skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
What's your background Debacle?

This guy currently contributes to several OS projects http://mutedsolutions.com/about, https://github.com/derickbailey and has apparently been a developer for over 30 years in a range of environments. Whilst I don't find it impossible to imagine that he's made up the problem it seems doubtful on balance - what would he gain?

He says he's fallen in to the trap himself of making fun of others [apparently] honest contributions.

Yes, that's not an argument but this

>Without hard evidence, he's talking out his defecation hole. //

is fallacious reasoning. It is not the case that failure to present examples of pathological behaviour means that behaviour is a fiction.

If your position is true and indeed he is literally the only person to believe that sometimes OSS leaders have made fun of the code of other [attempted] contributors then it's interesting to speculate why that might be so.

One possibility of course is that those who deny it's a problem simply can't see it despite it being there.

Also, if we can accept him to be a "leader" then we now know at least one person that he's being critical of ...
I think the CONTRIBUTING (sic) file in GitHub has also helped to put the onus on the repo owner to explain what is kosher, and what isn't.

The idea of a canonical ruleset exists mainly so people don't have to make vague references to "common sense" and such.

And I just don't see a lot of bad issues/pull requests out there, but the system still needs a managerial overhaul that scales, though. Better to nip the problem in the bud, before it downright breaks GitHub.
Before I joined it sometime this year or last, I thought Pinboard seemed like the silliest, most likely-to-peter-out trifle of a service. But now it stands alone from all the other pinning services I used to use, including Instapaper.

In other words, I trust this guy with knowing how to execute (and to the point, probably recognize) successful minimally-viable products.
Please, if you want to go postal, don't aim at our kids, aim at the politicians.

Drain your frustrations with those who destroy our future, not those who will build it.
All Introductions are Not Created Equal
I work under the assumption that there aren't any "bad guys," there are just people who wake up one day and snap. If somebody snaps, I would rather they not have a gun, even if they originally bought it for self-defense.

But yes, I agree that guns are only a tool, and that the underlying cause is psychological and/or cultural. No matter what we do with guns, it won't prevent future incidences; I just don't see how people can view a situation like this and think "oh, if the teachers had guns, everything would be all right."
I am not sure how iOS or Android handles the file system (officially), but I do know that Windows 8 could use a clean, simple, touch-friendly File Explorer replacement.

I don't believe that the growing scheme of ignoring the file system, especially on mobile devices, and in some cases even forcing you to use cloud storage (to share data between apps, for instance) is an effective solution in the short-term.
How the Web Made Price Meaningless for Car Buyers
Ok, I'm in. I have an idea that will cost precisely $37 dollars to start. This is such perfect timing.
Actually, people are trying to steal business secrets, and they are doing so all the time. The Chinese are notorious for it, and they target basically any business that has a valuable trade secret, even those that are not military. Even the US has been caught using its intelligence apparatus to pass foreign trade secrets to domestic businesses:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON#Controversy

If I were running a business whose trade secrets were worth more than a few hours of some Eastern European hacker's time, I would be concerned about computer security.
I interned at an outfit like that a long time ago. It sucked then and would never work now in the age of smart devices. Unless of course these devices were banned from, or confiscated on entry to, the workpla^H^H gulag.
What If You Don't Want to Be a Manager?
This just sounds like a lot of whining to me.

On every CSE test I took when I was in college they graded the code writing portions based on algorithm implementation. No one ran your code through a compiler and docked pointed for each error. If you wrote array.length() instead of array.length you wouldn't lose points as long as your loop did what it was supposed to do.

Also, on every job interview I have ever gone to I have had to write code on paper with the interviewer breathing down my neck.
That's not the point.

The question is not "How can I put an unmatched curly bracket in my comment?"

The question is "Why are the semantics of the language - including, but not limited to brace matching - so peculiar and unexpected?"

Look at my second code example! The matching brace is in a string, in another command, on the next tine! And it works! And removing either one breaks the code!
It came to my notice a few days ago that Gnome stored my Google Password in Gnome Keyring as simple text.
Tips for Graduate EEs (relevant for software)
The reviews are clearly sarcastic. It's an amazon tradition, and they usually put up with it.

http://www.amazon.com/JL421-Badonkadonk-Land-Cruiser-Tank/dp...

http://www.amazon.com/Looking-For-Best-David-Hasselhoff/dp/B...
New Species of World’s Only Venomous Primate Found
I wonder where do you take your experience from. I do pretty much all of what you described and while yes, there are definitely jerks around, there is no correlation between the level and jerkness. Maybe it's just hard to become "the best" while being a jerk, although I know quite a few world class climbers who are jerks and the best and who are humble dudes and the best.

In fact, we use IRC a lot for PyPy development and I think we're trying to be welcoming to other people, especially the newcomers, but then again, it's a self-judgement.

What I've seen correlation is the age (although there is definitely no rule here either). Typically, while you're being 16 and you climb say 7B, you think you're the best and you look from above towards people who climb 7As. And there are some people climbing 8Bs I know who are as bad as when they were 16.
Show HN: Mashing up Facebook, Pinterest and Amazon for Christmas
Some of these examples have less to do with the fact that a goal was set, and more to do with the fact that there was a financial incentive tied to it.

Financial incentives can have the side effect of reducing intrinsic motivation (see Daniel Pink's book "Drive" for research and examples).
Policies and punishment have proven to be useless tools to stop the spread of rogue clouds. Employees will do what they need to do to get their job done.

CIO's are adopting cloud apps. The reality is that users will still inadvertently save files in the wrong place. I know I do all the time. If we can help get the files into the right place, even if the user saves them in the wrong place, then that is progress and lessens the negative impact of rogue clouds.

Make it easy for people to do the right thing and don't make them change the way they work.
What's easier to solve: remove all access to any weapon, or treating mental illness?
It's not just mental illness, it's everything. It's how we treat friends, how we treat girlfriends/boyfriends, how we treat strangers, etc. And the problem isn't just deranged people who commit massacres, it's also people who feel so alienated, alone, and down that they commit suicide.
I'm a WoW user as well. I will say from experience that you do not have to argue with anyone about removing the authenticator. You simply submit a support ticket containing a picture of your drivers license. The authenticator is usually removed in a few hours. I've done this multiple times now due to formatting my phone without grabbing my restore codes for my authenticator.
As insightful as it is, I think empty-quoting xkcd is not really conducive to an intelligent discussion.

It makes sense on reddit where people aren't encouraged to a one-track threaded discussion, but less so here where the discussion manages to flow pretty well at times.
I agree with you, but I did not really want to stay working for that guy anyways - it was no loss.

My take on working is that my employer is renting my time & skills to complete a job, they have every right to expect value for their money - but they don't own me, nor can they tell me when I am allowed to take a phone call, go for a lunch break, shout at me or demand that I work extra hours for no extra money.

As the wolf says: "I'm here to help - if my help's not appreciated then lotsa luck, gentlemen."
Learning to Dance Without a Partner
does pair programming with google hangout really work? i cant find a way to make the video stream fullscreen which isnt ideal for viewing code imo.
> "why not stamp it all out at once? Or, work with it!"

You can't work with it, because of liability. If you bless Dropbox and champion it to the rest of management, it becomes your problem when the inevitable data breach happens.

But you don't want to stamp it out all at once, because:
1. CIOs know that cutting off things people want really badly just leads to better circumvention tech (more people running proxies or using 3G laptops, etc) and suddenly you can't even watch what they're doing, let alone stop it.

2. Those things are useful. Just because the Enterprise can't make peace with limitations or find a suitable analogue doesn't mean those tools don't legitimately make people more productive.
Well then we have the answer to our obesity epidemic, don't we?
I started using this method after reading one of Zed Shaws books, and it really works. I repeat an excercise 9-10 times, until its automatic. Its rote, but I'm actually starting to understand concepts. I'm also able to apply what I've learnt when I'm writing my own programs. Its not easy and maybe its not the best way but its working for me.
Ten years on Empirica is closed, and its record of returns is interestingly vague, given all the media attention at the onset. Universa Investments L.P. sprung up from the ashes in 2007. Again, the record of return is "secret", except for careful leaks in the press when things happen to pay off. But wait, there's more! They have a brand-new "Black Swan ETF" that hedges the S&P 500 and charges you 0.95% for the privilege.

It looks a whole lot like the usual hedge fund bullshit play to me. Make lots of noise for a few years, get the punters to play, close down, then open up under a new name. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Dropbox Releases Completely Redesigned iOS App
I (and all the contributors to Brackets) respectfully disagree that a text editor released before the internet was available is the best we can do for web professionals.

We are really honored to be compared to Sublime and Textmate at this early stage. Those are fantastic text editors.

The purpose of the Brackets project isn't to replace those editors, but to inspire new ideas for web development tooling. It's simply a sandbox where the web development community can experiment with new ideas. Because it's written in JavaScript, HTML and CSS, everyone can get involved.

-Adam Lehman
Brackets Product Manager
It's not especially ironic. Two things: when people are left to their own devices, they tend to imitate the people around them. And, people tend to favor themselves to be a good "end result", which reflects favorably on the environment which shaped them. In fact, to oppose the circumstances you came from is to oppose some part of your own nature. So, people tend to favor recreating themselves (because they prefer themselves) by recreating the environment they came from.

Edit: just found this example http://penny-arcade.com/2012/11/30
The solution is somewhere in the middle. It is never one or the other. Can you remove access to all weapons ? No. Can you treat all mentally ill ppl ? No. Can you make it harder for ppl to buy weapons especially if they could be mentally ill ? Yes, certainly. Will it always work ? No.
1) Try it and see (pick a topic like "pyschology" or "linguistics" and try to find the best introductory course).

It's broken in pretty much every way possible, you can't sort the content by ratings or popularity, you can't browse by lecturer/publisher, there's no recommendation system, there's virtually nothing to distinguish between lectures on the same topic, some have awful sound recording but you have no way to know unless you listen to them, etc.

2) I think the more fundamental problem is that knowledge generally isn't available in small discrete chunks but rather in books, lectures, etc.
> Why does it matter to our own humility if there exist people that are better/smarter/abler than we are?

They're competition.

On the one hand, you compete against them and how well you do will determine your life path. On the other, if you don't have any competition ... that's an even worse outcome, since you might be moving on a fruitless path in the wrong direction.

> It does matter to me, but I feel it shouldn't.

Well, to be perfectly blunt, that's the definition of insecurity. In other words, you're concerned you might lose the competition in some way or another. Money, social standing, happiness, you name it.

Everybody is secure and insecure in their own ways. For example, just using myself as an example ... I don't care if you're a better coder than me, but it'll bother me if you know more about how a kernel functions and works. I know or at least I think I know, very little about how kernels work. It might be true, it might be untrue, but that's how I feel. Would fixing that really change anything for me? Probably not. It's not directly applicable to my work. Which is why I don't do anything about that, it would be a waste of my time and I don't think I would enjoy it. But it's a "weak spot", so my mind dwells on it. Well, dwells on it is a bit much. Maybe passing thoughts when the subject comes up?
Programmer creates 800,000 books algorithmically, starts selling them on Amazon
How did you come to this conclusion? If you've found a bug, please file a ticket.

Gnome keyring definitely uses encryption to store passwords; they take security pretty seriously: https://live.gnome.org/GnomeKeyring/SecurityPhilosophy
Looks awesome, seems like it totally fits the needs of shoppers, does it work for retailers? Not sure, but there could be a lot of people that will use it to get a discount for something they were going to purchase anyway?
Beer Making is a Marvel of Industrial Chemistry (1933 PopSci)
Google dropping consumer Exchange support for Gmail, calendar, and contacts
So Google and Apple are fighting, and iPhone users got caught in the middle without their maps data.
Maybe you don't understand. It takes 0 customer support to add 2 factor auth and lock out the original user. It takes several emails and support requests back and forth to finally get it sorted out. Also, maybe a few phone calls. If that happened to your google account, it would be INCREDIBLY unpleasant.
Scaling Engineering Team Culture
That was flaming the ever-living shit out of someone? Seems like he's trying to keep his stdlib clean and efficient.
The best example I have against this goes back to physics and calculus classes. I have to try to be very sensitive here.

There was a certain ethnic group who overwhelmingly aced calculus tests. I mean, they were machines. Got it done faster than everyone and just aced the tests. No contest.

The amazing thing was what happened in Physics class, both tests and labs. They were completely lost. It was really an odd and unbelievable thing to behold. Some of them would get tripped-up by the simplest things.

I won't venture to guess as to why and how this happens. I'll just say that, in my experience, mechanical memorization of anything isn't learning at all. It's just memorization with no value whatsoever beyond that.

I am trying to think about a CS example.

Let's say that someone memorizes the implementation of a binary GA algorithm or a NN. Great. They can type it out in an instant when asked. Do they really understand what's going on? Do they understand when to apply it, how and why? Do they understand how to optimize it? Do they know how to make good chromosome encoding decisions? Or how about dealing with cases where the GA is lost looking for a solution? Do they know how to fix it? Or how to deal with it?

Or how about the choice between writing a class with a bunch of methods and properties vs. a simple routine with lookup table to solve a problem? I've seen people who think that every solution requires a class and a bunch of objects. You end-up with code that is fifty times slower and ten times larger than it needs to be.

Some of this only comes from experience, of course. If available, I like to look at code that the candidate wrote and explore it. It's hard for someone to bullshit you if it isn't their code. Another interesting thing to do is to put code in front of them and see how they go about understanding what's going on. After all, if you are hiring them to plug into an existing project that is precisely what they'll have to do. Someone who can't code will not ask intelligent questions about the code they are looking at. They will have a hard time getting into it and understanding what's going on.

Now, I do understand from other posts that there seems to be a failure in the system in that schools are graduating people who can't write a program that prints numbers from 1 to 100. I can't figure out how someone can come out of a reputable university with a CS degree and not be able to write that program, but that's besides the point. If this is true, then, well, I hate to say this, puzzle testing may be a necessary evil. The problem is that this isn't enough because you don't know if you have a memorization machine in front of you or someone who really understands the topic.

EDIT: I should say that I couldn't imagine being a company like Google or similar and trying to hire large numbers of developers on a regular basis. I would imagine that at that level you don't really have an option but to apply puzzle type filters as a first line of defense.
I don't think I'd want to work in a place like that.
In search of technical talent
I see "most popular articles don't belong" as excepting things like, say, assassination of a President or a 9/11 happening. And it can be useful for people to talk about and figure out what's happening.

But looking through the thread, most people aren't posting information. They are debating policy at a time when emotions are (validly) hot. There are lots of places on the Internet where one can debate political policy (and I love doing so), so it seems weird for it to be here.
Hotmail and Outlook Cookie Handling Vulnerability allow account Hijacking
It won't let me reply directly to you this deep in the thread -

> I definitely was insinuating that, along with lots of other things. So everyone who wants a gun will do whatever they need to get it? Measures such as background checks, safety class requirements, mental health checks, restrictions on high-capacity or high-throughput weapons, higher taxes, manufacturer and supply chain oversight, spying on domestic traffickers, or closing the gun show loophole?

You can help control/prevent, yes, but I'm strongly in the camp that if there's a will, there's a way.
I get your point, but i still think the girl the op talked about meant something different. My girlfriend thinks the same...sitting infront of a computer has nothing todo with social activity for her, even when she occasionally checks facebook, and she would go crazy if she had to be alone in front of a computer all day, while i enjoy it alot.
The website linked here in a Scientific American blog. Their job description is probably two words: "ask questions". Questions are extremely important.

> If the answer is "We don't know", then the article should not be posting headlines as questions they don't have an answer too.

Am I feeding a troll? This is silly. Publicly asking questions that you don't have an answer to is perhaps the single most important feat humanity has ever achieved.

Just calm down about the question, yeah? It's important, and it's not "fishing for traffic". It's a real, serious question.
Anyone from Seattle, how does that compare($) to taxies?
Whether or not they do, the point is that Google makes its money based on knowing as much about their customers as they can (to better serve them ads). Apple makes its money off hardware, which doesn't require that they know a lot of personal information about their customers.
Impact Driver 101: When to Use an Impact Driver
I love the fact that a developer can work anywhere, while working on client projects thats totally fine and cool. But when you're doing 'cool stuff' or your own ideas. I found that working with someone else is another world. The energy that flows back and forth is incomparable.
Perl 6 is so cool!

I like the bit

$_ %% (3|5)

A pretty nifty way to condense multiple values into a single test.

I don't always perl, but when I do sometimes I like to golf because it's fun.
Right. I should have framed my statement around mental health, not just mental illness.

(EDIT: listening to CNN in the background, Dr. Drew Pinsky said something along the lines of what we have here.)
Sadly in large companies with IT departments that have accountability and as such have internal costing to another department. Well in those sitauation it is often common for one department head to go behind official channels and outsource for a cheaper price. This sadly bypasses alot of security and other standards the company has. It's not new, and will happen again and again.

One example would be bank that had a website defaced around 12 or so years ago in protest to petrol prices. Turned out that the server was located in a server room with a dog running around in it and would be best described as a spare bedroom almost. The marketing department manager had organised that gem of a disaster. Was lucky as forensics upon that server indicated it had been hacked at least half a dozen times previously. So the defacement hacker had done that bank a realy big favour.

So your company can have the best and most excellent security standards in the World that are completely unbeatable. But it only takes one department head to outsource behind your back or for one individual with a BYOD or the like to plugs in and your open to a screwing.

Clouds are popular as for some reason people have been sold that there all uber secure in that all your worries are removed. They are not, shifting the storage elsewere not only opens up another access point publicly to potentual get at your data but the over comfortable attitude it installs will be inclined to make the clients not as secure as they should be.

If I was a Administrator and I was responsible for the data and liable to getting legaly shafted if there is a breach and the company used clouds and had a BYOD policy then I'd be very much underpaid and with that googling for some form of disclaimer you got every user to sign and every manager to sign. Just so I could sleep at night.

Remember this, when it comes to IT most users are like children and with that they will find a way to break it if one exists and failing that they will find a way.

Block everything website wise and add as an exception, as there realy isn't many websites that companies need you to access. If you want to access any other site then BYOD and network, just don't go driving on the internet in the name of your company. I often wonder if I was to set up a free porn site and then check what companies have employee's browsing it and then have a name and shame of the companies. But I feel that would be cruel upon poor employees with a porn addiction and with that I just can't do it as it would just get alot of people sacked and no company would take any heat from it.