skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The main issue I have with "escaping from callback hell" is that it's a half-truth. Although I don't know much about how the Reactive Framework created by Microsoft works, I know they went well beyond the basics to try to make it all-encompassing coming closer to making it a full-truth.

Just transmitting data back and forth may play well to the strengths of your abstraction. But we have other uses with Timers that should also need such abstractions.

With Timers I have other needs like delaying the execution, resetting the delay countdown, stopping it before it executes it at all (like cancelling it), and finally with an Animation class I needed a way to finish executing a string of events in an instant in order to start a new animation. Also the Animation had other Animation versions at play that could need to be sped up before a new Animation started.

In .NET they seem to have a handy feature that waits the code to run before proceeding that comes into play with their .NET version of the Reactive Framework.

As far as I can tell, it's tough to really solve it. JavaScript doesn't have extra features like .NET does. We are more limited in what we can do. In Dart they have a version of this called Future that has been streamlined recently. As simple as it may seem to be, it comes with other related abstractions called Streams that altogether make it a bit daunting to escape from that hell only to land on the fire outright.
http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=45000&year1...

I was using the Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Price Index
Don Pako Sex Shop: LUXE MAXIMA CONDOMS
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/_/dict.aspx?word=raping

The dictionary gives 3 examples of rape in a non-sexual context. Again, know that I am not saying the t-shirt was not offensive or in bad taste generally, I certainly would never buy it or wear it if given to me (no one I know would give it to me).

At the same time, in a hypothetical where an automated Google car hit someone, would it make sense to yell and the Google car and say watch where you are going? See in this exagerated example, it becomes clear I am soliciting insight to human interaction to an automated system that did not have intent.
MOOC Completion Rates
"Why shouldn't people cheat?"

I think cheating should go the same path has the hacking/cracking argument. There are good and bad ways of cheating both in school as well as in real life.

In my opinion someone who develops a sophisticated cheating system that allows to pass a typical brain-dump test has learned more than someone who plays by the rules.

I always believe that the one hacking the system should be rewarded at least by the same amount than the one just following instructions.
You are correct. In practice, case-sensitive filesystems on OS X are impractical, but boy does this destroy my faith in developers... how hard is it make sure that you use the same cases in your paths throughout your program?
And in reality, he's probably a mix of all of the above, like most people. Everyone's got ideals, everyone's got insecurities.

We tend to project our insecurities more when we're having casual conversation with people we consider friends.

We tend to project our ideals more when we're having serious philosophic debate, defending our character, or, you know, being charged with war crimes.
What you mean is not "passphrase keys" but "public/private keypairs", and it sounds like you are using an agent as proxy, so you only have to authenticate locally once.

This isn't an answer, but: password managers like LastPass can do this for the web. I let it generate secure passwords like "e^9u21$Fb%mJv"--in fact I don't know most of my passwords, it logs me in automatically, I just authenticate once with a passphrase. Highly recommended (integration with most browsers, other security features, see the website); definitely worth a look for the interface considerations alone.

The answer: it's probably too hard to get there from here now. Too many changes to UI's, re-education of users, and really they don't care if you have to type in a password every time or click an extra page.

Look at the popularity of decentralized private/public key trading with (e.g.) PGP. NOT. Sure, the paranoid elite have learned how to use the keyservers and mixmaster remailers, but there needs to be a killer UI that's simple enough (or maybe just smarter than the user) before people.. will... post to facebooks with it?

Client SSL certificates were supposed to be a thing once back in the 90's--everyone would have one, it would identify you to your bank uniquely, and everyone would be secure. I'm pretty sure the protocol still allows for it, but I think I only saw one website use/require it, and not sure it was this century.
Maybe people are actually searching for the site, and not the thing that named it?
> How do I boycott a tiny company I've never heard of and whose products I would never buy?

This is one reason companies are supposed to go public: you could just short their stock, and ask everyone else to do the same.
"Google's algorithm has gotten so big and so complicated over the years". Agreed! Just like the US tax code...
If it has to be short, I like http://goo.gl/e#q=stack+overflow
Use of sexual words, "raped", "fucked","buggered" in a non sexual context is incredibly common.
Thanks, that's helpful.

In general the entire system seems rather... antique. It doesn't give me a happy, fuzzy feeling inside. The reason is that I'm not a Unix geek, not in the ways this system wants me to be.

Oh, sure, I know the tools; I've written hundreds of bash scripts, I've done my share of C/POSIX programming, I know my way around Make and GCC and so on. But I don't want to do those things.

What's so great about Homebrew is that the recipe files are built against an API, which coincidentally is a simple programming language (Ruby). Pkgsrc seems to be based on makefiles, which is not really an API as much as a set of conventions based around Make and bash, where I need to sit down and read a manual to understand what plugs into where. The same problem exists with MacPorts, which uses Tcl; it's just so much more complicated than it needs to be.

The fact that pkgsrc and its ecosystem is is still entirely based on CVS, not just as a sync protocol but as the version control system for everything, is not inspiring, either. I'm sure it works for the people behind this project, but it simply won't lead to me submitting packages.

I'm sure I could use pkgsrc simply to install new packages, and treat it like a black box as a "user". But then one day I will need a package that's not in the tree, or I will have to fix a broken package, and I don't want to be left in a situation where I will have to do a lot of work to accomplish something trivial. In 2001 I would have used CVS and I would have hacked packages, not knowing any better. Not in 2012. :-)

That said, pkgsrc looks interesting, and I will be keeping an eye on it.
The posted link doesn't have any /. comments, try this instead:

http://apple.slashdot.org/story/13/03/01/2252215/among-serve...
Or the Facebooks ... https://www.facebook.com/the.philip.su
SpaceX could throw in kinetic bombardment to clear traffic ahead of you during jams.
Oh maybe, and maybe they search for that more often than they search for the thing it's named after, and maybe more people would find it more useful that way.

I'm really just expressing a preference :)
The power of a .gov domain authority in google's algorithms.
Book & Byte Children’s Museum in Indianapolis
It wasn't too hard to get running on Gentoo, but then again it is Gentoo...
As far as servers go, if you don't need the sophistication of OS X and its great development tools and process handling, why not just use an off-the-shelf and supported desktop (i.e., Lenovo ThinkCentre) with *BSD on it? Paying the premium for monolithic construction and an OS that is likely never going to see the height of its potential in a specified application seems a bit much.
Ruby's had something like this for awhile --a test framework called [QED](http://rubyworks.github.com/qed). Made for testing, but technically it could be used for anything.
Yes, C is 70's technology. That C++ is based off C is one of the reasons it is so bad. Problems range from compilation times to weird syntax choices to the complete lack of higher level constructs which C++ only barely makes up for.
I think it's a bit disingenuous to write that Linux uses C++. Clearly, the kernel is in C, and nothing else. There is no C++ runtime support in the kernel.

I get that there are userland applications in C++, but coreutils and all the GNU apps traditionally used in Linux distros are in C. And if you're counting userland apps, then you might as well say that Python and even JavaScript are the language of Linux, particularly since their use is growing more and more in most distros. Clearly, no one would make such a claim, so why for C++.
I would speculate (but don't know) that concentration of the heat energy to power a more conventional steam generation plant would be more efficient, at least beyond a certain scale. The best photovoltaic panels are about 20% efficient under optimal conditions.
Super bowl
The super bowl is an American football game that begins in the late summer of the previous calendar year. It uses Roman numerals to identify each game. The contest is held in an American city that is chosen three to four times before.
In contrast, I am energized by going into the office and working side by side with my peers to solve hard problems.

I dislike programming by myself, it is dull, boring, and much more error prone than when I have someone to bounce ideas off of. (Rubber Ducking only goes so far!)

Really every time this topic is brought up the overall consensus seems to be "it varies for different people." Some people seem to really benefit from working at home, some benefit from working in an office.

The real thing that gets to me is those who, for whatever reason, do not seem to understand that different people have different needs!
Some random anecdotes:

I went to Pomona College, which was a very different place than the one described in the Crimson article. While I'm sure cheating did take place, I was never witness to it, nor was there any cultural expectation that it occurred. Students tended to view cheating as just screwing yourself over in the long run (paying that much money to avoid get an education is a waste of time).

Harvey Mudd College, which was right next door, had an even more aggressive stance on cheating and honorable behavior -- one which was woven into the way pretty much everything was structured over there. Students were endowed with a huge helping of trust and were expected to act responsibly (and the actual student culture seemed to actually reflect this).

Both institutions provide excellent educations. However, PC and HMC are both small and neither of them have graduate students or research faculty. The faculty that are there are very accomplished in their fields, but their focus is on teaching.

I've also been the equivalent of an RA at MIT, where things are obviously a bit different. I don't think they're as bad as at Harvard, but it's clear that for many faculty the priority is not on teaching. Combined with the large size (~200 students) of many intro classes and this can create an environment where students do not feel that their success or failure is either cared about or monitored, which I'm sure makes it easier to cheat. However, MIT's technical focus may help to alleviate this problem since all of your later classes will depend on the stuff you're supposed to be learning now, so you'll be screwed later on even if you cheat. Sadly, I don't have a ton of data here -- all I can say is that out of the population of 40 on my hall there wasn't a culture of cheating. Getting bad grades was a shocking right of passage for many first-years.

Finally, my mother taught at a large research institution for many years. There cheating in the form of copying papers was rampant and the university seemed loathe to actually punish students caught in the act. My mother eventually gave up trying. These problems were worst in the large intro classes -- once things got down to smaller (<30 students) seminars and classes, cheating became both extremely easy to identify and rare.
So what happens when Heroku says "Ok, fine, we can't give you the service you want, please download any data you want to keep and we'll re-allocate those resources to our other customers in 60 or 90 days." ?

This has taken on the patina of a really huge fight between operations and engineering with nobody to step in and say "Hey, we both want to make progress here, let see what we can do." there is no common point of contact here sadly.

What is the end goal? One of these companies being out of business? What? Its pretty clear that Heroku doesn't have any ideas on how to implement routing the way Rap Genius believed it worked, they even said as much. So what is the next step?
MS put in an effort to improve the system level with their Singularity project (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singularity_%28operating_system...).

I personally love C/C++, write my guile scripts in vim, and see no reason to replace it.
No I don't think that is how it works. Programmers enhance the craft by applying technologies (like C++) and finding their weak spots and correcting those with new tools.

Enhancing your own craft has a ceiling (that of the technology), advancing technology has none.
What type of encryption does Evernote use?
It's hard to know which is going to give you better results ahead of time. That's why I tend to use google. I discovered this whole thing by accident.
Have a Plan
> There is evidence that actual rapists very often believe that most men either commit rape or want to commit rape: that they aren't all that different than the other guys they know (except that they had the guts to actually do it and/or that they got caught).

Most clinically-depressed people think everyone will feel just as negatively in response to anything they say/do as they themselves do. They are incorrect about this. The world is not this way; their perception is distorted.

For that matter, most zoophiles think everyone has secret thoughts about how sexy animals are; same for pedophiles with children. They are, obviously, incorrect about this. The world is not this way; their perceptions are distorted.

Mental illness can warp your view of the world, and of what is "predictable behavior" in other people. What evidence is there that rapists are rationally observing a rape-normalizing society and concluding that rape is okay, vs. that rapists are observing any society through a distorted lens and concluding that that society is okay with rape?

Which is to say, more practically: what evidence is there that, in a perfectly "cleaned up" society where nobody ever makes a rape joke, there would be any less rape, or a single less rapist who thought society approved of rape?

If people already are one way [e.g. "making rape jokes"], you should find a factual, consequentialist reason that making them some other way ["not making rape jokes"] would improve society, before going through all the effort to convince everyone to change their collective minds. Without the ends, why the means?
NASA fixing computer glitch on Mars Curiosity rover
Glad to know someone who works for the government at least knows where to get their information.
He might be a nobel prize physicist, but that article is strongly on the fringe side. You can't dismiss electric cars because the power plants produce CO2 and then go on to claim hydrogen is a "clean" technology because burning it does not produce carbon-dioxide.
I agree that the silent acceptance (and normalization) of prison rape is horrific. There is no excuse for it (except "out of sight, out of mind", which of course is no excuse at all).

But, as I keep saying here, the biggest impact of rape in our society is not its effect on the victims, terrible as those effects are. The much broader impact is the culture of fear and blame that women (and largely only women) have to live with every day of their lives. Our society demands that women follow strict (and often contradictory) guidelines for avoiding rape, and then we vocally make excuses for their rapists whenever someone assaults a woman and she didn't follow every single one of them to the letter. (For example, either "Why did you make him angry by rudely brushing off his advances?" or "Why did you lead him on by responding politely to his advances?", depending on the circumstances.)

Prison rape is terrible and must be stopped, but the one and only thing that prevents it from being as harmful overall is that its effects don't really bleed over to warp society as a whole. The results of men raping women affect essentially all women, essentially all the time.
Then you can legally virtualize osx.
Correct. However, that is both the generally fair assumption when dealing with use cases that actually care about UUIDs, and is the fair thing to compare Snowflake against, as Snowflake is pretty much a 64-bit limited-entropy implementation of the general concept of a v1 UUID.
Any chance for the Xserve line returning?

Now I use HP DL360s, but I used to love the Xserve !U servers
This would then change the calculation. Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil-fuel_power_station) says that the efficiency for a coal powered generator is only 33%, as opposed to 56-60% of a combined cycle gas powered generator.
Based on the above data, if one assumes only hydro carbons are used, for power production, that would give 37% natural gas and 63% coal. Then, the average efficiency is 33.63+60.37= 43%. So, the over all efficiency would be 1.14*43/60=.817 km/MJ, which now doesn't look that impressive.
Also, I am not sure if the calculation accounts for transportation loss involved in getting the coal and oil to the power plant.
This article mystifies me. He is whizzing rough estimations off the top of his head, so that might explain, but…

He omits the dramatic difference in internal combustion efficiency vs. electrical motors, identifies that electric doesn't mean zero emission because of generation sources, but then declares hydrogen to be the hope of zero emission.

Your summary also misses that it is the density of the energy storage that is about a factor of 40, not the system as a whole.
Homework is how one prepares for tests. Long form take home assignments should be designed with collaboration in mind.

Students explaining their understanding of a topic to each other is one of the most powerful ways for them to learn. I am fond of the saying that one doesn't truly understand a topic until one has explained it to another.

In class tests should be long, brutal, and test student's ability to come to their own conclusions based on concepts that were covered throughout the class.
I'm actually glad it's been edited. There's an RFC for this, people!!
>“Son, in my time I could multiply two three-digit numbers in my head.” “Dad, you talk funny.”

"We" probably doesn't cover a huge segment of the population. I know in my case, the "RAM" I have disposable for that sort of thing is around 3 numbers, not more.
Technically, we do this: SSL client certificates. Nobody uses them, though.

http://pilif.github.com/2008/05/why-is-nobody-using-ssl-clie...
It's more subtle than "worse." Apparently CTE optimization fence is part of SQL standard, and it can be useful to hand-optimize queries.

But you are right, when using CTEs for readability it tends to hurt more than help.

Interesting thread about being able to control this:
http://www.postgresql.org/message-id/201209191305.44674.db@k...
Taking money off the table does tend to indicate a lack of confidence in the future of the company.
It isn't just C++ that could do with replacing.

I want the speed of C.

I want the soft realtime characteristics, practical functional, highly granular GC, lightweight message passing concurrency, hot code reloading and easy parallelism traits of Erlang.

I want the fault tolerance and network distribution tools of OTP.

I want to have access to hard realtime performance with some additional work.

I want type inference, and a static type system which stays out of your way but can approach the if-it-compiles-it's-probably-bugless ideal, yet without weighing you down where you don't need it. (When it comes to dynamic vs static typing, I'd like a slider that I can move at will.)

I want immutability to be the default.

I want pattern matching and code-is-data macros.

I want recognition that the best part of object orientation is interfaces rather than inheritance, but with a way to provide default implementations.

I want a syntax that's very readable (with a gofmt-style standard) and easy to refactor without resorting to a heavyweight IDE. Parenthetically, I am not opposed to parentheses. Its LoC counts should compete with the most expressive languages without sacrificing much readability -- if that means some readability for newbies is sacrificed, so be it, but it should read easily once you've progressed beyond the neophyte stage.

Whenever we get those promised 1000 cores on a single chip, I want this language to scale beautifully onto that kind of CPU.

If I can't write a hard realtime aircraft flight control system, a competitive 3D graphics engine, a complex web app, a word processor, a highly parallel distributed numeric solver, a fault tolerant telecom switch, a variety of throwaway sysadmin and text processing scripts and a selection of games across multiple platforms without feeling like this language was the most appropriate choice for all of these tasks, then it doesn't do everything I want.

I haven't done much with Ada or Eiffel, or enough with Lisp or Haskell, so this list is probably too short on that basis alone.

And once I have all of those things, I'll have another list.
Yup. I'm definitely included in this bunch. My graphics card (Nvidia Optimus) doesn't work on Linux, so I'd much rather dual boot and game on Windows.
No. It didn't. The first editors were not modal.

And no, universally agreed upon better things did not evolve afterwards. I have no idea what the numbers are, but Vim is immensely popular amongst developers and I would highly suspect more popular amongst experienced developers than any editor whose name isn't emacs.

You are deluding yourself if you think that the modern world uses modal editors because their ancestors had keyboards that were too cramped.
That is not the main problem, that is you making a change with huge implications.

The big problem with callbacks is that they hold dynamic state and behaviour but, unlike other dynamic (and many static) objects in most languages, do not offer any interfaces to manipulate and reason about them. That's what higher level abstractions like promises provide.
IMHO the event model / callback spaghetti / what-have-you is tricky precisely because it operates at a high level of abstraction.

Memory management, by comparison, is conceptually simpler because... well... the concept is simple. Allocating and de-allocating resources, while tricky at scale, is something for which everyone (including non-programmers) probably have existing mental models for.

Event driven programming, on the other hand, is a slippery high level concept. There are relatively few analogues for it in the "real world", and therefore requires additional mental gymnastics to internalize and understand.

Essentially, we need to 1) follow the execution pattern of event driven code (annoying), while at the same time 2) "visualizing" or conceptualizing a fairly un-natural manner of abstraction.
Doesn't that energy ultimately come from tidal forces in the Earth's interior that wouldn't exist if there weren't a Sun to orbit?