skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm against SOPA as much as the next person here on HN but I disagree with shutting down Wikipedia. Paul Carr wrote a piece today that argues this case well -> see http://pandodaily.com/2012/01/16/dick-costolo-is-right-wikip...

Basically,

a) Wikipedia's core principle is neutrality. When they strive for neutrality and balance on much more sensitive issues, taking a stance on one particular issue affecting one particular country, you violate that.

b) Wikipedia runs on the kindness of strangers, some of whom could potentially be supporting SOPA. It is egregious to spend a month asking for donations on every page and then turn around and deny some of them service.

Fundamentally, it is not the job of an open and free repository of human knowledge to take political stances, however harmful and important the topic might be. To those making the point that this threatens the entirety of the internet, that is true. However

- The point of being neutral is that you don't get to choose what you're neutral about.

- Should Wikipedia shutdown hypothetically over nuclear arms (as an example) - something that could potentially destroy all of humanity? Where do you need to be on the destructiveness scale for Wikipedia to take a stance?

I'm not doing as good a job of summarizing this as Paul Carr does - do read his piece.
I don't think cynical is the right word for what you're trying to say.
Yes.

We need more echo out there so the IT industry can flourish.

More users == more money channelling in.

Heck even without users as long as there's hype, there will be money.

I may sound sarcastic but can we say no to money to keep our hobby?
The most important point: Webmasters should return a 503 HTTP header for all the URLs participating in the blackout
I'm very curious to know how you manage to need 2GB final binary ?

- Huge use of template metaprogramming ?

- Generated code ?

- May be it's only for the debug build with all symbols ?
THIS!

It would've been nice if C came with real string support, but it didn't. Instead, we're stuck mucking around with character arrays. All the built-in functions expect null-terminated strings, but many functions don't guarantee they'll generate these strings in all cases.

Look at strncpy. If the string you're copying fills the destination buffer completely, the function won't write the null terminator; the resulting string will blow up several C standard library functions.

If you're using null-terminated strings, it is your job to make damn sure those strings are always null-terminated.

C is an unsafe language. Get used to it.
You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train, Howard Zinn
This is article is very light on evidence, citing one engineer the author spoke with.

Having worked there I'd say the article is unfairly one-sided. There are plenty of Googlers who maintain a normal work-life balance.
True, but they both started their political careers in northern California. Barbara Boxer in Marin County, and Diane Feinstein in San Francisco.
You can't be neutral on a moving train
- Howard Zinn
Cool, but, ouch. My eyes really hurt after looking at black-text-on-green-background.
ipad 2 still running iOS 4. That might be the issue ...
ipad2 on ios4. I guess they upgraded safari in ios 5
Ick, it looks that much worse when someone is quoting me! Consider me duly shamed for that absolutely awful sentence.
So a guy who doesn't like to read blog posts decided to complain about one. Am I missing something?
> The software engineer I spoke with...

One is not a valid sample. Other than a single persons perspective, everything else is speculation.

Disclaimer: I work for Google.
Throwing this out there with the hopes of getting some valuable feedback. Thanks everyone!
I don't work at Google, but I must say that being surrounded by incredibly intelligent & fiercely hard-working people is awesome- among other things, I always have something to aspire to, and somewhere to grow.
Maybe its just the connotation of the words, but do you really believe that Google culture is both dangerous and unhealthy?
If you're implying that some issues encompass everyone and everything and suck people in, it is going to be hard to justify that SOPA meets that bar but something like, say, nuclear disarmament doesn't.
Sounds like a great place to work. I got out of web dev for companies in San Francisco around the time I saw a client bill and realized they were charging 5-6x my hourly for my work to clients. Still, what you do for a company like Google would be a lot harder to quantify (or explain to a client), and it's probably a lot more personally gratifying.

I'm probably an asshole to say this, but I'm reasonably sure I could've gotten a job with Google in 2001-2; and at that point I didn't want to work in that kind of office. I went back to LA and drove a taxi for a year and a half, and wrote a novel, to clear my head.

The thing that makes me flinch about it is the competitive nature of the job, even if your job shouldn't have to be competitive. The open offices, the personal time, all of these things make you run faster rather than being allowed to slow down and think. And if you get to thinking about who you're running for...who knows? As insulated as you are from the clients -- which is great -- you also almost never get to see the direct result of your own work. So what emerges is this endless Senior Year of High School, where everyone's waiting to be recommended or get their acceptance letters, while partially slacking off while looking like they're on their best behavior. I'm not sure that's a way I'd be willing to spend my life.

I make about 1/5th what you do, probably, for about the same level of work and commitment to my own startup. But I don't envy your job.
That is correct! I'm using sellout's Solarized color theme for Emacs[0]. It's also available in the Marmalade[1] repository under "color-theme-solarized".

[0] https://github.com/sellout/emacs-color-theme-solarized

[1] http://marmalade-repo.org/
I think it's kind of like color, this team has been around for a long time, proven themselves and probably know most SV seed investors. To convince a lot of them to each make a small investment shouldn't be to hard.
Two lines of code will show your anti-PIPA stance without blacking our your site
FWIW, this doesn't especially match my experience at Google. (I was an engineer there for four years, ending about a year and a half ago. I doubt things have changed drastically since then.)

Most of the descriptions about the environment and perks are accurate, though the article may somewhat exaggerate the extent to which people participate. However, I never felt pressure to devote my life to the company, and certainly there was no direct connection between hours worked and compensation.

Long term, the biggest personal variables in Google compensation are promotions and stock grants. The biggest determinant of those, in turn (luck and politics aside) is a perception that you're doing important/great work. Burning the midnight oil is not necessarily going to help with that, and it's certainly not the only way to get there.

Maybe the culture is different in other parts of the company. But I don't think it could be that different... there's a deliberate process for bringing people together from different parts of the organization to make decisions on promotions.
That is a good point. When I started this post, my goal was to put something together that would let me write the articles from Emacs and easily get them out on the internets. It turned out that the Jekyll part took much more time than the Org Mode part.
I think it was Gandhi(or maybe John Lennon) who said:

Ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions.
The author makes a great point about technology advancing so quickly that the bleeding edge of just yesterday is now just cute compared what we have now and about how cheap of a commodity server hardware has now become.

Unfortunately he had to use the 14 year old girl analogy and exaggerate the ease with we could build Google circa '98 today. Now his whole point is lost to click clacking of a thousand pedants' keyboards. Guys, this isn't about 14 year old girls nor is it about Google per se as much as it is about the fast pace of tech innovation, the ease and costs associated with acquiring infrastructure, and to a lesser extent there's a tiny but about how we're totally spoiled compared to what we had to work with 14 years ago.

The stuff about Google and 14 year old girls is just a literary tool (along with some mild hyperbole) to help illustrate his point which so far is getting completely missed. Come on guys, is this Hacker News or Pedantic Literary Scholar News? Focus on the point, not little Google girls. PLSN does have a nice ring to it but no, we're not on PSLN. At least not yet.
> What political speech exactly is censored in the US today?

Take out an ad about a candidate and you'll find out.

There's a whole federal bureaucracy, the FEC, devoted to regulating political speech. Many states (and some cities) also have campaigning laws.

Citizens United changed this somewhat but ....
good idea but need some type of IP blacklist
Fake French Wine in China
After Thinking about it some more I realized VC's usually don't think this way but angels could.
If you look at some of the newer sites, they're generally prettier than the original trilogy sites. Still have the same basic design and still all about the text of questions and answers.

A few examples:
- http://ux.stackexchange.com/
- http://bicycles.stackexchange.com/
- http://scifi.stackexchange.com/
- http://sharepoint.stackexchange.com/
- http://tex.stackexchange.com/
I'd agree with you about sparse files. I find it hard to imagine a modern file system without support for them.
I am responding to your point (a). Not acting is not being neutral. Not acting is taking a stand.
Blackberry/Java Developer - Mobile App Company - WhatsApp Inc
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Semi tangentially, the 'backspace = go back' shortcut has accidentally deleted countless posts and emails of mine (and I'm sure many other people's). I really think that shortcut needs to go away.
That's the situation with "entertainment" content generally., e.g. all movies at the theater cost the same.

And just like with movies, review sites, massive advertising to move units and create awareness, and a general distrust of new things is where I'd expect the App Store model to continue to go.
Yes, at least in the past, Google has taken into account intent when it comes to cloaking, letting some big sites get away with it and still rank well in serps.

However, I can see how your initial suggestion of showing full content to Google, could be viewed as solely for preserving rankings in an artificial manner.

As an example of cloaking, some News Sites let Google index all their pages, while requiring actual users to login/register to view it.

Typically, if the user has a Google Referrer, they can view the page one time for free and then need to login/register to view anything else.

Visiting the page directly or with a non-google referrer shows a register/login page.

New York Times was one that does(did?) this. I stopped visiting them when they started. I think Washing Post, or one of the posts, was doing it too, as well as a number of other sites.

Experts Exchange used to basically be the same way, although I think they are doing it differently now, and they were slapped by Google a long time ago for cloaking, so changed to a different method of cloaking...
Speaking as a fairly recent Google hire: No, this is not what it's really like to work at Google.

I considered writing more, but really, what else is there to say? Working at Google is not defined by the presence of cafeterias, alcoholism is not a way of life, and overwork is no more prevalent than any other Silicon Valley company I've worked at.
I do indeed. Not unhealthy in the sense of danger to people's bodies, but certainly I think it can easily stunt personal development and in the long run, harm the company by creating an insular monoculture.

A company can only succeed long-term if it understands its customers. Google, if it continues down this path, will only understand Google.
How Heroin Addiction in Vietnam and your Productivity Habits are Identical
I'm not affiliated with IDS at all, I just like their interface much more than any other domain name search tool I've ever tried including the OP. Yes IDS is a GoDaddy affiliate marketer but that doesn't mean I can't use their search function and then go register with whoever I want.
I find it a bit hard to see how to reinterpret your Python code in the list monad. Can you post a Haskell version of this function?
Were you planning to touch base with me about having forked my Clojure-HBase library, making changes, and adding novel new version numbers? First I've heard of this.
They need to capture the common interpreter errors in the earlier lessons. So that if you try and do liz.length it doesn't come back with a reference error, but with an explanation of why that doesn't work.

Making friendly error messages in the general case is a hard problem, but doing so in a restricted environment where you know the most likely errors that beginners will make (which you can data mine over the long term) is not.
Sad to see my original comment getting downvoted.

If your job depends on you being neutral, you don't get a choice. For example, the International Red Cross needs to stay neutral otherwise they won't get access to areas where they are sorely needed. The Swiss stayed neutral through some world changing events.

By opposing SOPA, Wikipedia loses its neutrality and takes a political stance - an act which could have long reaching consequences.

Here's a trivial question for starters - how does humanity trust Wikipedia's articles on SOPA given that it has taken a stance on the issue? Or trust it's pieces on the people supporting SOPA (a lot of whom are perfectly normal, smart, upstanding people we just happen to disagree with strongly).

The taint could be far reaching.
Mayor Bloomberg managed to get it right. Unfortunately though, the BBC managed to misquote him in a recent article[1].

Edit: added reference.
Update: seemes as though my email to them got 2/3 of the instances fixes; only the link at the bottom left!

[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16440126
Yeah, I ran the npm logo against WhatTheFont
What's the point of minimalism if not
to reduce one's impact on the world? Am
I understanding this "movement" incorrectly?

It is very similar to agile. Don't optimize prematurely. "You aren't going to need it"
That's a question of semantics. When you have a policy on not taking a stand on any issue which you stick to, you are not taking a stand.
I said "Wow" out loud then started sharing the link to your site. It would be an overstatement to call it "breathtaking", but only just barely.
beautiful, man..just beautiful! best of luck to both of you!
Sounds brilliant. It definitely makes me wish I could go be among geniuses for a day. Went to Mirman, though; so I know what it means to be dull among geniuses while you're being probed, overworked and experimented-upon. I especially know what it feels like to have your own sense of obligation turned against you in the service of your employer.

Just-under-geniuses -- and this is my observation only, as a guy who didn't make the cut to go to college when I was 12 -- have a desperate desire to prove their ability to whoever's in control. The closer you were to sparkling algebraic brilliance, or getting on Jeopardy at age-eleven, the harder it is. It can wreck your home life and your family.

The desire to prove your intelligence to your surrogate father figure is a sickness.

When you can run any kind of startup you want, and live wherever in the world you want while you're doing it, why's it better to be in an office that lets you come and go, and is filled with geniuses, but still looks and feels somehow like a preschool for kids with Asperger's?
org-mode is the gateway drug for emacs and in my opinion, one of the things that makes emacs great. A user, Carsten Dominik had a need for someone, hacked some elisp and it grew into something awesome. It's still one of my favorite pieces of software.
This is well deserved.

A little off topic but still about SE.

If you ever want to understand "social" not as in the buzzword but as in "what's it really about" I can highly recommend the Stack Exchange podcasts.

I know this is not their aim but it's actually one of the most insightful podcasts about social networks out there. So many great insights simply stemming from the conversations they have. For instance the one with Chris Poole from 4chan.

http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/11/se-podcast-29-chris-po...

Good stuff and I am glad to see them move up the ranks.
> When you do a floating point reduce operation the order in which you reduce your floating point numbers matters, but this order is not necessarily deterministic.

There is no such thing as a "floating point reduce operation". You can do a reduction using a floating point calculation as your joining operation, but even in that case, each individual operation is still deterministic. Moreover, a classical reduce is also deterministic, being a fold in one direction or other based on the associativity of the joining operation. The non-determinism comes only from your choice to specify the behaviour of your "parallel reduce" function in a non-deterministic way, and if you do that without understanding the consequences that's hardly floating point's fault.
Could search be better?
Is it me or could search be much better in certain areas?

I still search for a property based only on location.

I still shop for clothing on a categorized basis.

I still look for applications... Don't get me started here.

You get the picture I think. Google is great for getting me to the services that still do search pretty bad inside their own product.
Look, Microsoft does not prohibit Samsung selling their Galaxy Tab with whatever Samsung wants to ship. They prohibit Samsung selling their Galaxy Tab with Windows 8 ARM pre-installed on it. This - tablet AND Windows 8 - is a ONE product, hence you cannot divide h/w vendor and OS vendor. This is as simple as that. Samsung is free to not to ship tablets with Windows 8 ARM - how is that anti-competitive?

ARM devices are not supposed to be fiddled with by customers in their current state, PCs are. This business model is a status quo right now, like it or not, and Microsoft plays by the rules. The game is different in PCs and Microsoft has a different position on lockdown there.
Seems like the opposite of love -- they're removing a large swath of features in order to bring some new ones in.
Please provide links.
Site works for me but the blog was down earlier. Anyway here is the google cache for the blog http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.adi...
That seems fairly pointless. By that reasoning it's impossible to not take a stand, and then the whole notion of neutrality nearly becomes meaningless. But fine, let's say Wikipedia is taking a stand, what is it for? That stance is for neutrality--i.e., not taking further political actions on behalf of one political camp or another. Your comments would be better if they actually addressed the issues raised and not divert us on this path. (Edit: to spell it out, the issue raised in point a) is whether a stance for neutrality is good/bad for Wikipedia. One argument that it's good is it helps Wikipedia be a trusted source.)
There are a lot of political issues that could ruin the internet forever. The example I've been throwing out in this thread - nuclear weapons. Could destroy all of humanity. Does Wikipedia step in to get all countries to destroy nuclear weapons?

How bad does some political issue have to be for Wikipedia to get involved? And note that SOPA is far down on the list of "universally thought of as evil for all humanity" things that people would like to see changed.
Having a central server sit in the middle that all traffic goes through goes right against the very definition of P2P.
He says our state of the art. I guess by that he means the state of the art of storage in Windows file systems.
Not just a disassembly - an annotated, compilable version of one of the most iconic games of my generation.

This also facilitates conversion of the maps and scripts to alternative engines. I wonder how much more performant a native port would be than an emulator? Or how Mt Moon would look with HDR and Bloom effects?

I once recreated Pallet Town with the original bitmaps for the GoldSrc engine. Pokemon is one of those magical franchises that's so encouraging to engage with every time there's a new handheld game or news; i can't remember how many times i wrote battle simulators as a kid...
Don't download the archive directly from Wikipedia - that wastes their bandwidth. Grab the torrent instead.
Well, that's not strictly correct. In my experience every interesting question ever asked at any of the Stack Overflow sites consists of:

(1) A single question (as you say)

(2) (Attached to the question) Some whiny git putting on his internet cop hat and suggesting that the question is inappropriate

(3) An almost immediate locking of the question by said whiny git

(4) An interesting discussion

Almost every time I see some moderator putting on his 'big boy pants' I want to reach down the internet and slap them.

I just wish they could find a way to send the gnomes back to wikipedia.
Heh, the N64 was the first game console I ever used. I thought it was pretty spiffy. I still think it's pretty spiffy. In fact, looking at some screenshots, I would totally play some of those games over ones we have now.

Ignoring that, I agree with your point wholeheartedly: just because things work now does not mean we can't optimize. In fact, a very large part of the software field is all about optimizing things that already exist.
CloudFlare Builds ‘Stop Censorship’ App, Lets Sites Easily “Black Out”
The Social Product Catalog where your stuff meets your friends.

I didn't grok that line immediately. My stuff "meets" my friends? Huh? The wording on your /about page is much clearer.
I keep going back and forth between zsh and bash, I don't fully get used to zsh, but it's really great.
This railscast is also useful for starting with oh-my-zsh: http://railscasts.com/episodes/308-oh-my-zsh
It's not just the examples that are flawed. In most practical situations, provably correct answers do not exist. In most cases, one can only choose a level of certainty. Sometimes not even the level of certainty is possible to know.
cperciva: I know that some time back you said you'd signed an NDA with Amazon which prevented you from discussing what made this possible. Has that passed now? Was defenestration of Windows AMIs the secret?