skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
That's basically true, but simplified. We also have homeless people in Germany, who don't own a washing machine. To get the government welfare, you have to navigate some bureaucracy: it's not hard, but there are still people who can't or don't want to do that.

About the house: If your house is cheap enough, I am not sure whether you have to use it all up completely. (I heard that there's even the possibility under certain circumstances of the government helping you with mortgage payments instead of helping you pay for rent.)

In general, you can live of the government welfare and even raise kids. But you need some skills for that, and they aren't that different from the skills that make for basic employability.
This article completely missed the fact that there's way more to DirectX than just Direct3D. DirectInput, DirectPlay, DirectSound etc. are out-of-scope for OpenGL which means you have to add a lot of unrelated libraries to approach the same functionality as DirectX.
A computer science major who never uses algebra? I call shenanigans.
This is just a random idea, but how about a scheduler? A lot of times when I am self-educating, I find myself hitting a search engine or Wikipedia and getting sidetracked indefinitely. Soon I stumble across another amazing site and any hope of focus is lost.

Fitting in with the title of your site ("No Excuse List"), allowing a user to create a list of to-dos on a per site basis with due dates, could be pretty cool. Although I am hesitant of yet another to-do list manager...
This result doesn't seem contradictory in the least.

* All services have outages. Customers know this, even if they express otherwise.

* Prior to an outage with a new service, responsiveness to outages is an unknown to customers. Uncertainty is a common source of anxiety, resulting in dissatisfaction.

* After a provider has responded positively to an outage, the uncertainty is alleviated, leaving the consumer with a greater sense of confidence. Remember, the consumer knows that regardless of provider, they run the risk of experiencing an outage, so this confidence becomes an anchor.

The tipping point is when frequent outages outweight the benefit of certainty. There comes a point at which your customer deems you to be incompetent, despite the hustle you exhibit in the face of a failure.
That's not really so much of a problem as you might think:

http://www.libsdl.org/
Congratulations! (and wow, the low multiple for consulting in general is kind of sad, but oh well)
I find it interesting that WWII and the Korean War do not show as spikes in his graph.
315 FPS?

I was told that frame rates over what you can actually see tells you very little about the actual performance. So implementation A at 315 FPS being 10% faster than B might very well be 50 % slower than B at 60 FPS.

What is interesting is if the frame rate can keep a steady 30/60/120 FPS. Anything above that is just not indicative of actual performance.
I read that document a few years ago. The stuff on Germany is basically right, but of course there are some differences in opinion, and some things have changed by now.

If you want to talk about different culture, email me. I'm a German living in the UK, working for a multinational American company. I also spent some time studying in Turkey.
Try to propose using OpenGL to a game developer and you'll be laughed at.

OpenGL dominates the massive mobile industry (those billion or so Android and iOS handsets run and live on OGL ES 2.0), and OpenGL was the premiere desktop gaming API until relatively recently.

Then it fell behind not because it was a defective API, but rather because the OpenGL working group was far too slow to adapt to hardware improvements -- mired in infighting and bureaucratic BS -- while DirectX raced ahead with things like geometry shaders.

Of course mobile has completely changed the equation, and suddenly people are writing OpenGL engines that only make sense to use against all other targets (Windows, Linux, etc)
When you think about how far the world has come in the last 200 years, I can easily see that by 2050 we're doing manned deep space exploration.

I could be wrong, but I'm pumped for the ride.
The real problem I think, or at least part of it, is that it's considered acceptable for kids to be declared "just not good at math" and left at that. It's presented as a skill that you're either born with or not, instead of one that can be improved with practice. We wouldn't find it acceptable to declare a kid "just not good at reading" and give up on teaching him to read, so we shouldn't do the same for math.
Google's algorithm and publishing conglomerates
Agree with you! But I must say it is still functional.
网页变态传奇
I think there's still a gap between how you're thinking about it and how I am.

Yes, a for loop translates pretty cleanly to a flowchart. It's not hard to understand how it works. The problem is that I'm usually thinking about the result I want in the case of sequence transformations like map and filter, not the process of generating it.
Perspective and Context in Personal Computing
CodeEval is now part of HireVue - CodeEval Blog
Its funny but I have the opposite experience - the following amd devices have been rock solid for me on both windows and debian

a) radeon 3850

b) fusion e-350

c) a mobile x700

The only nvidia chip I have is some version of a mobile quadro and it has very bad thermals and will frequently segfault.
A JavaScript widget, browser plugin, or Photoshop filter to colorblindify, in various types, a webpage so that designers can check for usability would be useful.

EDIT: Actually, what would be more useful are colorblind OS X color profiles and an easy way to switch between them.
Did a politician just vault that--or was it McKayla Maroney?
Easy: Bring back the WoZ.
hey rahyan, did you see the 'MALE Recommends' badge? Let me know if not, could be a bug.
MiddleVR brings 3D apps to Virtual Reality • The Rude Baguette
Opa 1.0.5: great improvements in Node.js backend
This reminds me of dmoz, centered on learning and without external suggestions.
Valve's own blog seems to think it will: "Now that we know the hardware is capable of more performance, we will go back and figure out how to mitigate this effect under Direct3D." http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/linux/faster-zombies/
REST APIs with Symfony2: The Right Way
I may not be much better suited to answer your question than you, but my understanding goes more like: the intent was "let's use standardized testing to identify and then help weak students and to support schools that yield good overall students (according to the test results)" and the result was schools trying to game the tests to maintain/gain funding.
That gap between the effects that the work Musk is doing could have and the effects of most startups are attempting to do is incredible.

He makes you want to step up whatever is it that you're working on.
Looks pretty old, this may be a dead project
I think that the future of input devices are our brains and a device that can read what's going on in them

A major obstacle to developing a useful brain-computer interface using EEG is signal strength. The event-related potentials measured at the scalp are microvolts and do not play well with other electronics nearby. Direct measurement of the motor cortex solves this problem, but most people aren't eager for brain surgery. The other option is to move downstream to the muscle site where a clean signal is quite accessible. I agree, however, that this is a less than ideal solution.
I agree broadly. Some minor points:

You are probably right about the direct labour costs of treating an infection in ER. However, to use the language of computing, the difference between a GP and ER comes down to latency. An ER should be able to react fast, clogging it up with ailments that could be resolved at a leisurely pace earlier, doesn't strike me as a good idea.
> The only way I see humans still using hands for computer interaction in the future is if we get prosthetic robot hands like in the Deus Ex game for example.

If we could access the brain outputs that control the hands, why would we make robot hands and special input devices to be controlled by those hands to control the computers, rather than interface to the computers directly?
Sim Daltonism http://michelf.ca/projects/sim-daltonism/
Great site, I think I had seen it before (in Reddit?). I like it just the way it is, no nonsense carefully curated list of things to learn online.

I feel weary of changing any of this, but if you want users to come back a good feature would be listing the starting dates for upcoming courses. Coursera and Udacity courses have specific launch dates, you can use this information for a more "what do I want to learn next week" experience.
This is basically what I was thinking about doing earlier.

"This is actually something I was thinking about. For instance, say someone wants to learn Ruby. They could go to noexcuselist and find a step-by-step process that someone has made using only free resources. Does that sound like something that would be useful? The hard part is, I'd have to expand the site and make it social, so people can post their own guides. I definitely don't have the technical expertise for that."

Is that what you had in mind?
You do know that Zuckerberg has majority voting stock right ?

So it doesn't matter whether the board thinks he should be replaced. He will be CEO until he is either sick of the job or unwell. But either it will be at his choosing.

And people need to remember that there is a lot of very rich people at Facebook now. It wouldn't surprise me if we see a lot more people resigning to create their own startups or buy an island.
Nitpick: Arte has undubbed shows. And there's the ever popular Dinner for One.
Either processors could share cameras, or each processor could have a low resolution camera that works in aggregate, perhaps similar to how a fly's eyes work. Or we could have both. Computer vision doesn't have to replicate human vision to be useful, especially if the processing is fast enough.
Programmers are bad at estimates for one main reason: Many think that to stay employed they must give the answer the manager or client wants to hear and often that number is way too low.
Outlook email: Most useful and handy features.
Are you sure about that?

I used to work for a company NCC Group bought a few years ago and I heard Rob Cotton say the same thing...

Things got interesting really fast after our friends in Manchester bought us - changing what computers we use (on the desktop and server), changing email, etc, etc.
I think proprietary code and paid apps will make linux powerful.
This was incredibly insightful. How long ago do you think it all changed? Do you think it's a function of the size that Google has grown to?
Before and during reading I was pretty sure that it is a little biased for one of the countries. The end effect was completely reverse - I can't really choose one country as better right now. So I'd call this article a success.

Jelly donuts rant was a nice touch in the end :) .
Show HN: All the design principles in one place
Math, especially algebra, is essential to all technology. Counting and measuring and projecting forward are foundational skills. The thing is that there are two basic aspects to algebra, one is conceptual and the other is mechanical. The conceptual part is interesting and worthwhile to most people. The second thing is what drives people off - the long detailed mechanical aspect of accurately doing long equations, perfect transcriptions, looking for simplifications and cancellations. But it is precisely this laborious mechanical aspect that has been drastically improved with modern symbolic math software like Mathematica and Mathcad, et al. Factor a twenty term formula, do any integral, or differentiate a messy equation in about, oh, half a second? The failure is that we don't teach these software skills right at the start.

How boring would writing be if we didn't let students use word processors with their perfect erasers, spelling checkers, scissors, tape, carbon paper, and endless new blank sheets? Or if we forced all architects and engineers to use rulers, pencils, Leroy lettering guides, and E-size paper on drafting boards every time they wanted to design something for others to build, not allowing them to use Solidworks or Autodesk, or equivalent modern tool to help? Ditto for movie making, or pretty much everything else.

Algebra is great. Teach it along with teaching the modern symbolic math tools that go along with it.
(Super Excited For This) The Niche Case Study: Creating A Profitable Niche Site
In my experience, all these formal 20% things are just too artificial, and usually just marketing. The only important thing (but also the most challenging) is to ensure that there is enough slack in the schedule.

If you can manage that, well, you've got a bunch of hackers with some hardware, an internet connection and time on their hands. The rest will pretty much sort itself out.
The blog post makes no mention of the steps they went through to achieve quality parity though. So one can assume that they did not.
Why stop at OpenGL? Let's work with GPU vendors to get a more consistent, lower-level API for high-performance 3D graphics. John Carmack observed that not being able to program the hardware directly caused an order of magnitude drop in effective performance of PC hardware. http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/06/08/get-with-the-prog...
DirectX is a very good option for games. OpenGL on the other hand is a more generic 3D API (used, for example, by most CAD and other scientific applications). Additionally, of course, it is available on all platforms. I doubt that DirectX will outlive OpenGL in the long run.
Math, especially algebra, is essential to all technology. Counting and measuring and projecting forward are foundational skills. The thing is that there are two basic aspects to algebra, one is conceptual and the other is mechanical. The conceptual part is interesting and worthwhile to most people. The second thing is what drives people off - the long detailed mechanical aspect of accurately doing long equations looking for simplifications and cancellations. But it is precisely this laborious mechanical aspect that has been drastically improved with modern symbilic math software like Mathematica and Mathcad, et al. The failure is that we don't teach these software skills right at the start. How boring would writing be if we didn't let students use word orocessors with their perfect erasers, spelling checkers, scissors, tape, carbon paper, and endless new blank sheets? Or if we forced all architects and engineers to use rulers, pencils, Leroy lettering guides, and E-size paper on drafting boards every time they wanted to design something for others to build, not allowing them to use Solidworks or Autodesk, or equivalent modern tool to help? Ditto for movie making, or pretty much everything else.

Algebra is great. Teach it along with teaching the modern symbolic mat tools that go along with it.
But is it just a programmer problem? How good are lawyers at giving estimates for solving legal problems that are even slightly complex?
>The thing that got me started with SpaceX was the feeling of dismay — I just did not want Apollo to be our high-water mark. We do not want a future where we tell our children that this was the best we ever did.

Glad someone has this motivation.

http://xkcd.com/893/
The lead developer of SDL is now working at Valve, so I guess that is a very likely solution.
If you thought I was insufferable before...

You are, but congrats nonetheless! :-)
The website just has a couple of articles but looks promising.

I'm color blind and know the frustration to not be able to play some videogames or read charts which use very similar colors (at least to me).

A lot of people don't even understand what color blind really is, it's a funny thing to explain what it is and joke about it with new friends / coworkers when the subject comes along.

At least my coworkers now ask me first when choosing color coded post-it for the current project ;).
For those who, like me, use desktop Linux full time, Valve's close collaboration with NVIDIA and AMD (i.e., ATI) to improve the performance of proprietary graphics drivers is a huge win.

Quoting from the blog post: "We’ve been working with NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel to improve graphic driver performance on Linux. They have all been great to work with and have been very committed to having engineers on-site working with our engineers, carefully analyzing the data we see. We have had very rapid turnaround on any bugs we find and it has been invaluable to have people who understand the game, the renderer, the driver, and the hardware working alongside us when attacking these performance issues."

Leaving aside the amazing fact that Valve is achieving higher FPS on Linux than on Windows, the great thing about efforts like this one is that we can all expect the Linux desktop to become even smoother, faster, more seamless. I love it!
It's a US-centric graph, if I'm not mistaken. But it is interesting that WW2 doesn't trail effects. Although, there is a long-standing theory that WW1 and WW2 were just the same war.
Anyone who finds this interesting might also find the Strauss-Howe generational theory (1) of interest. It talks about the generational cycle in America.

(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss-Howe_generational_theor...
I've done some work at a customer where they used Planning Poker. I'm guessing the idea comes from some Agile development or Extreme Programming methodology. I'm not a fan of the latter, but Planning Poker was entertaining and seemed like it had some good points.

The team sits together, everyone has a deck of cards with values. The team lead calls out a task and everyone throws down his estimate at the same time. If the values diverge widely, the team lead asks the outliers to explain, and everyone can reconsider after the explanation. The highest remaining number is taken as the estimated time.

This was done in days for big tasks, who where then split up in sub-tasks where the same was repeated in hours.

Sharing the responsibility of estimates prevents the manager-pressure problem you talked about. If the team estimates it takes 5 days and the manager thinks it should only take 3, the team isn't going to back down (unlike what could happen in 1-1 conversations), and the manager will ignore the estimate at his own peril.

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/10/lets-play-planning-...
There Is A Horse In The Apple Store
I seem to recall that Microsoft minted millionares as well in the '90s. Did they have an outflow of the rich too? (I don't know).
Start a spark and join the movement. Bring tech to your campus.
Watch Google incorporate this into Street View to deliver billboard advertisements.
SEO Tools We Can’t Live Without
Didn't think of that. Arte is actually one of the few good TV channels in Germany (and France).
Congratulations Thomas, I know I'm not the only one who has learned a mountain about security from you! You're an invaluable member of the community.
I'm not an anti-linux Windows fan. I like both of them, and use both of them daily.

But I feel very rejected by the GNU mindset that 'every proprietary software in my platform is bad'.
Can Broken Links Hurt Your Website?
Have you considered switching on noprocrast in your profile?
Anyone got any idea?
Not to mention input lag, and display lag.
Thoughts on the Google Nexus 7
Knight Capital Trading Disaster Carries $440 Million Price Tag
If you work in an environment where everyone has respect for one another, that sounds like a great solution. If not and it's the manager's way or the highway, then that doesn't work so well.
Once upon a time, computer programming was a job for women, and not for men. So, based on that period of history, we can equivalently suggest: Maybe we don't need more men in software?

(I do not believe either suggestion, not for a second. And I am disturbed that people are so ignorant of history. Both the women subject to stereotype threat and the men suggesting it's a non-issue are making this same kind of mistake. So, instead, I'd like to point out that women are awesomely smart. So deal with it. Please.)
And managers are bad at understanding how long it takes to do pretty much anything.

Most effective flow I've found is: 1) ask programmer how long, 2) drop that number by 1/3 and give them a deadline, 3) indicate that the deadline needs to be adjusted if anything unforeseen appears.

Adjust ratio in item #2 as the team grows the relationship.
Personally I think "disclaimer" is exactly right. If you work on the drivers (or some other low-level component that's part of the general plumbing), your concerns are not always aligned with those of people writing the actual software. Therefore, if you have a complaint about something, it may be that you should be the one who has to do the hard work rather than the application writers, because making your life easier might not maximize overall happiness.

So, "disclaimer" is spot on, I believe, because application writers might like to shed a tear, but not sympathize too hard...
It almost feels like a personal win here(not in SV, "more experienced guy", networking background etc)...also shows you can be obnoxious and right at the same time
I am working in a lab that is developing a similar technology, the main difference being we use a single muscle site to control two degrees of freedom (primarily moving a cursor on a screen). We are also working on applications for severely paralyzed individuals who can use the "ear wiggling" muscles (auricularis superior--the side of your head) to control anything from a television remote to a motorized wheelchair. The control isn't perfect, but with a few hours of training most participants are achieving cursor-to-target accuracies of around 80%. One participant was able to reach 100% in one session.

It is fun to play with a muscle-computer interface for a while, but I don't think it will catch on as a heavy-use gaming controller unless they significantly improve upon current technology. It is simply too imprecise, though on/off (button) control like what is used for Guitar Hero is better suited for it than x,y movement of a cursor. Trying to control the equivalent actions of what you can do with a PS3 controller is out of the question.
You trust Google with your email more than Microsoft? Google is the one that scans your email for advertising keywords.

But no, I was talking about search. Google doesn't do email well in general. Their one significant advance was popularizing threaded display of conversations, and that hasn't been a gmail-exclusive feature for years.
They actually filed a patent in 2008 to do that http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_could_soon_augme... (direct link to the patent: http://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sec... )
I'm going to have to track this guy's book down. Subject looks interesting, and the nature article leaves some information lacking, sadly.

For instance, Turchin mentions seeing this pattern in Ancient Rome and Egpyt (past and present) but he doesn't explain how he accounts for the Middle Ages and European colonial expansion. Arguably the number of "violent" events during those periods would be concentrated to the point of potentially breaking the father-son-grandson model he advocates. The chart in Nature leaves out things like the Reconquista of Spain, Ghengis Khan and heirs marching into Europe, the Crusades, the 50 years war, the French Revolution, and numerous other major upheaval events that occurred in smaller windows than those 50 year cycles he claims.

I guess I want to know what happens when you add in those time frames missing from his graph. Does it show the amount of "conflict" in the world decreasing with time as civilization (our understanding of it) expands around the world?
This article is quite well-researched and argues that the meritocracy that you imagine doesn't exist in practice. As such you don't respond to the article at all, but for some reason feel compelled to use snarky tropes (whatever, sad, downhill) even when you admit the you have nothing to say. Why?