skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Academic papers today are not meant to be discussion forums. To be fair, undergrads and early-stage graduate students often use academic papers as a way to figure out what kind of debates are taking place in their field. But once you get into advanced levels, academic papers are little more than archives of discussions that you had many months and years ago. All the real discussion happens in labs, offices, colloquiums, conferences, by e-mail, and through countless other channels that everyone knows are much more efficient than academic papers. Only those who are relatively isolated from the rest of the academic community, like scientists working far away from major research centers, rely on academic papers to catch up with what everyone else is up to.

Also, sometimes it doesn't matter that the paper gets published a few months or even a couple of years late. Not every academic field progresses at the rate of cutting-edge science. In my philosophy PhD dissertation I criticized works that were 10-16 years old, and even older if you count how long they took to be published. But those works are still considered a hot topic in their field. Hardly surprising in a discipline that has been moving slowly and steadily for thousands of years. The same might be said of many disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, though perhaps to a slightly lesser extent. So whether or not papers can be a suitable discussion forum depends on the field and how people expect their discussion forum to work. Blanket statements that cover everything from philosophy to mathematics to the latest nanotechnology are not helpful.

Some of the other problems you mention, though, are real.
I think she is a little bit neurotic, and she missed all the evolutionary stuff - that we are hardwired for social interaction.

I live an overly solitary life, and I crave for company. My social circle is nearly empty, no GF, and almost all my friends have moved to other cities, so I have just one close friend.

Damn, I need to go out. I need more human contact, not less.
Why is this on Hacker News?

http://danielmiessler.com/blog/the-decline-of-reddit-hacker-...

...oh yeah
Or use something other than a MacBook. That's an option too.
Mini computers: MK802, CuBox, Raspberry PI
This is of course offtopic but I meet lot of people who think Chef/Puppet are not written in Ruby. There is something in wanting to talk about a tool without actually using it.
Yeah, the title may be a little exaggerated, but most developers I know (including myself) have some version of the MacBook.
No, you want to be as close to bare metal as you can - and as soon as possible. Dedicated hardware is even better but you need to gain access to it as the first one.
And the answer to "should I use Java or Python" is: no! Use Haskell ;). If you're entirely tied to Java (and, in that case, Python would probably not be ideal), you can still use Scala.

The question the study was asking was not "what language should I use for my lowest-common-denominator workforce" but rather "can a static type system catch more errors than unit tests and can statically typed code be as expressive as dynamically typed code".

In other words, it was asking for existential quantification: "does there exist some type system such that..." rather than "forall type systems..." or even "forall average systems...".
I would imagine that there are converters to DVI/HDMI.... I hope?
> Programmers tend to think that programming is the most important part of making software. However, managers think that managing is the most important part of making software, and business analysts think that defining business requirements is the most important part of making software. Asking a room of programmers about the value of business analysts is going to result in feedback that is heavily biased. As you say, we've invented a narrative of moral superiority, and it's a seductive one.

This is all true. However, you forgot this additional piece:

Managers and business analysts generally sit higher in the organizational chart than programmers, and thus have an advantage when negotiating salaries, presenting the programmer's relative value to the rest of the organization, etc.

> The value PM's provide is enabling specialization of labor. They act as the interface between business stuff and tech stuff--translating business requirements to tech requirements for their programmers, and tech trade-offs into business trade-off for their stakeholders. It's something that programmers can do themselves (especially entrepreneurial ones), but taking that work off their plate lets them focus on technical matters.

However, many would argue that translating abstract business requirements into technical requirements is a technical matter.

That said, the notion that programmers always make less is not universally true, and many organizations are more sane about paying commiserate with value generated.
This article seems terribly confused. Of course academic papers are a terrible discussion forum. They're not supposed to be any kind of discussion forum.

Academic papers are supposed to be contributions to science. They take by definition a long time to publish because they need to go through a peer review process, and they are only interest to a narrow group of people because they typically advance the understanding of a very narrowly defined problem deep within their field.

Academics don't just sit in a dusty office communicating with the world through journal articles. We meet in conferences and work in joint projects, have informal discussion forums and correspond through a multitude of different channels. Many academics also have non-academic publications about their research.

Academic papers serve a very specific purpose and they do it well. Just because they don't serve some other purpose that you'd like them to serve doesn't make the process broken.
No they don't. Any kind of complexity at all in M&A and major investment closings gets insane expensive no matter who's involved.

Have you ever closed a VC round? I did (with 2 cofounders) during the bubble. There was nothing remotely interesting about our paperwork. It was insanely expensive.
Appreciate a lot of the comments here. Let me add a few of my own.

To start, I'm as big a capitalist as anyone. Competition is generally good, especially from the customer's standpoint. Startups should compete hard to create and distribute the right product.

My point here is that I've seen a few startups waste a lot of time and energy beating the crap out of each other, often to no avail. I don't expect these guys to get together and hold hands. I do expect them to take the high road and welcome others into an industry they are also trying to change, especially when you are going against an incumbent who really can beat the crap out of you.

I'm not advocating calling up your buddy at a competitor and saying, "Hey let's band together." That's probably a bit much. I'm referring to the situations like the following:

Say you are RelayRides. A reporter asks you, "Don't you think Getaround does X, Y, or Z better than you?" A great answer to that question is, "We love what Getaround is doing and support anyone getting car sharing into the masses. We hope you choose to use RelayRides because we think it's the best service in the industry, but as long as you're choosing to car share instead of buying a new car we think you are making a step in the right direction."

Hope that clarifies a bit of the discussion here. Thanks for the enthusiastic response.
The best advice my mentor ever gave me, "When all is said and done, you still have to go with your gut."

It's so easy to get caught up in the frenzy of "start-up culture", "easy money", and "herd mentality" that we often have to make an effort to stop and tell ourselves, "Wait a minute. This doesn't make sense."

Sounds like you're really going with your gut, Dan. Keep up the good work and the great writing. I, for one, have great hope for your "sustainable happy ending".
How to successfully launch multiple startups at once - from someone who has.
well, it's not like anyone has made a real effort to stop it...
Source?

and what percentage of android phones are these pure android devices?
The vast majority of developers I know use some version of the MacBook. (However, that could be the San Francisco / New York tech bubble that I live in.)
No, what they need to do is have releasable products ASAP.

Pre-announcing hardware/software that won't be available for several months is not a competitive strategy.
How horribly patronizing.

I just ate a Whopper. It was delicious. I eat in moderation, have an active life, and there is nothing particularly insidious or evil about this food.

Some people just have to have their cause.
Negatory. The Thunderbolt port is really just passing through a DisplayPort signal - any DisplayPort monitor will do.

Displayport degrades nicely into HDMI, DVI, or VGA with an adapter, so sky's pretty much the limit.

The new MacBook Pro does also have a HDMI port which can do all the same.
I think that people higher up the chain get more money because that's how ultimately they are given authority. If someone who earned 25% of what you did, continually told you to do something that you disagreed with, you would probably think 'why am I listening to this guy telling me what to do?' This organisation doesn't value you as much as me, therefore I think my opinion is worth more than yours. Therefore I'm not going to do what you say. Consequently you don't have that much authority.

Something like that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valve_Time#.22Valve_Time.22

Yes. But Valve is a bit of an extreme case.
I think the cleanest example is the Quickcheck library. In Haskell an important focus is proving static invariants while in traditional unit tests an important focus is proving code coverage (since stupid type bugs like to hide in uncovered code).
I had no idea people paid ~$1000 for a computer display, let alone buy more than one.
Root EM Using CSS3 "rem" Units for "Elastic Pixels"
Microsoft’s Live Presentation Fail From Win 98 to Tablet PC [Videos]
Thanks! Yes we are.
I was under the impression that we were talking about programming jobs (since this is Hacker News) — if so, then yes, you're in pretty high demand. You'll notice that job listings at, say, McDonalds or grocery chains do tend to mention the pay.
You can't daisy chain pretend thunderbolt ports aka converters. So 1 monitor max.
From "How To Do Artificial Intelligence at the MIT AI Lab" (http://www.cs.indiana.edu/mit.research.how.to/section3.4.htm...):

After the first year or two, you'll have some idea of what subfield you are going to be working in. At this point-or even earlier-it's important to get plugged into the Secret Paper Passing Network. This informal organization is where all the action in AI really is. Trend-setting work eventually turns into published papers-but not until at least a year after the cool people know all about it. Which means that the cool people have a year's head start on working with new ideas.

How do the cool people find out about a new idea? Maybe they hear about it at a conference; but much more likely, they got it through the Secret Paper Passing Network. Here's how it works. Jo Cool gets a good idea. She throws together a half-assed implementation and it sort of works, so she writes a draft paper about it. She wants to know whether the idea is any good, so she sends copies to ten friends and asks them for comments on it. They think it's cool, so as well as telling Jo what's wrong with it, they lend copies to their friends to Xerox. Their friends lend copies to their friends, and so on. Jo revises it a bunch a few months later and sends it to AAAI. Six months later, it first appears in print in a cut-down five-page version (all that the AAAI proceedings allow). Jo eventually gets around to cleaning up the program and writes a longer revised version (based on the feedback on the AAAI version) and sends it to the AI Journal. AIJ has almost two years turn-around time, what with reviews and revisions and publication delay, so Jo's idea finally appears in a journal form three years after she had it-and almost that long after the cool people first found out about it. So cool people hardly ever learn about their subfield from published journal articles; those come out too late.

You, too, can be a cool people. Here are some heuristics for getting connected: ...

TL;DR Academic papers are for presenting final results and assigning credit, not discussion.
That site is really depressing. When they make him woodcarvings and take pictures and read audiobooks for him, you realize those people are just completely desperate and trying to make ends meet any way they can.
Yes, read the article. It has integrations with APIs that are more biz user focused.
Domino's put out a similar video a couple years ago: http://shine.yahoo.com/shine-food/dominos-gives-us-a-glimpse... (sorry, would have linked directly to the video but it doesn't seem to be allowed)
Thanks for your thoughts. "Your own personal heuristic approach is all that's going to matter in the end." I absolutely 100% agree.
You are not wrong. We will not be shipping the Editor for Linux, only export options for players that will run on 32-bit (x86) and 64-bit (amd64) Linux. We are only going to offer official support for Ubuntu Linux with vendor-made graphics drivers, but we expect games exported from Unity will run on most modern Linux systems.
Anecdotes are generally worse than meaningless. Still, in the spirit of things, I don't think I know a single MacBook user; sampling biases clearly exist.

Tangentally: One is inclined to wonder, if dual display support is such a big deal, why they all use hardware incapable of it.
Really?

I disagree, perhaps that's what the difference is between introvert and extrovert.

I find that I need some time to myself, to do my own things, or else I get perturbed.

For a while there in university I would spend even 2 or 3 day alone in my apartment, without speaking, texting, or IMing anyone. Just coding an assignment, playing video games or fooling around in Linux.

Completely giving up people didn't see terribly insane at the time.

Of course this is a moot point since I now attend a Unix group meetup every month and actually look forward to the social interaction.
Native Client only really gives support for browser-based games. This export option will let you ship standalone games for Linux, that run natively on the platform.
Got to say this is hard to admit, but after reading everyone else's comments, I am indeed ignorant. Thanks for the reality check.
A mini display port to DVI adapter is $30. You could get fully fitted out with three external screens + adapters and cables for under $600.
I believe the only way to get two displays working though is to pass the second display through the first display (via thunderbolt). AFAIK, there is no adapter to split thunderbolt into two DVI/VGA/HDMI cables. Though I hope I'm wrong, I'd buy that in a flash and wire up my second external display to my new air.
None of these evolutions in funding happen in a vacuum. There will be new structures to accommodate crowdfunding investors as well as basic provisions.

Remember too that VC's fund an incredibly small number of early stage deals compared to millions of companies that get started each year. Not sure that companies that are heading in the venture funded track are necessarily the model for this.
This is the perfect engine to create a great support service:

Use this to monitor alerts coming from various system monitors (BB, logwatch, etc..) and have it take the escalation actions that an on-call person would typically perform.
Title is missing the word "conference". Makes it a bit hard to know what the article is talking about.
There are, no worries
The port came from inside Unity Technologies, see the FAQ at http://unity3d.com/unity/4/faq#linux
Ifttt one year in
There is no good reason to deny anyone the four basic Freedoms. The world
will eventually realize this, and get rid of proprietary software for good, in
addition to all the other horrors RMS has accurately predicted and warned us
about for over three decades.

Too bad people didn't listen, continue to trample everyone's Freedoms under
their foots for their petty selfish greed while having the audacity to assert
their actions to be perfectly ethical. We are currently seeing where this has
lead us, and it is the duty of every good man or woman to do anything in their
power to stop it, lest evil will triumph.
Negatory. The total volume of pixels the Mac can push is the limiter. As you add monitors, the Mac will eventually black out the laptop display and spend the pixels externally. Beyond that it'll simply refuse to light up the display it can't feed. Doesn't matter which port they're headed out of.

Three sizeable displays appears to be the limit.

Note: A Thunderbolt display can pass along enough signal for another Thunderbolt display. But not two extra on the chain. And for (presumably) dumb (presumably) Apple Reasons, a non-Thunderbolt display cannot be involved in that chain at all.

tl;dr: give Apple all your money
I didn't know that.

Since I have Cinema Display with DisplayPort, could I do MacBook Air > Thunderbolt > Cinema Display?
That's why I pulled the trigger and bought mine yesterday.
Using Heroku buildpacks with Stackato (Cloud Foundry-based PaaS software)
If they cheat this much, it's basically lying. I mean, I don't care. Lie to me. It's better than the truth, frankly. I haven't eaten at McDonald's in years and this is just one of 100 reasons why.

However when she says 'we use the exact same ingredients they use in the store' that's a blatant lie. For one thing all McDonald's stores use slightly different ingredients (whatever can be bought at best market prices) and they definitely could never produce a cosmetically perfect burger using stock ingredients.

In addition, she doesn't tell you about all the non-food items that are used to make this look so good - hairspray for gloss, polymerized rubber for filling, etc.

I will add, gratuitously, the money McD's is paying looks good on her.
I saw a food photographer explain that for soup they used to put marbles in the can to push up the meat/vegetables and they aren't allowed to do that any more. But they can (and do) pick through cans to find the biggest and best pieces since it's stuff that was actually in the can. It's an interesting exercise in dancing just on this side of the line.
Kickstarter only allows projects that have a tangible end. They don't allow projects that have non-concrete goals like "make a business" or "hire people".
> That's not the best example to use of Microsoft's failure.

I think it is. I liked the zune myself and would have switched if it could sync with my mac. However, it's undeniable that the Zune was a failure. I think the OP's point remains true.
> The ONLY way that Microsoft intersects with this is that they have the privilege of being pre-enrolled on computers, because let's face it, 99.999% of people buy computers with Windows on them and they expect it to run. Not that they have to boot into a special OS, enroll keys and install Windows themselves. (Again, see my earlier post about how they can disable Secure Boot or enroll their own keys)

99.999% of people buy computers with preinstalled windows. If they are computer-litrate enough to install windows, they are literate enough to authorize a new Windows boot sector (the hash/fingerprint of would be printed on a new Windows media or sticker).

I wouldn't have a problem with Microsoft's preinstalled key if I had reason to believe this will work well when you authorize other keys. But so far, no manufacturer cares that anything other than Windows works on their machine/bios, and I wouldn't be surprised if adding more secure boot keys is somehow broken (the way a lot of BIOS power-management/apic tables are broken and no one cares because they work well enough on Windows)

> With Secure Boot, your bootloader can't be compromised. Not even with physical access, not even with a higher level software escalation.

I have a bridge in Brooklyn that I'm willing to sell for a good price if you believe that.

Yes, it will be harder to do, but ...

PS3, XBox, XBox 360, Wii, iPhone {2G,3G,3GS,4,4S}, iPad {1,2} and many other devices all have secure boots. And all have, in the past, been rooted by software or a combination of software and minimal physical access. (Of these, I think only the XBox 360 required physical access after two months has passed since the first boot exploit was released).

Theory, meet practice.
This article doesn't seem to have any meat that wasn't discussed by the HN community on http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4129125
Direct link without blogspam http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSd0keSj2W8
Thoreau didn't agree with Thoreau. His hermitage was frequently interrupted by visits. Solitude is best when broken occasionally.
No sir. For (presumably) dumb (presumably) Apple Reasons, a non-Thunderbolt display cannot be involved in that chain at all.

I'm not sure why. This is not gospel, by the way - I don't know if this was a limitation of the prior MBAir or else the signalling scheme in play. 1-800-APL-CARE can clarify.
60 seconds?! It took me at least 10 seconds of looking for a 60-second thing to work out that the shortest one of the things you can see that has some meaning is almost five minutes long. Am I missing something??
Awesome. But you'd still need at least one Apple Display to chain the second one? Or are there ways to chain together two DisplayPort displays?
Displays from Dell that rival this in quality are not even $100 less, and don't have the docking powers that a Thunderbolt display offers. I've got a bound pair of cables (power+thunderbolt) that plug into my laptop and all of the sudden my backup drives, both monitors, ethernet and USB hub are connected. The Dell 27" higher-than-1080p monitor is nice, but it can't do all of that sadly.
Unfortunately, the industry pretty much decided that 1080p is all they are going to support. Nowadays, it is pretty hard to find anything above 23" with a decent resolution. Most of the market is now taken by monitor/TV devices, with crappy resolutions (1080p is crappy with a 27" screen).

Find me a big monitor that has a decent resolution and uses a good panel and is significantly cheaper than an Apple display, and I'm going to buy one right now. Maybe two.
>Help me out here -- since the study confines itself to a handful of small Python programs translated to an idiosyncratic language like Haskell, how can the scope of the study possibly in any way qualify as a study on something so broad as "the concept of static vs. dynamic typing"?

You raise a good objection here. Is it possible to draw conclusions about the class of type systems labelled "static typing" vs dynamic typing by using a small sample of programs? I think this is where the impedence mismatch is occurring. The author seems to take static typing to mean "what can be currently accomplished through static typing", and thus he was justified in using the strongest static type system in use to do the study. Taking it this way, then the study seems meaningful.

Taking the other meaning, the class of type systems labelled static typing, then you end up with a very large set of languages each with (perhaps) varying amounts of power. Doing a study with just one static language does seem inadequate. Although, depending on the class of errors caught, it may still be valid. As far as I've seen, Haskell doesn't catch new classes of errors that are impossible in other systems, it just makes it a lot easier to do so. So essentially Haskell has the same power as other common type systems. If this holds, then the study would still be valid. (Admittedly I know very little about Haskell so I could be completely wrong).

TLDR: I see what you're saying, and I do agree that there needs to be more said before his conclusion can be supported by the study.