skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
No ways, I disagree.

Now you may debate the status of South Africa as either developing/developed, but I work in South Africa and since 98 I have worked on C/Cpp, VB, Python and mixtures of DB backends. Country does not determine the tool.

The solution determines the toolset.
Why not Kubuntu or straight Debian? I remember a few problems when KDE went Plasma on us, but they pretty quickly worked out the kinks and we have been pretty happy with Kubuntu for several years now.
Well, the good thing about this new EdTech trend is the fact that is being lead by likes of Harvard & MIT (edX) and Stanford (Udacity/Coursers). Most of it has been free. The impact so far indicate a transformative potential.
No, apart from "I've got this book about photo editing from a friend of mine, can you install that software for me?" where I have to say, no, sorry mom, that only works on Windows. They never asked for Windows or Ubuntu or anything..
Interesting.. out of curiosity, which country is this?
I'll second Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman for top book of 2012 and for top all time book like another commenter.

If you really want to expose the bias and structure of your consciousness, this the book to read. I would also pair this book with Incognito by David Eagleman (2012) to rehash some of the ideas of Kahneman and for a discussion of the implications of these ideas in morals and justice.

Also Connectome by Sebastian Seung (2012) gives a good outline of the structure of the brain, and an interesting discussion of how understanding that structure is a great scientific goal and some hypothetical implications of that understanding.

Really, I'd recommend reading anything to do with the emerging understanding of the brain because, without hyperbole, the better we understand the brain the better we understand the self.
I started a job as a web designer in Dec 2011 only knowning HTML/CSS. I picked up a little PHP and JS knowledge.. not much, but working with WordPress it kind of just happens.

I tried Learn Python the Hard Way, but when I finished the book I didn't feel like I had the skills to start a project, so I read the Django Book. I am more of a designer than a developer, I really want to get over the hump and start writing code that can do the things I envision.

I've tried codecademy, which is helpful, but I still don't feel I'm there yet. I have started a "web app", but I got stuck on a few features I want to add, so I'm stalling on those.

I'd really appreciate any guidance! No formal education, all self taught. I have grown immensely as a web designer over the past year, but my programming skills aren't growing nearly as fast...or at all anymore.
I usually give some explanation about how to open source is all about "fighting the man". I know plenty of gamer friends who have bought Macs, because they want to be hip. They put up with not being able to run all their games on their Macs (no, Parallels and/or Boot Camp are not viable for these people). You turn the lack of application choice on its head and make it seem cool. This isn't a real "issue", since it happens with every OS. Even Windows is missing software used by some "creative" types (or so they say).

And what I've found is that more and more stuff is on the Web now anyway, so OS doesn't matter as much.
I've watched a lot of 'bad' shows this year, really just for something to watch. I did really enjoy Breaking Bad, Dexter & The Walking Dead though!

I also re-watched Oz, The Wire & Seinfeld this year and I'll probably watch them again at some point in 2013..
That is what I thought for a while. I was really a Ubuntu fan since early releases. I always encourage people to use Ubuntu. I am really disappointed after last release because of this Amazon stuff.

I can understand, how hard to maintain this kind of software without any revenue but in Linux world there were always good business models. Also Ubuntu for Android is very good idea and I believe in near future we will be hearing it so much.

While trying to expand market share, let's say trying to access more users, making a move against user's liberty really hurts previously gained traction. It was going good but now I am not sure how can I trust a Linux distro that send my search terms to Amazon by default.

I don't want to be part of this anymore.
Not everyone has the luxury of owning the IP to their production codebase. If you want to start posting chunks of it online you're going to need a better excuse to give your boss than "I want to win an internet argument".
I don't know why people downvoted you.

I understand the point behind stock options, I just daresay that the reasoning is a bad cultural fit for most of Europe. I know too little about American culture to be sure here, but this line of reasoning gives me the impression that many Americans start a company or join a startup in order to get rich.

My impression is that this is an uncommon motivation in much of Europe. All (few) successful European enterpreneus that I know (including the founder of my current employer) started a firm for other reasons, typically independence, creating the ideal workplace, or the wish to create some dream product.

Stock options give you the opportunity to get rich, but they don't give you any actual say in what the company does until it goes public. In other words, while it may help motivate employees to make the company a financial success, I can't see how stock options help encourage employees to contribute to a nice workplace environment, having interesting work for yourself and your colleagues, and general workplace happiness.

Now, at the risk of mixing "European culture" and "my opinion" a bit, and I may sound like a softie here, but I just don't think that getting big fast is the only measure to company success.

I think that a small but stable company that's a great place to work at may in well be more considered successful than a company that goes to a massive IPO in two years of work stress, little sleep and broken love relationships.
Sorry this is such a long list, but I watch a lot of films.

"Martha Marcy May Marlene" - a gentle exploration of someone broken after living with a cult

"Never Let Me Go" - A film you can push a lot of meaning into if you want to. I love the acting of Carey Mulligan

"Shame" - Michael Fassbender is amazing in this, as is Carey Mulligan

"Catfish" - an amazing documentary about people who lie on the Internet, but a gentle and kind version, not the obvious "OMG THESE PEOPLE ARE NUTTERS".

"End of Watch" - 'found footage' style police thing. I really liked it for not forcing a traditional plot and pacing on the audience.

"Margin Call" - financial collapse and amorality. Not many films show business in any kind of sensible way. While this movie probably doesn't it avoids most of the cliches other films make.

"Beasts of the Southern Wild" - I'm disappointed this missed out on awards.

"Take This Waltz" - Seth Rogan playing straight might be scary, but he's pretty good as the husband who's wife falls out of love with him. Sarah Silverman makes a surprisingly good appearance (I guess her bit at the end of the film makes it worth it). Directed by Sarah Polley who is, IMO, amazing.
agreed... despite of a nice interface, the site does lack organization and some super beginner stuff, I did overlook the absence of those...
Good points all around. People tend to have an idea that they are the next Gates/Zuckerberg/Jobs, but in reality these people had college educated colleagues that helped them build their dreams. College is about education, and just that: you are paying to be tutored by people who know their stuff. If you don't need to be tutored, and are willing to hustle yourself (Colleges tend to use their name to make the game easier for you), then by all means go for it, however without someone saying you have the skills you claim or you being able to prove you have them, then you aren't going to get very far. Life is a journey, don't front load it and don't be a rush to get to the finish line. You have tons of time to build your skill set, work for someone else, and then realize your dream when you are ready.
I prefer Ubuntu LTS with 5 year support over the 3 year support of Debian. But given the fact that there are constantly things broken or not supported yet, I do feel an urge to upgrade to the latest and greatest. Unstable Unity and old versions of Monolight are just 2 examples of that.
I think you might be making the implicit assumption that this is somehow shady or out of the ordinary when it comes to credit cards.

When you hand your credit card over to any clerk anywhere you're giving them access to your name and credit card number. If you hadn't booked through an OTA your credit card number would have likely been manually written down anyway on a piece of paper by the clerk at the desk.

All of this is PCI compliant, in order to process payments at all the hotel has a contract with the credit card company (or a local bank by proxy) which stipulates that they have to adhere to the relevant PCI standards.

Could this be more secure? Of course it could. But credit cards were never meant to be secure. They explicitly take convenience and the ability to do offline payments (writing down your credit card number for later) over security. If anything goes wrong they'll use some of the money they get from transaction fees to refund fraudulent payments.
I think you misread that. He's saying it's harder to fire someone in Germany than in the USA because in Germany you need a reason.
I think there aren't that many Python jobs compared to Java, PHP, C#, but they're starting to increase.

It is strange to me as well, that I see so many people passionate about Python and, at the same time, I hear so many companies having difficulties finding Python devs.

One reason could be that the interest in Python varies by country. For example, in Romania there are very few Python programmers. Secondly, maybe the companies have too high expectations, asking for front and back-end experience and maybe even some low-level skills (C, C++).
25 advanced segments you should be using on your site
Irrelevant to your point, but motion interpolation isn't entirely worthless -- it helps, for example, with the motion judder problem that frequently occurs during camera pans on LED-lit TV’s. My new TV offers a clear-frame alternative that mimics the rapid blinking of CRT’s by injecting black frames or lines, which I prefer over motion interpolation, but it significantly reduces brightness and gives some people headaches.
I have been enjoying Person of Interest. A buttoned down cypherpunk and a ex cia black ops agent help/stop people indicated to them by an AI. But it's set in the present, not the future. Sometimes reminds me of the Wire.
> It's a bad sign when all of the "original" films in hollywood are just mediocre remakes

There are only seven stories, and the ancient Greeks already told them. Everything else is just a remake of something several thousand years old.
Hi, I made Airendipity. Long-time lurker, first-time poster, etc.

One day I want to introduce a web UI, but since iOS is what I know and I'm just one guy working nights, I went with iPhone-only. I feel pretty strongly that it's the API/community and not the device-specific UI that's important here, so... one day.
Yep. Planned and prioritized :)
Windows 7 is more like Windows XP/Vista than Windows 8 is so it is more likely easier to just drop them back to what they probably already know.

Also Windows 8 is brand new and while it works just fine upgrading to it isn't really something that needs too be done just yet. Windows 7 is still a great OS.
Printing a receipt with the Raspberry Pi
Quest for /the/ Operating System
This story stinks, what an obnoxious sense of entitlement.

How dare they break YOUR webcam, and why should you invest untold hours in learning how to contribute and then fixing it.

World on a plate with no effort to give back? Meh.
How are you seeking help when you get stuck? It's really important to have someone that can help you go over the big hurdles. It doesn't have to be a specific person in particular. You can go on irc.freenode.org #python and ask questions there. People are helpful most of the time.
Yes. it can. Scikit-learn supports algorithms that can be used to build your own recommender system. To scale your algorithms you can always use hadoop map/reduce to scale.
Totally. I've told a number of people that Google Now is the first "original" killer app on smartphones. Meaning: smart phones are essential for email, texting, nav, photos and browsing. But none of those originated there. Google Now did, and is amazing.
Similar here, but Xubuntu (12.04). Old laptop previously running Ubuntu 9.04 which this time just worked out of the box. Everything they need. Internet connectivity, browser, Skype (no webcam though). They are happy as it's enough for them (parents over 60).
New installation doesn't brake, no viruses, very safe for them to work with it.
I can't imagine giving them Windows (which will not run smoothly on this laptop) worrying they will have lots of spyware, viruses, etc. after few months.

On the other hand my personal laptop runs Arch with DWM. I don't look back at Ubuntu for professional use. I'm so much happier.
Microsoft's support is really great. Although it is expensive. Besides phone support you can also get Microsoft's support person sitting next to you to help you out.
It's not to win an argument but rather to share it with other developers (and get feedback). So your request to the boss will sound like "I'm hesitant if this piece of code is the best way to do it, can I show it to the world?"
> They put up with not being able to run all their games on their Macs.

It's quite easy to install Windows with Bootcamp, though if you have an SSD, space is an issue. If you're a remotely serious gamer, you're surely enough of a nerd to handle dual booting.

The problem is that every [desktop] OS is crap. I've been attempting to use various Linux distros in that role for over a decade, and I've yet to have an experience that wasn't riddled with bugs and annoyances. Windows 7 is generally the least frustrating option, though OS X has cool features to compensate for its own issues.
That is a pretty spot on summary of Windows 8. I use it on a laptop (no touch screen) and really like it but it can be a little bit disjointed to use. Saying that I never use any of the Metro (Modern UI) apps and uninstalled them all as soon as I installed Windows 8. They are not the kind of applications I want to use on a general purpose computer. A tablet? Yeah ok but not with a mouse. The 'old' desktop way of doing things is far better than the new way for 'old' input devices.
I'm running it on two small sites (< 50 users each) and it works as advertised. The nice thing is, it isn't monolithic - you choose the MTA and web software (in my case postfix and apache) and it uses mysql as the backend.

The webmail interface is the best opensource one I've come across (easily beats redcube) and active sync works fine with iphone 4/5 and android.
I want to bring Airendipity to iPad, but atm it's iPhone-only for the time-constraint reasons I mentioned above. I think iPad would be a great opportunity to stretch out a bit and carry a bit of the whimsical side a little further.
I'm encountering something similar this Christmas. We'd given my wife's grandma a Chromebook - and it has died of its own accord after just 14 months.

After talking about the replacement, she nearly begged for a Windows or a Mac. By name. This same woman that doesn't think she can run the microwave while being on the cordless phone.

We (Linux, and I'm lumping ChromeOS into this albeit a different beast) aren't going to win the marketing battle. With sites like Netflix not working on Linux and "you'll get it if you try it for two weeks" UX mentality (looking at you Unity), we're not going to win the experience battle - the only one where we stood a shot. Short of a product that thoroughly feels superior we just can't expect consumers to cope with a product just to "fight the [men]". And until that happens, I (and I suspect many fellow nerds) are following this round of the cycle and moving our families away from Linux (again, for now.)
You say you started in 2009 - I'm assuming you started with linux a bit earlier than that. I started using linux on the desktop in 1999 part time, and moved 'full time' by ... 2003 I think.

I gave up around 2008. Gave up trying to migrate friends/family; gave up being an evangelist. The number of things that wouldn't work on someone's hardware was always greater than my ability to help/google/patch/whatever. And I got sick of:

1) works for me.
2) research your hardware first(!)
3) build your own machine
4) this latest release version X "just works"
5) other tired canards you've already heard.

I've no doubt that for some people, some distros 'just work'. They never did for me.

Perhaps it was my hardware (the 6 different laptops and desktops I rotated through during 5 years apparently just never hit that magical elusive sweet spot of 'just working').

Perhaps my expectations were different - I'd like to have two different apps running at the same time and both play sound at the same time - pidgin/gaim would constantly lock the sound so that nothing else could play, causing no sounds and sometimes crashes.

I've got other stories - everyone does - but got tired. I went mac full time in 2008 and have a good balance of a system that lets me run osx with windows and linux in virtual machines when I need them. It's certainly not perfect - I have occasional crashes, that stupid beach ball, and I miss the FISH protocol in Konqueror something mad. But... I get far more actual work done on this system than I ever did on Linux systems.

Other people will have opposite experiences - good for them - I just wish people would quit blaming the "linux on the desktop" defectors as if they'd done something 'wrong'. The only thing most of them did 'wrong' was to believe the hype for too long.
Good work. I understand the stance you were taking but it's equivalent to "I think wooden bats are better for baseball, so I make my tee-baller use a wooden bat." You were fighting the right fight but on the wrong field. Don't let people make you feel bad. When it comes to an OS for a non-saavy family member ease of use and keeping those phone calls at bay are the only things that matter. Installing antivirus and running an anti-malware application when you visit for holidays is much easier than the nagging calls. Also, Mom won't get those weird looks in best buy when she asks the 16 year old girl if this copy of Microsoft word runs on Ubuntu.
I have a netbook with Ubuntu myself but only use it on holidays.

I'm using OS X as my main OS. I did try Ubuntu but really got crazy of the bad multitouch support (hovering over the touchpad was seen as a click, so I constantly lost the focus of my terminal while typing and having my palms near the touchpad)

So I'm waiting for good multitouch support for my Macbook Air and mayne switch then (not that sure anymore but I do have a little hope for those following Ubuntu's moves closely and the ability of apt-get like you pointed out).
It's pretty stupid to expect everything to just work. Your parents should have grabbed the source code, learned how to program, deciphered the problem and then fixed it themselves. Then they could have shared the code to help everyone else's parents fix their problems.

Or just get them iPads.
I don't understand your aggression. He chose to pay $100 - or whatever Windows 7 costs now - so that is the investment he needed to make to fix his problems. Fixing it in Ubuntu might be a lot more expensive to him (or impossible due to limited technical skills). What is the evil he has done now? He made a sane decision and I understand him well.
Tenacity: How I Spent A Year One Night in Kiev
Recently I decided to play some game and had to boot windows partition which I did not use from the date of laptop purchase. So I went through Windows clean installation process and then it all started - scrolling on touchpad not working, directx not working with pre-packaged drivers (had to download over 600 megs of video drivers - have no clue what take so much space.) While downloading it, I browsed some news and got my Internet Explorer crashed - I would not be surprised if this was some trojan stuff delivered through null-sized iframe.

Since I do not have DVDROM, I had to find some ISO mounter. Again, downloading megs of software from some website and hoping it is not packaged with some trojan.

After installing this iso mounter, it asks me to install .NET framework. After googling it - it says ~1 meg to download. Fine, downloading and running it from microsoft website. After it run it starts downloading something else form somewhere.... Done.

Video drivers downloaded - installing. Asks to reboot. Rebooting - blue screen every time I restart machine.... In the end - whole evening was spent to play single game and I end up with BSOD. Saying "FU" and return back to my Ubuntu to continue coding.

After couple hours of coding my machine randomly freezes... this started to happen after installing AMD proprietary drivers...

So two things I learned that evening:
- We are all screwed no matter what OS we use! :)
- I need to buy xbox/ps/wii to play games :)
>I've also build software that generates other software, invented new frameworks, and devised algorithms that dramatically improved the way we make and build and move the stuff that's probably in your cubicle right now.

Is any of that stuff open-source? What you say seems pretty cool, but I find it pretty uninspiring when the hard work of good hackers isn't free to be used and contributed to by others.
Yeah, as I mentioned above that's all I know at the moment. Plan on learning/contracting out android/web.
Yes

And the worse thing is that Ubuntu is moving away from 'common users' BUT ALSO away from 'traditional linux users'

Sincerely, it's been getting worse and worse by every release. Under the banner of 'making it more user friendly', they're adding more useless clutter, more 'funny pictures' but have no clear direction or desktop concept.

Yes, I believed it was going to be great as well.

I am much more productive in a linux distro with XFCE/IceWM, half of 'infrastructure' turned off (network manager, pulseaudio, etc) or I just go with Mac OS X
Nonsense. The "it's open source, fix it yourself" argument only holds if your target audience is developers.

Ubuntu is intended to (also) target non-powerusers. They intend to be a competitor to other "normal people" OSes such as OSX and Windows. The fact that they give it away for free is entirely Canonical's own choice, and it does not magically take away users' right to criticize them.

Canonical puts a product in the market with claims to certain qualities, such as openness but also ease of use. The OP feels that some of these qualities have disappeared, and chooses a different OS for that reason. How is that obnoxious?
I don't think anyone believes that you enter at the bottom of the ladder of a shop with 10,000+ software engineers and then change anything major. To do big stuff at Google you have to either work there 10+ years or come in from another company having done good stuff.

The only realistic shot for hackers to change the world is through their own startup.
Iran Rreported New Cyberattack Targeted Power Plant and Culture Ministry
If i were in OP's shoes, I would probably test drive Zorin before going back to Windows: http://www.zorin-os.com/
This is so unfair...

Viruses, trojans and bloat are not a part of Windows, it is what users make of their systems. I use both FreeBSD and Windows (as desktops) and I haven't had an issue with any of them for the last two years.
Project Management in the Cloud with Plandora and Jelastic
It's your time, but you're a lucky person if nobody else has any leverage over you
You might also have a hardware problem.
Features of Consciousness
Follow This Rule — If You Want To Be Popular (1922)
I'm hoping that the theme, some new features, and me keeping an eye on spammy content will make it rise above. I'm wondering just as much as you, though!