skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It's my opinion that the JSF will be quickly replaced - hopefully domestically, but definitely globally - by air superiority drones and bombing drones. The very rapid pace of development and much lower cost guarantees that outcome. It'll happen in the next decade. If the US doesn't invest in order to lead that charge, we'll be embarrassed by other countries that will. Even if there's an argument to be made in favor of pilots in planes, countries will rapidly turn to drone technology because it's cheaper.

It appears likely to take another decade to get the JSF program where it should already be. By that time it'll be a trivial matter to swarm these planes out of the sky with drones that cost 5% to 10% as much per plane. Even a limited country such as Iran is going to be able to take down the F-35 by throwing multiple drones at it.
Slightly off topic, but is it just me or has Lua gotten a lot of attention on HN in the past weekish? I haven't heard much of Lua before but recently it seems to have come up a lot more.

And even more off topic (sorry), what makes Lua better/different than other scripting languages?

EDIT: On jacobwcarlson suggestion, I Googled Lua vs Python, and found this Wiki, http://lua-users.org/wiki/LuaVersusPython Not a speed comparison, but gives a fair amount of difference in the actual languages. And yes it is on a Lua users site, so may be biased, but on my very light reading didn't seem too bad.
JS is great - it's so hackable, via simple straightforward syntax that's familiar to anyone who programmed in c,c++,c#,java,php and is similar in ease of use to python and ruby - why on earth would you think it's a bad thing... Javascript is easy - few constructs that together can build just about anything is a big plus IMO - to each is thier own right
Just have to photograph them at higher wavelengths. 390-700nm is fine and all, but somewhere around 10nm or so should do the trick...

Perhaps there could be a market on SR for little pieces of x-ray sensitive photographic film. Customers could pay providers a slight premium to include the film in the shipment. If the customer discovers that the film was exposed, they know that they've fallen onto somebodies radar.
IMO, the reference to large volume sites that use a product is an indicator that it can be scaled. Not that scaling a given solution was easy, but more that it can be done.
Beer absolutely kills me. I don't think it did when I was younger, but now two or three beers will get me slaughtered on the racquetball court the next day and leave me mentally slow. But it's just beer and all the various crap in it. Liquor is fine.
Teleportation: Behind the Science of Quantum Computing
I was told it would "clear my mind" and detoxify etc (that's not why I did it though). It didn't. My mind was cloudier on the fast and my coworkers would frequently call me out for rambling about food. My energy level dropped to about 80% during the day, and I slept about 2hrs longer each night.

But it did teach me that my body is much stronger than I thought previously. I am better able to differentiate between "I'm bored, let's eat" or "your stomach wants food" vs. actual, your-whole-body-needs-food hunger pangs. And it hardened my resolve that there are some things I can do if you put your mind to it, which 90% of other people have no desire or will to do, but that's not a reason not to do it.

As a result of the fast, I am further distanced spiritually from the others I encounter who make promises to themselves about one thing or another (e.g. one guy wanted to try the fast with me), but then during execution, they cheat or make excuses - Something I am still guilty of, but getting better at.
There is a reason people say some designs look like metro: because they do. To the untrained eye, Helvetica Neue and Segoe look very similar; text-heavy flat designs using very similar fonts look very similar. Microsoft might not have been the first to bring this sort of concept to life (they weren't), but they certainly popularised it by virtue of their mainstream reach and their dramatic departure from previous design choices.

I'm not saying Apple hasn't improved the concept with gradients, shadows etc, but denying that Metro was a big influence on the iOS redesign is just unrealistic.
Not 100% certain. I have IBS-like symptoms. Even whey protein (which has no lactose) makes my stomach rumble. Sometimes get flashes of heat from consuming dairy.

The tricky thing is, I used to eat that and other foods for years without any symptoms so severe that I should obviously eliminate them.

But, after eliminating dairy and a few other foods, my day to day digestion and energy levels are consistently higher. I've tested reintroducing them.

Relating this back to alcohol, the idea is that something could have significant effects, yet they're not high enough to be an acute problem. So you can persist in a behavior that harms you, without being addicted. You just haven't realized you might benefit from stopping.
Hold on. I'm going to be a father soon. Wouldn't I appreciate all that stuff too if I have my kid with me?
Railway cars weigh approximate 30 tons (unloaded) to 140 tons (loaded).

Even a Ford F150 truck only weighs 2 tons.
>At the same time, I can't help but grin that we on the CS side find a way to erase all the gains in performance and efficiency as soon as the EE guys make them.

That's one way to see it.

Another is that we don't erase them: we put them to use so programming can be more widespread, easier and more ambitious in scope.

(E.g. you cannot practically write a 10.000.000 line program in ASM, whereas you can in C. Or you cannot have everyone be able to write a 200 line high level program that does something complex in C, but you can in Python).
Yes. This is why it is often a good idea to restart founder vesting when you raise a funding round -- it is EXTREMELY rare for a founding team to actually hold together all the way through to success. Generally at least one founder feels that at least one other founder didn't pull their weight, and without vesting there's no way to fix this.
You could tell your former position and add that you have done some gap filing in between four a few month, without telling the details.
I wrote a similar program for windows.

https://github.com/jftuga/Windows/tree/master/mp

The only file you need to download is mp.exe. Source code is mp.au3.
I love having the server and client share the same codebase.

I'm working on a webapp that mimics functionality of an existing desktop application -- mostly as a self-educational project. As I'm writing it and adding features, I can push processing from server-side to client-side and vice versa with hardly more than a copy and paste of the relevant chunk of code.

Say I don't really care about the security of some particular process, and I really don't want to use up any additional resources on the server for it, I can just push that load to the client browser in a couple clicks.

Did I just write some feature into the client that I suddenly realize presents a security problem? With node, there's no need to change my frame of mind or rethink how to do something in a different language -- just copy and paste from client.js to server.js and do some slight cleanup.
I have a hard time believing that if the employer is in desperate need, and a potential employee has the skills, they cannot come to an agreement, especially if you make it in for an interview. This does not make sense. Someone is not motivated enough.
Plivo handles all call control, so traffic passes through Plivo.
ZFS Forensics – Recovering Files From a Destroyed Zpool
Actually, I don't. Disruptive employees invariably have an internal narrative in their own minds that says they're attempting to speak truth to power. In reality they're using that as an excuse to be disruptive.
It's not a bad language as long as you know it well enough to know which parts of it are the bad parts so you can avoid them.

...and that's what makes it a bad language.
It looked promising to start with, but it is diminished by using Hollywood footage instead of real world events.
There's also 'The Circuit' in Logan's Run, which actually delivers the semi-random anonymous partner to your residence (via hyperloop tubes?):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMlHZNMH5KA
Secret Ingredients to Building Airbnb’s International Payments Platform
As a Chicken Scheme user you might also appreciate the Hintz Chicken Scheme Shell (Hiss): http://thintz.com/chicken-scheme-shell

Disclaimer: I haven't used it and the author says it is "still pretty new." However, it seems to be under active development still. At least there was a commit to the repository within the last year.
Scaling nodechecker with Docker
Cisco Cutting Jobs as Revenue Forecast Misses Estimates
Geoff Schmidt - a founder of Meteor - wrote an essay explaining the reasoning behind meteor packages: https://github.com/meteor/meteor/pull/516#issuecomment-12919...

BTW - You can use NPM packages within Meteor packages.
Then I suspect it's just being raised in a very healthy environment ;)
Yes, definitely - I could be wrong, but I've been told that when you're healthier, your body metabolizes things faster & more efficiently. So stuff like alcohol or caffeine will hit you harder and faster too (all the more reason, right?).

For myself, I've noticed that after getting healthier, just one cup of coffee a day keeps me plenty productive. I might have a cup of tea in the afternoon. But it's a far cry from my previous 3-cups-a-day habit.
Ask HN: Best way to learn Java?
I'm looking to learn Java and need a resource that is preferably not a thick and verbose book. I have experience with Ruby, PHP, Go, JS etc.

What have you guys used or found to be good and interesting?
Yes! You ask polite questions. "Have you been here before? What product do you use today? What are you looking for? That's a beautiful watch/scarf/sweater. Where are you visiting from? What do you do for fun?" It's not that hard.
FakeValley: 'The Onion' For Silicon Valley
You are unusual. Most people actually don't want extra steps like going to a calculator site to perform calculations. Those things are especially annoying when on mobile.

It's true however that most people do not want the search engine to know much about them. Interestingly, most user do notice (and complain) if a search engine stops using personalization and localization. When given the choice between more privacy or better results, the vast majority opt for better results.
Careful, you'll unleash the PC monster...
I don't know that you get to say that something is wrong if you can't get to Ramen-profitability in 6 to 12 months and then later say to follow the example of Google and build something that touches billions of people's lives. Adwords didn't show up for a long time.
From what is in the post, it seemed too me that it was through personal connections
Is it true that many nations could afford to provide unlimited renewable energy, but choose not to?

http://cleantechnica.com/2011/10/24/cost-of-war-spent-on-sol...
Please I don't need more JS in my life, i need less JS in my life.
The ability to field ten times as many planes at the same cost should probably figure in an evaluation...
This is the image with the quote written on it. It's a picture of Earth taken from the Voyager 1 spacecraft, Earth is that small dot in the top ray of sunlight. http://ep.yimg.com/ty/cdn/skyimage/pbdwords.jpg
It instantly reminded me of simple as well. Both top fixed headers with orange buttons and large BG image with a white background. There are more for sure. The basic app/tool website layout.
Everybody thinks they know javascript, but on the contrary nobody actually knows it. It's a very twisted and powerful language. It has many quirks and many unknowns.

Most of the time if one thinks s/he knows javascript, actually s/he knows a higher level abstraction library and DOM built on javascript like Jquery.
"I'm currently considering a number of positions with competitive salaries [or 'with salaries around $X']. So, I think that focusing on what I can do for you and establishing a fair wage based on that will be more representative of what we can offer each other."

That tends to be the route I go down anyway. At least when their position is good enough that I don't just walk out of the interview for someone being that rude, (i.e. I want to work with them for some other significant reason.)
CoffeeScript is JavaScript. There should be nothing stopping anyone from doing everything with CoffeeScript on this device, or anything that supports JS.
Customer Acquisition and the Entry Level iPhone
Large companies (I've worked for two, in the Valley) have huge amounts of bureaucracy. Until you've worked for one, it's unbelievable how inefficient and wasteful they can be.

Maybe regular layoffs are a way to "force" some efficiency into the system, to cut out some fat, even if you end up losing some good people with the bad.

The promise of regular layoffs is also an excellent way to keep your employees toeing the line. Not everyone is a 25-year-old web developer with three competing job offers at all times.
Absolutely. On AVRs, `new` and `malloc` work, but just barely. RAII/stack-only programming is basically a necessity. That is simply not possible with languages like Python or Javascript.
Then just write more unit tests and you'll be fine.
nifty tool!
If anything : decentralized vs centralized currency.

For the laymen : Nobody owns Bitcoin. Liberty Reserve owned Liberty Reserve.

It's as simple as it gets.
JavaScript is the most deployed dynamic embedded programming language in the world (consider all the web browsers on desktop computers and mobile devices). If we expland this environment to customer hardware, we also expand our view of UI/UX to a different level. We should thank Moore's law.
How does Facebook manage releases without downtime and poor UX?
Nothing stopping media tycoons from making their own classifieds site. Village Voice did with Backpages
I feel the same way about it. It's always felt like more of a concept than an actual product or service to me. Even the home page is really vague: "App.net is Your Passport to Great Applications"--what does that even mean?

I have friends who use App.net and love it, but I don't think I'll be jumping on board because I just haven't been convinced that I need it.
Man that's jaded and cynical. There's a world of difference between assuming total control and tweaking your routine in hopes of living better.
If a waiter/waitress does a good job they will be more likely to get a better tip. If a waiter/waitress does a bad job they will get smaller / no tip.

Now, they will not necessarily get a bigger tip or even necessarily get a tip if they do a wonderful job, but it does make some people.
Your A-10 to F-35 comparison with respect to guns is even worse when you consider that only one variant, the F-35A, has an internal gun. The F-35B and F-35C would have to have a gun pod carried externally on station 5 (right in the center of the belly, between the inboard weapons bay doors).
Considering games one already owns and games one doesn't want, that's what not purchasing this bundle is for me.
You know when people talk about negativity in Hacker News comments? This is what they mean.
Who specified that either one of those conditions was true? If it's an example, let's be honest: If the employer is not desperate they may not respond well to being told that their question didn't pass muster. Real people who are struggling to find work are asked these questions, and real people are being discriminated against by not answering.
Nice to read others like me exist! My dad drinks, but is pretty picky; only high end IPAs for the most part. That's what he brews too, and I love helping, mostly because I appreciate the science.

I don't look down on anyone who drinks, as long as they're not getting blasted just for the sake of it. Okay...maybe I judge you if you drink cheap beer...but only in good fun!

I'm 22, and I tried wine on my own terms at a wine tasting solo the other day; I felt like I wanted to vomit. Holy crap!

I have my hobbies, and my friends, I just don't drink. Usually 'no thanks' is enough, I've found that even around new people I don't have to say 'I don't drink/smoke' mostly because I don't want to seem pretentious or judgemental. My hobbies include heavy lifting, green tea, and generally eating really healthy; barring something catastrophic, I think it'll pay off.
That is actually an amazing (short) speech. It's too bad most of the audience may not have been able to hear with all the screaming going on.

This guy just went up a few spots in my book
As another early adopter, I have to say that it's disappointing how much the company is relying on "the community" to generate their business model for them, rather than properly develop the software themselves.
I'll take "most terrifying things you could tell an electrical engineer in 2005" for $2000, Alex.
I have 34 years w/o drinking buzz, the best way to combat an addiction is to never start it.
Lua is a language designed to be embeddable, Javascript is a language that didn't even had the chance to be properly designed.

Although I'm one of those Lua "unadopters", for me it's better to simplify stuff to my audience, and I have considered seriously to use JavaScript for my next project instead of Lua.
Why I Resist Web Redesigns (And Maybe You Do, Too)
so... how about that well funded school system we enjoy here in the US?
Most of the 2 bdr units in Mountain View on Craigslist are well over 2500:

http://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/apa/pen?query=&zoomToPost...
And what happens when you need to specify a pin mode on the Tessel? If you don't have at least tri-state support (which isn't compatible with human-friendly abstractions like "blink"), you're going to burn out a lot of sensors.

Most modern microcontrollers have anywhere from 3 to 5 possible pin states, and I don't think it's possible to safely wrap these up in a nice, human-friendly function like "blink".

For example, on a lot of ARMs, you have:

In, no pull

In, pulled up

In, pulled down

Out, up

Out, down

and on AVRs, you have

In, no pull

In, pulled up

Out, up

Out, down

You necessarily have to have ugly secondary functions like "pinMode".
Yes, but in a good way, generally it's far stronger than our common sense idea of "secure".
ICloud.com updated to match iOS 7 design cues implies future design of Mac OS X?
Vulnerability in ICMPv6 could allow Denial of Service
HootSuite sending spam tweets
No, I'm simply saying that the mobile advertising market is paying others (apps, websites, etc.) to ultimately reach me. What if I could cut out the middle man and essentially let them pay to reach me directly. I'm "opting in" to be advertised to directly, not randomly, and therefore would let them pay me rather than pay others. I'm more about efficiency than anything. Why can't I list my phone for "advertisement" and then take a cut of that?
I've seen this on numerous sites now and each has 'Reveals Real Name' in the title. His name wasn't some big secret beforehand (it was on his wiki page) and using this link bait in the title defers from the quality of his speech.
I may know javascript, but my god I wish I didn't have to.
Not sure what you mean by that. I meant exactly what I said: I feel sorry for anyone whose linguistic toolbox is so limited that Javascript is their best option for writing low-level code for manipulating electronic devices. It is hard to imagine a more profound mismatch between the tool and the problem it is supposed to solve.
Doesn't this require your development machine to use the same architecture and OS as your server?
At the same time, I can't help but grin that we on the CS side find a way to erase all the gains in performance and efficiency as soon as the EE guys make them.

This is a long-noted phenomena. The old saying that summed it up was, "Andy giveth, Bill taketh away." (Referring to Andy Grove of Intel and Bill Gates of Microsoft.)
Honestly, its the same for all programming languages. Just find a project in that language and start coding. I feel like the best way to learning programming languages is the same as human languages, organically.
There's a site that is trying this (not letting men message women until the woman gives permission). I tried it out but there were only about 20 female profiles in my area (a large coastal metro) and most of them were inactive. The ones who were active were unattractive and their profiles were all of the "I'm an easy-going girl who loves to laugh" variety. I'm not sure if that's a result of the approach or just a marketing problem on the part of that site in particular.
why try so hard to put JS in new places?

Because its the current trendy thing. And chasing that dragon isn't necessarily a bad thing if it gets people in the door. Sure its an evolutionary dumb step in some ways but lowering the barrier to entry means that ideas that might not otherwise come to the space could get a chance to grow. Or if nothing else the trendy attention means more libraries get written, which helps someone else down the road.

There are a lot of blind optimism in that statement, but we all know that the best tech doesn't win. What wins is the good enough-ist tech that also pops enough buzzwords win the to interest of the dude that claims to only care about the best tech.
Some people do know javascript. Implementations differ, but are getting more standardized as time goes on. Without the DOM and browser environment APIs, it gets a lot simpler. Do you think fewer people actually know javascript than actually know C++?
> the three primary factors affecting the adoption of a programming language by developers are, in this order:

> 1. Libraries available

Not just programming languages. Microcontrollers too. You could get much better performance out of a bare AVR, but where are the libraries and modules? Whereas an Arduino comes with a library for anything that moves - of course most people are going to prefer it.
very very cool post!
copy/pasted for readability:

Hi everyone,
I work for Valve (http://www.valvesoftware.com/company/). We would like to make our digital distribution platform Steam (www.steampowered.com<http://www.steampowered.com>) one of the places where you can download Blender. The long-term goal would be to make it easier for people to build their own mods for PC games with Blender and share these mods with other gamers.
So I was wondering if there are any Blender users on this list who are interested in PC games and could see themselves working on an integration between Blender and PC games that offer official modding support such as DOTA 2.

Long story:
Valve is a company that is built on modding. The original Half-Life was built on a modified version of the Quake engine. All our major games since then started out as mods which we found cool, hired the people who built them and released them as major game titles. This is true for Counter-Strike, the original Team Fortress, Day of Defeat and DOTA 2 (Portal was not technically a mod but a student project - but you see the pattern).
Similarly, one of the most successful features of our Steam platform is the Steam Workshop (http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/), which is an interface for users to share, discover and install mods for their games. Essentially, you can publish your mod there and other gamers can bring your mod into their games with a single mouse click.
This is something that we think would be a cool feature for Blender to tap into. Like modeling a sword in Blender, pushing a button and having it available to all users of Skyrim. But we bet there are more creative ideas out there than this one.
What we are currently looking at is offering a completely vanilla version of Blender as a free download on Steam that is completely the same as that offered on other websites. We'd hope that this will get enough of our users exposed to and interested in Blender so they will be inclined to work on Blender plugins that would talk to Steam's backend services such as Workshop.
If you think you might be interested in being part of that, we'd be happy to hear from you!
Best,
Jan-Peter