skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Naive, absolutist positions in areas of long-standing consensus between programmers of great experience and the highest imaginable competence makes one look even more ridiculous.

By and large, the best programmers eschew nesting in favor of early returns. Invariably (in my experience) those who argue against early returns are inferior programmers (and not only by virtue of lacking taste in this particular debate).
Yes. Of course.

You would insist on more than $500? To stop you from hurting a company by releasing things you obtained unlawfully? Isn't that unethical? Illegal?

I would -- in fact I have! -- reported serious security vulnerabilities with no expectation of financial reward.
The proprietary software as evil thing comes as a morality judgment, that the potential evils from such software/licensing far outway whatever positive nuance it could bring to the table. A nuanced reading of the past 75 years of copyright/patent law and judgments can come to the conclusion that such an ecosystem is detrimental to the rights and ability of end-users and developers.

Guess what the solution to the proprietary software problem is? Not using or promoting proprietary software or platforms that enable it.

You are getting upset that the Free Software Foundation has standards to be met to consider software as "free". To dismiss their agenda as existing in 'crackpot' territory is invalidating a legitimate argument to support your shaky conclusion.
Uber is not going to be the Standard Oil of transportation, at best, it's got a hope of being the Walmart of transportation. Like other commenters have said, for Uber to get the level of defensive moats to achieve Standard Oil levels of monopoly and profitability, it doesn't just have to put Lyft and Sidecar out of business, it has to put private cars out of business. That's not going to happen.

The private transportation industry is interesting right now but I see a couple of pretty severe challenges down the road.

The first is the brutal price war that's coming down the pike. Right now, everyone's hiring pretty young white people as drivers because companies are engaging with a big PR push with regulators and they're able to still handsomely profit off disrupting inefficient cab companies.

But there's a reason why cab drivers are poorly paid and have horrible working conditions and it's because transportation has a hard time breaking out of a commodity status. Look at the airline industry in the 1950s vs today. The race to the bottom is something airlines have been fighting tooth and nail. The simple fact of the matter is that, despite all efforts to the contrary, only a tiny minority of consumers are willing to pay even a few dollars extra for a better experience. Once Uber bleeds millions of dollars being the first to fight all the regulatory battles, a Southwest is inevitably going to emerge to Uber's United.

The second major threat is that everyone can already see that the entire industry is going to be disrupted by the self-driving car and it's just a matter of when, not if. All of the private transportation companies are picking up pennies in front of a bulldozer. If they're smart, they're trying to figure out how to leverage what they have into a dominant position in a new industry but that is always a process fraught with peril.

Ultimately, I think the space has a lot of potential but let's not let wishful thinking get in the way of the brutal economics of this space.
That's all hand-waving. The courts won't allow it, the giants know that, so the internet giants use it as a chance to look good. Furthermore, it benefits the NSA for us all to think that Google, Yahoo, et. al., are not in their pocket.
There's more in the TOS and in the privacy policy section that people would consider offensive consenting with. Well, those that are informed, know that google works straight for the DoD, since its inception.
> Here's something specific: I'd like to get better at using metaphor.

I don't think you do. Metaphors aren't something that are easy to avoid in writing. Their purpose is to illustrate a concept; if you aren't illustrating a concept, you generally don't need a metaphor. If you are, then you'll be making a metaphor anyways. (Or failing to explain the concept.)

> It's.. well, it's just dull. I don't use many metaphors, and I know my writing comes off as very dry. So I'd like to get better at whatever skill or mindset that lets me spice up my writing, rather than my writing plodding dutifully along its lackluster course without any flair in presentation.

But this is what you seem to be after. This is style, whereas metaphor is just mechanics. You're looking for cadence, tone, color. So, here's my suggestion:

Pick someone in your life who you like listening to. Not for the content of what they say, but the sound of their voice. Give them samples of your writing and have them read it to you. Listen for where they get tripped up or start losing their luster. Those are your problem spots. Ask them what they'd say instead, to achieve the same meaning.

This isn't something I've personally done. I'm egotistical enough to appreciate the sound of my own voice, and I've had a lifetime of drinking in affectations of character dialogue. I've had people tell me how my writing and speaking style changes... and traced it back to the fact that I'd been re-watching Firefly recently and was unconsciously affecting a drawl.

/shrug Hope that helps.
i concur. i know a few female software developers who are completely comfortable amongst an all male group, but are terrified of speaking up when there is a mixed group.

This type of feminist, and the ada group are known for this kind of behaviour specifically, are wont to turn on their own :

http://violetblue.tumblr.com/post/44107008572/what-happened-...
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/i-am-not-your-enemy-an-o...
> People who refer to it in all-caps instantly give themselves away as outsiders to the language.

It's actually laid out in perlfaq1 ($ perldoc perlfaq1)

What's the difference between "perl" and "Perl"?
One bit. Oh, you weren't talking ASCII? :-) Larry now uses "Perl" to
signify the language proper and "perl" the implementation of it, i.e.
the current interpreter. Hence Tom's quip that "Nothing but perl can
parse Perl."

Before the first edition of Programming perl, people commonly referred
to the language as "perl", and its name appeared that way in the title
because it referred to the interpreter. In the book, Randal Schwartz
capitalised the language's name to make it stand out better when
typeset. This convention was adopted by the community, and the second
edition became Programming Perl, using the capitalized version of the
name to refer to the language.

You may or may not choose to follow this usage. For example,
parallelism means "awk and perl" and "Python and Perl" look good, while
"awk and Perl" and "Python and perl" do not. But never write "PERL",
because perl is not an acronym, apocryphal folklore and post-facto
expansions notwithstanding.

> I think what a lot of people mix up is that just because something isn't as big as it was before doesn't mean it's dead.

I wonder if the Perl6 chasm tainted outsiders' perspectives on perl and the community
I basically use it as an idea sketchpad for brainstorming. I keep a book of the thin blank pages in it, as well as one squared. The squared goes mostly unused, but it's useful for writing down visual ideas for websites and such.

Hope that helps ;)
Like the one Bradley Manning got.
I appreciate and agree with the points you are making. I really was talking general, it seems like my points were taken a little too much in a python or django related vein.

I do think there are inherent problems with a CoC. You state that the rules probably won't change anything and I agree with that. I think that shows the power of an implicit agreement of conduct. Because even if a CoC tries to inform that, I remain unconvinced that it can.

I suppose mostly what I have a problem with is the concept of expectation itself. A CoC is a lightning rod that is cited when people feel wronged. You sort of turn that around by saying that I might feel safer with explicit rules, but I could just as well argue that the more explicit the rules are, the more suspect they are to being misused or misinterpreted. Because what they do is create the explicit expectation that they will be upheld. What part of them and in what manner is subject to interpretation and those "toxic" people are usually quite inventive when it comes to finding such transgressions. Managing expectations like that can be a very tricky thing.

I might be biased by my experience here, but I've just seen a little too often how making conduct a high ranking concern can create a vacuum that attracts politics.

In the end, I'm quite certain that you are right with the beginning of your second paragraph. Although I would still say - If it's not needed and it won't change anything, then why have it? (And yes, I read your FAQ, so feel free to ignore this question ;-) )
Hence the "Except if" with which I started my comment.

I wanted to make the point that even if this one was a peaceful case of SWATing, an awful lot of them are not.
The hackers were in their own seat of power, and the guy came to them. There was no particular courage there. Had they heckled at, say, a military graduation ceremony he was presiding over, then yes, that would take courage.
Yeah, it can be interesting but often times it's almost the same sort of thing as any lousy computing job on a day to day basis, it just pays worse, with weird academic attitudes and bureaucracy tacked on. Plus, when I did it you were stuck using some janky Perl scripts and whatever bogus Java package was promising to replace the perl scripts of the day.

I worked in a lab at HMS that sounded interesting on paper but wasn't all that interesting in practice. The researchers did the same stuff as you would at The Office, they checked ESPN.com, went to meetings, typed in some SQL and Perl codes for a while, went on coffee break, complain about something, go to another meeting, fart around with the design of their conference poster, etc ad nauseum. Then they all just went to go work at some big corporation, anyway. The upside was low expectations so I was able to work almost full time as a contractor on something interesting at the same time.
You do a good job of it too.

I also wish that Good Will Hunting were required viewing, if only for the NSA monologue.

I think it's also worth mentioning that while sometimes indistinguishable, BlackHat != Defcon, even if tptacek wants them to be.
> Interesting that you think moral judgements are an indicator of self importance.

Definitely not. But the way one expresses them certainly is.
What do you mean you "missed" the github bus? If you still have the code saved somewhere, you can just create a new repo and put it up there.
How this stay-at-home mom used one weird trick to conquer the internet! Click here!

(And yes, that's how I parsed the link title at first glance.)
> Yes, we should have black and white laws, and unit tests for them.

First problem: I don't think that can be done. I'd be a lot more convinced to consider arguments like this accompanied by completed samples in some real area of human endeavor of the "black and white laws" with accompanying "unit tests" (and, anyway, wouldn't we want automated user acceptance tests, not unit tests.)
Yes - things that are U shaped would depend heavily on how great the initial and final funding is. In terms of $/t, rather than donations/t, it'd look more like - well assuming you got all your money on the first and last day you'd have two sheer cliffs with a perfectly flat plateau between them. But in reality it's likely to be somewhat smoother than that and the plateau is unlikely to the perfectly flat.

Assuming that the linear model holds until the last few days and then you get an upturn equal to the initial contributions, then you'd be looking at something like $22-23 million. Well, I'm just measuring it on my screen with my hands to get that, but that'd be my prediction based on what little I know of these sorts of fundraising thingies, assuming it behaves in the same manner as they did. ^^;
I wanted to be able to search the files in the current project (I believe it determines this by recursively going up the directory structure until it finds .git or some other version control directory), but have those files weighted according to how recently they'd been opened. And the MRU (most recently used) mode would count all recently opened files, not just the ones in the current project.
Thanks for your comments!

1) I didn't know that about issuing a FOIA to get higher res charts, but I'm not sure it would be very feasible. Our server processes the NOAA updates in real-time, and charges change nearly every day.

2) I totally agree, and only iNavX seems to do that, and I think we can do it cleverly. The one big feature that did not make Skipper 1.0 is the ability to press and hold on the chart mosaic, to surface the entire chart, and pan/zoom it with collars, insets, and all.

3) We do render the navaids using the ENC data. It's not perfect, but if you zoom in enough and tap on the navaid symbols on the charts, you will be able to interact with them (info, guidance, etc).

4) I hear you on the website text, and marketing is always tough. For now, we're emphasizing the automatic syncing between devices/web, automatic chart updates, the good UI, and friendly support. "Done right" is just a phrase we use so you keep reading, and find out what we mean by that. In general, the response has been overwhelmingly positive, and I think we're always going to get accused of smarminess by some. There are certainly a million things we could do to improve the website and other marketing.
What skills do we need to learn to get into such a position? That is apart from statistics and programming? How much effort will go into learning that stuff?
Wasting the time of bogus tech support callers
5 P’s to Ponder for Your Start-up
>Why are the illustrations done by small children using MS Paint?

None of those images look like the were drawn by a small child. The ones in the screen cap vary from "kind of crappy, but obviously done by an adult" to "probably the work of professional illustrator".
Perhaps, I'll admit my Rockefeller history isn't super extensive, but still: once he bought up all those competitors he was in an industry that required MASSIVE investment of oil wells, pipes etc. to compete with him. He had massive barriers to entry.

Considering that Uber owns none of the cars and they are a software company, I don't see how they are different from any other software company that just has a really good product. There are plenty of software companies that are awesome, that companies use, but don't have a monopoly.

I'm in the transportation space, specifically airport transfers and ground transportation, and there are tons of backend systems, and yes, it's difficult once people start using one to get them to switch, so Uber does have some barriers to entry. But there are like 20 of these systems that I work with: Zaui, Hudson, Fastrack, Distinctive Systems, they go on. Different companies used different solutions at different times.

It will be the same for taxis/on demand services. Hailo was the app in London when I was there. Most of my friends in SF use Sidecar or Lyft, not Uber, because we are more interested in the budget option, and even if Uber now offers it they didn't when we needed it first, so our habits have been formed already.

I agree on the automated cars, that will be the supply, but even then smaller companies, instead of just acquiring cars for their driver to drive, will get in the business of acquiring cars to lease. And then what about my own car? What if I want to put my car to work while I'm at work, instead of paying for parking? When we all have autonomous cars, then I can go make a choice which framework I want to use, and I'm willing to bet that Uber is not the only one standing. Who says I won't use multiple services, and have my car accept the first request that comes in from any of them?

Also, Uber doesn't have such domination that they can make a Rockefeller like threat right now. They are doing great, but so are other companies. They are in 40 markets, what about the other thousands they aren't in? What are they going to tell those competitors? Sell to us, or, sometime 3-5 years to now we may or may not move into your market and try to compete with you? Hell no, if I was them I'd stay independent and duke it out.

In the end, this is too early the game. If there are 10's of thousands of markets in the world, and Uber is in 40, and you are already declaring them the winner.

They are on the first mile of a Marathon, don't get ahead of yourself.
I think the stats speak for themselves. Very few people like Cherokee. Advertising it isn't going to help. The devs need to understand why people tend not to like it and change it so that people do like it. (They've already been told the way they handle configuration is not very good, and they reject that... good for them, but as a result and perhaps for a few other reasons too Cherokee won't be doing well on any web server survey for the foreseeable future.)

I would argue that the GUI model of configuring complex server-type services is generally wrong. At most, GUIs are good for tweaking configurations, not for setting up a baseline config to begin with.
Object pools were good JVM thinking 10 years ago. It's been a very long time since they made any sense for memory-based objects.

Unity manages to do quite a bit with the CLR on a cross-platform basis, and that looks like Javascript to me.

Horrors! AngelScript has Garbage Collection! But since it didn't come from the JVM, I guess it's OK.

http://www.angelcode.com/angelscript/sdk/docs/manual/doc_mem...

> Memory management just isn't that hard

Every victim of a use-after-free just cried out in anguish. Your world weeps at 60 fps.

Keep in mind the original question: What's a good language for implementing a browser? The number one requirement for a browser today is not performance. It is security. A decade of effort has been put into the major browsing engines to snatch pseudo-victory from the clutches of determined hackers. A great deal of that effort has been necessary because of the desire for "speed", and the fallibility of those who believe memory management "just isn't that hard".
Perhaps they aren't, I think you would find that to be true in a lot of cases.
and who has the logistics technology and user base to power that? Uber.
I would love to see this fly. I can't count the number of 1000+ word articles I've read that could have been reasonably summarized in a paragraph or two. Sure, there are long articles that are so engrossing or relevant that you wouldn't want to skip a sentence, but in my experience they turn out to be the rare exception.
It doesn't matter as much as you say. The fact is, at the very least we can now know better where the fenceposts are, and this will have the undeniable effect of creating a more educated citizenry. A secondary effect is that motivated people can now create tools that reveal ways in which legislators are positioned in relation to those fence posts, and why their interpretations (such as they may be rationalized in accordance with your observation regarding law enforcement) are positioned where they are.

Perhaps most importantly, this will serve to make the law shallower. Currently, many laws are passed with large parts in reference to other laws, definitions from 400 pages elsewhere in the text (themselves with referential connections to disparate locations), and providing a way to analyze the law programmatically will have inevitable analytical benefits that allow citizens to know exactly how the sausage is made, whose farm the animals are coming from, and how it's been spiced.
"Why cameras are banned on courtrooms? I remember the last US trial news all of them had sketches like this instead of photos and videos...
"

In general, because the judiciary has watched what the "news media" has done to every other aspect of life, and doesn't want trials and judging to become a popularity contest.

They try to strike a balance by doing things like having most court of appeals release live or near-live audio versions of arguments, allowing tweeting from court rooms, whatever.

Just not the "let's put up the satellites and get nancy grace on live"
Hey Marketers, making a website is not about you
I would like this too, there is a freelancing thread every month but some people are looking for actual employment not freelancing gigs.
>Airports are part of our public transportation infrastructure, and any new source of funding they find will result in higher costs for everyone except FlightCar users, because all the costs from rental companies will get spread out elsewhere

Alright, pass those costs on. What's the alternative? We live with a less efficient system because we're used to car renters subsidizing everyone else?
No he won't. He'll be like those early competitors to Ford who failed because they didn't see the big picture. Google is going to eat Uber alive in the long term. You stand on a street corner, use an app to select where you want to go, and a driverless car rolls up and you hop in to get on your way. Google bills you for cab fare every time you hit 50 bucks worth and offers you a discounted rate if you keep the volume up on the screen in front of you as it plays offers from various sponsors.
A list of dead scientists.
I'm sorry the progress seems to disorganized. I've recently moved to doing work in the main js-git repo to make things more obvious to people.

As far as the first fund-raiser, I was able to stretch the money farther than I had anticipated but as I mentioned in the second fund-raiser, has a slow start.

It's hard to build a large library like this when basic things like streams, packages, module loading, and binary data are so varied and there are no accepted standard ways to work. This is pioneering work, not paving cowpaths.
Sure, but it's more like Tesla would buy Uber, not Uber would rocafella out and buy Tesla, along with the roads. Plus, outside of SF, Uber isn't really taking off.
This is the Modem World: The sinister side of the '80s BBS
I'll be up late tonight to do the same. Coming back on the market as a Rails freelance developer!

I've heard good things about the prospects of this thread. I tried to find the thread which discussed the outcome of the freelancer, seeking freelancer thread but couldn't find it. There are also many personal references I know of that attest to its utility.
Would you rip out the guts of a modern browser and replace them with brand-new code that you claim is 25% faster?

No way. You'd be laughed out of the room. How exactly would you get a radical expansion of the attack surface past a security audit?

You might do it in a game, where security is (usually) not a primary concern.

Anyone who would sacrifice browser security for a 25% increase in performance is a fool. Browsers need to be secure, and then performance needs to be "good enough".
For Techzing (techzinglive.com) fans, this idea came out of Jason and Justin debating the merits of a 'TL;DR for Hacker News' service on a recent podcast. I figured it would be simple enough to test, hence, HN Digest.
Now you just sound entitled AND righteously indignant...
Today was disheartening.

The Guardian writes an expose on what should be the greatest political scandal of our lifetime- the fact that low level contractors and government employees can access all of our chat history, emails and browsing history.

The response? No one on social media is really discussing it, CNN America only has a passing mention of it on their front page (buried near the bottom) and America goes on with its day.

What does it take to get American's outraged about something?