulate a list of practices or behaviors where there has never been any (or much) barrier to copying, and where for someone to complain would sound a little bizarre.

For example, hair styles. If you dream up a wicked hair style and go out in public, anyone who sees you can likely copy it for themselves.

Same with how you dress yourself. (See also http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=878401)

Can anyone suggest others?
Rep. Ryan's statement is significant and helps the cause in both the House and the Senate. Ryan is a widely respected policy leader for Congressional Republicans. It is also a strong stance for him to publicly oppose another Republican's legislation, while the bill is still being considered in committee.
Hey there. I'm one of the guys that co-founded this project. The main debate here is about the big squid on the home screen. Some say it's too "friendly" for a legal product. What do you think?
I'm curious. What backs up the idea that the average number of children per individual will be 2 regardless of reproductive lifespan?

It seems that I've seen a somewhat(?) common pattern among people who have young families and get divorced that often times have another family (+2 children) when they re-marry.
Isn't your point just agreement with mine? You're reading books (or wikipedia or whatever) as a necessary task in a focused effort to develop software. Clearly you didn't take me to mean that you should never read, right?

But the GP post seemed to be arguing the opposite: that focusing your effort and learning on a practical goal was not a way to "improve yourself technically". And that's the part that lost me.
Separation of Duties for System Administrators
NodePDX 2012, Feb 11/12, Node.js conference in Portland, OR
Tmux for noobs: Multiple windows and panes in your terminal
Exactly. Despite the official lip service of lamenting how we are falling behind in science, anyone finding you have beakers, Bunsen burners, and shelves of chemicals in your basement will likely report you as either a terrorist or an illegal drug maker. Science went from being boring and unpopular to being suspicious and dangerous.
To me, a big advantage of Scala's "enrichment" over monkey-patching in Ruby or JS is that it isn't global. That is, you have to import the enrichment. Another code module in the program won't be unexpectedly affected by it.

In practice, I almost never use monkey-patching in dynamic languages because it's too dangerous. While in Scala there are cases where enrichment won't work, you can always just write a regular function in those cases, and there are lots of cases where enrichment _does_ work...