skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You know your MAC address doesn't leave your local network and your IP will change as you roam between say WIFi and cellular data so I don't see that either would be all that useful.
"Some of the best solutions for problems come from people who have not yet become indoctrinated in the "standard" methodology."

Is that really true, or a hypothesis? How was it tested, and what are the numbers? For example, do 5% of the solutions come from people in their first year and the other 95% come from those with between 1 year and 40 years? Or is it more like 80% and 20%?

Knowing those numbers helps determine strategy. The former suggests that novel solutions are hard, and inspiration is only weakly connected to experience, while the latter suggests that people should move to new fields every year or two, in order to take advantage of this effect.

For that matter, if the numbers are 1% and 99% then it implies that while 'some of the best solutions' come from new people, the overwhelming majority do not, in which case your observation, while still true, has a different interpretation.

In my own research, I came up with a novel and useful implementation for a multiple-graph maximum common subgraph isomorphism. It's a problem that I worked on when I first entered this field, when I was in my late 20s, but with 10+ years of experience in the field I was able to come up with a faster, more efficient and more general purpose method.

(FWIW, it's based on the observation that in practice, for
the types of graphs I work with, a certain NP-hard method - pairwise subgraph isomorphism - is actually very fast. New people to the field assume 'NP-hard' means 'avoid at all costs', so avoid use this method.)

Is my story anecdotal? Absolutely. Which is why I'm curious to see the evidence you used to form your statement.
Great job mentioning Skinner boxes. I think this might be another dimension to this pathology: to what extent is our economy a Skinner box?

And you're technically right about classical Puritans. They would regard a lot of what we "do" today as BS make-work, not true work. But I think that distinction has been lost. The "work ethic" is an example of what I call a "zombie idea," an idea missing its head that continues to march on through a culture and eat peoples' brains.
This is like a proper academic-language version of Bob Black's largely superior text, The Abolition of Work, which was posted here a few days ago and promptly disappeared.

Google it. Read Bob Black's essay, which is shorter and more blunt than this one.
And so does my Fedora install (let's not blame Redmond unnecessarily).

My Android phone is even worse - it drifts by about 5-10s a day. Not a nightmare but it's still a lot more than my (probably unrealistic) expectations of 21st century hardware.
This is really cool. The last who's hiring, at around 4pm EST I did a find for "Ruby" and for "Javascript". Javascript had almost double the openings than Ruby. It's not as scientific as this, but I plan to continue to compare and check, just for my own satisfaction.
> If it is trivial, can you disprove it? Quacks like a plutocracy...

Quacks like a democracy with a unitary executive and high level of electoral disproportionality, see Patterns of Democracy, Arend Lijphard (1999).

> We need better democracies.

We have better democracies (i.e., most modern democracies), and we can only understand how they are better and what the defects are in the US system when we understand the US as a democracy, and understand the features that make it a poor one in terms of effective representation.

Hyberpolic polemic like claiming the US behaves "nothing like a democracy" might sometimes have value in drawing attention to the problems (but probably not if it is coming from Chomsky), but it doesn't help understand or fix the problems, and if actually taken seriously it inhibits understanding and progress.
That's an interesting perspective I hadn't thought about. I've also always seen programming as a good way to actually learn math. Topics beyond basic algebra (e.g. calc, linear alg, stats, and even geometry) seem to lend themselves pretty well to programmatic implementation. Just imagine having to implement visual representations of Euclid's elements or Integration as Processing[1] apps. Sure you'd necessarily have to learn the concepts in order to implement them, but more importantly, you'd get to avoid all that cryptically terse math notation in favor of more sensible programming conventions :)

[1] http://processing.org/
as Jordanian IT companies threaten to move their HQ out of the country if proposed tax law passes.
NPM Meteor Integration is Back for Meteor 0.6.5
Cloutex Aims to Enable Full Synchronisation Between All CRM Systems
The usage of "as if" like that means to me that he doesn't thinl
k it's really what happened. He is using a similie.
>> They may not be able to multiply 0.15 or even 0.20 against a whole-dollar amount in under 30 seconds

I don't know how you would even need 30 seconds to do this. Lets say our bill is $62.50. Finding 20% of that is simply multiplying that by 0.20, which is also just multiplying by 2 and moving the decimal point over on stinking place.

2 * 62.50 = $125.00 ~ 12.50

It's that simple. I don't even think about it. Maybe people just see '20%' and that scares them.

Maybe that's where the problem lies. Your average non-coding person might spend all day trying to figure out how to sort a list of names but it would come naturally to a C+ programmer like myself, and come even faster and in a much better algorithm/implementation to someone who's a good programmer.
This fails to engage with any economic reality.

Realistically, the reason that bullshit jobs exist is because it is possible for a low amount of work to result in a good amount of profit. Let's look at Microsoft Office, for example - you can charge $200 per copy for effectively zero cost. Therefore, if somebody can manage to sell 1000 copies of it, their job is justified, along with an assistant or two. This could take a very short amount of time.

The reason there are "bullshit jobs" is because profit margins can be so high. The higher the margins, the more bullshit jobs, and the lower the margins, the fewer. Restaurants have few to no bullshit jobs because there simply isn't enough money to be made with labor that isn't running at 100% most of the time.

If you want a world without bullshit jobs, you'll want a version of the world where products are NOT sold at 4x markup from their cost of production, and instead a 1.5x to 2x markup. Then, companies will HAVE to be lean, because a marginal increase in sales/support will not translate to an enormous increase in profits.

Look at companies with low margins and high costs of production, and you may see inefficiency (it happens everywhere), but there will not be many bullshit jobs.
Google patents 'pay-per-gaze' advertising technology
I've been thinking that an ideal mobile device for serious coding would be a Dell XPS 18 plus a mechanical keyboard. http://www.dell.com/us/p/xps-18-1810/pd

It's not handy for putting on your lap, but for coffeeshop use it'd be great. 18" screen, weighs five pounds, no laptop keyboard getting in the way. Making it play well with Linux seems to be a bit of a challenge, from the forum posts I've seen, and an upgrade to Haswell would be nice.
Nobody needs to learn how to code, any more than they need to learn contract law, or organic chemistry, or welding, or music composition.

People talk about code "literacy" as though it's the 21st century equivalent to reading and writing, but this is crazy -- even as a programmer, I don't interact with any of my devices via code. Being a programmer doesn't help me troubleshoot Windows or get my printer working. I don't configure my apps on my iPhone using code; I use their preferences screens. I don't have databases I need to query using SQL, anywhere outside of my job.

Programming is a profession, period. It's not a generally useful skill like riding a bike is. It can be useful to teach in schools, but only in the same way high school chemistry is -- not so the general population learns it, but just so the students who might want to choose it as a career, have enough of an initial taste of it to realize that.
How to build a product biz while consulting
http://www.minamitamaki.com/practices/immigration/

They are good and affordable.

See my story at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6168431

BTW E2 visa should be one of the easiest to get. Just make sure you have over $100,000 for investment.
I've experimented with running headless tests using Firefox, in hopes of getting a good performance boost in terms of test speed. The results actually did not indicate much of a difference. If anything, FF in headless mode on CentOS ran slower than on Windows.

That's not to say there aren't good use cases for running headless browsers with Selenium. One huge benefit is not needing to run Windows VMs.
Good points.

Personally I ditched mobile devices entirely a few weeks ago when the SIM java hacks became public. (Amusingly, I've since run in to well known mobile network provider architects in Europe who were totally unaware of the issue... but then, what's new?)
Playing 50 games of chess is still in the "complete beginner" phase.
I think problem-solving is probably one of the most important skills one needs in his toolbox to succeed in life

This is the key statement. But I don't think it needs to be taught through programming, people were problem solving way before the invention of computers, or even electricity. I know this is HN so we have a biased view on this, but the ability to think/problem solve and programming do not go hand-in-hand.

I certainly agree that everyone should have exposure to programming, and the opportunity to pursue this further if they so wish, but to thrust it upon everyone is not the answer - not everyone will end up in a job where IT is the main focus.
Windows 8 banned by benchmarking and overclocking site
What is the advantage of quickly becoming effective? You'll probably only get promoted marginally faster, at best.
Both answers are either incorrect or inapplicable to a large portion of the population.

The real answer has always been that you need to learn intuitively what "division" actually means, and we have no clue how to teach that, but doing it by hand seems better than the alternatives. I'm not sure if teachers just choose not to phrase it this way or they don't know either (in which case the real reason is because they were told not to allow calculators). But calculations are easy. Intuition is hard. Until we have better ways to teach intuition, I'm afraid we'll have to keep trying to let kids build it via forcing a slow-down of the thought process by having them do it by hand.

A better example would be integrals and antiderivatives. One can certainly learn how to "find the integral" just by using antiderivatives. One could learn how it applies to the real world, as well. "A ball is moving at 30m/s for 10 seconds, what distance did it travel?" Increment the exponent, divide the coefficient, plug in X.

But then kids approach, say, revolutions of solids. Suddenly, due to the way they're taught, they think that there are different formulae for rotating about the x and y axes. If they're taught how to construct the Riemann summation from scratch, see the relationship between that and integrals, and see the relationship between a curve and its revolution, I think that's when they start to get the idea of what an integral (not an antiderivative) really is.

It's the difference between saying:

I want to find the volume of y = x^2 rotated about the x axis. I have the function and I know I need to multiply it by the formula for a circle and then integrate it.

vs

I want to find the volume of something. I can describe each point on the cross section. Each item in the summation can be described as circular. I can describe all of these circular sections at once by adding them all together. The integral is that sum. I can find that integral by finding the antiderivative of the original description.

Which seems more "true?" Which is more difficult to teach? If kids always used calculators to pursue question 1, they'd never arrive at the problems that would let them arrive at question 2.
Our library was also mostly useless. Maybe it's opportunity cost, then. We lived a ~5 hour drive away from anything resembling a city, so purchases of anything other than food were very infrequent. This allowed us to save up until the next trip to purchase a few C++ or Pascal( yeah I know )books from Bookman's and a cheap (student edition can be had when you're 10 years old without a student id) copy of turbo c++. That would last a year of learning. The next year, perhaps a VESA graphics book, etc.
What is your favorite iOS app for HackerNews?
My car also has a drifting clock without a dynamic CPU, losing two minutes every three months. It also doesn't have the ability to sync with NTP so it can't correct itself.

Apparently clocks are hard.
I've seen this trend forming over the last 3-4 years. Backend technology now has a vast wealth of frameworks, tools and hosted services to choose from. People still bicker over Django vs Rails or even Spring, but regardless any of these are so vastly superior to what we were working with 10 years ago. Cloud hosting has been another huge disruptor. We still have plenty of work, but on a typical web project nowadays, client-side development has seen increasing demands and slower uptake of new technology thus shifting the project bottlenecks form backend to front. Expectations are higher since the capabilities are there, but we've only just passed the hump of supporting IE6 and now we have to worry about phones.
Can you share how long you have been a programmer? Also can you give pointers like books or courses (coursera) for studying formal programming language theory?
That's true. I've been in meaningless make-work jobs before, jobs where I could literally goof off 90% of the time. I left.

A lot of people might think "wow! awesome!" It's not. It's soul-crushing and unbelievably depressing. It doesn't leave you more energy for other things; it saps your energy and makes you feel like shit.
How many of those pointless, time wasting bullshit jobs are directly linked to the gross expansion of government in the 20th century? Finance, law, health care, education... almost all of the jobs he complains about are built around the requirements of bureaucracies and laws, and the exploitation thereof.
It's hosted on Google App Engine. He has ads on the free version and an ad-free subscription option. You can self host if you want and it would probably stay under the free tier on AppEngine if it's just you (depending on the number of feeds and update frequency)
I find it cute that he thinks teaching is mostly not a bullshit job. apart from the first 4 years it is as bullshit as any of his other examples. He just fails to recognize that due to personal bias.
I used 11 for a reason, yes.

It's not a class B network under the old system. Because under the old system 11.5.0.0/16 didn't exist.

But you can make such a network now, and if you were to classify its size the appropriate letter is 'B'.
R/GA Connected Devices Accelerator
Which cloud hosting platforms have you tried?
Hello guys! There are so many PaaSs nowadats and I'm a little bit confused, don't know which one to choose for Java( the most powerful argument for me is stability. Which cloud hosting platforms have you tried? And what are your impressions?
MySQL 5.6 security vs ease of use
Founders: Keep Your Startup Out of Fundraising Prison
I first heard about Iain M. Banks here on Hacker News. I've now read Use of Weapons, Player of Games and Consider Phlebas. Now currently reading Excession. This guy's writing is incredible. Lovely poetry with a crazy wild imagination.

Player of Games will be one of my all time favorite books for a long time. I can't wait enough to forget all of it so that I can go back and read it once more. I love you
Flere-Imsaho!
A calculator. Or more likely, the calculator app on his iPhone.

Personally, I like the ability to at least be able to get a rough approximation of an answer without having to resort to tech... but hey, call me old fashioned.
( tataniel 4 days ago | link

WTF? An Illustrator that never learned Hand Craft illustration as the core of it's art, is not an illustrator but a guy who uses tools to replace and emulate that art, same way, a Front-End must know how to code. If not is just using tools, not a bad thing, but it's just the superficial layer of the work.
reply)

You do understand that if someone learns how to illustrate using a specific tool, it would classify them as an illustrator. Just because a person doesnt use the same methods you consider traditional illustration doesnt mean they're not an illustrator. Does it mean they're not as good of an illustrator? Possibly. But that's a bit close-minded.
I'm a little confused. Does Windows 8 initially use the real time clock and the MHz as reference without checking if the MHz does change over time?
I like the feel of everything on here nice, simple no bullshit .
>Being a programmer doesn't help me troubleshoot Windows or get my printer working.

I think that is partly an artifact of closed source OSes. When I used OS X, I almost never fixed a problem with programming (other than a problem like "I don't have a program to do this"). Having switched to Ubuntu, I actually have found programming to be a useful way to work around problems.

Sometimes there's a "right" way that involves digging through documentation to find some random option, and an easy way that involves writing a shell script.

>It's not a generally useful skill like riding a bike is.

I totally disagree. It's not as useful as riding a bike, but it's certainly useful even when not used professionally. I recently was working out a recipe for a "one food to rule them all" inspired by soylent, and I wrote a program to calculate the ingredient proportions. It had nothing to do with professional programming, and it was incredibly useful.
Clocks are easy. Even accurate clocks are easy. However, accurate clocks are expensive which is where the problem is
In Silicon Valley, age can be a curse
2013 is a record low year for U.S. tornadoes
I personally get stuck or end up using the wrong constructs in the wrong places. Like I might use controllers(angular) for more than its intended purpose or in place where something else might be more appropriate. This is why I am afraid of getting into making before I get a fare handle on the basics.
Thanks! Feel free to check out and review the code too to see if I missed anything.
> Chomsky says that the lower 70% of the population has no effect on policy, but there is plenty of evidence to the contrary. The U.S. system of income taxation is progressive and refundable, meaning that there is substantial transfer of wealth from the richest people to the poorest.

No, it doesn't mean that, because income tax isn't the only tax (or even the only tax on incomes, as the payroll tax, which is regressive, also exists, and, on top of that, forms of income that tend to be distributed more to the richest -- long term cap gains -- have preferential tax treatment over other income), and because while the nominal rates are progressive the distribution of deductions and credits (including refundable credits) are not.
You're right about the specialised stuff, and it's fairly cheap second hand. The warehouse is more a playground than functional though - I've set up a woodworking shop in a quarter of it, I have an area for mechanics and some desk space. I'm quite happy making things just for a break and because I enjoy it - I don't have kids yet, but I can't wait to teach them how to make things. Thanks
Has anyone tried this ? Looks like a good option to test front-end
I appreciate his attitude about this - he doesn't come across as bitchy at all (at least not to me). He's essentially saying "you choose not to run the project a certain way, and that's fine, but therefore I can no longer afford to run mine at all, and that's the consequence".
As a "potential" end user you have a complete right to complain about the missing feature, as much annoying it can be for the developer of the open source thing. The developer has the same right to just answer "send me the patch". In the end of the day, patch won't be sent, and feature will still be missing. Other users might also miss that feature, and not become users. If that's fine to the project authors, it's also fine for me. Just wanted to say, maybe not that clearly, that "send me the patch" is perfectly appropriate answer to developer, and not a good answer to the end user. And you can't just assume that everyone complaining about the feature is the developer.
Why do you always have to look at evidence of systematic abuse of power and government corruption and say, "Well it's not as bad as China/Russia/x"?

How about you choose a line in the sand. And say that behaviour on this side is OK and on the other side it's not.
"Where we're going we don't need monitors"

http://i.imgur.com/ITc0Bmu.jpg
Few other great learning resources for Scala:

- a "JSFiddle" like editor for Scala: http://scalakata.com

- Interactive tours: http://scalatutorials.com/tour, http://www.scala-tour.com, http://www.simplyscala.com

- Learn Scala in X minutes: http://learnxinyminutes.com/docs/scala/

- Typesafe Activator: http://www.typesafe.com/activator

- Official docs of course: http://docs.scala-lang.org/
I believe that Twitter tends to define their services as Thrift interfaces, which forms it's own documentation for the application rather than having to crawl through code to find which REST URL endpoints are being listened to.

I could be wrong but I think Finagle reflects this in that Thrift is more of a first-class citizen than REST (although I'm sure the latter is possible).
Oh, I'm quite incapable of doing long division in my head. Far too ADD.

Professionally, I write parallel OpenCL software used by the mathematics, physics and chemical engineering communities. The irony is not lost on me.

EDIT: When I need to approximate long division, I multiply up from the divisor towards the dividend. I find this dramatically easier. My mother is incapable of subtracting in the normal sense, and does the same operation with addition.
Just give the guy a job. He did you a service and if he didn't do it, and others found this hack, they'd hack millions of accounts with personal information and YOU would be held responsible and taken to court! Either pay the man, or give him a job on your security team since he seems to do a better job than half of the team already there.
Obligatory links: https://code.google.com/p/v8-juice/wiki/HomePage and https://code.google.com/p/v8-juice/wiki/V8Convert
Elasticsearch at Scale, an Interview with Bonsai.io's Nick Zadrozny
10 Time Management Tactics That Works
Yeah, we're feeling this in nodeland too. The core team has actually done a great job making sure that the core of node works with the new V8 API; this is already working in the unstable branch, without too much fuss.

The much, much bigger issue is the native modules in npm. They all basically have to be ported by hand, and only a handful actually have been. So, transitioning to the next version of node will be an exercise in masochism for us makers.

On the other hand, improving V8 with breaking changes is the V8 team's perogative and I trust they're doing it for the right reasons.
Single Point of Failure?
Can you explain what you mean by "Stripe and Paypal"?
How would you build a skyscraper? That requires quite an investment of capital.
Really like this idea; great tool, Ryan!
I thought that the redundancy in all the engineers working on competing identical products was bad but this is worse. No wonder we're not exploring space. My understanding of free market theory is that the "competition" supposedly drives down price, but I don't think free markets exist.