skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Lots of good tidbits and examples in there - I really enjoyed reading that. There are several not-quite-inaccuracies-but-not-really-how-you-would-think moments in it but, overall, it's very well written. The pictures were annoying after a while haha.

Just to clarify, this isn't "specific to SQL Server" - SQL Server was originally a straight-up "licensed by Microsoft" version of Sybase SQL Server and thus it's early code base (things that defined the Transact-SQL language) has almost all to do with Sybase and naught to do with Microsoft. Things like the plus sign as a string concatenator, the way numbers are handled when compared to strings - all of that was the way Sybase did it and, for whatever reason, Microsoft didn't change it (we're talking way back in the late 80s and early 90s). In fact, there's not a single thing in that article that has changed or been implemented by Microsoft - nearly every one of the nitpicks/topics referred to by OP refer to the original choices made by the Sybase engineers. You could say, "Yes, but Microsoft hasn't changed this despite having 20+ years with the source code + standards!" and that's a valid point.[0]

1) TRIM - This has been asked for and discussed ad nauseum in the SQL Server and Sybase community. It always circles around the idea of VARCHAR though - the variable character type automatically trims trailing blanks thus, years ago, developers said, "Ahhhh, screw it - no need for a TRIM() function! They just should use the LTRIM() function to get rid of the leading blanks." It's not correct IMO but that's always been the logic.

2) "This behavior violates the standard and is specific to SQL Server." - I hate this statement. Which standard? What section? This is a case of it being easy to say something but, without backing it up with a citation, it implies that I trust the OP. I dont' know OP - maybe he's right but maybe he's interpreted "the standard" incorrectly, or is referring to an outdated standard, or is comparing SQL Server 2000's interpretation of a later-written standard. There's no way to know - it's just too ambiguous.

3) ORDER BY in subqueries - I laughed when I saw this:

SELECT * FROM
(SELECT TOP 100 PERCENT* FROM mytable... ORDER BY id) q

In nested queries and inline (single-query) table valued functions, ORDER BY is not supported unless TOP is used with the SELECT.

Kinda, sorta - it depends on which version of SQL Server you are referring to. SQL 2012 - yes. SQL 2008 - yes. The "original" SQL Server would have done what OP talks about - sorting w/ TOP - but, at some point, MSFT changed it to give the behavior he talks about. I can't remember when - maybe SQL 2005 or, at worst, 2008 - but this is an example where using specific version names would be helpful.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_SQL_Server#History
Custom Application Development and its Importance in IT Sector
The Firebrick range is all custom dev. They'll sell you a commodity router quite happily, but they're 50% responsible for Firebrick.

A presentation by their MD on the backstory:
http://online.ipexpo.co.uk/Videos/Adrian-Kennard-presents-Br...
few Americans begin study of a second language before secondary school

Are you sure about that? I grew up in Texas and I remember taking Spanish in elementary school.
They give you less than 12 hours to respond? Really?

I would seek a lawyer if you can afford one and if not, then you can't afford a lawsuit either, so in this case, pull it offline. If you do the latter, you should post the results of your research somewhere, this can't be taken down as it is sharing information and not an API tool.
https://www.google.com/transparencyreport/safebrowsing/malwa...

See "Compromised sites" at the bottom.

In my experience, compromised sites and insecure ad networks are by far the most common means of distributing malware through legitimate sites.

Even if you know what you are doing, you are very likely to come across sites running e.g. Wordpress, Drupal, etc. with shitty addons, e.g. timthumb, that have been compromised and are serving exploits through hidden iframes, redirecting you to bad pages, etc.
The film?
Most of those reasons are bunk. One of them seems to be "if you smoke it when you're driving, the cops might stop you and won't know what you're smoking is legal".

If you smoke it when driving you are an asshole.

Whether it's legal or not, whether it's real weed or not. Get off the road, get baked in your living room and stay there you dangerous, selfish prick. Also his 'hell' experience? Oh My God he took an unfamiliar substance along with TWICE his usual dose of dextromethorphan. I'm not f*cking surprised he had a hard time.

Most of the other reasons he gives there are to do with people purchasing 'blends' of unknown amounts of unknown chemicals on unknown plant matter. People who want to know what they're dosing themselves with buy the pure powders and measure carefully.

That all said, it's true that there's far more known about the safety profile of the 'real' stuff, and you probably shouldn't touch the synthetics. But not because of that huge pile of toss.
The downside of this approach is all of the bootstrapping for running and developing your project is now a new environment on the server side. Don't forget that all of this tech carries a lot of mass and now you're having to maintain a number of different tools!

If this is an open source project, you just went from:

python -m SimpleHTTPServer || open index.html

To:

npm install && grunt build && grunt run

... And now as a person wanting to work on your code I have a whole slew of new tools to learn!

It's not always as cut and dry of a decision...
Sounds like the streisand effect for these guys http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
Well if it does not the system would be completely raped!
Nothing is stopping you from building the app from source instead, just like every other open source project. But at least with Go you have the _option_ of just downloading and running a binary if you trust the author.
Thanks - I'm getting majorly down voted by illiterates.
I'm pretty sure this rings true for the whole world and not just America. I moved from a coal mining town when I was young to washington DC and it increased our family wealth significantly and impacted my life in a very good way. If I had stayed in that coal mining town I would probably have done okay but the opportunities would have been much less.

Now I'm in NYC specifically for the opportunities. I'm here to make a great living and then one day skip town with my chest full of gold.
Trouble is, what killed the patent was prior disclosure from the researchers.

The same thing has happened to friends of mine; an undergraduate's summer research presentation may have betrayed patentable inventions. An effect of the 1-year prior art rule is to force researchers to keep mum about what they're doing and to generate greater numbers of incremental patents.

If you're interested in the free flow of information, using a researcher's own publications to kill patents may not help the cause.

Prior art from other work in the past? Bring it on!
Haha oh wow. They're charging hundreds of dollars to add a free OS into a smartphone. And they expect to get 32 million just for the promise. Someone lock these people up before they do some real damage.
I really dislike these type of stories. Basically saying "Investor buys lotto ticket; outperforms DJIA by 5 billion percent." Or a more realistic example, the stories that flow when gas prices spike. Like the person with the diesel engine running off waste grease from restaurants.

It's nice this person found a profitable niche but the concept itself doesn't lend itself to even linear growth.
Will.I.Am painfully talks about what (little) he knows about tech
Samsung to cut out Google middleman with own developers’ conference
i'd like to hear more about the startups that have made the move from the us to canada. from my perspective, this seems great for startups looking to get into the us market by making a stop in canada, growing, and then attracting us investors.

it will be interesting to see the long-term affects this has. will startups stay?

also, i would love to see an article about the canada startup community in general. canada's economy is well-balanced and from what i can tell pretty risk-adverse. how well people respond to the influx of startups that must take risks, gamble, and move quickly in order to survive?
Since this is permanent residency and not citizenship, shouldn't it be a fair amount less effort and paperwork on immigration's part?
So long TNW, hello FullContact
>The reason we use secrecy is not to hide it from the American people. But, to hide it from those who walk among you who want to kill you.

Fear-monger much? What can you not justify with this line of reasoning? "Well, we're not herding you all up into concentration camps because of anything you've done innocent Americans. We're putting you all there because of the evil Americans who walk among you."

If we buy the mindset that the "evil-doers" are indistinguishable from innocent Americans, then we will allow virtually anything.

And, is this overt paranoia inducement even remotely justified? I mean, really, what percentage of the so-called terrorists are "other Americans that walk among us"? For that matter, how many "terrorists" are really out there?

But, this is a subtle, insidious, and very purposeful shift. It's an example of how they've moved the goalposts and are increasingly morphing these "terrorist-tools" into a hyper-surveillance program to keep tabs on all Americans. There was a time when they'd have to justify their actions and abide by Constitutional protections by pointing to foreign involvement in monitored communications. The line was that they are not monitoring us, as much as they are monitoring those foreigners who happened to be talking to us. Now, he's allowing that Americans are specifically being targeted domestically, but that it must be done because the terrorists "walk among us".

Also love the way the story frames the NSA activity as more benign and highly targeted:

"[a program that] gathers data on numbers dialed and length of calls, though not call content, and another that allows the NSA to monitor overseas e-mails and Internet sites used by suspected terrorists."

Makes it sound highly targeted and less invasive to innocent Americans. But, we've already learned how they get call content, that the distinction between foreign and domestic communication is less meaningful than we originally thought, and other details that go beyond the benign characterization of the story. This story seems to be stuck in the days before so many more revelations came out.

They left out all but the "This message brought to you by the NSA."
What, like Lisp?
The joke at Origin Systems (back in the day) was:
"We train people for well-paying jobs in the computer game industry."

It was funny on several levels... if you didn't work there.
Modern English with a capital M.
$32 million? Well they mention formula 1, are they bootstrapping a new team maybe?
Well, I suppose this is a two way street. Hopefully something like this would kick-start Canadian VC funding, as they'll have a lot of very qualified international applicants knocking down their doors.
Sure, but mucking around with software, on each machine, is a lot harder and more daunting than a simple tick box at the router. Harder to manage too. Easier for the kids to get round or just destroy. Most concerned families are not geeks. They need it simple.

If the gov want a simple tick box opt in on the routers, I cant possibly see a problem with that.

Note: I am uber liberal on this. I would never tick the box. But I only speak for me, I understand the net and have my own views on porn etc. How ever, I dont seek to impose my liberal views on others. I simply want us all to have a reasonable choice, that we make our selves. I want "wet" parents to have their option, so that I can have mine. Their freedom to chose is as important as mine.
How to Not Suck At Collecting Customer Contact Data
We built Yumcoin to be the fastest, easiest way to accept Bitcoin for digital goods.

We host your product, give you a short link to share with your audience, and manage the Bitcoin payments for you.

It's already a useful and fun way for artists and other digital media creators to get their first bitcoins.

Here's what a product page looks like on Yumcoin: https://yumcoin.com/p/osZO
Also note that many languages that encourage immutable data also have first-class functions with closures, which are also a very powerful tool for encapsulation and abstraction.

I think lambdas more than immutability help one write clean abstractions without traditional OO-objects. See the "Lambda the Ultimate" series of papers for details.
I don't self-identify as liberal, but I'd say that corporations and oil are the villains to mainstream liberals; you have to go pretty far left (as in, farther than Chomsky) to find those against all forms of capitalism.

That said, you're right about confirming pre-existing prejudices; in that sense, every ideology or belief is a conspiracy. Climate scientists are not immune to this phenomenon, but the act of science is to proactively try to correct for these kinds of biases, with the added constraint of having to "show your work". While mainstream science can get it wrong, 95+% consensus is very hard to achieve due to either ideology or external influence, especially worldwide. Those scientists might be wrong, but they're not all duping us as part of some plot.
Except there isn't "experiment" anywhere on that page, it is being billed as a final, nearly-complete product.
The quote below is decidedly "legal" in nature. The meta-question of whether the author is interested in moral guidance or legal advice is immaterial, as the framework within which Snapchat is operating is legal.

> I am under the impression that reverse engineering is still protected under fair use doctrines. Is this the case? How should I respond, if at all?

Speaking as someone who has been involved in an arduous civil matter for the last four years, matmaroon's advice would be well heeded.
Thanks for linking to the NYT article, much better than the Slate one.

IMO access to efficient public transportation has an outsized impact on people's ability to move up the economic ladder.
RIP Origin bros. :(

EDIT: I assume that joke is funny in the same way that you'll find "The Liberated Democratic Free People's Republic of Chernarus"?
Yup! That's why there are more squirrels than humans!
Yes, take a look at those method signatures. They are imprecise and incomplete. And that is for MRI itself. Very few Ruby projects has documentation anywhere near what MRI does, whether separate or in the comments.

But even if it did: Rubyists are far more likely to be tolerant about documenting type information in optional comments than including them in the code.

I think there's room for experimenting with Ruby's typing, but I also think the most that project can hope to achieve would be extensions that could see some limited use in the odd little piece of performance critical code. It's best hope of success, actually, would be that JRuby and other alternative implementations grow more popular and make it harder for people to rely on C-extensions.
How the Right Amount of Ambient Noise Increases Creativity
I've just forked it on Github, as have 25 others (as I write this).

As with file formats, the notion that network protocols & APIs should ever be granted any type of protection and that no-one other than the creators should be able to write software that conforms to these protocols is ridiculous.

Snapchat, in my view, have every right to restrict who uses their service and in what manner - via standard mechanisms like API keys and login credentials. But preventing third-party implementations of protocols or APIs is so 90s. Oracle had a bit of trouble with this recently.

One problem I'm personally trying to remedy is the proliferation of various APIs and protocols for accessing various online storage services (Dropbox, Google Drive, Box etc) by developing an SDK that supports all of them. We need more of this kind of these kinds of projects, not less.

Micah Schaffer, if you're reading this, you're welcome to send me a takedown request and discuss the issue with me. My email address is in my profile.

EDIT: It's at 62 now. I wouldn't be surprised if even Barbra Streisand has forked it.
The patent trolls are already on it, patenting crowd-sourcing as a method of patent defense. This will inevitably result in the shut down of Ask Patents in a stunning fit of irony.
Not that long ago, a UK newspaper call The Independant refused to cover any royal stories at all.

I was saddened when they published the birth of that Harry in a column on the inside pages, it should not have been covered at all.

I do not know if the Indie still has this policy.
It's refreshing to read a story like this where everything works as it should. Skill and honesty rewarded, security for all improved.

Also nice, though scary too, to see that this didn't require outlandish levels of skill to find the vulnerability.
I really really hope I'm wrong (because I really believe in Ubuntu's vision), but what I'm gathering from this is that Canonical really has no idea how to make money.
The next really big thing will be a language that does not mix things up.

I.e. a language that keeps a clean orthogonality between the three dimensions of a program --state, functionality, and event handling-- not favoring one over the others.
The hard part is to make hierarchical modularization mechanisms work simultaneously along all three dimensions.
If I have a run loop/game loop, I always use OOP.

I'm curious, has anyone ever implemented a run loop in a functional style? I know there are recursive approaches to passing the time deltas and what not, but it seems rather difficult to make video games with a purely functional approach... Can anyone offer any insight?
My Six Years of Ignorance
Definitely a good idea, although I don't drink soda and I have a kindle! :D

Maybe some milk carton boxes will do the trick.
I think this means that the phone is equipped with antennas for different "LTE/4G" frequencies. This makes the phone work with different carriers throughout the world. The second antenna is for compatibility.

It's unlikely that the phone will spend power activating antennas that are not in use given the carrier/geographic standard, so my best guess is this: No. You will not see double the radiation.

(I could be completely wrong here, though. I'm not a cellular engineer by any standard.)
How to insert a record in MySQL with PHP
Theoretically this is fantastic. I'm in the US on an H1B visa and there's no clear path for me to be able to start my own company. My visa still has a couple of years left on it, but this is something I will be watching closely.

Of course, the US could implement a similar program in a heartbeat. And by "in a heartbeat", I mean "never, because the government in this country is utterly dysfunctional".
It matters a great deal (well, not to me, I don't use the service). Password reuse is common, and the way to fix that is good quality password hashing. If I used OVH, I'd need to change my password everywhere now.

If I used someone competent (i.e. they still have bugs but they use bcrypt), they'd have lost: $2a$10$NkYCXBjWeVP0rJUlfl0VL.d66EvJjbVUA/YEsmBSyTZOnbY0/anxa which is a bcrypt hash of my most secure password.

I'm happy to publish that. The salted SHA-512? Not so much!
I went to school in S.E. Texas. We had French and Spanish in high school, nothing else. The French class was solid, but the Spanish class was lame, all we did was crossword puzzles and word exercises. I took it for two years and did not learn the language due to the poor instruction. I knew schools in the bigger nearby cities sometimes had German, but not my school. Also, the foreign languages were not mandatory classes. There was no incentive or push to learn a second language, most adults in my area thought it was useless and that students should be focusing on agriculture and not foreign languages. As such my high school had: Agriculture, Horticulture, Cosmetology, Auto-Shop, Animal Husbandry, landscaping.. but no focus on foreign languages or science beyond the basics.
You'll never pay a dime of US taxes, since Canada has a tax treaty with the US and income taxes in Canada are higher than those in the US. Also, Canada has higher gasoline and alcohol taxes and double digit sales taxes in most provinces. Also, tax deferred retirement plans have lower limits than the US.

That said, healthcare costs are minimal in Canada, which are a huge plus for entrepreneurs who may not always have a steady income stream.

That said, if you're moving from a high tax US state (CA) to a low taxes Canadian province (Alberta), the difference isn't that great.

Keep in mind that if you have a Roth IRA in the US, it gets complicated. Canada doesn't recognize Roth IRAs thus there are tax complications.
> I'll assume that by "this" you mean rape fantasies. What if it is normal? Do you think there would still be harm in convincing people of that fact?

Certainly, rape is one of the most offensive crimes imaginable.

> So?

So the danger is on the Internet you can easily tailor your social circle to agree with you where such a thing would be impossible IRL.

> Is it? How so? What about romance novels?

Romance novels as far as I am aware do not involve crimes.

> Not so fast. Are you assuming that anyone who would watch/read such a thing is trying to work up their nerve to commit/participate in a rape? Or that once they've seen a depiction that they'll be somehow compelled to go and rape someone?

Neither, simply that their fantasy is one of rape, not pretending to rape. If it's just a fantasy then it's creepy but ok, the danger is when an echo chamber is formed and no dissenting voice exists.

> Is it your opinion that suppressing such material would prevent the behavior? Can you support that opinion with evidence? How about the fact that rape has existed before pornography?

No of course I don't believe that suppressing such material would prevent the behaviour. The fact is that many rapists are mentally ill individuals. My hope is that careful management can reduce the exposure these individuals have to reinforcement.

> Is there some proof that viewing or reading such material will cause previously ordinary people to become psychopath/rapists? Or is it merely popular to want to externalize blame for one's actions?

The danger is not to 'previously ordinary people'. The danger is that people with predispositions can be convinced that they are right in their beliefs or feelings. For example, that feminism is against the 'natural order'. That is quite a common one.

> But you want to start stamping it out on the internet first?

Not at all, if there existed such a place where people with rape fantasies could go to discuss them together I would support its closure and perhaps even the monitoring of its participants. It's a fine line to walk but I take issue with the idea that it's either all or nothing. It isn't, responsible measures can be taken without silencing dissent or isolating the vulnerable.
Are you looking for other Black Programers? Check out the Black Techies Meetup group (as oppose to Blacks in Tech, which is a bit different). Also head out to some hackathons. There are usually a few to chill with.
"After internal investigations, it appeared that a hacker was able to obtain access to an email account of one of our system administrators."

That translates to password reuse, or an insecure password.
Sequences using JavaScript Array
A few weeks ago I was halfway through the process of reverse engineering the Snapchat API myself, when I found your library. I just wanted to say thanks for saving me so much trouble.