skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Well... to most people it's still a computer and not a TV. That's why they buy both :). But they purchase computers like TVs (a single product with practically no user serviceable parts).
>why to use modules for everything instead of solving problems with your own code.

That simply doesn't make sense. You could make that argument against every single programming language.
A lot of these comments seem misinformed. So, as a user of CloudFlare, let me speak:

CloudFlare takes over your domain and reverse proxies your site, to your control. They cache resources for you, selectively, to your complete control. They have some security features, like presenting captchas to dodgy IPs. The base service is completely free, albeit restrictive, but there are no bandwidth caps. They also have "apps" that provide extra features, like asynchronous JS loading, automatically adding Google Analytics to every page, email scrambling, etc. Everything is customisable - if you want, you can completely disable the security features, caching, apps, in fact, you can also disable the reverse proxying for subdomains (which of course removes all the CF benefits).

My web app, http://ponyplace.ajf.me/, has benefited greatly from being on CloudFlare, since it has relieved the burden of serving most static content from my server. It's a really great service, especially for the price. My only complaint is that SSL usage on CloudFlare is pretty pricey.
Flex and Flash are two different things. Flash is a designer-friendly tool, while flex is more programmer-oriented. From what you describe, it looks like you've been doing more coding with the platform than designing.

Dude, you serious? I can build you something similar in just 5 mins with 0 lines of code with easier maintainability and no calls to external CSS or Code.

>which was never really a fun workflow

I am surprised, because it was one of the most powerful features of flash, just like layers were for Photoshop. Maybe it's a personal opinion, but I loved this workflow personally.
The problem with Javascript is that you basically can only use it to interact with websites (thus forcing people to also learn HTML and CSS along with it). There is also the problem of it being a language full of warts and implementation incompatibilities and missing lots of features you would want from a modern language.
What did I miss? taligent was banned from HN for his comment?
They're just not targeting savvy people, which of course drives all us savvy mac fans up the wall. But then what's the alternative, run Windows? I'd run linux but unfortunately I need Adobe CS and MS Office.
>> What is wrong with accepting that

>> you are doing something wrong and...

>> keep doing it if you wish?

Because we believe there’s honestly nothing wrong with it.

Paraphrasing you: I don’t understand what is wrong with accepting that pirates are doing something right and... abstain from doing it if you wish?
As a Python dev keyword arguments are among my top language features. Kinda surprised that Ruby doesn't have them yet.

On a slightly off-topic note, what's the best way to dive into Ruby coming from (strong) Python background? I bet the syntax wouldn't take more than a weekend to get used to but I'm more interested in the less trivial stuff (semantics, idiomatic style, dev environment, 3rd party lib ecosystem etc.)
No, this one was dead on arrival, I'm just curious why. Lots of karma, nice posting history.. Nothing even sort of objectionable in his history, just a line of comments and then suddenly they're all dead.
A simple way to predict the future is to step back into the past. 5 years ago? Aside from the whole tablet/smartphone revolution, not much. 10 years? Much faster computers, web 2.0, Facebook, Gmail, the whole social media thing. 20 years? The entirety of the modern web. MMO games. Global warming. Cloning. Cell phones.

Basically technical progress moves quite fast in the medium term but slower than you'd expect in the short term, except with surprises. (Nobody saw tablets coming. A move away from the web, to native apps? In this day and age?)
Yes, running from home on a dynamic IP. As another commenter says, my comcast IP is pretty stable.
To learn outbound sales for http://improvely.com, which is currently growing only through inbound marketing and referrals.
To say the least, the post is a worst possible example of "science":

1) Bad generalization: "Multitaskers actually become bad at multitasking, by multitasking". Reading the referenced article, we can find out that it talks not about generic multitasking but only "media consumption multitasking".

2) Incorrect conclusions: "Students who browse Facebook and instant messaging while doing homework on average achieve lower grades in school". Really? Don't you think that students who browse FB instead of doing homework are probably bound to do worse in class not because of multitasking but because they are just not interested in learning?

3) Just complete BS. "For instance, when driving and talking in cell phone, our brain assigns a higher priority to responding to our the phone conversation than focusing on the road." Really? The referenced article doesn't even have the word "brain" in it. I would be very curious to find out the source. And BTW, you should probably never fly in an airplane if you believe this BS since pilots constantly listen and talk on the radio while flying planes and navigating in the same time.

Yes, multitasking is not a "native" human skill. You have to learn how to do it and some are better in doing it than others. Also, it is absolutely correct that context switch has a price. However, you can learn how to do it effectively. As the result, while you productivity in each individual task will be impacted, the overall results will be better. And of course, one of the skills is to learn the priorities of different tasks to make sure that cell phone conversation is secondary to driving the car.
Except that IBM and Oracle are neither defending existing territory or actively trying to compete in mobile, search, games, etc. (and Microsoft is actively competing in all)
That seems like a false dichotomy to me. Clearly I can worry about the cost of hashes and be using Ruby productively and performantly. (Unless I were writing programs whose performance was really dependent on hash performance; I don't use Ruby in those cases.)

Anyway, everything adds up. Even for webapps in Rails or Sinatra, the sheer number of method calls in a single template may contribute significant overhead to the rendering of a page. Which means that shaving a few microseconds off a method call may in fact boost performance measurably. I am hoping this will be the case with named arguments.
Indeed, it's still very annoying though, I can see how OOP can be good for larger scale but when you want to learn pragramming it shouldn't be something that gets in the way, it did for me.
I don't get the point of upgrading a Mac. They retain value so well it's just easier to sell them on eBay and buy a new one, and the cost difference is usually minimal versus upgrading piecemeal.
Well, I would start by posting a question on Hacker news...
Would be nice if they supplied working implementations of the algorithm and sample input/output files.
Javascript doesn't even need classes as a prototype-based (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prototype-based_programming) language.

I get the feeling that because Javascript is in such high demand, a lot of "classicly trained" programmers have started taking it up and started b*tching about how things aren't they way they're used to.

That's probably the same group of people who on this board complain about Python's indentation syntax, etc.
Reminds me of the Drucker quote:

"Leadership cannot be taught or learned."[1]

Which is funny, because the article itself is a lesson about what is required to become a leader.

[1]- http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=mV3XM28AdoIC
The branded error page in Cloudflare can be customized if you have a paid plan: https://www.cloudflare.com/plans
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sri[at]arshu[dot]com

-----------------

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-----------------

From Mar 2011, I am individually developing a Cross-Platform Mobile Framework based on Html and OpenGL using Mono for Android/Mono Touch (C#).
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You are overly western-centric, if you honestly think that the world in the 1990's is any different than it is today.

The only difference is that the there has been a shift of development, where some Eastern European and South American countries can now afford software licensing, but at the same time massive numbers of people in Africa and Asia have reached wealth levels that are sufficient for buying computers yet too low to afford the software.
Yes. It's called Movable Type.

http://www.movabletype.org/download.html

If you wait long enough, everything old becomes new again :D
Many DAW's (Digital Audio Workstation) such as Cubase, and DSP "plug-ins" have special software protection schemes. Cubase uses something called eLicenser[1].

Another popular, niche product that has proven difficult to fully crack is a program called Pro Tools, created by DigiDesign, now owned by Avid. It uses a protection called PACE Anti-Piracy[2]. Many expensive pieces of software require unique hardware, either a security dongle or some other external device.

[1] eLicenser.net

[2] paceap.com
I’m just saying that it’s not all black and white.

It is black and white. It's theft.

The issue of whether you shold steal in certain conditions is a separate issue, as discussed some in the article.

But it is black and white, it's theft.
Business Lessons From a Former Gang Member
Same here, except the Alienware X51 + Apple's Cinema Display! Cheers :)
I get your point, but why should you even bother using modules when you are trying to learn programming? The scenario you suggests isen't a task for a beginner, especially not a kid with no experience. Anyway, I just want to say a quick apology, I relize my first post sounded a bit more aggresive than intended, sorry about that.
Taleb is wrong. There's a much better analysis on why futurists predict the future wrong by an author who I forget. This authors central thesis is that technology moves in spurts along any given dimension. For example building were getting taller and taller. Every year a new "talltest building" was built. People began imagining buildings to the moon or at least out of the atmosphere. This eventually stopped. Similarly, planes got faster and faster. In the midst of the increase in plane speeds not many would have thought that we'd have the amount of commercial flights at the current "slow" speeds we have.

But people tend to miss a lot of other things. Most futurists wouldn't have predicted that computers 1000x more powerful than ENIAC would fit in our pocket. I recall one prediction about a computer the size of ENIAC might fit in a small room. Notice the low resolution displays in most old sci-fi movies. Or how ubiquitous wireless communication would be. Many sci-fi movies with tethered phones, or data transfer with USB-key like gadgets.

It's not that things are subtractive (that's just wishful luddite-like thinking). It's just that things aren't necessarily additive where we think they may be. It may be that in 50 years the web is a lot like how it is today, but nutrition technology has drastically changed so that nutrituous food is tasty and cheap. Or we discover technology to communicate with animals much more effectively.

Technology keeps moving forward. And I think his comment about literary culture reveals his bias.
The practicality of piecemeal upgrades is overstated, especially with external storage. I've never wanted to upgrade my GPU without also upgrading the CPU (so its not CPU-bottlenecked), which usually necessitates a new motherboard anyway and these days usually new RAM too (DDR-XYZ).
just got that too...
Okay, I stand corrected.

Either way, given their performance we were not interested to upgrade. Cedexis currently shows CloudFlare with 22.9% error rate and 1123ms slowest avg response time, in the USA.

If you can tolerate that kind of performance in a primary market then you don't need a CDN to begin with.
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I like this article, although I think that some people have a higher tendency to be a leader. Based on personal experience these are the types of people that grew up being able to manage their peers. This transcends into the workplace. These types of people still will need the same sort of education as described in this article, it just may come more naturally to them. Regardless, I think that being a good manager/CEO is a skill that can be acquired much like any other skill with studying and practice.
Totally true, one solution though could be to pay people to turn in guns, this won't work in practice probably though.
If there's an irony here, it's that Taleb's most famous book is entitled Black Swan, hence the phrase for an out-of-context, low-probability event. Yet here he is downplaying the possibility of future black swans.
I don't think it's just about the game. I believe many people involved in distribution of illegal content do it out of a genuine desire to share.
For every released movie, every song, a book or a piece of software there exists a group of people with no means of accessing it in a legal way (and probably another, much larger, of people who can't afford it).
Any project challenging RIAA's monopoly is getting my upvote. Looks very well thought through and nicely executed.
This is why I use Adblock, Ghostery, and always-on Private Browsing in Firefox.
Did you not know there is an iPad4? I think you need to upgrade :)
All of this just begs the question of how good these guys are.

Yes, you can find a job on your own. But not all jobs are the same. Maybe they'll find you a better job.

Yes, you can learn on your own. But I don't think there's any question that a good teacher can help you learn faster.

gSchool is new. So it's too early to find hard evidence either way about the quality of jobs you'll get, etc. But if they give you the right teacher, education can be a good investment.
In case anyone else has the same problem, the Ads Preferences HTTPS link (https://google.com/ads/preferences) didn't work for me, but the HTTP link (http://google.com/ads/preferences) did.
You can write it like this:

python -c "while 1:import sys,random;sys.stdout.write(random.choice('\/'))"

and it's shorter too !
If you're going to those lengths, might as well use Tor.
> After Emily left I checked on the internet and it turns out she was right, you really do just look at it, that’s all!

Well, that's one way of doing it, and it's what most people do, but you're not going to get the most out of it.

Rothko's Four Seasons murals are a good example - big slabs of colour, nothing too complicated. But then when you find out that he said ...

> "I accepted this assignment with strictly malicious intentions," Rothko said. "I hope to ruin the appetite of every son of a bitch who ever eats in that room." He wanted his paintings to make them feel that they were trapped in the room "where all the doors and windows are bricked up, so that all they can do is butt their heads forever against the wall."

... you get a better appreciation for them.
Bloomberg mentions it in his autobiography (Bloomberg by Bloomberg) while Taleb mentions encountering similar stories on his Bloomberg terminal in Fooled by Randomness.
He's not arguing that you should steal. And anyway, I think what you're saying is baloney. Theft is not always bad. Do I really have to give examples to illustrate the shades of gray?
It's only black and white if you narrow the question down to "is it theft or not?". The author was talking about piracy as an overall issue, not the strict definition.
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All that stuff existed with TOPSITES, ftp, etc. before the torrent sites. The torrent sites are just the "retail" level of the game; the real players are getting prereleases, ripping, potentially cracking, and doing stuff on topsites.
I don't fully understand why Lua hasn't taken over the world. Seems that a large part of it is a sort of weak ecosystem (maybe larger than it seems, but too spread out), and maybe the table thing weirds people out. People want to learn something they can use in "real life" as soon as possible, at least in my experience. But if Lua had taken over that wouldn't be a problem. Grrr.
I guess I should couple "monotonic in goodness" with "taking a global perspective". Economically[0], the world hasn't had a down year for decades. Even the 1930s were an "up" decade, at least for the world.

[0] One can make an argument about "economic bads", because economic growth isn't necessarily an indicator of humanitarian progress. However, I've seen no data to indicate that the proportion of economic bads has increased, so it wouldn't have a differential effect that would nullify observed growth.

Locally speaking, there are horrible uses of technology that occur all the time, but people have been doing awful things to each other since there were humans, and I think it's hard to blame that on technology itself. So what I'm really saying is more restricted: that the march of technical progress has been, for the world, positive more than negative over almost any measurable timescale.
Thanks! It's also far out of copyright, here's the story itself.

http://archive.ncsa.illinois.edu/prajlich/forster.html
This is really interesting, thank you. Could you recommend any good books about the economics of information as you've described it here?
Ah, a brick and mortar troll!
It's more about preventing commercial tracking than anonymization. Ghostery is really cool. Some sites have upwards of 20-30 tracking scripts running. It's just ridiculous.
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/alt.cd-rom/IPpvC20j2cM...

CDRWIN's author's rant and viewpoints against piracy, from March 1998

When all software distribution moves to the Internet (which it will
when high-speed fiberoptic connections because commonplace in the
future), the big developers like Microsoft and Sony are going to come
down hard on the pirates and WAREZ. These big companies are not going
to allow the Internet to become a "candy store" where software can be
stolen with the push of a button from the comfort of your home. If you
think that all of these "bits" are free, then try developing a really
good software product yourself and see how much money and time you have
to invest in it.
I find it ironic that you make your argument this way, when the statement that it is not theft is generally exactly intended to highlight the moral issue.

To me and a lot of others, illegal copying is far more morally defensible than theft. If someone tries to call a person that pirate a thief, my immediate reaction is that the claim is not only flat out false, but offensive.

Copyright protection is an artificial government monopoly on an activity that does not affect your property rights, and as such it is perfectly defensible for someone to consider it moral to violate copyright. I do consider some forms of copyright violations morally wrong, such as selling copies, but I do consider a lot of piracy morally acceptable (despite the fact I don't engage in piracy, though I did some 20-25 years ago)

Theft is materially different because it deprives the owner of continued use of that which was stolen.
Don't Plagerize Like the UPS Store
SEEKING WORK - San Francisco / Bay Area / Remote OK

I'm a fullstack developer who enjoys working on all parts a web app, from frontend to backend and even some sys admin. I've been building projects for myself, employers and other entrepreneurs for the past 6+ years. I'm most familiar with PHP, Python and node.js on the backend and have experience using jQuery and backbone.js for much of my frontend work. I'm currently the lead developer for 2 of my employer's sites but am looking to switch over to doing contract/freelance work again.

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StackOverflow - http://stackoverflow.com/users/205343/justin-lucas

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While I don't think the Google Search : Zynga Poker comparison is fair, I think that your comments' parent has a valid point as the online gambling market is pretty saturated. It would be interesting to see if they can do something innovative for the online gambling marketplace.
Con: Tor is slow, using those plugins is not!
On the subject of a piece of chalk, although both are fine, I enjoy T. H. Huxley more than G. K. Chesterton. If Mr. Taleb disdains me, he need not seek my company.
That's exactly the point of the 2nd Amendment.

In fact, it goes further. The point of the preamble (the part of about the necessity of a militia) isn't there to say that the right to keep and bear arms is necessary so that the state can have an army. Rather, it's positive law saying that citizens should own guns to be able to form a militia in order to fight back against a tyrannical government.

And the start of the Revolutionary War provides more supporting context for this: the British march that begin the war wasn't intended to start a war. The objective was to disarm the citizens. The authors/signers of the Constitution wanted to ensure that the state could never do that to the citizens again.