skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Create a mandatory 'real vacation' by requiring employees to take at least a week off, in a row, once a year

Great idea, but I would argue a week isn't enough. Require employees to take a minimum 2 or 3 weeks off per year, not necessarily contiguously.

Although, I can also see this as a bad thing. It might create the impression in people's mind that "the company thinks that X weeks is the right amount for everyone to take off", which might make people hesitant to take more, even if doing so could greatly benefit their state of mind.
Really good idea and execution. Thank you for building this.
> What browser is that in?

Camino, which uses FF 3.6's engine.
I guess that depends on what you mean by "access your data via a web browser". I'm imagining a Dropbox type system, where a native client uploads my files after pgp encrypting them, and there's a website where I could log in from any browser and download any/all of my encrypted files. It's not actually a very good idea, for the website to be of any use, there needs to be enough cleat-text metadata (or at least decryptable by the web server metadata, which may as well be clear text), so that I can find the file I want. If that file is called "Metalica_Album.mp3.pgp", or if there a directory called "Disney_BluRay_rips", the large encrypted lumps probably won't do me any good as a defense in court.
Socket-activated containers on systemd
Yes, I know, it's turtles all the way down, of course.

Still, I think that "but here we are aiming for practical applications not a philosophical debate about how everything is just an illusion." is a dangerous statement. Some people would say the same about something like sql injection, or cross-site scripting (Really? Yes, really, I encounter them on a regular basis).

With security issues the border between 'practical' and 'not practical/philosophical' depends on your threat model. If the kind of adversary that is able to compromise your JS engine does not appear in your threat model you can ignore the possibility of your JS engine being compromised and your solution may be good enough. If however that kind of adversary does appear in your threat model you do not have that luxury and your solution is not good enough.

That's not philosophical, that's real world practical.
What makes it your favorite?
'Quantum smell' idea gains ground
Similar article here, going to 11:

http://www.metabrew.com/article/a-million-user-comet-applica...
Any document you can actually release, file a bug with a copy of the document - they actually care about fixing this stuff, and treat it as a fun game to do so. This link shows what they need: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Bug_Report#Detailed_expl...

For widest good results, and if you have the time, checking against the latest Apache OpenOffice dev build https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/OOOUSERS/Develop... and filing a bug there too strikes me as likely to get your class of bug dealt with quicker.
The examples don't have to be idiomatic Python to demonstrate Python's weaknesses. In fact, one would expect mature idiomatic forms to skirt language limitations more-or-less by design.
Depending on a browser's screen width, the "Fork me on Github" bar's clickable box can almost completely cover the "Blogs" menu item.
Well I guess I screwed up royally
Are you aware of gofmt's rewrite rules?

http://golang.org/cmd/gofmt/#hdr-Examples

Pretty powerful stuff.
> I find these benchmarks to not be very valuable.

It's interesting to take one piece of the stack and see how much abuse it can take, even if it's not necessarily reflective of real world behavior.
When I was 8, I insisted on buying a little book containing a collection of toilet stall graffiti sayings. I didn't get half of them, yet merrily recited them.

And look where I am now, happily employed software developer with >=1000 karma.

So I wouldn't worry too much.
I wonder how many people have died because of inefficiencies caused by the patent system, or just the whole healthcare thing. I don't know if the medical patent landscape is a wasteland like the software one, but probably it's not the best we could do.

Just a thought: abolish the patent system. Pay the pharmaceutical research companies directly, by the State, like we do with military research or civil works. I prefer free markets but anything touched by patents is not a free market either.

The cost could be shared by the rich countries. Research is expensive but is a fixed cost. Manufacturing could be done by the free market, because all drugs would be generic. Rare diseases could be researched instead of just profitable ones. We would avoid all the "convincing" doctors to buy expensive patented drugs. Some companies would be specialized in research, others in manufacturing. Developing countries wouldn't have to be worried about patent fees they can't afford.

IP lawyers would lose, I guess.
Minion: Mozilla's New Community-Driven Security Testing Framework
Brain drain bleeds Wall Street
Same here, I spent minutes loading tags and C-F-ing for Smalltalk, until I gave up.
You got to hand it to Heroku for their site design.

I particularly like their understated google map marker as the icon to click to find the location.
A shiny example of a country filled with incompetent people, including the ones who frequent HN.

How can a journalist be such a fool to publish something as ridiculous as this? A simple Google search can confirm that she is fake.

With this article behind her back, don't be surprised if she ends up on a '50 under 50' list within a year.
Good point. If a stalker starts out as 'nice' (and boy, can they be nice) like in the story above then you must feel that there is a point where they go from normal to 'creepy' (hard to define). If you've been in regular communication with them until that point then it will be impossible to avoid some of the fall-out, but the rules still hold. It's a war of attrition, and unless your local law enforcement takes this sort of thing serious (and oh, the joys of the internet, you can now stalk someone half the planet away with proxies, anonymous remailers and so on to hide who you are) it can go on for years.

Not all stalkers are created equal. Some will fold after the slightest hint of official repercussions, others will continue no matter what.

Whatever happens it'll leave you changed in how you behave online and in real life.
Depends on the dream, for many people's dream it's very unlikely.

I always thought Land of Opportunity just meant if you work hard enough you'll land a mediocre job that pays well and will be able to provide a decent level of support for your family.(although unfortunately that is not always the case)
This is awesome! In which language is it written?
>>>> There were obviously no WMDs in Iraq

Only question I'd have about that is what Iraq declared to OPCW in 2009?
http://www.opcw.org/news/article/status-of-chemical-demilita...

It says "chemical weapons" and I thought chemical weapons are WMDs...
The problem is that, in addition to what I've already said, the essay itself does not do a good job at making a point. Sure, it gesticulates at some points. Sure, you could assume the author is trying to say X, but I think that is one's own projection of the essay's vague intent. In fact, we have two comments here which potentially illustrate what I mean. You argue that the article is about fashion. Someone else argues that it's about social privilege. I argue that it's so vague that it's really about nothing.

I'm not sure who you're calling a "critical-thinking-by-the-numbers guy," but since I was one of those criticizing the article, I'll respond that it is wrong of you to assume that our criticism must be due to the fact that we/I don't understand that fashion in some ways represents who we are. Because I certainly recognize that fashion represents not only who we are, but who we want to be. But that does not absolve the article of having made no meaningfully substantiated conclusions apart from interesting points about the anonymizing use of hoodies.

If you asked me, the only reason Zuckerberg wears/wore hoodies is because he is/was a twenty-something. In his case it has nothing to do with anonymity/surveillance, etc. etc. They're just what was in fashion when he was in college. They're still in fashion. I wear them. They're comfortable. For youth, they're not uncool to wear. A suit would be uncool. Imagine all the grief you'd get if you wore a suit to high school.

EDIT (reply to below): While your reply may or may not be accurate, I think the fact that this is yet another interpretation of what the author's point makes my argument even clearer, that the essay has no point at all.
"This seems true enough - from a (rational) game-theoretic perspective, why should any victim really fight hard to overcome a troll, if in doing so they risk big losses, and don't gain any advantage over their competition even if they win?"

This might be true over a single iteration, but I don't think it holds well over indefinite iterations. Developing a (credible) reputation as an entity (government, corporation, person, etc.) who doesn't "negotiate with terrorists" can be quite a valuable asset.

Just like productive companies have an incentive to give in to the demands of patent trolls, patent trolls have an incentive to avoid companies who "don't negotiate with terrorists", in part because there is a very high (> 50%) rate of claim invalidation across the industry (what does that say about the quality of the original examination?), and in part because it costs the patent trolls just as much money to go to court as it does the productive companies.
What you say is valid. Humans do group think, and the vast majority of people in AS view the "steps" as required. Not by any authority, but by their need for help. If you are not into that, it's harder to feel part of the club. But in the stated ideology of AA they are only suggestion. This is different from many other religious groups, who claim a unique and exclusive truth.

In practice, there is shockingly little authority exercised in AA there is literally no person or group who can kick someone out or impose sanctions on anyone.

I'm not saying it's not a weird group, it is, but it was founded by and populated by people who are in dire straights. It's not for everyone. I think it's an unfortunate development that attendance to AA is often compulsory by the legal system, social service system, and the treatment industry. But this is out of the control of AA, all are welcome who have a desire to stop drinking.
Why We Don’t Achieve Our Goals, and What I'm Going to Do About It
Where is the schedule? am I missing something?
I'd very much like to re-emphasize this point:

> Fashion mattering doesn't depend on you caring.

In general, there are actually quite a few things like this in the world. Just because it is out of the scope of your concern does not mean it isn't of any concern.
https://github.com/nirvanatikku/stack-ed
I like what Odersky did with statics in Scala.

I agree that F# is not pure as Haskel and limited in comparison with OCaml and Haskel.

But the things that works in F# are working fine. In comparison with Scala: curring (by design) and tail-calls optimization are looking "more FP" in my opinion.
I was extremelly surprised, especially when Lua is actually famous as a game scripting language!

«a language which may not please the purists»

I would have stopped reading here, but the article was already over...
pmarca certainly doesn't know it all, but he's got better visibility into the whole spectrum of tech companies than almost anyone, as well as personal experience at both consumer and enterprise over something like 20 years now. (pg probably has better visibility into a certain category of early startup, but pmarca has breadth).

So, even if you assume people like that are only of average intelligence, it's probably worth listening to what they have to say. i.e. if a tall guy at a concert starts running in a certain direction, you may want to follow him.

The annoying thing is that since he's on the HP board, he can't talk about HP (what is up with HP?) or any other big competitors. :(
The author of the article is, however, an expert. In chemistry (among other things). And the fact that we know a lot about chemistry of some other batteries does not in any way makes it impossible that we know very little about the chemistry of this specific one.
Could you elaborate on your last sentence? Especially with F# 3, the OO features should be syntactically the same as C#. You can use F# as a light-syntax C#, really, with a few minor caveats.

For curiosity, what in particular do you find to be unnatural in F#?
No, I got it. It's overwrought symbolism posing as profundity.
So we agree unlimited vacation really means "vacation at the mercy of your manager."

The problem with "quit and find a company that doesn't lie to you about its culture" is that you can't tell if they're lying until you've made the enormous investment of quitting your previous job and getting hired there.

Even if they're the good guys(tm), their investors can kick out the previous CEO, and management styles can change dramatically for the worse.

If you accept "unlimited vacation," you're negotiating a scenario where a non-trivial portion of your compensation is tied to the goodwill of your counter-party, whose inherent interests are opposed to yours, and where the costs of you "fixing" the situation are dramatic.

Caveat emptor.
Sounds much like my own experiences. I recently wrote some APIs in C#, and was reminded just how verbose and limited my writing becomes.

Even if I'm writing code that's not very functional, using F# as a better C# seems to work very well.

The main reasons to use C# are for legacy interop and perhaps if the code isn't a major focus and hiring someone capable of writing F# would actually be a limitation. Some folks also feel F# is clunky for imperative code; I haven't really felt that way.
In addition to that, you should fix the labels for the checkboxes. For me (Chrome 24 on OSX), clicking them doesn't seem to (un-)check the checkboxes.
Other than that, really nice work!
This is presumably the PingShow in your profile?

30,000 views of a video sounds huge - can I ask how you grew it ? What was the off the bat number - ie was being part of a big channel just land big numbers ? Did you link from a popular article? Interested for the obvious reasons - and will have a watch when off iOS !
JOBS Review: A Satisfying Experience for an Apple Fan
Extracting bits with a single multiplication
Generally, effective petitions need to do two things:

1. Put pressure on a specific person or group of people to make a specific change.

2. Bring attention of an issue to a larger audience (i.e.: the press, a congressmen's constituents, etc)

Having those things goes a long way to making these online petitions useful, but without them you'd just end blowing around a lot of hot air.
The rise of over-familiar websites
At Levion, we're looking at implementing a stated vacation day policy, but as a matter of policy. So to avoid discouraging people from using say, 10 or 15 days of vacation, you are guaranteed those days. As a matter of policy, we probably won't track vacation days unless it feels excessive (and where you need to "buy" vacation days if you go over excessively). How does this sound?
Odd - I submitted this story, with the same URL, 5 days ago

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5098033
Well, most game development happens for consoles - so if the question is "Why game developers use Windows" not "Why PC game developers use Windows", then it still is an interesting quesion.

If you're coding for PS3 or Wii, why is Windows better than Linux or Mac? Marketshare doesn't explain that.
US free to grab EU data on American clouds
Can you clarify why it can't be duck typing if it's static? For instance, in F# you can declare a function that can take any type that provides a specific method name and signature. You can pass any object to such a function as long as it has that method - there's no other similarities required in the types you pass to it. How is that not "duck typing"?
Chrome packaged apps support auto-updating, so unless you take steps to prevent that from happening, you're never sure you're running the same version today as you did yesterday. Again, trusting the server to serve you a trustworthy version of the app repeatedly. And if you're trusting the server already, local storage is no better than server side storage.

Again, I think this reduces to "Microsoft/Apple can auto-update your OS, so you might as well send your keys to Microsoft/Apple." Would you argue that? If not, why?
I've been telling my friends this: Graph Search is going to be the biggest privacy shitstorm we've ever seen, by a large margin. The only way it's not going to be is if Zuck et al cave quickly and lock it down to just search in your own network before the media picks it up. Basically Graph Search is the piece de resistance of Zuckerberg's vision for the world: ultimate transparency aided by algorithms to surface "public" information (ie, information the person posting it did not realize it was public.) It's the last big piece of the puzzle and closes the loop. The current product launch is just one "frontend" to these algorithms. Make no mistake the creation of this search engine is a huge inflection point since now things can be built on top of it.

The thesis (I think) has always been there would need to be a huge trial by fire, teaching the public about what information is actually public, and what it means to be "on the Internet" not via privacy settings, or blog posts, or tutorials, but by pure unadulterated necessity through fear. You will have to lock your shit down now or face the consequences of massive dissemination of that information. There will be no more friction. There will be causalities, and I think Facebook thinks it is an inevitability that "privacy through obscurity" becomes a thing of the past, so might as well be them to kill it. If you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet, particularly one that is going to be made by someone, so be it.

"Market efficiency" of social data is going to be achieved: just like when a news report comes out about a company its stock price instantly updates to reflect it, so to will the world itself, and the people in it, reflect the publication of personal information thanks to the ability of the world to see it via software like Graph Search. Anyone who wants to know anything about you or what you do will be able to, instantly, unless you understand the scope of the things you publish intimately.
This happened to my bicycle. A thief tried to break the lock, didn't succeed, and instead decided to kick in the wheels and knife the saddle. That left me with €100 damage, almost the cost of the bicycle (a simple city bicycle).
Yeah, but LISP doesn't do currying and I find Scala's support for currying just fine, although the syntax in F# is definitely much nicer.

Also Scala does optimize self-recursive tail-calls and it's pretty easy to work with trampolines. This is a platform limitation btw, as you can't optimize tail-calls without support from the VM. Mono, the open-source .NET implementation, also has problems with optimizing tail-calls (last time I checked) and I don't know about .NET 4.5, but .NET 4 was not optimizing tail-calls on 64-bits Windows. I remember reading a blog post about them fixing it on 64-bits OS in the latest version, but it wasn't the kind of feature you could rely on in the past.

I do have hopes that TCO will make it into the JVM at some point, as there are experiments for it available as part of OpenJDK. Unfortunately the JVM moves at a glacial pace in regards to such features. This is both a blessing and a curse.

I do agree with you. Not having full TCO in a functional language kind of sucks.
You may have forgotten where you are discussing this topic.

I couldn't blame anyone for this stereotype but I don't think it's true. I suspect quite a lot of people here are into or have a nose for fashion (though not necessarily in the haute couture/catwalk sense).
If the sexual funniness stems from the library the team is using, then the awkwardness can be addressed in a team meeting well in advance. Perhaps resulting in a only-one-joke-a-day policy or changed pronunciation (e.g. AnAl like "analgesic").
The library author is Chinese, so English isn't his native language. We'll be cleaning up typos soon - this post caught us by surprise.

As for Compojure, etc.- those are libraries that operate on top of a Ring web server. Jetty is the default, http-kit is a drop-in replacement. So basically, you'd use both http-kit and whatever other libraries you normally would (like Compojure).

I swapped out a production Jetty+Compojure app to use http-kit+Compojure by changing ~20 lines of code.

Hope that makes sense?
> No legal procedures exist to put down a stalker until after an actual crime has been committed.

That's not really true without jurisdiction filter on the assertion: there are jurisdictions in which harassment itself is a crime (in all circumstances, not just for protected categories or e.g. in the workplace). For instance, the UK with the Protection from Harassment Act 1997.
Thanks, we'll try get that fixed soon (Feng and I are both at work atm).
Somewhere in the article the author says, the consumer doesn't care if the developer is large or small. I would say it matters to me and most people i know, because most consumers especially when they are paying for something like to look for support and future possibility of growth for the app. I do always take a look at the developers site or their portfolio to understand if they have got what it takes to keep pushing updates and better features. if not then i would go with another app and pay for that if it fits my needs.
Linux compatible can mean as much as 'runs in wine' for some games.
it could shine as bright as the moon and may even be visible in broad dayligh
> Duck typing looks at run time compatibility, so long as the runtime accessed portion is the correct signature it passes.

Of course inferred structural types should also have that feature, if all structural types are left inferred.
URL hacking works: http://www.stack-ed.com/#tag/smalltalk
So now you vote for stopping progress forever for the fears of safety?

I assume you understand this makes you undeserving of that safety.
nicely done. It would be extra awesome if you could weight the answers a little by date and whether the current version of the language matches the date.
Actually that would probably be a pain. Maybe just some (optional) sorting by date?
I think this is largely true, but sad.

There's an overabundance of "me too!" apps that just try to replicate what everyone else is doing. This is why there's such a lack of apps with the level of depth and functionality that you find on desktop systems.

I only really consider this a problem for the iPad though, since it currently has a lot of unrealised potential as a computing device for doing real work. Apps like OmniGraffle and Textastic stand out as examples of what developers should be building more of IMHO. The world only needs so many running games and photo sharing apps.
Yeah! I love using as many languages as possible with my projects too, that way I can raise the "barrier to entry" to a codebase as high as possible--which comes in really handy if, for example, other folks you work with would otherwise hit you with drive-by craptacular changes that break your pristine codebase (that with any luck you have to clean up yourself afterwards). Also, lets not forget about another nice side-effect: added job security.