skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Read from an article on CNN (http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/19/tech/us-spacex/index.html):

"This is not a failure," Shotwell (SpaceEx President) told reporters. "We aborted with purpose. It would have been a failure if we lifted off with an engine trending in this direction."

Perhaps that's PR spin, but I think that it comes from a very responsible position. Well said.
Yes and no. Websockets is awesome, but no UDP support yet (although chrome nightlies have added this as an experimental feature!). Once UDP comes, we can do p2p and eliminate the server round-trip (as well as the whole TCP ACK bottleneck), vastly speeding up realtime games... but then we have to deal with firewalls :D So its up to the dev to pick his battles, although I'm sure there will be libraries to vastly speed this thing up.
Who gets to be an FBI threat?
Computers Abort SpaceX Rocket Launching to Space Station
As a practical application of this, consider 1-d optimization using some kind of stochastic, "jumping" process. So long as the global minimum is in a kind of larger well then the information concerning it's location is "global" enough for the jumping process to work its way down there.

If the well the global minimum lives in is sufficiently small—if it is a sufficiently local event—then your stochastic search is bound to fail. At the limit, you have a discontinuity, a global minimum which literally has no global presence and is essentially impossible to find (you can show expected convergence times going to infinity as the minimum looks more and more discontinuous).

Fortunately, few processes are genuinely discontinuous and they usually have some kind of non-local "well of attraction". But in higher and higher dimensions, these wells can be made to appear nearly infinitely narrow.

All together this enforces the principle of the curse of dimensionality. High dimensionality hurts you in statistics and search unless every dimension is just chock full of signal.
Tesla vs Edison is my favorite Drunk History: http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/ef668caf14/drunk-history-vo...

Duncan Trussell clearly disagrees with the OP. In other words, the OP is anti-oatmeal and anti-booze. What is wrong with him?
The poster says on the Flash topic:
"but I can see HTML5 being favored over something that is completely beyond their control."
...and further down, on security as a flaw:
"you can make your game secure, you just need a backend that can be done fairly easily with node.js."

This strikes as an incredible double standard for appreciation that permeates the article top to bottom. I do understand why the poster is so enthusiastic for developing games rapidly in HTML and went about it cutting some corners when having to compromise. But enthusiasm is just that, doesn't make said games any good by default or the plat to magicly be mature to the point it should.
I was an engineer at HomeAway during last year's IPO, and all employees were under a 6-month lockup period (during which time you can not sell stock, or enter into any sort of agreement with a third party regarding stock options).

As an employee, therefore, the IPO event itself is not too significant. Unless you have $1 options (or already own stock at a very favourable price), you can't bank on a return due to the uncertainty of the lockup period. Also, the end of the lockup period itself (although completely anticipated by the market) will likely be unfavourable for the stock price as selling employees introduce more supply.
>>Nobody with the actual skillset to design and implement a programming language would consider, for example, merging vectors and dictionaries into some kind of mutated frankenarray.

>Actually, JavaScript and Lua have merged vectors and Dictionaries.

I'm not sure about Lua, but in the case of Javascript, it's not entirely true. Arrays are objects, yes, but objects are not arrays.

So, unless you are extending the build-in array type, objects do not behave as arrays. They are not recognized as arrays, and more importantly, no modern javascript engine actually implements arrays as hashes.

For example {}.length has no value. It does not have a length of zero, it does not have a length at all. Visa versa, when looking at an object-map as a 'map', you'll get the array entries, as well as the length property, and the push and pop methods.

It's orthogonal. Imagine a javascript engine having no special implementation for an Array. We could implement it on top of the object-map. So, an array does not behave as a map, its implemented in a map. There's a clear distinction.

But the parallels with PHP are interesting. Both languages were not designed with the intent of large applications, but with the intent of adding a small piece of isolated logic to what is mostly a template. Both languages have had a lot of flack for their early design choices as well. People are still upset how Javascript handles casting (which is similar to how PHP handles it), and they are still upset how Javascript handles scoping (which is again similar to how PHP handles it).

Where the languages start differing, is that Javascript is much more reflective, which allows one to fix many language flaws in library or framework code, to suit different use-cases like the development of large scale projects. (just consider the hundreds of class-based systems implemented in Javascript)

But even for Javascript, the same logic applies. Considering the role and purpose it has now, the language design would have been different, if it was not for backwards compatibility.

And there as well, people are trying to figure out ways to make it radically better. Dart comes to mind. Compiling other languages into javascript. (coffeescript, gwt, etc.)

And even arguments in favor of Node.js are all based on the assumption that we are stuck with Javascript in the browser.

And just as with PHP, the original authors themselves, make no secret that their language design wasn't optimized or optimal for how we are using it now.
I think the "cult of Tesla" preceded the comic. It seems to me like conspiracy theorists particularly affectionate this story, for some reason.

I guess that the author was simply refuting the comic as the latest manifestation of an annoying trend.
Why tech?

What do you really want to do in your life?

Make stuff? Sell stuff? Turn people on to stuff? See things? Write about things?

What things to you find yourself doing when no one's paying you?
Background Tasks in Python with RQ
If you take this particular comic in the context of the rest of The Oatmeal, it seems clear (to me, at least) that the author likes hyperbole for comic effect. Maybe I'm wrong: maybe this is the one instance where he's totally and completely sincere in his approach with no exaggeration, but that strikes me as unlikely.
The reason for the self quote, is because the block quote only has one style on that theme. Thus in the past readers have been confused between external quotes and internal quotes. That is the reason (as a means of reference).

Secondly, the example you gave is about mathematics. In that context I agree. But in the context of software programming this is not the the same. The statement stands.
This reminds me of the movie Limitless, in which a drug is invented that gives people who take it access to the 80% of their brain that they don't normally use.
> "Some savants are very disabled," said Treffert, "yet they know the rules of math, they know the rules of music, they know the rules of art. But they've never been taught that. Well, how can that get there? The only way it can get there is genetically."

Really? This is the only explanation that he can think of? Genetics? Not, say, that people have been exposed to this stuff for years, but haven't been able to do anything with that knowledge until something traumatic happened to their brain that allowed them to connect it together?

I'm not musical genius. I can barely hold a tune, and while I try noodling around with instruments every once in a while, I'm not that great. But there's a large body of music that I know through exposure. I've just never been able to do much with it. That's not genetic; that's learned through experience. Why would he think that the traumatic injury would be unlocking something genetic, rather than just allowing people to connect things they've learned through experience in more creative ways?
> I fully agree that for a new project, you shouldn't use PHP for any other reason than the ubiquitous hosting.

Here's another scenario where I could imagine using PHP. Suppose I'm starting a company, and I'm starting it solo. I've been using PHP successfully for many years, and I know it and the environment (Apache, etc.) really well. I know what libraries are good, what libraries are not good, I have a framework that I like, and that I know how to set up to my liking. By the way, I'm really excited about this company.

Now, PHP is pretty awful as a programming language. I really don't like it. But the reality is, I am going be dramatically more efficient with it. If I were to use Rails, it would take me at the very least a week or two to really be able to use it without checking documentation constantly, and it would probably take me months to be at a proficiency where I was totally comfortable with it, and the environment it lives in, and figured out which libraries to use with it and so on.

During those months, when I should be focussing on building my business, talking to customers, getting feedback, learning more about marketing, I am instead dealing with the friction of learning a new programming environment. If I had stuck with PHP, all I have to do is sit at a terminal and let the code flow out of my fingertips. All of my actual thinking could go into the important stuff.

I don't deny that PHP is pretty terrible as a programing language. I do however deny that there are no reasons to use it for a new project.
VPRI's STEPS project is one such project: http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2011004_steps11.pdf
Only the "we only use 10%, 20% of our brain" thing is false, basically an urban legend.
Sure I work in tech. (Check my HN karma or history.) And almost everyone I work with is male.

Your first paragraph is pretty vitriolic. Actually I chose to go to a liberal arts college with a strong focus on the humanities, because I knew it would get me a more serious education as well as better connections in business. I didn't feel like I was fighting the odds, I was getting a massive leg up on my career.

There were a lot more women than men around because the nursing program was the best in the area. I think only 4 people graduated with me from the CS department, it was very small. The entire CS faculty was women, but even so there was only one girl student in the entire CS program (not counting the beginning classes which most people didn't pass). This was mainly because the boys in the classes had started studying computers much earlier, so the girls thought they must somehow be less smart when really they just didn't have the same head start. That's also discussed here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3836440

The claim that there is a shortage has nothing to do with the fact that tech is more welcoming to men. It's two completely separate issues. I know. You brought it up when you said that men were being encouraged to go into tech, to the point that they were almost being pushed away from other fields. Demographically speaking (looking at the whole population) no one - neither men nor women - is encouraged to get into tech. Therefore there is a shortage of skilled workers.
There are people who use 100% of their brains, they're generally flopping around on the floor.
Do you know who McCarthy and Alonzo Church were, what the lambda calculus is, and in which way LISP relates to mathematics? If this is all Greek to you, then please look it up. Next time, though, please do some research BEFORE you write blog posts. It will save you from being ridiculed.
Nobody with any relevant industry experience would overstate the important of language design.

I've used many languages in my 25+ years in software development, and I've seen very little relation between language and either overall quality or simply getting stuff done.

I have however observed a strong negative relationship between that and people bitching about their and other people's tools.
There was no reasonable arguments made. Simply put, if we wanted to build a space craft of the size or capacity of the enterprise, designing it from the outside in would be a terrible way to do it. The enterprise is a fictional concept produced over a very small amount of time by an artist. That alone means that it is simply unsuitable for the task.
The semi-formal term of art is RUD --- Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly.
That's why you use something like Justin.tv or QIK or something that live uploads. Cop beats you up and smashes your phone? The resulting payout you'll get will make the beatdown worth it.

I'd totally take a beatdown if it would make me a multi millionaire :)
Facebook Reveals How Much Stock Each Bank Got
Congressmen Seek to Lift Propaganda Ban
...but saying all black people are stupid IS immoral...

Supposing hypothetically that this were true, would it still be immoral?

So, until a scientific study proves that women's brain account for them liking dolls instead of Lego, I will still think that's society that makes them that way.

So it's immoral to make decisions based on people's actions if those actions are not proven to be driven by brain chemistry?

Suppose a scientific study said Lego would make more money by selling pink cars to girls and aliens to boys, with no reason given. Would acting on this be immoral?

Or, suppose there were no study, but Lego merely tried out 20 different product lines. Of those product lines, the pink cars sold very well (purchased mostly by girls) and so did the aliens (mostly purchased by boys). Would it be immoral for Lego to continue a sales strategy based on these two successful lines?
Yes I'm aware, you still haven't backed your statement. The context is "software engineering" not about creating the next LISP. So please answer that before throwing ad-hominem's?
The author of this opinion piece, jwz, certainly has the ability to flee with his Netscape cash, if he wanted to.

In general, very-rich people don't renounce either, beyond a tiny handful. You don't see Bill Gates going anywhere, Steve Jobs didn't go anywhere, not even libertarians like the Koch brothers are leaving.
Yeah, it can be useful. I just posted the comment so as to avoid anyone else the confusion.
Arxiv abstract page http://arxiv.org/abs/1105.3195

Link to ArXiv Paper http://arxiv.org/pdf/1105.3195v2.pdf

I wish they would link to the ArXiv instead of Nature but then again Nature probably promoted this in sciencedaily...
Ruby is free. PHP is free. A Les Paul costs a lot more than an Alvarez. It is understandable to work with inferior tools if a better solution is not readily available, but that is not the case.
Spammers create 40% of the social-media accounts
PHP has had closures for 3 years.
I wonder whether this inspired the low access tunnel in Being John Malkovich?
Apple iPhone charger teardown: quality in an tiny expensive package
Facebook’s unimpressive opening day bodes well for the Facebook Platform.
That's not being sneaky at all; it's in the commit logs and he can announce it. It's just shifting the burden of action back to the people who want the vulnerability. In theory, the same. Practically, very different.
Looks very much like courier imho. Courier has bit more serifs, but the letterforms seem similar. Not ugly, but distinctly monospaced
A bookshelf drag-n-drop interface: how far should I go?
Right. I understand what harmonics are.

I'd expect timbre to get weird from aliasing of the high harmonics, but since all the partials within an octave above that C5 are under the Nyquist frequency of a 2048Hz sample rate, I'm a little surprised that the pitch is affected.

I guess there's probably some destructive interference being caused by the aliasing though. Maybe that's what's ruining the tuning.
Another explanation (a bit clearer in my opinion): http://bit-player.org/2011/the-n-ball-game
S/he's not denying that PHP is a crappy language. He's saying that he's comfortable building successful in PHP.

You're saying “Don't use PHP, it sucks.” He's saying, “I don't care, it lets me turn code into money and that's all I want.”
Who creates the tools that allow, in your world view, average programmers to compete with "geniuses"?

Further, you are the one making bold claims, so the burden of proof lies on you. There are more than enough examples of great software written by "geniuses". But now please mention one great (groundbreaking) project that was written by an army of mediocre programmers.

Let's just make it a little game. I'll go first:

Don Knuth: TeX

Now is your turn!
> Nobody with the actual skillset to design and implement a programming language would consider, for example, merging vectors and dictionaries into some kind of mutated frankenarray.

Why is this bad?
No, he's more like Bill Gates.

Tesla/Jobs are driven by a desire to change the world. Edison/Gates by the desire to own the world. You can see the difference in all the decisions Apple made in its history, often making choices of design purity over market dominance. It ultimately dominated by sticking to its design principles, showing that sometimes the long-view wins.

I think Tesla would have thrived if he could have gone to Jobs instead of Edison for support.
From experience, its definitely not easy (even with a hot air station).

Bring back though the hole components - much more hackable.
Reasons to love Django, part x of y
In fact, SpaceX has a technical debt to Apollo which they've been quick to acknowledge --- pointing out, for instance, that the Merlin engine injector design uses techniques pioneered on the Apollo LEM descent engine.

What's odd here is the failure to point out what SpaceX is doing differently --- engineering not for optimal performance, but for price/performance. (Using the same basic engine design on both Falcon 9 stages, for instance, and designing the tankage so that common tooling can be used for both stages. I'm sure there are more decisions along these lines that they haven't made public.)
Some quick Django optimisation lessons
Scientists claim that we only use 10% of our brains ... but I think that we only use 10% of our hearts.
I'm imagining QR codes will really come into their own when the Google Goggles (and later competitors) make augmented reality default to on. Then QR codes will probably just always have a little hypermedia description-augment floating about in space in front of them, and you just have to focus on it to "go" there. I feel science-fiction-y just thinking about it.
Tsarist Russia sucked pretty hard too.
That piano player in the video is hardly what I'd call a savant, more like he hit his head and woke up as a douchebag but music is one of those things that gets stored way back in your brain somewhere, I think. I have songs stuck in my head all the time and I'll sleep for 12 hours and the damn thing will still be there. Maybe after a head injury some people can recall tunes they've heard throughout their lives more clearly which would make them easier to play.
A prayer to the programming gods
tl;dr: Use \A and \z rather than ^ and $ in regexps, because the latter two match newlines in the middle of strings, whereas the former strictly only match the beginning and end of strings.

I thought this was common knowledge, but it's a good reminder for anyone who doesn't know.
Async Raven/Sentry client with Django/Python
Thanks everyone for the feedbacks. The scrolling thing is fixed.

Keep in mind that it's a teaser. We decided to show the ideology, then we'll show the technology to those that sign up for the beta, with an invitation to play with it.
@debacle...thanks...very helpful
That's not true, for reasonable definition of "use".

There is grain of truth on the "we only use 10 % of our brains" saying, that we don't usually use our whole brain at once. It is possible, but not very comfortable, the closest you can get would be something like solving differential equations in you head and driving a car at the same time, while singing and thinking about you wife.
>The author makes it sound like simple is easy. As if it's just a matter of saying no to complexity, like saying no to memcpy() whenever we have a memmove() that's good enough. This is not the case. Simple is not easy. On the contrary, simple is hard.

Simple by design might be hard, but "simplify in retrospect" is easy. It just needs you to be willing to sacrifice meaningless backwards compatibility and inflict some temporary pain (rewriting stuff dependent on it) for the benefit of tomorrow.

>So you think "ls" has too many command-line flags; how are you going to cut the number in half? Which ones do we keep and which ones get axed? How are you going to provide for all the same use cases that those 35 flags were added for?

You don't. Fuck ALL those use cases. Keep only those that are used a large percentage of the time by the large majority. For those that need the extra juice, let them use the old, convoluted version. You don't have to have "ls" be a be-all-end-all. Have both ls AND a power-version if anyone cares to maintain the second.

And sure as hell, don't keep competing or duplicated flags just for backwards compatibility.
> I can't understand why the writer is reacting so much to the comic. Sure, it uses blunt language, but is the writer related to Edison distantly or his childhood hero or something?

Reading the article, I would bet the comic under the second paragraph of "Tesla Wasn’t The First Person To Discover X-Rays" was what started the article. The comic is out-and-out false.

As to being a comic so why should he care. I would point the the Daily Show and The Colbert Report. Both are listed as comedies, but a lot of people report what they say as fact. The Oatmeal got a lot of play for the Game of Thrones comic so people use it as a source also.

To give a bit of political example. If I were to ask for a description of President Ford one of the first words to come to mind during the 70's would have been "clumsy" or "physically inept". This is the result of comedy sketches on SNL and not reality. Reality is he slipped on camera. He was probably one of the most physically gifted of the modern Presidents as he played center and linebacker in college. He was a star athlete.

Letting popular untruths sit, no matter the medium, tends to make them "common knowledge".
Scientists do not make that claim.
Starter fabfile and scripts for a Django project on Webfaction