skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
How Microsoft quietly built the city of the future
This saddens me and I hope you are wrong. For 40 years DC was the center of my life. I was born there and raised in the suburbs (went away a couple of times for school). I worked in the defense industry a bit between degrees. I taught college there for a decade. I left the area ten years ago, and I found the political climate there nauseating when I left.

While I acknowledge that the population at large carries a spectrum of pathological traits, and perhaps DC tends to attract and keep those with certain types of pathologies, I still like to think that most people are trying to do the "right thing" but in situations that are enormously complex.

Back to my thought experiment: You are Obama. You truly believe that torture is horrible and wrong. Yet when you are briefed on our operations you learn that information obtained as allowed us to derail a few large scale terrorist attacks. Do you close it down? If you do and a bomb goes off at the World Series killing thousands, how would you feel?

Again, complex.
You've hit a pet peeve of mine so sorry about the tirade. People use the term "front run" incorrectly and it is important to point this out. Front running is a very specific activity and is illegal. If there is evidence of front running people need to be prosecuted.

That said, I've worked on several systems and never seen any of them that would allow a faster market participant to see your order flow without your permission. This is what front running is.

People who don't understand the term seem to think seeing market data before other participants is front running it's not. There have always been and will always be some traders that see (and can react to) market data faster than everyone else. In the era of electronic trading this information latency cost is going down, not going up.
>I think the front page copy could be a bit clearer, as I'm hazy on what exactly it does.

Yeah... it's all greek to me...
We will never update your private repos.
what we do is we add a robot account that listens to your commits. We never commit anything yourselves.
I will add a panic button to the interface so that every time you want, you will be able to opt out and all your code is deleted from my code analysis server.
Here's my email and skyp: jaime@qamine.com jaime.fjorge Feel free to contact me regarding that.
I know where this article is coming from, but I guess I've just been lucky to work with a lot of great PMs that:

1) Are a firewall between upper management and the development team.

2) Organize the priorities of the team and help the developers to get the most done in the limited amount of time that they have.

3) Follow up on business requirements and the thousands of other details that need to be figured out so that the client doesn't say, "what the hell is this?" on delivery day even though it is precisely what they asked for (but not what they wanted).

4) Praise the team for the great work that they've been doing and make their successes known to management.

I've worked with as many (or more) crap developers as I have PMs, so I'm always wary of articles like this. It's way too easy to talk about how management/sales/PMs/etc don't add any value to the process (which is patently false) while lionizing the work of the developer as if they are all dedicated, hardworking, and never, ever, make mistakes.

This "us vs. them" mentality that exists is ridiculous. We are all trying to accomplish something. Some are better than others at it. But don't shit on someone else's job, complain about how you want to be left alone, and then wonder why your career isn't going anywhere.
Also consider subscribing to:

TheRoyalInstitution (science stuff, professionally done)

periodicvideos (excellent channel, chemistry stuff)

numberphile (math)

minutephysics (physics)

sixtysymbols (physics/math stuff)

DeepSkyVideos (space stuff, not updated often)

psyfile (psychology, not updated often)

engineerguyvideo (was really good, now rarely updates)

computerphile (brand new channel, no content yet, from same guys as the other *phile channels)

and for fun: JoergSprave (the slingshot guy, but his creations are quite cool if you like physics)
I don't see the gaming industry changing anytime soon.

Just like actors and actresses go to Hollywood to be in show business. Many programmers enter the gaming industry so they can work on games.

While I love video games, I can't see myself in the gaming industry.
I gave up on reading newspapers and watching TV news over a decade ago and I can't point to a single way that it's ever harmed me. My basic theory is as follows:

- I miss out on the fearmongering

- I save a tremendous amount of time

- If anything important IS happening, everyone will be talking about it, so I'll hear about it

- Even if I do miss hearing about an important issue, what does it matter? What can I actually do to prevent e.g. the fiscal cliff, or the failure of Lehman Brothers, or etc?

- When it comes time to vote, I talk with my friends who actually care about news / politics and, if use their information (plus a bit of research if needed) to decide my vote

- I read Hacker news or other sites like it because the news that geeks want to know about is far more likely to be interesting / relevant.

Aside from some occasional mild embarrassment when someone asks me an opinion on something I'm not aware of -- which can usually be deflected simply by saying something innocuous and then turning the conversation back to them -- this has worked excellently for me.
The Constitution details the authorities and powers that the government has. The government does not assume total power when it is dealing with non-citizens or operating overseas. The Supreme Court has ruled clearly on this in the past.
Researchers produce working bioengineered kidney
Was fun but the NSFW part is ... too much
Viagra super active help when it need
I don't see why the mouse should be tied to the keyboard. They're used for different purposes. We use mice to point stuff in a specific place on the screen. It would be much faster to do that by just putting your finger on the screen (and more intuitive, since we already use our fingers like that). I think the time it takes for my hand to move from the keyboard to the mouse is about equal than it would take to move it to the screen.
awesome idea! there's even an easter egg hidden in the code: open the javascript console after the page was loaded _for the first time_ :)
I haven't started a blog yet, but something that is making me to create one this summer is simple:

Things that I can't find on Google.

Content on the web is spread across so many terrible websites with a lot of poor descriptions, and a lot of the time you can't even find the answer you're looking for. I want to start answering those questions.
I live in Ireland so while we have all of the above we also have a whole heap of 'economy' bad news. In fact this story has been running for about 5 years now. I don't listen to the news during the morning commute anymore as it kind sets you up in a bad mood for the day. I listen on the way home when I'm in a good mood because I'm going to see the kids etc so I still know what happened, but i'm not being dragged down by it.
One possibility is to use Felleisen's notion of expressiveness: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.51.4.... The gist is that Turing completeness concerns what you can do with whole programs, but expressiveness concerns what you can do in smaller scopes.
The Constitution does not purport to give rights to anybody. It declares that certain things are rights and prohibits the US government from violating them.
Certainly a risk; in my personal case I read news magazines to see what I missed with the assumption that anything important would eventually be covered there. There were a variety of things that I was glad to be hearing about, but which I don't think hearing about sooner would have made me more informed.

I could be wrong, certainly I missed Paris Hilton's sex tape entirely.

But more seriously, there are very specific topics which I will miss by not watching the news if I have no other source of information -- particularly political action items and dangerous weather on the horizon. But both of those topics I am certain to hear about on facebook. Might vary by friend circle though, I have friends who work at NOAA as well as obama's campaign.
"We had a mini-computer and it was anything but friendly."

Non computer people always talk about the IO as being "the computer" so I found it odd he went on about the IO devices and not the architecture despite being a computer guy. Probably intentionally writing to his audience of the general public about being "us" rather than writing to "us" about being "us".

The article goes on about learning assembly on the PDP-8e... I did some stuff on 8's and its important to note that its not like learning intel or motorola or PIC or BAS (from a mainframe) ... its a weird cross between being really RISC and kinda CISC. Only "about" 6 instructions makes it kinda a turing tarpit but add a layer of dozens of IOT I/O instructions and some weird features like a stretch of memory that autoincremented when you accessed it, and its really a pretty nice platform to be educated in assembly. Its useless as training of course, but pretty good as an education. DEC also had awesome manuals, at least for the time. "Programmers handbook for the -8E". I believe I still have a yellowing copy at home as a memento.

You can tell he's writing to "the general public" instead of us another way because to "us" the weirdest part about assembly on the -8 was it was octal, from the days before hex took everything over. The heathkit H8 was a 8080 machine (from memory?) you programmed traditionally in octal, but you could yank the S100 bus 8080 out and replace it with a Z80 that was almost binary compatible but that was entering the era where everyone used hex, so you had a octal box you programmed in octal which you could upgrade but then had to program in hex which I never really got over. Then I switched to motorola products and got horribly spoiled. Someday someone will make a CPU architecture as perfect as the 6809 but probably not anytime soon.
Off the top of my head: it boots faster, it operates faster, it's more stable, the interface is less bad (I hesitate to write "better"), and it dials down the panicky Cancel or Allow dialogs.
There have been several pieces (from classical to classic rock) that have actually caused me to break out in tears. Not teary eyes mind you; gushing waterworks at specific resolution points. Amazingly, this is reproducible, but the severity of the effect depends on my mood. After reading this, my best guess is that this is tied to an especially intense release of dopamine. My maternal grandfather shared this peculiarity and both of us have had awkward moments where we try to explain that we are quite OK -- "it was just the music" (an explanation often met with puzzled expressions).
The essay is the unit - heelhook
While I enjoyed OP's article, this article is a bit more serious and detailed:

http://www.nczonline.net/blog/2012/06/12/the-care-and-feedin...
"COBOL, Fortran, C++, Ada... were the scripting languages of what exactly?"

Isn't Ada the scripting language of the U.S. Department of Defense? As far as I know, most real world Ada usage is in DoD funded projects.

C++ won the battle over Objective-C to become C's successor for many applications, so fills a similar ecological niche.

First sentence from History section of Fortran Wikipedia page:

"In late 1953, John W. Backus submitted a proposal to his superiors at IBM to develop a more practical alternative to assembly language for programming their IBM 704 mainframe computer."

So Fortran was the scripting language of the IBM 704.

COBOL's Wikipedia page indicates it was championed by a committee of all the major computer industry players of its day, making it the Java of its time. So COBOL and Java may be exceptions to this "scripting language of..." rule, and instances of the "successful language created by a committee" rule. (Common Lisp, of course, being an example of "unsuccessful languages created by a committee".)
9 Best Cloud Services, AWS, and Azure Infographics
How do recreate BMX on an iPhone?
Cached Article here: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:pfmf4-8...
apparently, the video is re-rendered on a regular basis containing the flock of mouse pointers:

We composite the music video with the latest pointers every 30 minutes orso.
For that we use Node.js & FFMPEG
Should Chess Be Required in U.S. Schools?
The difference is the backwards shift in the user interface this time around. The touch paradigm is fundamentally less powerful and efficient than KB+mouse. Conversely, a PC can do anything a mainframe can do, from a UI standpoint. The true supplanter of the PC must have parity in this regard.
Pure CSS3 breadcrumb navigation - the pixel perfect way
Is mobile health approaching its iPhone moment?
http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/business-browser/2013/apr/15/mobile-health-approaching-its-iphone-moment/
As a 30-year old childless white man who left the games industry after a short 8 months in order to get married and spend time with my spouse, I can tell you that the assessment is fairly spot on. If you weren't putting in 12 hours daily, something was wrong with you and it was 'bad for team morale'. I was also pretty horribly underpaid, as evidenced by raising my salary over 200% by leaving.

Seems to me the 'white' part is being called out unfairly considering the rest of tech isn't a whole lot different, demographically speaking.
Maybe in the US, but elsewhere the Latin American coups and Native American genocide are not, and will never be, "glossed over".
So, how far exactly is the API compatible with Openstack? That's the one thing that would be really necessary to match. Basically, can I take tools and utilities that work with Openstack/keystone and have them working without any/much work? If you're able to do this it would be a nice, simple alternative to Openstack. For anyone installing Openstack for the first time, the install is anything but simple.
There's an unsettling trend in startups today on IP protection. A lot of incubators/accelerators seem to think that having a protectable IP = innovation.

By placing more focus on patents rather than on real innovation, we are far from acting as a catalyst to promote innovation in developing countries like India. Intellectual monopolies in the developed world prohibit SMEs in developing countries from growing to the point where they are able to compete in global markets with the western IP heavyweights. It is imperative that developing countries like India and China place careful thought before committing to restrictive FTAs that are specifically designed to keep them at a lower level of technological development.
have in mind that this will only work if you have great workers, that are able and willing to help theirselves. This attitude will be destroyed by continous bad leadership and will not come back very fast.
Y u mad bro? Advising people to install an Anti virus package isn't exactly the same as selling snake oil. I don't intend to promote any product, including Comodo, but I don't think if we go by your rule we'll be able to settle with any anti-virus s/w. All of them have some known loopholes or the other.

Advising people not to install an A/V package because of <insert youtube video here> is even more dangerous than selling snake oil, dude.
Solving the Search vs. Display Advertising Quandary
If I understand correctly, your argument is:

"Parent says only members of the core Go team are known to be doing stuff with Go in Google. But that is circular reasoning on his part, because anybody who makes something in Go also becomes a member of the core Go team (or he considers him one, anyway).

I don't think it holds.

The core Go team is more or less specific and stable over the years, and the news about projects and stuff usually come from certain core members (Rob, Brad, and 1-2 more).

Very rarely do they come from other, random guys at Google (the YouTube thing being the exception IIRC).

So it's not like Google has mass adoption from tons of Google developers but he dismisses it because they all are "just from members of the Go team" in his eyes.

And, of course, thinking a language is excellent and using it in your project, by no means necessitates you becoming a member of said language's core team. We don't see much rise in the Go core team members anyway (if any).
I can put up with your smug, cowardly, evil war nerd horseshit, but not when it's from a throwaway.

Fuck you, fuck this encroaching Reddit-flavored nonsense, thank you HN, and goodbye HN.
Thank you. The engineer is me is screaming while the other quarter is happy for the attention :)
Regarding your points:
1) You're right. This is our first iteration of our UI. We need to work on that. However we should have a small tour on the first screen.. I'll check it afterwards
2) Indeed it is. Some users (very recently) told me that it looks like the repo is on by default. We need to change that. Good spot.
3) It tries to register with my code analysis server. But because it's burning up with so many requests, it times out.
Sorry about that. We will increase the capacity for situations like these.

Thanks for the feedback. I'll try to spot your registrations and make them work.
This is a great book, btw, "Code Name Ginger". The author never fell for the hype and avoided Stockholm Syndrome being embedded with the team so there's sufficient detachment.
Blogging is cathartic, and is a great way to keep track of how your thought process has progressed over time. But yes... totally agree that the process helps you to distill your thoughts and be a better critical thinker.
Looking for design advice
Hello, I'm looking for your opinion on the design and usability of this website I made for an architecture firm. Please also advice on what you think can make it better. I'm mostly looking for design related comments, but chime in if you have anything technical to say about it too. Thanks!
This comes down to supply and demand - people want to work on games, and don't see a way to get a experience and/or a paycheck out of it outside the large companies.

This isn't weird, because people aren't rational - I know plenty of people who took degrees in fields where the supply of labor outnumbers the jobs available, and thus work less than ideal hours, for less pay and more abuse than they should.

I'd love for everyone to be able to do what they love, but frankly this is frequently the result.

Also, there's an unfortunate truncation on that URL...
With the Firefox add-on GreaseMonkey [1] you can create a script to change whatever you want.

[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/greasemonkey/
As someone with 5 years experience in the industry, this article is spot on the money for everything I experienced.

It's a huge problem, both by discriminating against people unwilling or unable to put in ridiculous hours, and by driving away those talented women and men who are finally becoming experienced experts when they become so burned out they have to leave the industry.

I worked in games for 5 years. I no longer do. I had a lot of good times but I'll never work for a mainstream games company again.
Update to my Japanese study game for iOS, KanaSwirl
I've been working on my Japanese learning game for the past year. I love Anki but it's kinda vanilla and once your reviews for the day are done there's not much you can do to continue studying with it. So I made KanaSwirl which is what I wished existed when I started learning Japanese four years ago. Because I learned the kana by just writing them down a lot. Booorrring.

So please, check out KanaSwirl in the App Store:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/kanaswirl/id525332301

The changes in this version are:

★ Selectively study only Hiragana or only Katakana (suggested by Daniel)

★ Tweak accuracy coloring (suggested by Daniel (he's on fire!))

★ I love my shiny new icon. I hope you do too!

★ KanaSwirl is now 25% smaller. That's almost another photo's worth!

★ Starts up a little bit faster too :)

★ You now get Katakana as well in the start screen swirl. ナイス！

Please let me know what you think!
I pity the engineers whose managers read this list but don't go all the way to the end.
This is why he mentions that Karate Kid didn't work well, because one of the factors of a successful play-through was that your opponents health is decreasing, which is something that this AI doesn't look for.

I don't believe that was the case. From the video he mentioned it using the power kicks up all on the first enemy because they produced the most favorable outcome for that game, at the expense of later games when more powerful moves are needed (since the AI can't plan that far ahead).
Silicon Valley's other entrepreneurs: Sex workers
“Businesses have employees. Employees use productivity software. Productivity software cannot run on a tablet in any practical sense.”

Employees stuck in offices use productivity software. There are so many settings in which notebooks and desktops aren't practical, but tablets are. Places where specialized software is required. Tablets deployed in retail, healthcare, defense, airplanes, hospitality, parcel delivery, onsite sales and repair, city councils, classrooms, elderly homes, etc etc.

Also, even productivity software works better on tablets in some cases. Nowadays, I use OmniPlan for iPad instead of Microsoft Project and Apple Numbers for iPad instead of the OS X version. I make website mockups on the iPad instead of on the desktop. For what I need to do, it's faster and more convenient.
fancy error page now.

--

EVERBLOG
home
Uh oh, we hit an error.

You can try refreshing the page, but if that doesn't work you should contact Chris. [link redacted]

© 2013 Everblog. All rights reserved.
Which is ironic, seeing as how his own website is now guilty of many different things he rails on the mainstream media establishment for in that book. Off the top of my head, unlabeled advertising masquerading as news, equal time for nutjobs, headlines that contradict articles...

Kind of sad, really. It ruins a good analysis with the stench of hyprocrisy.
Hypocrisy and changing ones mind aren't the same thing. To me hypocrisy implies playing both sides of an issue at the same time, or disingenuously trying to appear to have changed your mind, when you're pursuing an ulterior motive. Maybe the NYT is doing this, I don't know. But if so, it's more than simply changing their minds.
hurt.
Just got my full price license.
Hello, I'm looking for your opinion on the design and usability of this website I made for an architecture firm. Please also advice on what you think can make it better. I'm mostly looking for design related comments, but chime in if you have anything technical to say about it too. Thanks!
The Recomputation Manifesto
Run, Play, Think - LucasArts Retrospective
Is he part of the Taliban??
- Someone will think of some shitty startup that has no added value to anyone.
- Someone will claim that technology xyz is the perfect solution to all of the web's problems
- Someone will give some wise ass advise stated in the form of 10 things I ... from ...
- Someone will discuss why he would or would not work at some big company.
- Someone will pretend to care about some minority, meanwhile insulting them and everybody else.
Get a job if you're an entrepreneur complaining about local investors
Article about the global capital market and the valley investors current appetite to invest outside the valley.
This is only a couple paragraphs, and the site is full of ads and garbage.
I really, truly, honestly believe that above 9 hours a day for an extended period of time actually ends up hurting your development efforts.

You want developers who come into work and WORK. Not work a little, check a little HN, work a little, eat, check a little Reddit. Living at work forces coping mechanisms like this on you because you really only have a finite amount of creative attention.