skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Apparently the entire issue came down to a junior pilot pulling back on the control stick, causing the airplane to stall and fall. It seems commercial airlines usually operate in a mode where it is impossible to stall -- pulling back all the way just ascends as fast as the plane can. But, the plane reverted to another mode of operation and the pilot did not understand this. Additionally, the Airbus control system has no physical feedback between the two pilot inputs and just merges the data. So if one pilot is pulling back, the other has no way of knowing. From the transcription, it seems that the pilots were confused as to why they were falling, until they realised the junior pilot was stalling the plane, and by then it was too late to fix.
According to a recent theory[1], there are three affect systems in the human brain:
- Threat/protection (Safety seeking)
- Drive/Excitement (incentive, resource focussed)
- Soothing/Comforting (Affiliative)

Anxiety problems are caused by the first one. The theory holds that problems with the first system are best tackled using the third one (whereas I imagine that most HN readers are more likely to assume that everything should be done using the second one).

[1]http://apt.rcpsych.org/content/15/3/199.full

NB I can't claim that I have any evidence for this theory, as I have only know about it for a short time. Anxiety has ruined my life so far; this is merely the first thing that looks like it might really help.
Where are you moving to? Because that's where you need to do your networking. And possibly figure out your own work visa issues.

Your main goal doesn't seem to be more time, but a different place and more money. Start by networking with local recruiters to get your foot into that market. They often can get you contracting jobs. Then you can network with locals.

Finally, full stack software is a big job - in fact it's many jobs, and rarely do developers do all of them (and never well). I've been freelancing for almost 4 years, but never completely on my own. I always team with other locals with different skill sets to tackle more complex projects with better rates.
Always wear sunscreen while maintaining a blog
People take photos of others all the time without their consent and upload them to public profiles on Facebook.
Of course you have to do that long before Google breaks your feed. I don't really object to Feedburner in this piece, btw, I just say people are going to regret it. In my opinion (clearly labeled as such). And of course this is your opinion (not so clearly labeled, esp since you work at Google, assuming you still do).
That blog post restored a good deal of my faith in smart people in the tech sector... it's looking kinda bleak lately, not a whole lot of actual thought or even reflection going on. Thanks, and all the best.
You're correct, anonymous functions were 2.0, sorry. However, I'd argue that, syntax aside, they were already true lambdas. The expression stuff that V3 added isn't even on the Java roadmap.
I have everything I wanted and I'm still not happy. Why? (via Quora)
As an EU citizen myself I think the EP is pretty much the only governing body that I vote for that I can actually trust, except maybe for my local municipality. I thanked the MEPs I voted for the last time they turned ACTA down, I should do it again.

As for Ars, probably subscribing: http://arstechnica.com/subscriptions/
I can't believe we're 30 comments in and nobody has mentioned Scratch yet! (http://scratch.mit.edu/ or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scratch_(programming_language))

If you're not familiar with it, Scratch was developed by the Media Lab and heavily influenced by Logo. It's used in thousands (tens of thousands?) of elementary schools to teach programming concepts. It's a really great language, and is incredibly visual.

One of the great things about Scratch is that whilst it's certainly heavily slanted towards children it's not exclusively for them. Actually, Scratch is used at Harvard for the first week of their Intro CS course. If you're interested in programming languages for children and those new to CS then Scratch is well worth a look.
I think not actually.

I think it's pretty helpful to get young kids to understand the logic first and then get introduced to programming operators and other weird characters.

It would be interesting to see if there's any research or papers on this.
Instead of thinking about this as a way to learn programming think about it as a way to internalize the principles of programming by removing some of the abstraction.

Think of this as php for children. An easy to use forgiving environment that welcome everyone not just the few who have the stamina and interest to learn assembler.

And think of this as the future of programming languages as they will become more and more abstracted from the core.

Those who want to dig deeper can.
That was precisely the conclusion of my (heavily downvoted) reply. The ratings agencies are not the banks. What is unclear about this? I wouldn't even think it controversial.

The parent that I replied to stated that the instruments were marketed as safe when they were anything but. The implication in my view was that you should not be able to sell unsafe things (and the only other reply confirms this). Even if I misread this, it's simply not factually correct to say that they were marketed as safe. They will - like anything else - be marketed as a good product. Which means a good risk/reward ratio. Which means fuck all, if you don't trust ratings agencies. But again we are back to the same issue. Is it a good thing that ratings agencies make money from the companies selling the products they rate? Wow, you know what? That's an interesting point! Maybe it's easier just to click the down-arrow though - it's not as if the discussion is valuable. whatever, hating on bankers is more important than facts. apologies for the sarcasm.
Business at its best? That batshit insanity is one big part of what's wrong with this country.
Relevant: The Acceleration of Addictiveness -- http://paulgraham.com/addiction.html
I’ve heard this many times, but it’s orthogonal to the point of the essay. If we take the words “know” and “learn” and replace them with “feel,” I can write the same essay. I felt anxiety because I didn’t have any feeling for the game. Every time I did something, I felt punished for having the wrong feeling, but I didn’t have any feeling, much less a wrong feeling.

You can say there are no wrong feelings, yet the game has a winner and a loser and is very much scored like there are right and wrong feelings. My problem then was what it is now: I have no feeling for the game, and there is no feedback loop to help me feel what is going on.

Which is not to say that you aren’t wrong about how to approach the game, but my essay isn’t really about not being able to become a good player, it’s about not being able to do anything because I had no “feeling” for what to do.
This isn't Ars reporting. This is a guest piece written by a think tank wonk. Ars put a disclaimer at the beginning of the article stating that it doesn't not necessarily represent their views.
Another problem with natural language languages is they can be very tricky to localize, because grammar can be highly variable across different languages.
> How is people giving a company money for having fun playing a game "destructively selfish" of said company?

The same way that giving a company money for alcohol/tobacco/cocaine/etc might be destructive to the buyer and selfish for the seller.
Leaving Janus for Vim
Communist space propaganda posters
... because this is what happens when I use Java-based tools that are associated with Google (i.e. Eclipse+ADT): http://i46.tinypic.com/300tyc9.png
Say what you want, that is a disgusting justification for ignoring others suffering
Cord cut, now what?
> The first company is a family/friend owned company of the Karunannidhi empire, often called the first family of Tamil Nadu.

While you make a good point, I have to that guy and ask for some sort of a citation on this. I've lived in Chennai for 5 years and never heard anything of the sort. (that Saravana Stores is part of the Karunanidhi empire)
Every time there is a post about Microsoft, this is the obligatory response. I understand that being such a huge company makes it difficult to change, but from the inside it's very exciting seeing all of the new innovations coming out. Microsoft is certainly no longer resting on the success of Windows but is actually trying to make cool, useful products and shaking things up.
Have you seen this? http://www.spacemonkey.com/
There is plenty.

http://www.papert.org/works.html
He probably did, I think this was a follow-up.
Ah shoot, I completely and unconsciously skipped that for some reason. Ah well, it got them a subscriber. Everything I've seen from them in recent memory has been very well reported.
Of course it's a shame that Laurent needs to eat and of course this has everything to do about RM being able to build for Mac or not. Knowing him, I know he would prefer RM to be open source but it would be much harder for him to monetize his efforts.

I'm perfectly ok with paying a fee to get RM but I know that wouldn't pay for support (especially if the community handles it which is already the case).

Corporate sponsorship doesn't always works and often lacks security and stability for both the developer and the project as they are at the mercy of one entity.
This post represents a gross misunderstanding of origin security on the Web. Protection against a malicious client is an explicit non-goal of origin security, if not an outright impossibility. To put it another way, if the client is already compromised, then what can you possibly do at the server to protect it anyway?
I agree. This language is too far abstracted from the standard paradigms, hell I even have trouble bending my brain to this structure. I've been programming for 12 years.

When I was eight we had a turtle in our classroom, driven by Logo on a BBC Micro. No child had trouble understanding Forward 30, Left 10 and seeing the physical turtle make those moves. Adding in recursion was pretty straightforward too, and you could see the results (right or wrong) straight away as the little guy makes his moves.

I'm not suggesting Logo is right, but kids shouldn't be underestimated. This language seems patronising. App Inventor is much more in the right direction http://www.appinventor.mit.edu/.
The insight behind Knuth's glib "I have only proved the program correct" quote is that proofs can still contain our untested assumptions. It's possible for someone to carry over an untested and wrong assumption from the implementation to the proof without ever finding out it is incorrect.
Yeah, I'm pretty impressed, especially with the complete one-sidedness of the vote.

And yeah, in for a year on Ars, now. I'm hoping one of the ID's in the URL (in the 800's) isn't their number of paying subscribers...
I feel that much of the negative comments are a defensive reaction. Coming to Hacker News and pointing out, even if indirectly, that the tricks of the startup trade are of questionable morality is like showing up at an decadent dinner party and pulling out photos of starving third world children.
He would make more money charging for support or for the tail end (e.g. codesigning).
I really like this post, it resonates with me as well. I have parallels with Dave's story -- mostly figuratively, but still felt like I've been along the same ride with him.

The fact that Dave is still going strong at 46 and trying to make a difference shows there is much more substance to him than many others I know in this business. If there is one thing I've observed, it's how the perceived "lack" of success in those who expected great things of themselves have knocked so many people off their perch.

Good job, Dave. In my book, the very fact you recognize this in yourself qualifies you as successful.
As the founder of StethoCloud, whilst our primary focus in the Imagine Cup, I'd also like to articulate that our other major focus is on the diagnosis and monitoring of asthma in children under the age of 5.

We see this as a huge market to expand mHealth into.
Nonsense. Good design is effective; its quality is independent from its aims

Nonsense. How do you define "effective" without aims?

I believe the author's point of view is that an aim must first be moral to be good a aim, and this leads to his statement that you quote.
Oh, they use vert.x, cool!
STA didn't mean store address anyway, what would your long neumonics for store X or store Y be?

Having learned 6510 asm when I was younger, mov always seemed backwards and magical to me.
Employee of the site here. Just want to point out a few things.

1. The submitter of the article to HN has no affiliation with Postmasculine as far as I know, nor did we request them to post it here. We're very grateful for them doing so however!

2. While the author of the site was involved in the pickup industry for a while, he chose to no longer identify with that scene over two years ago, and specifically moved his content away from its perspective, even going so far as to systemically deconstruct the flaws and failures of Pickup theory and the community it created. So we don't feel that 'pickup' really represents what the site has to say about dating. Although we definitely do talk about meeting women. A lot. :)

3. While we're dedicated internet marketing students, we're far from experts on the subject. We're putting a lot of time and effort into improving the site's marketing, but our number one focus will always be on providing high quality content that is as no BS and realistic as possible. Hopefully anyone who came from HN and spends further time reading the site will agree.

I realize your comment wasn't a criticism, but just thought I'd try and give a bit more context to the situation. Thanks for assuming we were so professional!
There is still a lot that you can do to contribute back to the project. Much of the build system and various supporting libraries have been open-sourced. Furthermore, it is the stated goal of RubyMotion that development of higher-level abstraction libraries should be driven by the community.

I suspect that the number of people who would actually be interested in (or, indeed, even capable of) contributing back to the parts of RubyMotion that are closed source is rather small.
I agree. Some companies are more flexible than others on this, so the obvious solution is to find a flexible company.

The good news is that one major corp. I know had an unbreakable policy for years (every new employee starts at the same 2 weeks, NO exceptions) broke this when the local market got so tight they had no choice. So job market timing is part of it, too.

I'll also point out that executive compensation is always flexible, and the OP is coming of an age where that might be a valid path.
"My mind’s eye could just see The Buddha face-palming".

Haha! Such a great turn of phrase!

Honestly, everything in this article makes sense. I've also had these same experiences. Not sure I'd write about it though - particularly since India is such a nebulous topic, hippies come in all flavors, and whatnot .. but an enjoyable read.

Next up: China.
Setting, not game mechanics, is the key to video game storytelling
I am a crack cocaine dealer and I entirely agree with you.
On CEO Confidence and Risk-Taking
How is that separate but equal? Who is making anyone separate? I'm suggesting the government should treat everyone the same.

My understanding of "separate but equal" historically had to do with separating students based on race into separate schools. If the government were to say, "OK, call it a marriage, call it whatever you want, but 2 people can form what we call a 'domestic partnership' that creates certain legal rights by filling out this form." How is that separate but equal?
Unless of course you're not suited for it, and you lose out due to the opportunity costs of all the money you could have been making as a salaried employee elsewhere in the time you were barely getting by with a startup.
Ugh, I really hate comments in HN's economic threads. As with all economic theory, this is a framework for thinking about a problem, not a description of reality.

All the author is saying is that there is a set of assumptions that when met, bundling benefits both consumers and sellers. Specifically, this set of assumptions includes 0 transaction costs. Thus, the decrease in transaction costs does not mean the end of bundling.
Show HN: Peer advisory circles for startups
We’re forming small groups of startups (5-10 per group) to get together and discuss problems, progress, and knowledge amongst each other. The monthly conference calls (about an hour long) will allow the startups to monitor each other's traction and hold one another accountable for meeting individual goals/milestones. We want the sessions to be results-oriented and constructive. We will handle the annoying bits like matching startups and scheduling sessions. All you have to do is join a circle and stay committed for about an hour each month. We believe in the power of peer collaboration, so please sign up so we can help each other build great businesses!

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dFZnemFxMXdtQ2o0a1VuRlJ2LWdMcGc6MQ#gid=0
I say that being a meth dealer is immoral, and your response is that I can't make such a statement without first dispensing a treatise on morality?
You shouldn't have been downvoted to hell because you were right on some account. Literacy is only part of the problem. Even if you have 100% literacy it won't stop corruption. Case and point: Kerala -> The only state in India with about 94% literacy and yet there is still a good amount of corruption! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerala
Don’t Indulge. Be Happy.
Now that is a serious exaggeration, and an unproductive one as well.
Data scientists have big opportunities in tech startups. Data scientists create that magic spark to give a fragile startup a strong competitive advantage, and share in the upside. Many many startups are trying to learn how to build a data science team.

Trevor Hastie at Stanford told me that Google revolutionized the outlook for stats PhDs. Prior to Google, statistics was an important field but jobs were scarce, and at places like research labs. But since Google taught the world where the magic lies, Stanford stats grads are inundated with offers from Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo - and most importantly - countless startups.

Many of the best data scientists I have met studied physics. After the dry complex problems they have faced, commercial applications are human, exciting, straightforward, and a way to make an impact. (yes all our basic advances came from physicists doing physics. Im just saying Data Science could be a great alternative for some people).

I know that I'm biased, so take this with a grain of salt, but tech startups can be an exciting place for a data scientist, where you can make a major impact on the financial success of the business and share in that success.

Happy to give anyone specific suggestions via email.
Engineers build things. In the software field if you're unable to build things (code) you're not an engineer.
Based on how long it took to introduce the ability to say foo()["bar"], I'm guessing it's not the language so much as it's a set of poorly designed parser rules.

Also, magically, I can't use
empty(functionResult());
but I can say
$result = functionResult();
empty($result);
This couldn't have happened to nicer people. Every time the MPPA/RIAA lose big a thousand kittens die and another lobbyist pushes for another draconian copyright law over a dinner table at a $10,000 per head benefit dinner. While it might feel like we've had a few wins lately with ACTA and whatnot, this is only the beginning the stupidity of the entertainment industry will never cease, more laws will be proposed and eventually I believe one of them will get through and once we get one law it opens up the floodgates for more bad laws, don't you just love the world?
Can You Teach Yourself Synesthesia?
You're sidestepping because morality is inconveniently annoying.

How would you feel if your 8 year old child spent hours playing FarmVille? She thinks it is more fun than playing outside or with her friends.

Now what do you think about a company that claps with glee upon hearing the above?
State of Technology Fortnightly #66
You can use PDO to connect and run queries without using all the crazy variable binding features.
I find the notion that the SOPA protest woke up us previously apathetic Europeans somewhat insultingly US-centric.

Prior to SOPA, resistance against increasingly insane copyright legislation was considerably more widespread than it was in the US, partially triggered by events like the trial against the Pirate Bay, Sarkozy's three strikes sell-out etcetera.

There's a reason why we're the ones with the Pirate parties. We didn't need major corporations like Google campaigning to wake us up. Yeah, the defeat of SOPA was a major encouragement and inspiration, but the fight was already on.
You're correct. It's called advertising.

An example is a friend who oohed and awed over the Samsung Galaxy Note due to its size, who previously had slammed the Nokia tablets for being too big and bulky.
I work with an ex physics major now doing planetary geology, at a university. Above all else, scientists should be problem solvers, and gravitate to where they can solve problems of interest to them. Too many fixate on one thing without consideration to where they can actually contribute something meaningful. Money/employment is not exactly equal to where you can meaningfully contribute, but there's a correlation.
It uses Google Wave. Well I guess it's not totally dead.
Some people like it that way!

Also, it's 3,727 lines.
With each law they fail to get through (And rile up a public policy shitstorm over.) the chances of them getting the next one through go down.
That's an excellent question. Our current institutions (school, work) are set up so that people by and large respond to commands from a higher authority.

Entrepreneurship gave me the incentive to find things on the one, and also made it necessary.
I know of no cases where state secrets were claimed, and then there turned out to be an actual state secret at issue.

Part of the reason for this is that the US, unlike the UK, does not have state secrets law, so there is no actual legal definition of a state secret in the US. It's just a couple of words lawyers mumble in hopes that a judge will defer to their desires not to confront some fact.
If you want a deeper dive into RubyMotion, the creator was just on The Changelog podcast - http://thechangelog.com/post/25928209107/episode-0-8-2-ruby-...

He actually left Apple to launch RubyMotion -- a commercial product, by the way -- after creating MacRuby and developing/maintaining it for several years.
True, although I feel there is still plenty of room for as-yet-unseen ambition in projects that fit within the rules (for every app store). And it's worth pointing out that there is a significant benefit to the users for restricting what apps can do -- albeit at the risk of reducing the more 'ambitious' projects for the sake of the least common denominator of users.
Berlin.

Germany has a real economy, the Germans believe in good education (or at least skilled vocational training), there are tons of hackers, a great nightlife, and the rule of law.

A big one for me was that the cops here ignore people who aren't criminals. Coming from the USA it's like a breath of fresh air.
It's only possible because of the near duopoly status of AT&T and Verizon.
At almost 40 I'd be worried about ageism. Seriously, most high demand freelancers are your age at the oldest and most are younger. Fair or not there is a widespread perception that 40+ coders aren't very good. Be careful cutting off your safety net as your freelancing might get much harder in the next few years.

I'd test the waters and make sure to keep up contacts with the work-a-day world so you can jump back on board if you need to.
Ars still gets props for running a piece many outlets wouldn't.