skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
A. Nobody cares about your degree.

B. If you ever find yourself in a position where A is not true, you can go back and get the masters degree. Schools will very happily sell you degrees at any point in your life, never fear.

(Interestingly, this advice doesn't apply to medical school, where a friend once cautioned me that, if this were a universe where I wanted to achieve the life goal of having one of every degree, I'd better sign up for the M.D. portion before turning 35. But the other degrees are open to anyone who's ready to take on debt.)

Take the work. Work, work, work. School is a great thing to do when the market turns way, way south. This is not that time in our field.
NVidia Shield Review: A Bright New Future For Android Gaming...
I found this whole discussion irritating because not a single person mentioned that with the memory demands of a web browser that you might not want GC. You can say all this BS about momentum but in my mind avoiding GC is probably the best and most relevant reason in 2013. Thank you for mentioning it.

Shows how dependent on GC a large part of the community of developers have become - they are incapable of imagining a world without it.

(PS: I am amused when people mention that being 20-50% slower is described as fixing the performance gap.)
UK Government to outlaw Google Glass for drivers | Stuff
More likely he assumed the reader knew what he was talking about.
I usually cheat and just carry a stripped lower receiver if I'm not going to be carrying at the destination. I avoid going to NYC to the extent possible, too, though. The TSA people sometimes lol. The ones who handle guns also seem to be the best ones at the airport, and especially at Seattle, I like talking to them (someday when I get my manufacturer FFL I hope to show off some hot title II stuff there)

Tempted to start carrying an 80% lower, which is tech I ally not a firearm, to be even safer. Should still be able to get firearm service at the tsa for it.
Another way to say it: if we had any way to quantitatively measure the performance of programmers over time, most "programmers" wouldn't be programmers any more.

There's a field with a similar problem to our own: public-school teaching. Teacher performance isn't quantified, and so teachers can pretty much get away with only being as good at imparting knowledge as any random member of the population--even though they took years of education-in-Education. Most "teachers" aren't teachers, any more than I'm a teacher; they're simply people paid to repeatedly attempt (and fail) to be teachers.†

We pay a lot of people to repeatedly attempt (and fail) to be programmers.

---

† Teachers' unions are right now fighting the introduction of actual metrics on how a student's achievement level's year-over-year velocity is affected by a teacher relative to the average of their peer-teachers in the same school. They are fighting this because the data clearly shows a bimodal distribution, where a lot of people are just extremely unfit to be teachers--their students actually reaching negative learning velocities by their presence in the class--and until now, the unions protected these people, since there was nothing to prove they sucked so very much. It's hard to go back on your decision to defend someone when you later find out that they're indefensible.
I'm getting seriously irritated at the "I have nothing to hide" crowd. For starters, here are a few ways this can go horribly wrong:

* Industrial espionage -- it's big business, and I'm sure it pays better than being an NSA analyst.

* Foreign espionage -- since this gives unlimited querying power to every agent, a single "turned" agent could inflict massive damage on U.S. government and industry interests on behalf of a foreign power. The potential for double agents is huge.

* False positives and guilt by association -- being flagged as a "person of interest" and then essentially persecuted because you have fringe ideological interests, are looking up a lot of info on terrorism for a book project, have a friend who knows radical Muslims, etc.

* Corrupt use in political campaigns by incumbent politicians with access -- obvious.

* Blackmail and other corruption.

* Use by government agencies with access to spy on other agencies.

... I'm sure creative people can think of more.
"Mr. <webservice-ceo> Does your company offer a backdoor for the government? It looks like it, even though you have declared that there was no backdoor just a few weeks ago!" - "Uhm. Not wittingly!"
The United States is also moving more and more to an offense-based model of disallowed speech despite having strong constitutional protections for free speech[1]. Free speech has never been terribly popular anywhere.

[1] http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2013/06/13/essay-critici...
Show HN: Minisync gives your web app its own relational backend-as-a-service
Stallman's stance is against all cell phones, not just smartphones. And I'd argue that in 2013, to the point where we're issuing basic phones to welfare recipients for the purpose of job searching, that this is an invalid conclusion.

As is only using the FSF's definition of free software (where it matters less that the software itself is free, but that the software doesn't point out to you any nonfree addons. Fedora Linux is free software, as is Firefox but since they allow nonfree firmware blobs, and addons respectively, they don't count).

Or free hardware, Good Luck With That, unless you like a single netbook made by a single company in China.
>>Perl [...] lack of formal function parameters

http://search.cpan.org/~barefoot/Method-Signatures-20130222/...

(And others on CPAN.)

>> [C for suid flag]

Afaik, you should be able to use anything for suid stuff.
Yes, but not in a technical sense. People think encryption is hard. They believe that they have to jump huge hurdles and will be confronted with an incredible learning curve in order to protect their privacy via encryption. The fact of the matter is, that this is simply a misconception. There's nothing hard about using PGP for instance. It integrates nicely almost everywhere the typical user would want to use it with. The process is already rather streamlined. Our job as those who know this is to educate those who don't in how to use encryption. Most people I've done this with so far said something like "What? That's it?".
> IP by definition cannot be "lost" by the creator

Yes, it can. "Property" is the right to control, not the subject of the rights. IP is lost in the same way that physical property rights are lost -- I can sell physical property and retain possession of the physical object that is the subject of property rights, but still have lost the property as such.
Bunnie's open-source laptop project (Novena) also had similar philosophies with part selection, with the addition of another requirement I think is pretty important to the maker/hacker community:

"You can download, without NDA, the datasheets for all the components, and key peripheral options are available so it’s possible to build a complete firmware from source with no opaque blobs." [1]

I wonder how many of the Minnow's components require NDA/signup/etc for datasheets, or to access (proprietary) firmware.

[1] http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=2686
Cool designs!
One place, with 60000 employees, had an 'editing cone' which was an actual traffic cone that you had to have in your cube if you were writing to the Access file on the SMB drive

I LOVE this image. Acquiring a physical lock on the file. Think of the manager who thought of this beautiful idea, probably not a programmer by training. Awesome.

And yes, since it relies on human conformance, it's bound to fail on occasion. You can say the same thing about any piece of software you ever came across or wrote.
Hey Josh, Zach here (one of the co-founders). We personally don't use PHP very much but we're more than open to hosting those screencasts. If you have any recommendations or would like to post some yourself please let us know.
Anecdote: I'm white, speak English as a first language, and smile and look everybody in the eye. I also go through TSA Precheck. My experiences have been generally excellent.
Office 365 subscribers get Office Mobile for Android phones
Also, you can use the arrow keys to go back and forth through the slides.
Two words: Pre Check

Seriously, this will change your life if you are a frequent flyer. Just get it.
Ask HN: Visiting San Francisco in August
I run a startup based in New Orleans, and was offered a chance to tag along on a trip to San Francisco for a few days (August 8th-10th) which I jumped on as a chance to look at a far more established start-up community. I've never been to SF, so as an entrepreneurially-minded person, is there anything going on in town that stretch that I could take advantage of? More generally, are there any companies or incubators with an open door sort-of policy that I should check out? This come together rather rapidly for me so I didn't get a chance to do any advance planning, so any advice would be appreciated.
Nvidia Shield review
I agree that there is not a good overlap between people employed by the TSA and people subjected to the policies of the TSA. I'm less convinced that there is a huge socioeconomic gulf between those groups. The cost of airfare relative to overall cost of living has substantially declined in my lifetime. I would agree with your assertion if the passengers of airlines were like they were 20 years ago. But my contemporary experiences suggest that anyone who has a salary of a TSA employee can afford to fly somewhere. I fly out of Orlando, Florida and I don't see a huge difference between the clientele of Southwest and the clientele of Walmart.
Introducing Facebook Embedded Posts
Wow, what a staggering misinterpretation of what the parent said.
Nvidia  Shield review
Packer can now do no-launch AMI builds
It's just a different (arguably better default) to have to explicitly ignore errors and/or explicitly bubble them up the call chain.

You'll always be in control of your code's control flow that way. You'll never have some random library 5 levels beneath your code throw an exception that you didn't know about, causing your function to return prematurely, resulting in your function accidentally leaving some file handle open, a mutex locked or some similar problem (I realize in Go this should be handled via defer anyway, so would probably not be an issue in practice). In short, you know exactly what error cases you should be thinking about and are forced to explicitly reason about whether or not you care about it.

A few languages fix some of these concerns with checked exceptions, but checked exceptions have their own limitations and drawbacks. Of course, regardless of the approach taken, lazy programmers will always do the minimal amount of effort required to ignore errors/exceptions.
This seems relevant:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-04-26/illuminati-were-ama...
Nvidia  SHIELD Review
Ask HN: I'm in a difficult situation, and I would like to work for you
Hi HN.

I know this is most definitely the wrong place to be posting this, but there's not much else I can think of to do right now.

Recently, I dropped out of college after 1 year due to financial difficulties, got a full-time job, became unemployed, and will soon be out of a place to live (~2 days). I know given an internet connection, and the chance, I can prove myself and bring value to businesses. I live in Vancouver, B.C, Canada.

I have about 5 years of freelance web development experience, from the server side (WAMP/LAMP), to server side logic (PHP), to front-end (HTML/CSS/JS). I also have experience with Wordpress, Google Analytics, Google Adsense, and a short foray into website security. During the 30 days of unemployment, I've been applying to many positions, but have been rejected time after time. I've even flown down to Seattle for an Amazon on-site interview for a front-end developer role, but never heard back.

Anyone who has the chance to work with me has never had an issue/complaint, and I have worked through many new and foreign challenges, and produced pleasing results.

Most web-dev positions in Vancouver have been Java/C#/.NET related. Given the rejections I've received, no one wants to waste money hiring a variable to learn and succeed at something they've never done before.

I will do my best to maintain an internet connection and a place to develop with the (~$450 CAN) I have left. I am not looking for charity, sympathy, or pity. I just want a chance to prove myself and provide value to your business. Any type of work as long as it's legal and ethical, and if I will be unable to produce results, I will honestly let you know.

PS: I am a 20 year old. If that instills any kind of discomfort/distrust in you, feel free to ignore this. For anyone who is willing to contact me, please leave an email address. I would like to retain confidentiality, thanks.
What do you mean no? Amazon isn't writing the reviews, someone else is.
It does not, and this needs to change before Go becomes viable for applications like this.
I've never heard Stallman be right about anything that wasn't blindingly obvious to anyone who was an open-minded observer of the same things at the same time.

He's not the only one that's been crowing about electronic surveillance. Ever since things like Carnivore (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnivore_(software)) were uncovered in the 1990s, it's been obvious that there's a lot going on we will never be fully informed about, that the internet is no longer a safe playground devoid of malevolent actors. Mailing lists and USENET groups at the same period of time were constantly aflame with these sorts of issues.

If you can cite an occasion where Stallman has had a unique insight into the situation, I'd be surprised.

Stallman, for all his posturing and relentless drum beating, which is at least admirable from the point of dedication, is still no Alan Kay, Marvin Minsky, Marshall McLuhan or Raymond Kurzweil.
My son won’t get fair trial in US – Snowden’s father
Not sure if there is any outside research. I believe that newer additions has this info in the preface. But I can say I felt good while reading it. I need to do that again.
One that I've seen in the past is:
Machine with Concrete - Arthur Ganson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5q-BH-tvxEg
The onus on one making broad statements and presenting them as fact is on the one making them. Note, i'm not really asking you to prove your statement. Just that you refrain from making such statements when you don't already carry the proof and provide it along with the statement.

Also, no, i did not take it as an insult, just as a false statement from someone with little knowledge of the subject matter.

> I do think that providing multiple options where most languages have one option built-in is unnecessary cognitive load. One doesn't "choose" an "object system" for Python--what benefit would one hope to gain?

That question is actually understandable and easily answered. Two benefits:

1. More expressive power for example. Perl has Roles that function in a way unmatched by most other languages (i say most because i don't know all languages, i honestly don't know one that has roles as good as perl). They make it possible to share methods among classes without needing to resort to base classes and diamond inheritance issues, while still retaining full introspection capabilities. Another system implements most of the sugar, but leaves out some really complicated features in order to make it much faster. Yet another provides the most speed by implementing the core in C. This makes it a bit harder to debug, and less portable, but if you need massive speed, there you go.

2. The ability to try out different things and work out in real life situations which features are needed and which ones are dead ends. This ability is amplified by the ability to simply extend your object system by writing more Perl. In comparison, Ruby has an ubiquitous one, but when they desire to change it, they cannot easily test the changes large-scale in real situations, and even if a change is undoubtably positive, they still have to convince Matz first, and then implement it in C.

> indisputably more work for everyone than just having one.

Actually that is disputable. In the past it was the case, yes. But nowadays they have converged on the same syntax and present themselves identically to consumers. That means porting between different systems is trivial, and people using a class don't even notice changes. And that is not just fluff. The perl community has been doing this actively, for example here:

https://github.com/rjbs/Email-Sender/compare/52fcbbb9b6a1c4a...

I'm not going to comment on your last paragraph because you wrote it while having decided that what you wrote before is actual fact and it is thus very flawed. Please stop doing that and use more question marks.
A channel may be closed with the built-in function close; the multi-valued
assignment form of the receive operator tests whether a channel has been closed. [1]

Given that is available, why is the use of a separate bool quit channel preferred?

[1] http://golang.org/ref/spec#Channel_types
The Harsh Truth About Fear
That is, in fact, in a rather primitive way, what compilers do already; it's just very blunt and baroque, so instead of "please be more specific" you get an error message, and then you have to run it over again to get the next iteration of the feedback loop. The near-term goal in compiler/interpreter design (given still-textual languages) should be more of exactly this kind of interactive communication, where the compiler is "peering" with you to edit your code.

But the full solution requires hard AI, really. "Build me the next Facebook" can't be extrapolated into anything useful unless the software itself can dream of what the "next" Facebook would be like. A human programmer probably already has those dreams on offer.
Life Of A Stranger Who Stole My Phone
GO BOILERS!
> Why? The reasoning here is a awfully thin, but has something to do with "being tracked = bad" and then goes into crazy territory from there.

You don't understand why tracking may be bad? Or are you just trying very hard to mock his very valid conclusion?

Here's other people's thoughts about cellphone tracking: http://www.zeit.de/datenschutz/malte-spitz-data-retention/ (totally crazy, right!)

> If he's concerned about remaining invisible, then this must be applied rigorously across all aspects of his life

No, it mustn't. Every bit helps.

> Does he wear dazzle face-paint or glasses with bright IR LEDs on them so that CCTV cameras can't pick him up?

Perhaps he does not yet live in an area with seamless CCTV tracking.

> The sign that someone's a crackpot is in how inconsistent they are in applying what they've concluded. It means they're missing something important.

You must be a crackpot then because you're clearly missing that Stallman has probably managed to avoid having his daily movements tracked by some carrier.

> Everything Stallman advocates to avoid detection just makes him an even bigger target.

To whom, with what (crackpot-like) line of thought? Stallman is very open about his principles, his reasons and his actions. It would be extremely dumb for anyone to derive from this information that he is dangerous or a worthwhile target.
Google Play Now Generates More Downloads Than iOS App Store
> Muslim-majority countries ranked as "free" by Freedom In The World include Senegal, Sierra Leone, Northern Cyprus, and Indonesia.

It's worth noting that "free" is relative in this context. In Indonesia, for instance, it's not unheard of for individuals to be jailed for "blasphemy" [1]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_religion_in_Indonesi...
While I have great respect for Arduino, if you are looking to do something with networking, go buy a BeagleBone Black (or other cheap ARM linux board).
The title and the premise of the article are misleading.

There were not more works created in the 1880s than the 1980s that Amazon can sell -- that would suggest that human productivity per capita was significantly larger than it is today thanks to different copyright laws, especially since the literary population was much smaller than it is today.

In fact, the article is referring to the number of works multiplied by the number of releases. IOW, the same work is being counted multiple (or even hundreds of) times.
How I found a bug in 23andme and wasn't really terminally ill (translated)
Yes that is correct. Brainfuck is not as readable as Perl. (I think you need to train more with your witty comebacks. Also drop the meme that Perl is not very readable, when it has lately improved a LOT [1] in that regard.)

[1] https://metacpan.org/module/Moo#SYNOPSIS
Big plus one on this - especially the Philippines. Jumping on a fishing boat in a place like Malaysia is probably not super difficult. But would take some capital.
Moral judgements are subjective opinion by nature, fair enough, but I bring the crackpot label in for exactly what you say, thinking in absolutes, in black and white, instead of nuance.

In the real world, that shows a distressing lack of critical thinking and a further distressing abundance of dogmatism.

"Proprietary software is bad" -- Subjective value judgement.

"Properitary software is evil" -- Subjective value judgement that shows a lack of thought.

"You should always use free software wherever possible." -- Subjective value judgement.

"You should use absolutely nothing but free software ever" -- Subjective value judgement that shows a lack of thought.

I mean, the FSF "disapproves" of software that is completely free on its own (Fedora, Firefox), merely because they point out nonfree things you can use. (Fedora's firmware bundles and some repos, and Firefox's addons site).

That's completely idiotic. Apparently the FSF's "freedoms" do not include the freedom to run whatever software you choose if it's "unfree".
FUCK YEAH BRO!
Yes, the goal is "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts." But the means to that end is to incentivize creators by granting them exclusive rights to the things that they create for a certain period of time.
Reddit thread with damning real-world examples of surveillance misuse
Just as likely to end up in gizmo.
While I think there is plenty of doom and gloom that isn't entirely true, I think the picture you've painted is still a bit rosy.

> korean cybersport is finally transitioning to SC2

Yes and no. Proleague finally switched from Brood War and KeSPA players are doing excellent in the WCS leagues, esports in Korea are way down from where they've been, with MBCGame dead. Even then, almost everyone is playing LoL.

In fact, in PC Bangs, Starcraft 1 is STILL more popular than Starcraft 2.

> diablo is fine

Again, yes and no. It sold well, and the initial sale of a Blizzard title is where almost all its revenue comes from. But many, many of the most hardcore fans were disappointed, and most won't buy the next Diablo property 'sight-unseen' like the last one.

> wow is probably holding record for the most living / profitable mmo

True, WoW has been the most profitable MMO ever. But their numbers have declined over the last few years, and every attempt they've had to "give it the paddles" and reignite growth hasn't been too successful.

Almost all my friends who played WoW call it a shadow of the game that it was, citing the HUGE differences in skillsets and builds, how easy it is to get rewards, etc.

---

All that said, SC2 was a HUGE part of eSports rising worldwide, and still sports a pretty healthy audience. And one has to expect their next MMO will be spectacular, if they can ever abandon WoW.
I am still learning my self hence why I would love to see some screencasts. I am about to start a year long placement where PHP is the language of choice so maybe in 6 months I may do something for your site. Great work so far.
There is an architecture doc, but definitely there is no porting guide. I would start with sending a mail to pypy-dev or asking on IRC, but generally "get the tests running first, all of them" is a good start.