skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You (and the author) make a very good point here, and I wasn't disputing that point directly. The issue I was disputing is a generalization made by the author and the people who are insisting on their own 'only way to create software' ideologies. Arguing about software as a whole is flawed, and discussions like this must always be put into context and evidence for or against must be very specific about the exact context.

This ties into a similar issue in management academics in which, for decades, people tried to prove a 'best way to manage a company'. Management academics have now moved on from this and all management recommendations are always very rooted in as deep a specific as possible. Software best practices need to make the same transition now.

Simply saying 'TDD is best' is the same as saying 'performance linked compensation is best'. Awhile back, a number of idealists very strongly touted the performance linked compensation angle in the same way that a number of software idealists are touting TDD. There is nothing wrong with either idea when used pragmatically and in the correct situations, but the important part for the future and for software as a whole is to discovery the situations in which TDD shines, and the situations it doesn't. Only by breaking it down as specific as possible can we get any real value from TDD recommendations.

So, if you cannot prove that it's right or better, why do you say that it is? I think this is the point of the article.

What I'm trying to get at is that if we can drill down to the specifics we may be able to actually prove things in very specific industries/team structures. We must move away from debating 'software development' as a whole before we can arrive at anything useful though.
Absolutely. As of last year, they have this thing in the game called Squeal of Fortune. You earn or buy "spins" and you use them to win coins, items or experience. It's basically gambling, but instead of winning real money, you win virtual money. Not only does it destroy any integrity the game had left, it aims to get kids addicted to gambling.
The article title gives the puppy image credit but I think the additional text had as much if not more of an impact on the conversion lift than the image.

"Start your 30 days free trial" text

vs

"*Sign up now* 30 days free rial. Pick a plan & sign up in 60 seconds. Upgrade, downgrade, cancel at any time." with a puppy image.

The second version is so much better because it tells the viewer what to expect... the 60 second signup, flexibility in changing plans, no long-term commitments. The dog image does help since he is looking at the call-to-action, which also draws the viewer's eyes there too.

It is a great post and just goes to show how testing can really help boost conversion. It's often a lot cheaper to grow your business by improving conversion rates than by increasing traffic.
or 'vagrant halt'
There's a lot I am not clear on here. What if Brendan didn't donate any money? What if Mozilla employees net donated against Prop 8? What if you discovered Brendan's donation after working with him for awhile? What if Brendan changed views while you worked there? What if Brendan (work with me) was hired after you worked there?

What if you never knew of Brendan's views during your entire tenure at Mozilla? This is a situation I believe you have already experienced because it is so likely.
Light Table working on OS X 10.6.8
Will Google Hang Up on Voice?
Not just Amiga, .mod music crossed over into the PC community as well quite robustly, once Sound Blaster cards with digital output entered the market around 1991. I never had an Amiga but I've still got a couple hundred .mods from the BBS and demo scene days, that are still in regular rotation in Winamp. My eternal favorite, Elysium by Jester: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTtjvbAvsys

They do make great coding music. Not coincidentally, .mods resemble code, being in a way code themselves, with tightly structured and repetitive patterns but also with their own creativity flowing over the top.
But Go's intended niche appears to be for user-facing server-side programs, and in that environment if you ever run a naive exponential-time regex against user-supplied input you're setting yourself up for a potential DOS attack.

Yes, but for larger recognizers, one would probably use something like Ragel anyway. A DSL that provides intersection, union, difference, concatenation, composition, etc. makes it far easier to construct elaborate automata from smaller expression than the 'compile a big regex string' approach.
Logica is indeed shitty (they mostly employ second rate people in my experience; at least in Sweden), but in my mind that only makes it more likely that Gottfrid/anakata was able to hack into their systems.
That was there. PyPy was there at least. LuaJIT too I think.
All go yanked out. The benchmarks are bogus anyway unless what you plan on working on n-body or fasta search or a short other list of things they run.
After Tinkercad shutting down, I would be wary of tying my workflow (or investing my time in learning) into software I didn't own. Not trying to spread FUD or anything, but it seems risky.
I assume the downvote means "fuck you now you really spoiled it". Thanks google employee ;)

If not, please comment what's wrong, then I might be able to post better comments in the future.
Isn't comparing against a scripting language apples and oranges? Compiled vs interpreted one would assume to always look like this. Although the modern sophisticated JITs have definitely narrowed the playing field.
I dunno about you but I don't use Go where I could use javascript. And also, I use multicore machines only.

So I prefer this URL:
http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/benchmark.php?t...

:P
Design: Websites and Cars
Wow, fantastic. Cool story too. So, how often was your developer in Canada at the movies when you called? Haha
I wouldn't consider SWIG the foundation of multi-language support; it seems more like a legacy wart that you don't want to port to a new OS.

Especially with C++. AFAIK it's an ad hoc C++ parser written in Perl! They can do better by ditching the legacy.
So basically Wunderlist Pro is a reboot of Wunderkit, only this time not based on Titanium like WK was and which turned out a nightmare to build a productivity app on, but based on the architecture of your reworked Wunderlist app?
>>Why would you not do that...<<

"Because I want to do fewer chores not more!"

>>a completely wrong impression<<

"These are not the only compilers and interpreters.
These are not the only programs that could be written.
These are not the only tasks that could be solved.
These are just 10 tiny examples."
Know your tools, Love your tools
I like Haiku OS very much :)... Last year, I tried using it as my primary OS for a couple of weeks but it didn't work very well. It's not productive enough (for me) yet.

But I will certainly try it again in the near future because I like very much switching my OS every now and then. And I definitely recommend it for any advanced user to try it out. =)
Totally agree. People are probably saying a lot of stuff in daily conversation that, if transcribed, could get them fired.

Thanks to social media, these conversations stop happening between two people and include me on the other side of the globe, too. I like that. I want to hear people's real opinions, get a sense of their real personality, from the internet.

Firing someone over their tweets sends a powerful message to everyone to filter what you tweet.
It's absolutely bizarre that the developers have adopted the Linux idea of package management, including shared library dependency hell that requires maintaining the dependency graph in lockstep.

You only need a traditional UNIX package manager if you have traditional UNIX packages -- splatting files all over the file system, providing unstable ABI/API, etc.

The OS is basically ready to release now, and instead of focusing on polish, they're bringing over one of the worst features of Linux. You'd think they'd at least borrow from the modern app store idea of "packages".

They're actually implementing package management as a paid project. I'm seriously annoyed that my donation to Haiku is being spent on that, rather than on things that would actually matter to existing desktop users coming from Mac OS X. It seems that Haiku has floundered, largely due to the take-over of Linux-centric developers after the original project leader (Michael Phipps) left in 2009. Michael kept the project very focused on BeOS R1, and now it's all over the map and pulling in the very ideas from Linux that BeOS and MacOS were built in opposition to.
I like your app. Big fan of the 'timed' time-wasters! Great for short breaks. Thanks for introducing me to it!
To some of the sub-comments to this:

Not at all (AT ALL) defending Prop 8 here, but where do you draw the line in cutting these people out of your life? Take the issue of abortion, which is easier to see that there are no easy answers. You either believe that abortion is MURDER or stopping abortion curtails PERSONAL LIBERTY for all women. Either way, people are defending a highly moral position and you can argue against their conclusions but you should at least try to respect their personal opinion, especially if they afford you that same respect.

I look at the new Lincoln movie and that makes a lot of these points for me. Everyone is entitled to shun bigots and work only with people they agree with, but there is an opportunity to improve things for everyone by sitting down at the same table with people we disagree with rather than vilifying their existence.
Because there was a big spitting match a couple of years ago and it seems the maintainer picked its favorite languages and features and chose to represent (what seems like on purpose) others in a bad light.
The Basics Of Emotional Design
I'm not sure where you're located, but you may want to try Angie's List. I know they have a relationship with quality cleaning companies in many areas: http://www.angieslist.com/cleaning/. Thanks for reading!
Holy crap, Supercell is now valued at $770M, doing $2.4M a day
I wonder if I may suggest the book:

_Normal Accidents_ by Charles Perrow

Please, please read this book RE: complex, tightly coupled systems.
April 2013: Learn how to create and sell your own products
I have 3 or 4 people I would consider very close friends meaning I can openly talk to and depend on them for nearly everything. At least one would qualify as a best friend, effectively family.

How I talk to them depends on their distance. Closer means more time face to face over lunch, dinner or by getting together, farther means more chat via IM.

Looking at that thread you linked, I'd suggest expanding one's horizons a bit. I have good long-term friendships and associations born from an interest in technology, martial arts, gaming and more.
More often than we'd like! All jokes aside, he's been great and is very reliable for us.
Just as a heads up, there were a non-zero number of people who "supported" Prop 8 for a very different reason. This group of people reasoned that the only way to get equal protection under the law for gay and straight people was to have this law pass, have it be contested, and have the Supreme Court toss it out.

Here is the thing, you can't go to the Supreme Court with some random request to rule on a principle they need to do that in the context of an argument. But the Supreme court's decision can be narrow or broad. And the argument limits how broadly it can be applied.

If you look at another decision, Roe vs Wade, the controversial abortion decision. That was based on a right to privacy between you and your doctor. Because it was based on the right to privacy, and not some definition of when life begins or doesn't begin, or when a person is or isn't a person, it has been very durable at being applied against a number of other laws that would seek to overturn it. even laws that would ban the 'day after' pill.

So to be a good decision, and one that will put this issue to rest for a while, the contested law needs to be written in a way that allows for a broad, structural, decision. One where the Supreme court can say on principle the constitution gives equal protection under the law and any attempt to deny those protections or rights based on sexual orientation is invalid.

Prop 8 was reasonably well written as a foil against which this argument could be made. (and was made and has so far succeeded as far as the Circuit court is concerned).

My point is that because you saw Brendan's name on a list of names that gave money in support of the proposition, you don't know anything about the context of that donation. And by immediately dismissing the company based on this imperfect understanding you close off opportunities that may be much better than you know. And even if Brendan is morally opposed to same sex marriage, by choosing not to work at the company (which doesn't take the same position) your actions put you at risk of committing the same sins that a hiring manager might make of choosing not to hire someone because of a difference of opinion.

Raganwald's piece was a well written plea to see past the individuals of an organization when those people are not speaking for the organization. Understand that in any group of people there will be some with whom you disagree. But if the mission of the group is true, perhaps your contribution can help it to succeed, and in so doing you may also be able to change the opinions a few of your co-workers to something less disagreeable.
> The same thing in Backbone would have likely taken a lot more time and a lot more code.

I think that's an unfounded (not to mention unfair) statement, unless you've actually attempted to do so and can provide some objective data points. Otherwise, it's nothing but opinion.

Aside from that, the app does look interesting; I'll have to check it out later.
natural causes?
html version of the document in english via google translate:

http://trotsky.github.io/AM_52124/
Actually, this is something I've been curious about for awhile: I know "modern IE" comes with developer tools that allow you to switch IE versions, and essentially look at the site at hand as if you were using IE8 or IE7, all the way down to IE6. From my understanding, a website can manually trigger this switch by using a special <meta> tag. Can't these legacy systems that only work in IE6 simply use the appropriate <meta> tag and have things work? What are the differences between using straight up IE6 and the IE6 rendering engine in IE8?
As someone who works in security, I can tell you that your trust in these is misplaced. Archaic proprietary systems, once examined, are far worse in terms of security, not better. It isn't difficult to learn z/OS if that is your goal.
Would love to hear more about the first part of the trip: how they got to $15k per month. I'm sure I'm not the only one.
Bloomberg Terminals Get Estimized
It depends, if you have the opportunity to build a DFA once, why not do it? It's only a one-time cost.

I think the more serious problem is that what most people consider to be a 'regular expression' does not express a regular language, and hence cannot be expressed as a finite state automaton.
This is strange, because everyone has a different interpretation of what civil liberties are.

There are few any large set of people actually agree on

gun control, prayer in schools/government, searches by the government/TSA/whatever

There is a lot of subjective disagreement over exactly what liberties exist, and their limits.

As the parent said, if you really think you have an objectively correct view of what civil liberties are, and other folks are just wrong, ....
> So far, the researchers have used this tech to create a button-sized microbattery, and you can see in the graph below how well their battery compares to a conventional Sony CR1620 button cell.

That sounds like a battery to me. The new design has actually been built and tested. The quote you pulled out refers to scaling it up to things like lasers and F1 cars. A button-sized battery sounds fine for a lot of electronics today. Just not an F1 car.
> Currently the lottery has a 25% cut of the total amount in the lottery. This is used to pay for development, server costs and maintainence. Eventually, my goal is to decrease the fee to as small as possible to allow for the largest winning. This will take place when the development stops (meaning there are no features to be added) and/or the lotteries take place more often.

I find this to be backwards, you are effectively punishing your early adopters. It seems to make much more sense to make the cut lower (or zero) now, and increase it later when you have more users.
I'm curious how "ended up on SNL" is a reward.
Roughly 25% of my generation has been killed by abortion, yet I still manage to work with many ardent pro-choice people. You have to develop thick skin.

I blame the meme-space that we live in for ideas that I find abhorrent, not the individuals that believe them.
Why differentiate? Scams are apparently more profitable, or else these bitcoin lotteries would be running legit instead.
I suspect this as well - the part where they talk about "even if half of the remaining nodes disappeared" makes me think that a Tahoe (or tahoe style) technology is behind this.

Interestingly, the Tahoe people have their own product to offer:

https://leastauthority.com/

... although I have no idea what state of production that is in ...
Pretty much this, that's why most TV ads have animals and many huge corporations base their entire brand around them.

What's next someone telling us they increased conversions because they used photo's of smiling people?

/debbiedowner
What if we're in a simulation built by crappy programmers in an extremely advanced society?

Even advanced societies will have crappy programmers.
Work, Life, and Balance
Good read. I recently became a father and suddenly the need for hiring baby sitters,nannies, house cleaners is critical and like the blog says "it is not rocket science but not as easy as ordering book on amazon", I totally concur. My wife and I have been struggling to find "good" and "reliable" cleaners, or babysitter even though we have tried craigslist, care.come (for nannies) etc.

Basic household needs have many pain points that are asking for innovation. Some of my pain points specially as a family with a kid :

- how to hire good/reliable house cleaners

- how to hire good/reliable nannies/baby-sitters (part/fulltime)

- I hate going to the groceries for items that are pretty much recurring. Eg.: milk,eggs,fruits etc. are mandatory and every time we run out, a trip to the store is needed.

- Food and cooking. ??
And people think I am stubborn for still using Windows XP...
There won't be hundreds of copies. A device may back up data to hundreds of other devices in total, though.

Space Monkey data will be resilient to considerably more than 3 nodes failing.
You're making unsupported assumptions about zacharyvoase's intentions.

And I don't think supporting or protesting Prop-8 is something purely of the personal sphere; it's a moral issue, and morality is and should be an important part of someone's professional life. It was certainly part of my decision to join my company.
I agree that I wouldn't want to work with someone who supports prop 8, however there's a world of difference between that and having a different opinion on DRM.
Let's not pretend there is a different incentive to submit a URL that has not changed in the last 365 days other than karma points.

Though I certainly appreciate being reminded of excellent projects, this submission feels way too automatic.
6000+ Sold in Less Than 12 Hours: StackSocial Name Your Own Price Mac Bundle
Would you want to join a live-in accelerator? - The Startup Tower
One thing that's not entirely clear from the article is that probabilistic programming is Bayesian modeling and inference. Probabilistic programming isn't a new machine learning technique it's a more flexible way to do Bayesian statistics.

The new term "probabilistic programming" stems from the recognition that stochastic programs can be automatically interpreted as defining a joint probability model and Bayesian inference on this model equates to sampling execution traces that are consistent with the observed data. This is an extremely powerful idea. It enables one to quickly build and compose both the standard Bayesian models you'd find in textbooks, and innovate easily to build new models tailored to particular application domains, often by composing more standard models with more exotic ones. Probabilistic programming provides a natural way to specify these complex models and has the potential to hide the computational difficulties that plague applied Bayesian modeling.

Making all this practical is the real challenge. Performant sampling of execution traces for a broad class of models is an unsolved problem, which is part of the motivation for DARPA's new project.

For those interested in this area, we're working on one effort alone these lines at Sense: https://www.senseplatform.com.
Not only that, but "the author" has for many years provided the source code for the scripts to make the measurements -- so anyone who actually wants to can easily start a new benchmarks game.

Go do!

http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/play.php#languagex
It's not gambling that is at the heart of Squeal of Fortune; it's micro-transactions. Runescape has been moving in that direction for a long time to squeeze whatever is left of the remaining player base.
1. That sounds like a good idea. "Should" and "like" are interesting terms to consider.

2. Restoring backups should not take over two months. That's just not the way it should be.

3. I was talking about using up all of your allocated 1TB, not the size of individual files.

4. I suck at math and can't wrap my head around erasure codes. But think of hundreds of nodes in recovery mode: peak i/o load, bandwidth pegging, resulting in poor performance, higher heat, more likely URE failure. Ever use a cloud server where the neighbors are using too much i/o? That's what will happen to you when your device is pegged by serving file chunks to neighbors. Even with really good load-balancing you have to eventually choose between lower availability or swamping a node.

5. The article is based on UREs not increasing with the size of disks, leading naturally to more errors sooner. As capacity increases and URE stays stagnant, the problem gets worse. The projection will change if UREs get less likely, but there's no sign that will happen in the near future.
The Wii and the particular games like Wii Sports, the hottest things during this generation of consoles, became so successful first and foremost due to the UI innovations they brought to the table.
Speaking as a massive troll:
If they actually believed it, it wouldn't be trolling by definition.
If it's an inflammatory/racist/whatever opinion, and they actually believe it, it just turns out they are an asshole, not a troll.
I find that type of stuff fascinating. I wonder what they think of our movie pricing (cheaper during the day)?
No. Although being a distributed network with similar reliability and availability and performance requirements, there are some similar technologies/approaches at play.
I am not sure I follow you on this one. It isn't like the type of technology used in drones can't be used in stationary cameras. A drone is simply a flying version making it ideal for short term deployments like surveillance on an annual sporting even like the Boston Marathon.
Does this use http://ceph.com/ ? Seems to take a similar approach.
Too much buzz? The site's down for me...
Why would anyone follow their coworkers? I follow people whose opinions I want, and I 'friend' my friends - a few coworkers included, but not 95% of people that I meet in the office daily.
I fondly remember The Great Language Shootout by Doug Bagley; I could understand the majority of the problems, there were a lot of languages represented. Good times.