skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> That only works if you do it in machine code (and your hex-editor is clean).

Not necessarily. It would be very hard to get a ken trojan to propagate if you were to write your compiler in a high-level language such as python and then use a C compiler to Compile the Java runtime which you would use to run a C compiler to compile say go, then use the go-based c compiler to compile the python source, which you would then use to compile gcc. Gcc would then compile itself, resulting in an almost certainly clean gcc. If the gcc were compiled by the go compiler, presumably that gcc would be functionally equivalent to any other gcc binary of the same version. If it's functionally equivalent then when you compile the clean gcc with your go compiled gcc, it should be binary equivalent to any other gcc binary compiled with the same compiler, flags, and version.

EDIT: Now that I think about it, you wouldn't need to write your own compiler at all at that point, making your earlier point correct. But I meant something else when I was talking about checksums and versioning.

You then compare the checksum of your final result with the one on the server, if they don't match theres probably a problem.

Another approach would be to use assembly to implement a higher level language such as scheme, and then use that to write a C compiler.

Also, I would pay $50 to see a hex editor or assembler that can detect that it is writing a C compiler in all possible cases and bug the users final program.

Of course, none of that matters if your hardware has a backdoor in it. So everything enumerated here depends on the assumption that your hardware is trustworthy.
Question is, will they divulge the method they used to hack your site, and if so, can you trust them to tell you everything?
Uniformity of culture would presumably increase quality and speed of communication, and remove needless distraction from the process of producing. I can definitely see why even a company committed to diversity of gender, race, religion, and so on would want to hire only those who "fit the company culture".
> So what's an example of a flat file that isn't HTML? If you have flat files, what value does Varnish provide?

Sorry, that's probably confusing language here. I was referring to structuring Markdown files in a flat-file database, not the concept of compiled HTML files.
That's one of my concerns. One of their clasues state "Termination for Breach. [...] if Customer is an individual, Customer was not at least 18 years old or otherwise did not have the legal capacity to enter into the MSA".

Note the "was" and "did", I assume your account can be terminated right now. Whether they enforce it or not is another question.
I didn't roll my own parser generator, I used LPeg: http://www.inf.puc-rio.br/~roberto/lpeg/

It's a great library, I highly recommend it.

I've assembled a few parsers using various tools, and I must say PEGs are my favorite. They are very flexible and performance is comparable. (even CoffeeScript 2.0 is being written with a PEG.)

You can check out the guts of the parser here: https://github.com/leafo/moonscript/blob/master/moonscript/p...
I like "4 Hour Workweek" and its ilk ... particularly the message about not delaying gratification forever (or at least until retirement).

But come on ... does anyone really think that Google or Facebook or SpaceX or etc could have been built without significant personal sacrifice by not only the founders but also the employees?

I'm not saying that you should be worked like a slave ... but if you go into it with the explicit goal of combining comfort AND entrepreneurship ... then you should prepare to be dissapointed.
Amputee scales 103 floors with mind-controlled 'bionic leg'
Classical Inheritance in JavaScript
So are we to conclude that piles of regulations end up helping the incumbent? That regulation is just a form of mercantilism, or some other discredited economic theory?

A few months ago, I heard a story about Kosher food production on NPR (http://www.wbur.org/npr/150300040/why-matzo-makers-love-regu...). The upshot was that Kosher food producers love the strict regulation - complying with the elaborate Kosher rules makes a large barrier to entry into the market.

This viewpoint may actually solve the apparent contradiction of large companies decrying regulation, and giving money to candidates who want to "get rid of red tape", yet actually lobby those same candidates pretty hard to enact more and more regulation.
Not sure how much I buy this. I had a similar situation to the OP in high school - a friend and mentor passed away and in the wake of his life I felt the need to Find My Purpose and conquer the world. While I realize with almost a decade under my belt that ForrestN has point - any individual mark tends to blur and disappear, I would still argue that during the days where I am fighting for something, those are the days where I feel good and alive. The days where I let ambivalence win are a waste.

I will say, the biggest difference in how I view the mark I want to make is that my scope has widened. Creating a product that changes the world, spending time with family, helping pass laws that make life Better according to my admittedly limited worldview all work.
It depends on how many times a year you have to ship things to your home. And even for them, I try to have it scheduled around the weekends.
Going to supermarket is another thing, but I mostly purchase the stuff during weekends. So very rarely I have to make a purchase during the weekday. And those are things that I try to get from the nearest convenient store.
Much thanks, I really appreciate it!
I totally agree that the Wired review wasn't all that it could have been. It did answer some of my basic questions though (like 'how does the battery life hold up?' and 'is it a lemon or not?')

I can't really say the same for the Verge video, though. It felt to me like Google's PR video, made by a third party. The only even vaguely critical question was "so it's like Swype?" IIRC the interviewer doesn't even get to hold the phone. Surely tech journalism can do better.
I've thought about this. It doesn't make as much sense in Lua. An iterated variable it gets it's own local assignment for each iteration. The variable isn't shared like JavaScript:

http://moonscript.org/compiler/#14

Here I create 10 functions closed on the loop value. Then I loop over them and call them all. In JavaScript this would print 10 10 times, but in Lua we get the 1 through 10.
Battle Of The Flagships (50+ Headphones Compared)
Not everybody wants to build a Google, Facebook, or SpaceX.

There many paths to building a startup or achieving fulfillment. You only noted the most exceedingly rare form of them all.

Why not spend more time talking about the more common, more viable paths?
It cannot be that. Alligators and crocodiles also use the term cow and are not mammals.
I am world traveler for past 8 years and I can tell is really hard to work at some paradise longer than normal vacation time. Typical paradise consist of beach, some local bar and maybe two or three crappy restaurants.

There are many different kind of people, but I dont believe that most of us will thrive in this kind of non stimulating environment.
Defining intelligence is complicated, and probably a wrongheaded way to look at things. See http://masi.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/~crshalizi/weblog/520.html for more on that.

But with that said, any definition that says that Feynman wasn't a genius is obviously wrong. In every environment that he was in, he was given the genius label because he obviously was one compared to (usually quite intelligent) peers. If a test says that he is not a genius, then the test isn't capturing what common usage says that genius means.

Conversely the flip side of the point stands as well. The fact that someone is labeled a genius by a test does NOT mean that they have whatever intellectual abilities would be required to better society. There is a correlation - they are more likely to have those abilities. But not a guarantee. And the fact that we see high IQ people failing to use their brains life is not always evidence that those people's gifts are being used. The true gifts may simply not be what was recorded on the test.
Over the summer I moved from a 4" device (G2x) to the 4.65" Galaxy Nexus. Had no real trouble adjusting, and I can't imagine going back.
Fantastic information design. World class.
Why foursquare will beat Yelp
Step 1: Sell ads designed to generate likes. Step 2: Hold those previously purchased likes hostage by forcing everyone to buy promoted posts in order to reach their likers. Step3: Wait, come back everybody!
A Startup Primer
I thought the suggestion was more that by producing just one variant for all markets/regions/carriers, Google/LG can leverage economies of scale to bring the overall price down.

I haven't looked at the S3, but past Samsung models have had a bunch of variants marketed under the one model name.

(How much this really factors into the pricing, I doubt if we or Wired can really know.)
That's not quite fair to compare, a modern computer OS has a lot more features than something like Amiga OS.

Say for example, you have a folder full of movie files. The difference in computing required between just displaying a list of the files in there vs interrogating each file, generating a thumbnail on the fly and possibly sorting based on some metadata inside the file is probably more than an order of magnitude.

Not to mention all the extra stuff you have for security and stability when you are running so many applications at the same time.

You also have the classic trade-off of developer time (and therefor time to market) vs computer time.
The page shift can be fixed by using:

html {
overflow-y: scroll;
}
Sure, it sounds plausible that it would do that, but then I think about if my hobbies and work code interact at all, and it just hasn't happened. Have you seen it yourself? The software business has its own jargon, and in my experience it's entirely divorced from non-computer-related hobbies.[1] I played a lot of videogames in the past, but I've never used a videogame metaphor in describing a programming problem or requirement to a coworker. I've played and watch a ton of sports, but similarly that's never come up. And none of my coworkers with other interests (for instance, D&D, which I've only played once myself) have ever described stuff in those terms.

[1] If someone didn't have as much technical background or interest in the job itself, that's one thing, but when it comes to liking to go hiking vs liking to play board games? Is it really going to make a difference?
I was perfectly happy with the 3G service on my iPhone 4, and the HSPA+ service on family members' 4Ses was nice, but I didn't expect to care much about the LTE service on my iPhone 5.

I've gotta tell you, it's very nice, and pulling up pages feels like you're on WiFi. But the first time I really noticed it was when I was sitting in a parking lot and asked my phone to pull down a 1/2 hour podcast. I pressed the little download button and watched in amazement as it downloaded in a couple of seconds. I pulled down the Speedtest.net app (also quick) and was stunned to see that I was getting 20 Mb/s down, nearly double the speed of my home connection.

It's a bit like the retina display. No one actually needs one, but it's just so much nicer than what you had before that you can't help but love it. Given that the power draw on the newer chipsets means battery life isn't gone, it's turned out to be a surprise great feature.
D I have a startup?
Mobile Safari Image Dimension Limits
Bali?
Two devs met on HN and made a website for the election
There was a selection of CP/M-86 software for a while from companies that hedged their bets and developed for both systems. This ended when they noticed nobody bought those versions.

I'm not sure just when CP/M-86 was released by IBM, but it was there when the IBM PC with the 64K mobo and 180K floppy appeared, which is when I bought mine.

Many CP/M people did buy CP/M-86 at first, but they threw it under the bus shortly thereafter. Some of them tried to extoll its virtues to me at the time, but they were clearly disappointed by it.
Facebook Admits Too Much Facebook Probably Isn’t Healthy
Oatmeal rocks for quick/healthy/inexpensive/tasty. My go-to is quick oats (from the giant cardboard box) + hot water from a coffeemaker + sliced almonds + frozen/dried blueberries + milk
Yup. I've done the math. I think this math is a large determinant of the property values in dense cities (SF, NYC, etc).

For a few years, I took the subway (BART) from Berkeley to SF. In theory, I could have used that 45 min commute to do something useful. In practice, I spent most of it standing, packed in like sardines.

At first, it was hard to justify the huge increase in living expense by moving from Berkeley to SF. But the move decreased my commute from 45 min on public transportation to a 10 min walk.

Totally worth it.
Perspectives On The Future Of The Human Interface
This is really cool. Thanks for sharing.
I wrote something emotionally charged on HN a while back. I honestly don't remember what I wrote, but I remember that another contributor replied something along the lines of "That metaphor/phrase/word sucks all the oxygen out of the discussion."
I don't trust myself to know - while I'm writing code - how well I or anyone else will understand it cold. So if I'm in any doubt at all I leave a comment. Sometimes I do go back and remove them - refactoring has to include comments.

Whenever we discuss this topic there are usually some defensive sounding remarks about the fact that inaccurate comments are much worse than no comment. This is certainly true but I don't share the conclusion that the only reasonable answer is to never leave a comment. I guess if that is already what you do, then its probably easier to conclude it is correct.
That picture is creepy because the eyes don't line up...
FYI, there's a T-Mobile plan for $30/mo with 5GB of data if you don't talk on the phone that much--it only offers 100 minutes of talk time.
Is there a common way of keeping a backup of Android phones?

I've been an iPhone user since the 3G came out. I don't really worry about this kind of thing because I know that iTunes makes backups when I sync. Now that iCloud is integrated, it's supposed to keep backups too (although I don't trust it as much as iTunes). Those backups have meant that upgrading to a newer model has been basically seamless.

I know that Android doesn't have a centralized piece of software like iTunes (which is arguably a good thing), but how are backups handled? Are they left to the end user, or is the fact that your account is syncing with Google supposed to take care of your important data (Gmail, Google Calendar, etc)?
Frequentist approaches do not use any prior at all. Indeed some of the issues that frequentists wind up getting genuinely concerned about, such as repeated significance testing errors, are clear logical fallacies if you're doing any sort of Bayesian analysis.

As an example, most of http://www.evanmiller.org/how-not-to-run-an-ab-test.html will look dead wrong to any informed Bayesian.
Yep. URL differs by the ending /

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4733264
"IQ is biological"

And you believe this because?
A) People in different regions will pay different amounts of money. By restricting regions in which a person can use a thing (such as DVDs) they can sell at the price each market will bear.
B) Sometimes, the separate regions are managed by separate corporations (wholly owned by the parent) which have their own pricing policy.
C) Often there are local laws or agreements dictating that the corporation not undercut local distributors.
I think it's pretty obvious that "Promoted Posts" are not the answer to Facebook's revenue problem, but their desperation to make it work says a lot about the lack of options that they have. While it may have been technically unrelated to the introduction of "Promoted Posts", Facebook's culling of people's news feed smacks of a shake down. Unfortunately, Facebook has played fast and loose with their user's trust, to such an extent, that nobody trusts their motives anymore. Mark my words, Facebook's eventual downfall will be do to it's burned bridges, way more than any poor design/feature implementation
Brilliant! Thanks for these.
It's better than the GSIII in nearly every way: much cheaper, the latest stock version of Android instead of the janky Samsung skin, IPS display instead of Pentile OLED, better battery life and performance. The downsides are that apparently the GSIII has a slightly better camera and of course it offers LTE. Not sure about the N920.
In what world is pricing a digital version of a book slightly below its dead-tree variant "undercutting"?

This is not publishers shutting out Amazon, this is publishers shutting out digital books, and they have been doing so all along, consistently pricing ebooks at the same or higher price of print copies and colluding with Apple in a price fixing scheme.
Read the article, it answers your questions, and better than the Wired article did.
Its just as possible that the currency of likes has simply devalued as like buttons have spread to every corner of the web with facebook login syndication. What kind of engagement does that really amount to? So maybe likes dont drive traffic when not done directly on the page itself.
Optimizing Three.js Performance: Simulating 20,000 Independent Moving Objects
Asphyx - flash game played by holding your breath
I dunno. I would categorize myself a health nut (powerlifting, leangains etc) but I do think that junk foods (cookies, icecream and redbull) should not be banned from a tech office kitchen. I may not partake of them but some people do prefer them and the idea should be to cater to as many preferences as possible within reason. I find it odd that some people have this fixation that their personal attitudes towards eating healthy should be enforced for every one in the office. I appreciate their efforts to be healthy but if someone wants their sugar fix and get back to work without being distracted, they should be free to do so.
The fact that you are going to die isn't a scary thought in itself, whats scary is the 'when' part.

>>especially if those priorities are centered around banal platitudes like "doing something remarkable with your life," which are probably masks to keep you from thinking about what really motivates you.

Let me tell you why this is true. Its true because "doing something remarkable with your life" isn't a goal at all. At the maximum its really a vision. A goal is something that can be measured. Wanting to make $5 million in the next five years is really a goal. And its a interesting goal to chase. No matter how much interesting and challenging work I may be doing, realizing the fact that nobody knows about it beyond my cubicle is the biggest demotivating factor in my life.

I don't want to want to work on the project that forces to jolt down 100K lines of code, no matter what that project is. I want to spend most of time in life having fun, doing recreational stuff. And I'm sure many want to do the same.

Realizing that given the effects of age on energy, vitality and vigor a person can have, coupled with uncertainty about death that you may really have to sprint in your early part of your life, so that you can have all the fun in some part later.
Do we know how good or bad the promoted posts revenue stream is?
The word "presumably" is the kicker. To "presume" is to "Take for granted in the absence of proof to the contrary." So, if you don't have any proof that barring people who use a word like "hoops" is bad, you take it for granted that it's good.

Somebody else can also go ahead and presume that in a company that is in the business of converting human capital into money, diversity of culture can bring new perspectives and ideas that may lead to higher performance. In the absence of proof to the contrary, they'd be taking their own biases for granted as well.

In the end, I'm not particularly impressed by the idea that company culture trumps the ability to perform the job in an exemplary fashion. As a long-time manager, I pride myself on getting results from people who have the necessary baseline skills to perform. In my former life as a Director of Development, I can't imagine saying to the President, "Sorry, but the reason we're slipping deadlines is that we can't hire enough qualified people. And thanks for that referral, but although he aced everything technically, he's a basketball player rather than a cyclist or rock climber, and worse, he used a word typical of basketball players. So that's why we're going to lose some money this quarter."

I don't play golf, but if you do and you're amazing, you're hired and one day you may be managing me and dropping hints that I ought to hit a few buckets of balls on the range. I'm ok with that :-)
I came to Clojure after learning Scheme. One would think going from lisp to lisp would be an easy task, but the languages are so different. Clojure is an incredibly rich language, which is why so many blogs talk about how after 6+ months, the team is still trying to grasp all it has to offer. I started by rolling my own over and over again, only to discover a data structure or technique that erases 50 LOC and opens up a whole new world of program reuse. I have zero idea how someone coming from Python, Java, or Ruby would handle the transition, but I imagine it would be very messy at first.

I'm not sure why the team used single-letter names. Using non-descriptive arg and function names (if he did that too?) is about as anti-lisp as it gets.

I wonder if this blog, and other blogs like this, do a disservice to the growth of Clojure. Not only is it apparent that using a lisp and immutability is completely alien to the teams adapting it, they seem to take a very long time to ramp up into it, and the conclusion is always the same: they are still slipping and sliding, but at least they aren't breaking their noses anymore. At the same time, these blogs are informative of what companies are likely to get into and it should help stymie the surprises and perhaps keep the noise down for a while, so maybe it helps with growth by attracting those that are really willing to hack it. The author, as most are, is forthcoming with the early mistakes and surprises. This is most certainly to be expected when transitioning to any language, but it doesn't seem like there are many languages where bloggers feel inclined to dote on the initial shock outside of Clojure. It is a wonder that they don't complain about the lack of frameworks a'la RoR/Django and other things one would figure they'd want before diving in. Was it the lack of structure that made them go for it in the first place?
Really well put. But to me, you bailed out, or at least contradicted yourself with the phrase, "instead of contributing to humanity."

You set up a nice concise statement of Sartrean pointlessness, and then you appear to invalidate it completely with such a broad notion full of Big-Picture-Feel-Good-Meaningfulness as "contributing to humanity." You just kind of slipped that in there as if we all Know What You Mean. As if it wasn't the exact same species of content-free sloganeering as "fight the status quo" or "great visions of the future."

Finessing an emotive appeal to purpose in the midst of purposelessness with an abstract notion of 'humanity' doesn't make it any less vacuous, at least given the thrust of the rest of your comment.

Sorry if that comes across as harsh -- I actually liked your post and thought it was well-written. But if we're all just dissolving slowing into equidistant neutrinos in an eventual cosmic Cold Death, why should 'humanity' writ large have any more purpose attached to it than my own or any individual 'humanity'? Is that really 'internalizing death'? Moreover isn't the notion of internalizing death and absurdity merely another 'prescribed way of thinking' among many equally pointless strategems?

...and things have gotten pretty dark for HN on a Sunday Night. Flaming Lips anyone?