skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
QnX is extremely low overhead, and gets a much more responsive system out of the same hardware than a linux based system. Linux simply doesn't do soft-realtime well, forget about hard realtime, even with the patches applied the granularity is terrible, and prioritization is worse.

Those are the things where a microkernel shines. Because realtime systems value responsiveness (and minimal latency) over raw throughput they look worse on paper, but in use they feel a lot more responsive.

In a nutshell, having 300 MB/s throughput for some system function with latency ranging from 2 ms to 100 ms vs having 200 MB/s with latency ranging from 2 ms to 5 ms will give a very strong edge to the slower system if there is some cut-off beyond which the latency becomes unacceptable (for instance, machine or process control).

Lower performance on paper does not always mean worse performance, it depends very much on which criteria are considered to be more important. And latency can be much more important than throughput.
I was going to post something similar earlier. I was put off by what I perceived as a very condescending tone in the essay. I got the impression that the author envisioned his audience as children, or unintelligent adults.
Check out rosetta code: http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Category:Programming_Tasks
Ownership of the source code is a stupid thing to want. It means the developers will have no interest in making your code any good (they can't reuse it) and unwilling to incorporate code they own into the project rather than reimplementing everything from scratch.

Complete access to and an unlimited, unrestricted license to make use of is probably what you want.

To give a wonderful counterexample — the project I'm working on right now is Federal government. During a recent code review we discussed standard headers for source files (it's all JavaScript) and the client said "we'll want to make it all public domain, since this is the work of the government". We love our codebase, and now we love it even more because we'll be able to use it on future projects.
>Next, violent crime is not murder or death. It can be robbery or assault.

Many gun deaths are gang-related or otherwise criminal-on-criminal. Also, with less strict gun control a robber is more likely to be shot dead by their intended victim, which is a good thing. Yes, I mean that; I'm not equivocating: it is a Good Thing when an attempted robbery fails because the would-be robber is shot dead. (Minor assailants should of course not be shot, but it's also a Good Thing when an assault bordering on attempted murder ends with the death of the assailant.) Hell, it's a Good Thing when gangbangers shoot one another dead. There's a Tupac line that goes "[something something something] give 'em guns, step back, watch 'em kill each other". Bearing in mind that I'm referring to gangsters ONLY and in no way black people in general, Tupac's darkly humorous suggestion is actually a good one.

To put it bluntly, if I could push a button and reduce violent crime by 75% across the board but it meant that gun deaths would quadruple--but 80% of those new deaths would be violent criminals--I would do it.

>So, Americans should keep their guns, but equally not complain about other freedoms being compromised to compensate.

I don't even own a gun and have only fired a gun a few times (when I went trap shooting just for the hell of it). Still, I wish you would try to take some freedoms from the "gun nuts" as "compensation" just so I could watch you get your ass handed to you.
OK, this latter link explains a lot. Now I see where the cliff argument fits - it's actually not the argument about proofs, but an illustration of truth being defined as match between expectations and actual results. Also explains where the shoelaces thing fits in, thanks.
This is really impressive. I can see this becoming foundational for presenting feature journalism and even educational content.
Our brief says:

"Unlike the Ninth Circuit’s interpretation, however, the Second Circuit’s reading of Sections 109 and 602 permits no exception for foreign-manufactured goods that are sold within the United States with the permission of the copy-
right holder. As a result, absent the permission of
the copyright holder, any distribution of any foreign-manufactured copy could infringe copyright."

This seems to be a reference to the distinction drawn by the Second Circuit at p. 16 of its opinion:

"While the Ninth Circuit in Omega held that §109(a) also applies to foreign-produced works sold in the United States with the permission of the copyright holder, that holding relied on Ninth Circuit precedents not adopted by other courts of appeals. Accordingly, while perhaps a close call, we think that, in light of its necessary interplay with § 602(a)(1), § 109(a) is best interpreted as applying only to works manufactured domestically."

And on p. 17:

"In sum, we hold that the phrase “lawfully made under this Title” in § 109(a) refers specifically and exclusively to works that are made in territories in which the Copyright Act is law, and not to foreign-manufactured works."

In a footnote, the Second Circuit seems to acknowledge that this leads to the exact concern that we raised:

"Phrased differently, it is argued that [this] decision may allow a copyright holder to completely control the resale of its product in the United States by producing its goods abroad and then immediately importing them for initial distribution. In this sense, the copyright holder would arguably enjoy the proverbial “best of both worlds” because, in theory, the consumer could not rely on the first sale doctrine to re-sell the imported work. In other words, the copyright holder would have an incentive to “outsource” publication to foreign locations to circumvent the availability of the first sale doctrine as a defense for consumers wishing to re-sell their works in the domestic market. [...] We acknowledge the force of this concern, but it does not affect or alter our interpretation of the Copyright Act."

Hence, the Second Circuit suggests that Wiley could control the resale of foreign-manufactured books in the U.S., even if Wiley itself imported and sold them.
Why not upload a ringtone that you like to your phone?
A christmas carol - Internet edition
Please read the Second Circuit's decision, particularly pages 16 and 17. The Second Circuit did not agree with your intuition about this point.

You can find the decision at

https://www.eff.org/files/Wiley-v-Kirtsaeng_2ndCir_8-15-11.p...
What is wrong with employment benefits at Amazon, and besides the 'work hard'. ethic?
I just added it to the list. Perfect timing, because I need a new TV series to get addicted to now Dexter and Homeland are over for the season.
The Second Circuit specifically disagreed with the Ninth Circuit on this point, distinguishing its holding from the Ninth Circuit's in Omega.
A Warby Parker For [Blank]
(I am not the original poster)

* improved file copy dialog, including pausing
* much faster boot
* improved task manager (as you said)
* better multi-monitor support (I have 2 monitors)

It's not much but was worth the $30 upgrade. I don't mind the new start screen but I understand that is subjective.
I think that's what Yudkowsky is essentially claiming, if I got it right - that true map is the one that gives correct description of the territory - meaning, if we make a prediction using this map and then actually interact with the territory and the prediction turns out to be correct, then it's the supporting evidence for the map being true, and vice versa. I derive it from the links given here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4961488
Chances are OP downloaded an open source svg program. I'd have to guess inkscape. At this point, the right move would have been to either post a feature request on launchpad or implement the functionality yourself.

If you don't want to get your hands dirty, pay for illustrator.
It should have Iron Man. Maybe also A Beautiful Mind.

Closer to home, if we're doing documentaries, Revolution OS maybe ought to be there.
In order of my preference:

Windows 7
Ubuntu 12.04
OS X
Windows 8

Windows 7 earns my bread, it works, and most of the time works well for clients and friends. Ubuntu is my goto "Unix/Linux" for OSS development, friends and resolving Windows issues.* OS X, use it part-time at work and friends, couldn't justify the cost of the hardware and some other quibbles. Windows 8 is a UI failure for the power user and admin.
Understanding map, filter, and fold
My employer (smartly) prohibits bringing any corporate equipment into China - including cell phones which access company email, and generally suggest not touching the Internet (at least any of your accounts) at all.

Having been there, this is honestly very good advice.
Do you mean "Surface" the touch table, or "Surface Windows RT", or "Surface Pro"?
You should have a look at the gap between the Ninth Circuit's holding in Omega v. CostCo and the Second Circuit's holding here. :-)

In footnote 44, the Second Circuit agrees that its own "decision may allow a copyright holder to completely control the resale of its product in the United States by producing its goods abroad and then immediately importing them for initial distribution" but says that this "does not affect or alter our interpretation of the Copyright Act".
That's a pretty strong statement (not that I disagree with it), just that it's strong enough that I'd love to see a citation for evidence of that history.
If you like this, you should watch the documentary on the tiny home movement:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDcVrVA4bSQ
Both GNU sed and BSD sed have -i, what other kinds of sed are you using?
How were they able to sniff your keywords on Gmail chat? I thought as long as you are connected via HTTPS, your packets are encrypted.

Or does China not allow connecting to foreign websites via HTTPS?
This is hugely important. Any analytics had better be opt-in from a very visible and honest request dialog. Otherwise, quite frankly, it's unethical.
Interesting that SSH is getting through still.

I wonder how much longer till Chinese avoidance VPN tech needs to resort to stenography in images to transfer data. Masking data as cat pictures would be slow but not automatically detectable.
It's interesting that both the question and the answer do focus on pattern matching. I maybe mistaken on this but that is really just one use of FSMs.

I've implement event-driven FSMs and to me the biggest "ah ah" moment was that it was trivial to make a list of valid (or non valid) state transitions. I used it in one particular case which was really complex (IMHO) to model and were my code was quickly becoming a gigantic mess. I ended up rewriting that part using an event-driven FSM and things became smooth.

Nowadays I don't like the 'S' in "FSM" that much anymore: I've moved to FP and can't really say I'm missing mutability.
Wilson
hello!
It is to recognize the congnizing that you are doing about finite automata is itself composed of finite automata.
Starting a blog is pretty ineffective unless all you care about is working at a web startup with a few other twenty somethings. In my area (systems) I couldn't care less if you have a blog or not.
IFTTT for developers? with all I/O that API can really provide and the whole expressivity of Javascript for making more advanced scripts?
Along those lines, what compelling innovations are there? I've even used a Surface before, and still have no idea what I should get excited about.
Feature idea: make it so other people can add stuff to collections and then the article's owner can moderate it in or out. Would you use that?
Or a Google Apps Script for not only "Google" APIs?
Whichever one comes with the touch cover... er, I mean the type cover. I mean the colorful one that is a keyboard but isn't a keyboard but I can type on it fast but just not as fast as a real keyboard but it's a real keyboard which makes this a laptop but it's not. It comes included, right?
A Journey From a Hacker to an Engineer
A few bits that caught my attention and perfectly show why Zed's publications are so good:

> 1. Use just a simple editor like gedit, notepad+, or Textwrangler. NO vim! NO emacs!

> 2. Do not have them use git or other RCS tools. They're here to learn code, not git.

> 3. Make it work for Windows, OSX, and Linux if you can.

> 4. The install of your language should not involve tons of steps.

> 1. Your book should educate people, not indoctrinate them. If you find yourself talking constantly about how awesome your language is and how it will change their life, then you're not educating, you're just making another cult follower. Leave the decision of whether the language is good to the reader.

> 4. Lightly make fun of programmers and inoculate your student against religious wars over syntax, idioms, editors, tools, and anything else that gets in the way of them learning. Remember, you are writing this book for them, not your fellow coder friends.

This should be the mantra for everyone who writes a tutorial (which often land here on HN) or any other form of introduction into technologies. Way too often authors waste a huge chunk of their educational material on shoving their tools of choice down readers' throats. 'hey, you want to learn rails? ok, now buy a mac, install git, learn emacs, download my dotfiles...'.

TLDR: want to educate? be agnostic.
Also, it looks like the author is poking fun at certain trends in philosophy, such as intentionality[1], and if you don't know or care about this stuff, the article probably isn't intended for you. (I don't know or care about this stuff; I just got curious and looked it up.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intentionality
I think Win8 is a downgrade in almost every aspect, but it does boot faster. Granted, I think that it's doing something akin to hibernating in Windows 7 and not actually shutting down.
This is a great article.

To me, the most powerful example is this: "It forced me to think of every such problem as a chain of the primitive list operations, maps, folds, filters and scans. Now I always think in these terms. I "see" the transformation of a container as a simple sequence of these operations. "

That's a higher level of thinking that is faster and yet at the same time more precise than thinking in terms of imperative loops.

Haskell has taught him to think more powerfully.
It's a brand new OS, it wouldn't matter if it was the best thing since sliced bread, I wouldn't be able to recommend full scale deployment at this point in the product's life.

It'll continue to rank behind Win7 for some time yet, but my point was its not massively behind Win7 as has been the storyline in the press.

The scope of this evaluation is to determine whether to avoid Win8 like the plague, or to tolerate its introduction (typically through new hardware acquisition).

Unfortunately in this instance, as if I hadn't backtracked enough from my initial statement, I won't be recommending the integration of Win8, however this has less to do with Win8 as a product than it does a whole slew of complex requirements around that company's IT needs.
A micro-service (or micro-API)creation by scripting existing APIs, in Javascript?
For a book like the Python book, what features of LaTeX were used? I usually associate it with its ability to do fancy typesetting. But the Python book looks like it could be done in mostly Markdown.
Windows 95 which is 17 years ago. I remember people camping out for it.
I.Q. is a nice one
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110099/

Although not sure if it qualifies as "Engineers as Heroes".
I would have already upgraded to Win8 if it had a real desktop with a real start menu for my dual 27-inchers instead of a friggin touch interface designed for a tablet. Seriously, i don't know what they were smoking when they came up with that one. I still get moderately excited by new Windows stuff, after all the PC is not dead yet and i still enjoy building up a dream rig from scratch, even though i probably spend more time on my various Android devices.
Toosell blog | Benefits from LED Christmas Lights
Not to be rude, but what do you mean by this?
Most project budgets for SMEs and startups are guestimated by a business development team, therefore underfunded.

You'd be VERY lucky as a firm to be communicating with a technical, who has an actual idea about scope and the time it takes to iterate a "small feature", if they're coming to you for a project.
>It strongly implies there's a hallowed land where every use case is obvious and accounted for

That land might not exist, but for every problem we try to solve, we should search for that land relentlessly, as if it did actually exist. It's a not a framework, not means to an end, it's a goal, an end in itself.
You're confusing having a carrier-unlocked phone with having a phone that has an unlocked bootloader. The two are completely orthogonal concepts; you can unlock the bootloader of a phone that you received with a subsidy by signing 2-year contract with a carrier.

The point is that, once I've bought the hardware, nobody should be able to tell me my that I can't flash my own custom ROM on the phone.
I have a different intuition and I'd like to know why I'm wrong, other than what she/he thinks.
I really wonder about this:

> Only 15 percent of Acer’s current Windows 8 products in North America have touch screens

Microsoft made an OS that tries to shove a touch based interface down user's throats. They've gone all in and really committed 100% to it, which is admirable in it's own way: they know a large section of their users will hate this, but they also know their long term survival depends on getting a touch paradigm into their products, so this release is "taking one for the team", and it's not too surprising that sales are poor. But given all of this, why oh why, are ANY products shipping without touch interfaces? This part I don't understand and, I think, points to a major failure on Microsoft's part.
i have nothing to add.. other than to suggest that you post this sometime later again. I have a feeling that the that you would get more responses if it was a bit later in the holidays (for most of this audience) I'd like to see the what others have to say on this issue as well.
>> failure for the ... and admin

Coupled with server 2012, it's actually a huge leap forward for the admin.

But I agree that for power users (who are one of the rarer user types in your typical office environment and notoriously hard to accomodate) it is not an improvement at this time.
I'd love to know of any instances of this (work done in personal time being legally given to the company person worked for at the time) going to court.

Sounds like a non-compete clause to me; ie. basically unenforceable.
I dread going to an Apple store. I live within walking distance of 3 and avoid them all.

They are busy full of people trying to get service at the Genius bar (which is pretty poor experience a lot of the time), the demo units are taken by people just killing time, they have a lack of products in stock, and the accessories are generally overpriced.

The last couple of Apple devices I bought elsewhere: Amazon for the new MacBook Air as they had it in stock, and Best Buy for an iPod because it was cheaper.
Fortunately his arguments (his actual arguments in the book, not the summaries in the press) can be evaluated on their merits.
I remember reading an article about Inuits doing traditional kayaking (I think to hunt whales but I'm not sure).

The writer was surprised to find out that they did not train or practice "Eskimo Rolls". He asked what they would do if they got stuck upside down. The speaker said something like "I don't know, probably drown".
You've left out things like bundled crapware, impossible-to-remove stickers that advertise Intel on the palm rest, horrible tech support, the need for antivirus, the sleazy way the software autorenews at much higher rates, and retail stores that bully you into protection plans that are a bad value.

I'm puzzled how PC vendors can be so oblivious to the reasons why people are unimpressed by their products. Most of them just ooze mediocrity. Microsoft is powerless to fix the problem because the OEM owns the customer and Windows is just a component.
I wonder if people are comparing the boot time of year-old Windows 7 installations to brand new Windows 8 installations.

I know my SSD-based Windows 7 system could boot to the desktop in less than 10 seconds when it was new, but now that it's over a year old with dozens of additional installed programs and drivers, I'm lucky to see the desktop in less than 30 seconds.
I just added it based on his comment.

It inspired a Surprise Endings collection too: http://refer.ly/surprise_endings/c/5ecdc9fc4ceb11e2b5ab22000...
You could make a case for putting Star Trek on that list. How often were Scotty and Geordi, chief engineers, literally heroes on those shows?
Re: blackmail.

Given the number of sexual and other scandals that have come to light regarding Congressional representatives in the past few decades, one wonders how many have been blackmailed, and how many are currently being blackmailed.

See: http://www.davidbrin.com/blackmail.html
Shoot, I figured out that's what happened and tried to delete my comment. Too slow!
No, really, just use modules - they are testable and reusable and any truly professional Rails dev is going to have zero problems understanding and working with them. This smells of someone very new to Ruby/Rails.
This is true of a lot of good charities. I assume it's because it works, and just deal with it.
Out of curiosity, what was the startup?
Cheaper By the Dozen http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0042327/, The Aviator http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0338751/
I was dreading taking Computer Science Theory for my undergraduate degree. Turing machines bored me when I studied them in my introductory class, and I saw the class as a necessary evil - a core requirement as well as a prerequisite for my compilers class.

Boy, was I wrong. Despite what I'd anticipated, that class ended up being the single most useful CS class that I took. I had the fortune of taking the class with Alfred Aho[1] - I can't imagine a person more qualified to teach a class on computation via automata; he literally thinks in automata.

One day, I mentioned how I'd solved a particular programming problem (not for class) by reasoning about it as if it were a pushdown automaton, and how I was surprised that these techniques were still relevant, even for problems far more high-level than, say, writing egrep. He told me, 'Sometimes when I have a tough problem, I like to think of it as a language recognition problem, and it becomes easier to solve.'

My brain may not be quite as oriented towards state machines as Prof. Aho's is, but that trick has saved me countless times. Like functional programming, it takes a bit of practice to wrap your head around it if you're not used to it, but it can present really elegant solutions to problems that seem daunting at first glance.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Aho
lots of formatting features, easy to version control, able to convert to print book and pdf easily, fully text based thus more predictable, and so on. LaTeX can be used for any document from CV to an entire book.
I agree, the crowds can be punishing and that's certainly an alienating experience for many. But the stores remain at maximum capacity, they're the #1 retail draw anywhere they exist, and you're still sending Apple money. :)
Supporting those who support us
USA TODAY, MERRY XMAS
I love it how German seems to be able to put the whole law in one word :) It doesn't sound that stupid, depending on what "related" means - if it is indeed almost the same as you are being paid for, then it may make some sense (I'm not sure I agree with it, as it's basically means employer owns your thoughts, which seems a weird concept to me, but even if it is wrong it's not completely stupid). If it's just "it's all computer stuff so must be the same" then it's stupid. I'd say it all depends on how the courts will be treating it.