skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
New technology always causes us to lose something. The issue is whether or not we gain more than we lose, and the answer is universally "yes." The combination of PCs and the Internet has made copyrights obsolete, and with that the concept of royalties is obsolete. Yet what we have gained from those technology vastly outweighs what we have lost. Poor students who can barely afford tuition can access textbooks they would otherwise be unable to afford. The concept of "rare" or "out of print" is a thing of the past. One no longer needs to travel long distances to find a library with a copy of some book or photograph.

People who have no idea how to develop a photograph can send copies to their entire family at near-zero cost. Researchers have presented systems that can create accurate 3D maps of cities using photographs published on the Internet.

I would not throw any of the above away just to preserve the ability of a tiny minority of authors, musicians, actors, etc. to live on their royalty payments. I want to be able to read scientific papers without having to spend hours searching bound journals at some library. Creative workers can and will find ways to monetize their abilities in a post-copyright world, and they will have to do so without relying on DRM and without trying to destroy the Internet.
I can accept the braces, but the semicolons were a big letdown for me. We should have learned by now from successful languages that the semicolons is obsolete.

If Ruby can do it (and Ruby does it very well with just a few simple rules, even though its lexer admittedly contains parsing logic to deal with the challenge), then Rust can do it.

The other disappointing aspect of Rust is the "line noise" problem. Rust has three types of pointers, and needs a line-noise character for each of them. That, combined with the liberal use of underscore-based identifier names, makes it very noisy. (Ruby also uses underscore-based names, but the relative absence of noise characters keeps it clean.)

In my opinion any new language project ought to have an overriding aesthetics process. Aesthetics is often belittled (as you say, "childish"), but code readability, over time, becomes more important than almost everything else.

I like Rust's design principles, but Go definitely wins the syntax competition for me.
i'd like to see this list after about 10 years more experience. some of these traits are dangerous in a production environment :)
Still, that's a very real problem with buying laptops these days, especially for non-techies. Sounds quite fair to me!
I haven't had a problem with the partitioner in years. What was your experience?
Thanks! Perfect. That's enough of a tutorial I can poke around.
> The other Ubuntu regression which annoys me to no end and again is the same in OSX is that clicking on a dock icon when you are in a workspace and there is an instance of the app opened in another workspace makes you automatically jump to the other one instead of opening a new instance in the current workspace.

If you middle click the icon it will open a new one instead of taking you to an existing one.
>Strip everything out but the five or so best-looking jobs, add a year or two on to the hire dates if you feel the need.

That's lying. It's REALLY STUPID lying at that. Your employment duration is one of the things companies are unequivocally allowed to say, and often do.
There's a simple off switch for all online results in the dash, and it works. The dash is being improved so you can disable individual result sources, but that work wasn't ready in time for this release. I don't think there's any particular malice in the delay.
> Many of the best con artists are sincere.

No. Many of the best con artists can convincingly simulate sincerity. If they were sincere, by definition, they wouldn't be con artists.

A con is by definition a transaction in which one person knows something that the other person doesn't, something that's being deliberately hidden from view for the benefit of the con artist.
They are not trying to sell to every business in America. Do you think all businesses are restaurants and barber shops?
Bookshout Closes $6M in Series B Funding
Burroughs B5000.

Stack based instruction set designed from scratch for programmers (and implementing high level languages). tagged architecture. Single cycle context switching. It was also a secure architecture directly on hardware, tasks couldn't even generate addresses to munge another tasks data if they wanted to.

Wish someone would bring that back.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burroughs_large_systems
Except shouldn't you use, or also use, scrypt, which is space intensive and therefore harder to fit on an FPGA, ASIC or maybe even GPU?
Exactly. The author even says he doesn't understand why someone would be fired for teaching a junior everything they know as long as they are a good enough programmer. Career management is completely othorgonal to programming ability, and career progression is surely a function of both, with luck thrown in.
yea you're right that there's a big difference in the mean age and a more benign prognosis for prostate cancer in general. I just get uppity with all the focus in society on breast cancer with the high rates of lung (3rd most often, 1st most deadly - no screening procedures), colon, prostate, etc.

With regard to your question on the effectiveness of digital rectal exams for prostate screening, I'm not sure about specific studies. From the us preventative services task force site where they suggest against the PSA test for screening they mention:

"Periodic digital rectal examinations could also be an alternative strategy worthy of further study. In the only randomized trial demonstrating a mortality reduction from radical prostatectomy for clinically localized cancer, a high percentage of men had palpable cancer."

http://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/prostatecancers...
How would you press Control-Alt-KeyLeft with less than both hands?
What Scott Cook Wished He Knew About Being a CEO When He Founded Intuit
> What you seem to be saying is that in order to use a personal computer, you should be an expert.

No. What I am saying is that a) using a device is different from administrating it and b) in order to administrate a device you have to be an expert. You don’t expect to buy a car and never ever go to a workshop with it, because, you know, you shouldn’t have to be an expert to service your car. Similarly, expecting to be able to service a PC without being an expert is as futile.

> Have you noticed that the most successful distributions of Linux are the ones that are most friendly to beginners?

What metric/definition of successful are you using? [0]

> (third paragraph)

Exactly. Your point being?

[0] Hint: Number of users is not a measure of quality, and hence not necessarily a measure of success.
I've personally seen people click through the most alarming-looking certificate errors and start entering their bank login credentials. I've driven in cars with people who had put up with that knocking sound in the engine for months because it wasn't getting any worse. If your mother did any of these things, I would be very worried about her financial and physical safety.
How to localize your API
This isn't accurate. The infrastructure is setup once they started billing people. I think the support side is what will eat at the profits... a million $20/month users can be very demanding until they figure out what they're doing.
Will this be fixed in an upcoming ubuntu or skype update?
A bit surreal for me, too. Like seeing two worlds merge.
I'm not sure there is much actionable advice to be taken from this list (and I'm not sure it was the goal anyway), but that was entertaining to read.

There's a few obscure references that I got, a ton others that I didn't get, and even more points where I'm not actually sure there was a reference to get.
Sure. I'd love to help out, get in touch: jon+hn@jonabrams.com
Why Your Code's UX Matters
There were a number of dupes of this: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubiquity/+bug/1080...

Looks like it was fixed at the last second.
Pictures of people who mock me
> Nexus 7 and other MTP device users: plug your device in and enjoy full read write support by default :)

Is browsing/copying laggy or slow at all, like on Windows 7?
Is China covering up another flu pandemic?
I think this is probably it. It's the only thing I can think of.
How to report a DDoS Attack
Yup. Was a big head scratcher around here. They raised $7.8M and shutdown 6 mos later. Rumors are they ever actually closed it, which would make a lot more sense than they burned over $1M/mo.

http://betabeat.com/2012/11/what-happened-to-loosecubes-new-...
Sunil Tripathi Update: Body found in waters off Rhode Island park
The best way to write CSS
9 million+ "Smart Devices" expected to ship by 2016
I think our culture is objectively better in many ways, and that it's better for humanity for others to adopt it. Not just so "we win."
Xubuntu here as well, it runs great without causing you any hassle, like Ubuntu with Unity does. The UI doesn't change a lot and you know exactly what you're getting.
Both bugs appear to be things which a future ubuntu or chrome/skype update should fix. Please correct me if I am wrong.
This is really cool! Go drchrono!
NodeFly’s Node.js News Round-Up for April 25, 2013
I suspect Ubuntu's user base isn't more discriminating. Ubuntu targets people who want to switch from Windows, and most of those people want to switch because "it's free."

If Ubuntu's target market was more sophisticated they wouldn't be reviving the old "sponsored computer" model of fifteen years ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_One says they have raised $100,000. the $20,000 number was for a specific target.

more generally, your argument seems to hinge on the idea that they would make more money if they could. but it's not clear to me that is the case.
How to Create Your Reason
Forks over knives and Plant based diet
What are your taughts on plant-based diet?
Well, every year's a full house. It used to be a great event where you could meet people in IT, web developers, Objective-C developers, Mac developers and iOS developers. Now, it's pretty skewed towards iOS development, but it's still fun.

I think it's absolutely worth it to meet the Apple community. You'll get a pretty interesting sampling of people who are really enthusiastic about developing for the platform, including members of the Mac press and some folks who are just trying to learn things. And you won't find a better group anywhere else.

As for the labs, I've had a mixed experience with them. Some teams are really approachable (the Accelerate team, awesome guys), some not so much. I've heard some very funny stories from some of my friends and from people I respect regarding the labs for the App Store review team... I don't know if Apple has App Store labs anymore. Wouldn't be surprised if they went away.

Regarding food; Moscone West's lunches have always been kinda suspect. For some reason, food quality tends to go down quite a bit as the week goes on. Consider eating at the Metreon or Mel's instead for a quick burger for a protein boost. The WWDC bash more than makes up for the rest.

Not going this year, pursuing other interests at the moment.
The United States wasn't a world power or thriving before the New Deal. It was in the middle of the Great Depression and a growing wave of isolationism. Of course, it was in pretty much the same place after the New Deal as well- World War II was required to take care of both.
sort of answering my own question from deeper in the comments,

https://twitter.com/mitsuhiko/status/323177177367601152

looks like Armin is gearing up to take care of business!
We use a 6Mb point-to-point link via dish to a tower 2 miles away, and have never had a problem with weather - and we get some pretty serious storms here on the gulf coast.
Fully agree, the list should be called 'signs that you're like the list author who considers him(her)self a great programmer'.
Probability and Deuces in Tennis
What’s New in Node.js and libuv this Week
If we drag the FBI over the coals for interviewing this guy and failing to stop him, we are shooting ourselves in the foot.

Either the FBI is going to stop interviewing people, or they are going to start putting lots of innocent people in jail.
Your second statement shouldn't be true unless Whites and Asians are treated differently in admissions.
Most people seem to say that 13.04 is smoother and more stable than 12.10. Canonical seem to have their ups and downs. I don't think desktop Linux has ever really had a great reputation for reliability, though.
I think it's quite uncommon to have a commercial product that is widely pirated but not widely sold. It's always going to be roughly the same proportions of sales-to-pirates for your product. if you had thousands of copies downloaded but only a handful of copies sold, it probably means it wasn't a very popular book, and wouldn't have sold well regardless of piracy or not. If pirating didn't exist, your sales numbers might not change much because the benefits of no piracy (payment being the only option) somewhat cancels out the benefits of piracy (widespread knowledge of your product).

I'm not condoning piracy, but the effects of it are complex. I'd rather replace it with a friendlier approach, like Bandcamp's pay-what-you-want options.
A Waste of Time for Entrepreneurs
> Eager to fix what isn't broken

I've depressingly found, in recent years, that most programmers I've encountered can't be bothered to fix things that are broken, never mind stuff that isn't. I don't see a lot of people who are taking pride in their work anymore. It's a damn shame.
Original link: http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2013/04/15/why-i-let-my-st...
I have wathed "Forks over knives "on netflix and "Engine 2 kitchen rescue" Really changed the way I eat -- I am eager to hear your taughts?
I write bad reviews sometimes, but usually include concrete reasons why the place sucks in my review. I find the bad reviews generally are more specific than the good reviews.
CPU Design on Paper
Agreed, this is such a masturbatory post. "If you have the same hobbies and interests as average hackernews readers, you might just be a good programmer!"
OP here.

Ultimately I want access to the Twitter Ads API, at which point I'll switch from favorites to serving promoted tweets/accounts. I think I've innovated on the Ads UX and the form which the impression takes is secondary. This is a surrogate impression. It has allowed me to build an Ads product and an Ads customer base in anticipation of Ads API access.
Yeah, I shouldn't cast aspersions without evidence. But it's the only reason I can think investors would throw money at such a business. Someone should interview them, because clearly some bad decisions were made all around, not just by the founder.
which are decidedly different things. By definition, the bigger problem with spam is receiving it, not clicking on it.
Single page link: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/28/magazine/our-feel-good-war...
Yelp's cold-calling operation is in-house.

It's naive to think that you can control what a team of thousands of sales people say while dialing for dollars. No matter what you do to control the script, there's going to be someone who breaks ranks to gain advantage.
Quite an uncommon situation as far as I have seen. Can you actually provide an example of a book (or anything else) that nobody bought, but that was heavily pirated?
I knew the comments on this post would all be shallowly dismissive.

Wait, does that make me meta-dismissive? How far does this rabbit hole go?
That logic sounds fishy to me. After all, they took C++'s semicolon syntax over Haskell, OCaml and Ruby's semicolon-free syntax, so there must have been a reason for picking one over the others. So the issue is not about inventing syntax, it's about choosing one (existing) syntax over another.

pcwalton says it was to attract C++ devs, which is interesting considering that Go was also designed to attract C++ devs and made the opposite choice. As a sometime C++ dev, I recognize the historical uselessness of semicolons and would love a replacement language that did away with them.
No camping :( where we gonna stay?
The Arduino is pretty well known, it's a tell if you somehow have not heard of it - it shows you haven't spent much time looking at side projects.
Meh. Doesn't seem any more offensive than a targeted ad on Amazon. It's just a favorite, after all. A subtle, "Hey, check us out." These are company/marketing/publicity accounts anyway (I'm assuming). It's not like followgen is masquerading around with a stolen identity like most follow bots, spitting out bit.ly spam with suggestive tweets and racy pictures. It's simply programmatically allowing twitter accounts to reach out to people who happen to fall into a statistical category. It's also important to remember that follow bots make it easy to follow-back via the "follow" link in notification emails. On an iPhone, to follow the account of someone who favorites my tweet I would 1) see the notification, 2) open the app, 3) select the interaction 4) select the user 5) follow the user (I count 3 interactions using the web app, already having the page loaded). If it truly is spam I can just ignore the notification, as opposed to having to block and report a follow bot.

Rather ingenious, if I do say so myself. The favorite interaction has become increasingly important over the past year or so... I know friends (non-technical friends) who joined twitter recently who would rather get a favorite than a retweet, as a favorite feels more personal. This opposed to a retweet, which seem to be given out much more frequently than a year ago. It would also be pretty cool to be favorited by a recognizable name. Now that I think about it... could be a pretty useful recruiting tool, if targeted properly.
But the act of "looking into their profile" is valuable to the spammer. You get an ad when you do that. So, it doesn't matter if you follow them or not. If you do follow them, of course, it means they have direct access to send you ads. If you don't because you viewed their profile, you at least saw one of their ads.
"At least 10% or more of their commits reduce the line-count of the project without adding new functionality"

It would be great if there was a git command to check that. Now that would be HN worthy. I skimmed the rest of the article and it seems to be typical link bait list
Do you second guess your mechanic in an auto workshop? (I do, but then again, I've restored a couple of cars from the ground up). How about a contractor, an engineer or someone working on a high voltage line? Maybe the pilot of the airplane that you're taking to your holiday destination or the cook in the restaurant where you ate yesterday? Based on a reading of the literature you could easily become an armchair expert in just about anything. But that does not give you the years of practical experience that typically go with the territory and that should count for something.

Doctors are emphatically not con artists.

I applaud you wife's reasoned decision, clearly she is in control of her own destiny and her decision (if by unfortunate chance it is the wrong one) will mostly affect her and her immediate family.

But if we spend a good sized fortune and several years educating someone I really wonder why we'd bother with that if all that it would take to counteract all that effort and knowledge would be a lay persons reading of the medical literature. Most of which is not exactly written for easy consumption by the general public.

Whether you're in a risk group for certain cancers depends on a lot of factors and you'd need to know all of those to make a weighted decision. This is not always as easy as applying the general case to yourself calling it a day.

Age and sex are obviously the big ones but there are many (not sure how many) contributing factors that may cause doctors to be more concerned about one individual than another. We call those people specialists because we recognize that the amount of knowledge required is typically larger than what one person can acquire in a lifetime.

The time when I'm going to trust my own interpretation of a pile of google'd medical papers over a qualified specialist is still a while away.

In the meantime I'm terribly happy I'm not a medical doctor, I'd hate to have to continuously defend each and every minor decision to a general public that I'd be trying to help in an already time-constrained practice. It's hard enough when non-technical (read: totally clueless) customers question evaluations of technical issues based on some popular text they've been reading, at least there are usually no lives on the line.
Strange Tales From the Frontiers of Resuscitation Medicine
Show HN: The Behance Portfolio Review Site We Made
We're doing a local Behance portfolio review here in DC around the same time as a number of other cities. We decided to burns some pixels on this...
A cubicle or desk populated with toys that came from ThinkGeek

I realize that it's a joke (or is it?), but I disagree with this. In fact, I have hard time to trust people that show any strong sings of group-belonging.
Hmm, interesting ... but how you calculate the weights ? do you use the KL-divergence method.
Fundamentally, people like copying things, and some forms of copying are restricted by law. So either the law is bad, or they are a bad person.

that's a static analysis. isn't it more likely that society is changing in various ways, that law naturally lags the changes, and that the result is a mess as society negotiates with itself to find an appropriate adjustment?
The tone of the article was so tongue-in-cheek, that I am surprised by the seriousness and vitriol in the comments.

Obviously, to me and the author at least, this isn't like an actual guide to being a good programmer - this is a semi-autobiographical, kidding essay about the subject.

That's how I read it at least - I expected to agree with some points and not with others, and empathize with a fellow soldier. It tweaks a lot of whiskers because he invariably badmouths something you like or props up something you hate. For me, I was scoffing when he said tabs vs. spaces wasn't important.
You're right, but I can't seem to change it now.
I don't expect it to actually move from the harbour, and that's definitely under the uk jurisdiction :)
You do not have to change distributions because you do not like the desktop, you can simply install another one.
> A destructive pursuit of perfection

> * Preference for dismissal over compromise

> * Contempt for delivery dates

This one is so completely backwards it makes me wonder if it is somehow tongue-in-cheek. The best programmers are masters of compromise. In the real world, nothing is perfect.

> * Substantial refactoring on the eve of a deadline

If a team member did this regularly I'd have to recommend their termination.
I am unimpressed by 60 watt equivalent bulbs. A 60 watt equivalent is about enough to be a desk lamp, if I need to provide light for even a small room it is a useless amount unless I get a large number of bulbs together.

Unfortunately 60 watt equivalent has become some sort of benchmark for new light bulb technology. If you really want to replace lighting in some meaningful way, start quoting 100 watt equivalent numbers to me.
Hehe, good thing it is no longer in use or nearby, I'd love to track that problem down. I'd start off with simulating bad weather by moving the antennae a bit (or a bit more) from their true alignment and by putting up alu foil sheets on kites in between the stations :)
Eg, the problem of hardware backdooring.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRxDvkKBMTc

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/133773-rakshasa-the-har...
And that's totally ok, after all, not all places are great.

But it's one thing to write "OMG this place sux", another is to be specific as you say, like "we waited for 10 minutes until the server appeared and he was rude and the food was chewy"