skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
So you're saying, for example, that you can delete files that are currently open in another process in Windows? So not hypothetically: you've personally succeeded at deleting a file on Windows that is currently open in another process?

Also, is it the other process'es responsibility to open those file handles with the confusing, poorly documented, non-zero flags so that I can read/write/delete from my process? What if I don't own or control the other process? Am I just screwed in the majority of real-world cases?

I suspect the problem here is a lot more complicated than me not setting open flags and getting all cross-eyed when visiting the CreateFile page at MSDN. The real problem is Microsoft's insane default file open semantics that do exclusive locks purely for the sake of compatibility with 30+ year old legacy. I've lost face on jobs because of file locking going on that was out of my control and creating havoc in my app. If we were targeting Linux, there wouldn't have been a problem, so the status quo is not okay.

In my opinion, Win16/32/64 code should be sandboxed and only run in VM's in future OS'es; shed the legacy design decisions like pessimistic file locking completely. Trash the standard Windows API (not just hide it) and give me a next-generation Posix or CLR as a sane platform for new development.
So great to see entrepreneurs like Hsieh help to build communities on a massive scale.
There is no agile fixed price
And just a few years ago, they knew XML databases which were eclipsing that old SQL!
not sure exactly what you're looking for, but here's what i do:

- download from isp using getmail via a cron job
- store in local imap directories using procmail
- use mutt in a shell window to read
- use mairix to search

on top of that, in the past, i have run an imap server (dovecot was simplest iirc) and squirrelmail, to give web access. but it was more trouble than it was worth (i have mutt configured to handle the odd html only email via w3c).
A 6502 emulator in Common Lisp [pdf]
I think the PC as heater question is easy to solve. Just add up all the watts and assume that it all becomes heat. A cpu and graphics card can easily be over 100 watts each, and a 100 watt light bulb gets pretty hot. (I had this conversation with another computer guy at one time, and he didn't think all of the watts became heat. I'm not an engineer or physicist, but -- where else could it go?)
> What motivates web designers to tell stories by repurposing the scroll mechanism instead of, say, using video?

Control for the users.
Blue Apron Secures Series A Funding
Huh, ok. If you didn't have to search yourself, that explains why you didn't mention that part.
Keep this in mind:

Open-source also means: The entire planet's population is the pool (of developers). And this in turn means:

As soon as there is a real need for something, and somebody in this world is willing to work on it (for whatever motivation), this piece of software instantly becomes available to the _entire_ planet, without barrier (no price to pay, no payment method hurdles).

This is an _extremely_ powerful property which eventually will dominate the nature of solutions we use.
I think we already have "private" dictatorships in most of the world. 2/3 of states are fucked up, just look at failed state index or press freedom index.

> The argument is that if you eliminated the government, the alternative (private dictatorships) would be even less accountable.

If you are right and private defense organization would collapse into one, then why there is no single government? (Moreover, some of states(like USSR) get decomposed into few more, so the number of states even grows). Why do you assume there is no reason to prevent a number of PDO turning into violent one?

There are great books: Murray Rothbard's "For a new liberty: libertarian manifesto": http://mises.org/document/1010/

David Friedman's "The machinery of freedom": http://daviddfriedman.com/The_Machinery_of_Freedom_.pdf
The Raspberry Rover
For starters - see Hebbian theory. [1]

Backprop falls within the class of 'supervised learning' which can indeed be said not to be very biologically realistic. However, reinforcement learning is observed, so the overall picture is probably much more complex: e.g. associative/recurrent/etc networks with Hebb-like unsupervised learning developing neuronal group testing and selection systems that involve reinforcement learning. (see first lecture/talk in [3].)

Perhaps worth a watch is a very nice talk by Geoffrey Hinton [2], which is oft referred to on HN. (Hinton does refer to the notion of biological plausibility etc. in this talk as far as I recall, but the focus is elsewhere (developing next generation state-of-the-art (mostly unsupervised) machine learning techniques/systems.))

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebbian_theory

[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyzOUbkUf3M

[3]: http://kostas.mkj.lt/almaden2006/agenda.shtml (The original summary HTML file is gone from the original source, so this is a mirror; the links to videos and slides do work, though.) The first and the second talks are somewhat relevant (particularly the first one, re: bio plausibility etc ("Nobelist Gerald Edelman, The Neurosciences Institute: From Brain Dynamics to Consciousness: A Prelude to the Future of Brain-Based Devices")), but all are great. Rather heavy, though. (Also, skip the intros.)

edit that first talk/lecture from Almaden (Edelman's) is actually a very nice exposure of the whole paradigm in which {cognitive,computational,etc} neuroscience rests; it does get hairy later on; overall, it's a great talk for the truly curious.
I understand that. I'm just a bit irked because i occasionally do actual free work for people who can benefit from my skills and do good or interesting things.
Designing Dashboards With Fewer Distractions
> pearl

I see what you did there.

And as Joeboy says, it would be months. I can say this with confidence because i know enough about C to know how little i know about it. Just the thought of memory management and all the complexities involved makes my skin crawl.
That kind of demanding tone, limited requirements and small amount of data always make me suspect someone is looking for a solution to a homework exercise.
Sure - but I'd be earning money to cover them :)
Show HN: CleanLists - A cleaner way to organize Facebook lists
Magnificent Lego Acropolis Is Made of 120,000 Bricks
AFAIK they actually made this worse due to the in-app purchase complaints (from parents who recklessly allowed their children access to their credit card). It used to appear for the first purchase and then not for the next 5 minutes (something like that anyway) but now it appears every time you try to purchase anything.
Sure, and he's not the only one like that on SO. However, if the question is interesting, I see no reason why it shouldn't be answered or upvoted. SO is not about one guy asking the community to do his job, but more like archiving a bunch of programming questions and its solutions. This thread will benefit more people than this guy with a bad attitude.
Yeah, it didn't see that important - the internet is quite a good place for doing things like this - thanks to Twitter and other places where people share things the calendar was booked up for 6 months within a couple of weeks
that was my favourite test case when i developed the add on. I'm on the road now, so I can't verify if they still do it. it might depend on you having a YouTube account linked to your Google account. The technique I'm referring to involves redirecting you across other domains, allowing them to set 1st party cookies, and then back. this happens in an instant and "feels" like a 3rd party cookie to the user, because he does not even realize this happened. the browser will treat it as a 1st party cookie however.
So you are claiming that the average age of a Microsoft developer (one relying on the Microsoft ecosystem) is edging up rapidly? I would love to see some hard evidence about that, though its definitely plausible.

At least on hackernews, the number of Microsoft developers seems to be quite small (a poll would be interesting though).

Disclaimer: working for Microsoft, speaking for self.
If you read bunnies post carefully, this probably isn't the open laptop that most people are hoping for. It's tailor made for an EE that does a lot of high speed digital work and wants an open laptop. RTFM indeed!
Nice!

BTW, am I wrong or some small countries are missing? Just to name few: Vatican City, Mauritius, San Marino
Running PostgreSQL on AWS
Maybe - I can't help but feel you're all putting C on a pedestal though - thinking you're immune from memory management issues because you're not using C seems a bit weird.

I feel confident that if I was asked to do C at one of these gigs I'd have been able to deliver something useful. Perhaps less if it was C++ because it's a bit swiss-army knife and there are a lot more "don'ts" to pick up.
I disagree. I had the opportunity to work on a Windows 8 (metro) project and was quite excited by the idea (and I'm a young developer). However, after developing for it I wouldn't again for two reasons:

1. There just aren't enough people using Windows 8 and downloading apps yet
2. MS approval process is much, much worse than Apple's. They even included things like grammar errors in the review.
Funny, I remember some (worse) experiments done with Marines positioned near atomic bomb detonations

The glowing oatmeal seems mild
Yes, do you know what else constitutes a radioactive material?

A Banana

One of the highest amount of radioactivity in natural products.
I think on HN that's probably true but a lot of people here seem to forget that most programmers get jobs at a bank/insurance company etc. and spend all day coding in C#/VB or Java. I don't think being a MS developer is 'fashionable' but among young programmers who just want to do what they're told and bring home a pay check I'm sure it's still very common.
Don't mind asking, but why would it be better than just reading the wikipedia or CIA world "fact book" or anything similar?

And your country presentation pages start with history, that is irrelevant to most and doesn't have much to do with the current state of the countries.

Le me give you an example: the page about Romania (http://countryaday.org/#/country/romania) starts with lots of historical information that is irrelevant to any potential travelers and to the current economical and political state of the country. A summary for someone wanting to learn more should rather start with something like this: "R. is a democratic East European country part of the EU located .... . The country is safe to travel in and if you are an EU citizen you don't need a travel visa. It is a latin country like Italy, France and Spain and unlike all its neighboring countries, and this is a basic thing that every explorer should understand before learning more about its culture and history."

My advice is to make it into a "travelers' wiki" curated by regional experts. But even if you don't do it this way, don't start a presentation about a country with its history - its both extremely boring and prone to create misconceptions (because it's basically impossible for a non-historian to figure out what parts of a country's history are relevant, by relevant meaning "connected to the current state of affairs and present-day culture of the country", and what is just meaningless historical trivia that not even the educated citizens of the country itself know...).
> (Advertising) gets the word out about a product or service and lets the creator point out why their audience would like it.

The problem is that it does this by interrupting users when they were doing something else. Ads, except those that are shown when the user is explicitly performing a search, are not "relevant" enough - because they ignore the user's context. When I'm reading guitar tabs for a song, I do NOT want to see ads for guitars. Interruptive ads can never be relevant enough.

From my point of view, search and social recommendations are enough to hear about new products and services which might be useful to me. "Interruptive advertising is beneficial for the user" is just advertisers trying to give an ethical justification to the fact that they are basically being jerks.

The second part ("lets the creator point out why their audience would like it") is easily solved by maintaining a landing page. Be accessible when I search and have enough information for me to learn more about the product.

(I had written about this on my blog a few years back: http://www.nileshtrivedi.com/search-results-are-the-only-rel... )
The highly technical work has got commoditised and outsourced to very specialised professionals ("engines").

Making a game in the 80s and 90s meant doing basically everything. In the 70s, even the hardware to run it. Now it's increasingly using tools and hacking some customisation.

The spectrum from making a game, a mod and using gamemaker or something of the sort is getting more diffuse.
Guilt by Association software for tracking gangs
If it's a choice between low cost of living/low salary and high cost of living/high salary do you happen to have any figures which show which one actually works out as more profitable?
Where do you have this quotes from ?
Your version of the quotes are completely biasing this comment thread.

This is his original:
"I'm not looking for a general overview of machine learning, rather I'm looking for actual model in code (python preferred)."

To me this sounds like:

"i am not looking for theoretical background, but practical implementations in code (or pseudocode)" - as in "something more actionable and more straight forward to the solution" - for many people (eg like me) this is easier to learn from than whitepapers.
Thanks for this. I do more and more mobile browsing nowdays and this works on my phone too, unlike Ghostery & noScript so thank you.
This.

> Advertising never tells me about a new product that I care about and I'm not already aware of.

Even if it does that, it does so by interrupting me when I'm doing something else - which is not acceptable to me. Considering that we have search and social recommendations, advertising is not "beneficial for the user".

A very nice consequence of rejecting interruptive ads is that marketers won't need to collect data about me and build huge behavioral profiles. I'll come to you when I need you. And when I knock on your door, you would be certain that I am interested in talking to you. So there is no need to track/profile me.
Windows 8.1 Update -What It Means For You?
The Growing Popularity of iPhone Application Development
if you could feed it to the grid, hydro and coal and natural plants could be throttled down or some units shut down. I don't know about nz energy mix but I assume they have lots of hydro power. This is the natural straight forward way if doing it, not installing heavy batteries at homes. You can simulate adding different power sources to the grid with commercial software.

I'm sick and tired of this "but it's intermittent" canard.
I don't think that that option accomplishes the same, or is even similar.

What about sites that you never visit (= type in address bar / follow links to) directly, but which are on some subdomain of the visited site nonetheless? Cookiemonster will accept the cookie. Firefox, with your config, will not.

What about sites that you do visit (eg facebook.com) but don't want to accept/send third party cookies for? Firefox, with your config, will. Cookiemonster won't.
Tens of thousands of Americans question authority on a daily basis and nothing happens to them.

Or to said authority, for that matter.
If you want it done your way, do it yourself.
It doesn't bother me. I suspect many people go to SO in order to solve a problem.

Sometimes it's nice to find gigantic answers explaining the theory behind the question itself and giving the answer & examples in the end. It's nice, I search for random coding stuff in my free time and finding such answers entertains me greatly.

Most times, though, it's annoying when you ask a question and the answer/comment simply says "Why are you trying to do X? Please let me understand the problem; maybe you want something else!". I'm one of these people who ask edge case questions concerning obscure pratices/libs/language features, and let me tell you, I hate when someone tries to patronize me about his favorite design pattern on SO.

I don't think he's trying to bribe anyone. Sometimes you're just desperate with no knowledge on X, and a search for X yields just scientific articles on the subject. Sometimes you just want to get stuff done.
are you sure it has to be pulled back to main memory?
Solar Impulse – Around the world in a solar airplane
> What do you think would happen if you questioned authority in, say, Venezuela?

I am pretty sure that tens of thousands of Venezuelans question authority too. The difference is that it takes less to make the Venezuelan government feel threatened than it takes in the US.
Sphirewall 0.9.9.5 Released
I've never done much Windows development, but even as a user, I've wondered what is up with the file locking. In the *nix world, deleting an open file is no problem. It just goes away when the last process closes it. In Windows, you can't drag a file to the Recycling Bin if an application has even used it recently, it seems. I always wondered what the heck that was for. So it's a legacy of DOS?
The link to msdn in your post is still working.

> The dual elliptic curve random-number generator algorithm.
Standard: SP800-90

> Windows 8: Beginning with Windows 8, the EC RNG algorithm supports FIPS 186-3. Keys less than or equal to 1024 bits adhere to FIPS 186-2 and keys greater than 1024 to FIPS 186-3.
An easy way to share files P2P, and how it works
Freedom of Information, Act
This is really a strange move. Yahoo have acquired a company with so many users, and now they just sending them away.
Como recuperar a mi ex
Recupera a tu ex siguiendo estos pasos
So are ethics.
The way you inferred that sounds like how my ex-girlfriend infers emotions from texts. And you quoted him saying something he actually didn't even say--another popular move by my ex.

> "I'm not looking for a general overview of machine learning, rather I'm looking for actual model in code"

He wants some code in Python that will help him discern Apple (Inc) from Apple (Fruit). That is as opposed to getting a high-level tutorial on NLP entity and category extraction, semantic reasoning, classification and a link to http://nltk.org/ saying "You can do it with this."
Right. Ethics exist without the human race as well. Like math, they parallel reality but are thought of as conceptual.
And to continue your metaphor, when there's a bit of a cash drought, your steamboat may run aground on a suddenly not-hidden sandbar, or get stove in by a no-longer drowned tree corpse.
List of Canon network printers connected to the Internet
Fake iPhone 5 : Trick your friends into thinking you have the new iPhone 5.
works like magic, how did they not think of it till now?
> I wouldn't want to live in one but probably would if SoMa had an equivalent - and I imagine many others would as well.

I came to the comments hoping someone else felt this way, actually. I really, really wish micro-accommodation would become a thing in American cities.

I'm moving to San Francisco after I graduate next spring. I would love it if some sort of crossover between a co-working space, a Japanese airport "capsule hotel"[1] and a hacker house type environment existed.

The hacker houses that exist now sound like a nice idea in theory[2] (being around a bunch of interesting, like-minded people). In practice, however, trying to get some sleep in a place like that sounds like - well, a nightmare. Great when you first arrive and are meeting people and going to interviews or whatever - not really viable over the long term for someone like me who values his sleep.

In my mind, I see a place where I have:

* A clean, comfortably appointed, soundproof capsule for sleeping

* Access to a nice, luxury-gym-like shared bathroom

* Access to a co-working space / commons area for hacking

I'm not sure how realistic this is given government regulations, housing prices, the number of people interested in actually paying for such a place, etc. Sure would be cool though.

[1] - http://resources2.news.com.au/images/2011/01/12/1225986/0270...

[2] - http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/06/technology/at-hacker-hoste...
Are these key-value DBs like LevelDB / BerkeleyDB / etc? or maybe something more sophisticated?
Spacex Latest vertical landing rocket vid. 325M altitude, hold against wind
Tackling a problem
> Panic attacks throw about 50 different symptoms (you have to have a few before you see them all) of which any one of them would feel like an acute, life-threatening crisis to a sane person. Almost everyone who has a true panic attack will end up in the ER, the first time. You have to cycle through all of the bizarre symptoms a few times before you realize that the attacks aren't dangerous. Once you've learned this, they're just annoying ("shit, there goes the next 10 minutes") but the first few attacks are devastating because they feel real.

I've never suffered from a panic attack, but my wife does, and regularly. This describes our situation almost exactly. The symptoms are diverse enough to be congruent with everything from acid reflux to a full blown heart attack.

The attacks are milder now primarily because she started timing them and now knows going into one that they'll be over in ten to twenty minutes. Not knowing that leads to the spiral of despair, where you become more and more anxious because you don't know how this panic attack is going to end.
I disagree.

The OP did not post the bounty, it was an interested reader. The OP (and also the bounty poster) have been engaged in the discussion threads with examples of effort and pursuit of the ideas offered.

SO does get used/abused as you describe sometimes. I'm mostly OK with that. If the poster can find someone interested enough in their problem (or in demonstrating knowledge thereof) then who can complain, really? Everyone is on SO for a reason, after all.

In this case, even if the OP was the typical Homework Solution Seeker, the responses would be valuable to others, sometime and somewhere -- though they would be hard to make discoverable without a few important search keywords.
This seems like sound reasoning. Thanks for wording it so clearly.
Given that there are people who can't afford a place to live coupled with the deflationary crisis, could someone explain to me what would be the issues, if the Japanese government simply starts giving out a minimum amount of money each month (as has been proposed for poorer countries where people actually face starvation).

On the face of it, this solves two problems in one go, the poor have a basic guaranteed income; and printing and distributing money solves the deflationary spiral and pushes the currency towards inflation.
> The iTunes password prompt is absolutely maddening.

Perhaps this is the reason for their supposed push to fingerprint scanners?
WebRTC was not there to help... It's just recently that DataChannels API hit Chrome and FF. Quite experimental stuff
Yes, that makes sense. I like lmm's comment below that clarifies why these contexts are different.
This is all very nice to state as goal, but it does not help if you need money as software developer.

I do a lot of open source on my free time, but that is because I get paid by one of those commercial bad guys companies to work on closed software, which allows me to contribute back for free.

How far do you think most open source projects would be without sponsoring from commercial companies that allow some developers to work on open source projects.

This is one of the reasons why most successful open source software is developer tooling, or nowadays hidden behind SaaS walls.

It is all nice and dandy to talk about open source ideals, but when you need to earn at least 1 000€ per month, those ideals start to fade away. Speaking from experience.
The Shocking Truth About Doug Engelbart: Silicon Valley's Sidelined Genius