skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> After all, that's what the Cold War demonstrated. If you're going to use them, you have to use them in numbers great enough to wipe out every city in every nation opposing you. In essence, your own use must be heavy enough to absolutely ensure no possibility of retaliation.

That only works as long as your allies have nukes and are willing to use them on your behalf. Uncertainty is one of the more dangerous things when it comes to balance of force.

Even assuming that other nations held on to the things. The question then becomes whether your enemy's allies would actually strike at you if you held something in reserve. Who's going to go first in striking back at you when they know that their payment for that's going to be their twenty largest cities? Who's that loyal that they'll get millions of their own killed for however many remain of yours?

You can't be sure, and your enemy can't be sure, quite how that's going to work out. Someone with their back against the wall in some sense; religiously, economically - whatever; may well reason the uncertainty there is better than the certainty of defeat along some other line.
> Deconstructionism itself has some interesting ideas [...] like those pointing out that a work of art can mean two opposing things simultaneously. The problem, however, is that its sillier adherents—who are all over universities—take a misreading of Saussure Deconstruction to mean that nothing means anything [...]

Surely the point is that the meaning of the text is dependant on the context supplied by the reader. So for an analysis of a text to a mean something (rather than nothing) is must not only define the subset of readers it is confined too, but also offer some justification of why it assumes those readers supply a common context (and what that common context is).

Without this context an analysis of a text is a largely a polemic unless the analysis is so absurd (or dissident) that it becomes a satire. Assuming a wide definition of "a text" then the majority of the media have been effectively "saying nothing" for the last 30+ years and academia have been satirising them.
> Language choice is mostly a reliability, sustainability, maintainability and team-scalability issue

Yes, but aside from that, Mrs Lincoln, how was the play?
I truly don't understand what MS finds so hard about backup. What people want is so simple and obvious - a separate copy of all their files, preferably their whole system image, somewhere else. And yet every version of Windows seems to screw around with it. I remember Vista came out and I thought a great way to migrate would be to do a full system backup and then I could restore back the personal files I wanted onto Vista. Nope - the backup system totally changed, the utiltity to restore files didn't even ship with Vista! I was left to manually use an old XP computer to extract and copy files across from my backup image.

Then Win7 came and I started using the backup option there. But even with the full drive image I didn't quite trust it, so I also made intermittent backups using Macrium Reflect which creates a low level image of each partition. So then came the day when my wife chose the "recover my pc" from the boot menu and wiped everything. "No problem!" I thought, I will just Google how to restore a full system image to bare metal. Imagine my shock to discover that this is not a feature of Windows backup. Unless you make a "recovery disk" using a CD (this computer did not have a CD drive), you cannot reinstall a full system image!? So I installed from the Macrium partition image and it delightfully brought back our system in a matter of minutes.

I've never been able to work out if this consistent incompetence is by design (to keep the industry of alternative backup solutions alive and avoid accusations of monoply / antitrust) or if they have some strategic or tactical reason to make sure noboby on windows manages to back up their computers (hey, 20% of all users who corrupt their hard drive just buy a new computer!)

Whatever the reason, it is exacty this sort of thing that is driving regular consumers away from Windows and into the arms of Apple. I hope MS figures it out, because I am not fond of Apple either.
Why you probably don’t need an API strategy
Incidentally, most deadbolts are ridiculously easy to pick. I can get into my front door deadbolt in about a minute with a multitool and a safety pin bent into the shape of a pick with said multitool [1]. Unless you've upgraded your typical run-of-the-mill deadbolt to one with mushroom, spool, or serrated pins [2] it will take roughly the same effort. Those higher-security locks typically run over a hundred bucks and as such aren't what most house builders would put in a front door.

[1]: http://www.crypto.com/papers/notes/picking/

[2]: http://www.lockwiki.com/index.php/Security_pin
That's not what Nietzsche said.

He said that Christianity (not Judeo-Christianity iirc) is a slave morality. It preaches equality N. says and only a slave or an underling would preach equality and they do so because they have less than their masters. So in that way it is a self-interested morality (if you accept it was advocated by an underclass). He contrasts this with a master morality (might is right basically).

What is ethics or morality? It's what values you hold and project onto the world, correct? So I guess N. is saying that these values are subject to your socio-economic place in the world. That's quite materialist -- like Marx, who said more or less the same thing except that Marx said that the material conditions of your (as a class) existence shape your ideology. I think the text to look at for N. is "On The Genealogy of Morals" and the text for Marx is "The German Ideology".

Regarding the provenance of deconstruction. I'm not about to read "Of Grammatology" any time soon but you are the first person I've heard to assert the Heidegger should be given credit so you need to, you know, cite your source please.
Heh. More like "Shopping is fun, and that NSA squirrel isn't really shiny enough ... yet."

But taken the way you put it, you need to pick your battles, which includes specifically what and when you fight. Right now I think the odds in the political arena are good, given the stunning results of the Amash Amendment vote ... but if that proves to be wrong then perhaps that sometime later, and in the meanwhile other battles should be a focus, and perhaps none right now ("let's go shopping").

And then there's my bottom line: none of this is risk free. Including doing nothing, although way too many underestimate the risk of that.
Software Development Estimates: Where Do I Start?
Why doesn't anyone pay attention?
Not big data in a personally identifiable sense - but big data in aggregated advertising market data:

At install, all options on this screen were defaulted to on
http://imgur.com/RP4UNhG
Note the "Let apps use my Advertising ID for experiences across apps" option.
Also let apps access "other account info"...what info is that?

Windows 8.1 Smart Search now renders Bing ads into the search results - so ads brought onto your desktop - not just in the browser experience
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2043518/windows-8-1-smart-sea...
That is extraordinarily incorrect.

Apple can be prosecuted under the same exact anti-trust laws as Microsoft, regardless of market-share, if they've managed to cause harm per the government's findings.

Using a quasi-monopoly to create another quasi-monopoly is not illegal. Owning a quasi-monopoly is also not illegal.

I find people are often extremely confused about anti-trust law and the actual laws (and relative lack thereof) related to monopolies.

Microsoft is not operating under a government consent decree any longer.

Microsoft using Windows to compete with Dropbox is not inherently illegal. It has absolutely nothing to do with market-share, it has to do with whether the government, on a case-by-case basis, decides that a company's actions caused harm, and it is purely a subjective decision.

Anti-trust law, I'll note, does not specifically or exclusively govern monopolies. The majority of anti-trust cases that have been brought forward by the government have nothing to do with monopolies.
Typing stealth: a review of the CODE Keyboard
FWIW, I emailed Bruce who said:
>> It's longer, and as long as I was already creating a new keypair there was no downside.
This is nitpicky, but I don't think people are mad at you for "having an opinion." They simply disagree with your opinion. Two different things.
One trouble is that the "idea" you've just communicated isn't actually the idea behind linear regression. The idea behind regression is this.

You're trying to make a prediction for some number you care about - let's say the value of a given stock price. You've come up with a set of hypotheses about which characteristics might help you make that prediction. Moreover, you have a set of examples that you've witnessed in the past, and you want to learn from that experience.

Using linear regression, you can test those hypotheses. You turn those characteristic features into a quantifiable number themselves. Linear regression is simply the name we give to the process of testing whether there's any validity to your hypothesis. If that hypothesis is true and you've discovered what makes the stock go up, then the corresponding feature will be given a high absolute coefficient. You'll also know whether it's an indicator of the stock going up or down, based on the sign of that coefficient. There's no math involved - you're testing your own intuition about how to make predictions.

The idea behind linear regression isn't "finding a line that fits a scatter plot." That's still math and it's still unhelpful to many people with serious, real-world applications. It's just an abstraction of the math that happens to leave out the formal representation.

To really communicate ideas in application, you need to move past the math entirely, and get to how it ties into people's judgments about data that they know well and have experience with, and show them that the intuition they can bring to the table is valuable (for feature determination). Otherwise, even scatter plots will often shut people out, because they "aren't good at math."
Saw the talk by Martin at JSConf.eu today explaining how he did it. Just brilliant!
http://2013.jsconf.eu/speakers/martin-kleppe-1024-seconds-of...
This may be a reflection of the fact that people who write code, but are not really programmers, lack sufficient domain knowledge (in the field of programming) to choose anything other than the "default" choice.

While this could sometimes be the case, that's mostly because they have other things to think about. Spending time on choosing and learning new languages (with their libraries and communities) can be rightly considered a manufacturing optimization. That's really important to people whose job it is to manufacture at scale, but not necessarily to those dreaming up new components. These are two different jobs. When you deal with manufacturing, you're expected to spend a lot of energy on picking the absolute best tools. But if you're handcrafting something completely different from most of what's out there, your tools and process don't matter as much. The path doesn't need to be optimal if you're the first to take it to a new destination. If you don't know if you can even get to where you're going – or if there's anything there at all – spending money on the best shoes is a premature and unnecessary optimization.
I really which grammar comments could be replaced with a "suggest edits" feature like on Quora. I don't know why no one has created a javascript layer that can be added to a site that would allow the author to designate anything on the page as something for which readers can suggest edits. Then when a reader clicks an edit button, they get an interface just like on Quora or maybe even better, where they can make changes and send those diffs to the author, who is free to apply them.
Worth mentioning for HN: There is a field of critical studies devoted to code, called critical code studies. A friend of the author directed me to this paper, which, somewhat unexpectedly, I found excellent:

http://thoughtmesh.net/publish/367.php

Here's the abstract:

"This is an investigation into some aspects of the way the C programming language creates meaning. In any formalized language, meaning is created by a tension between a community of speakers and the language's formal definition. In the case of C, this community preceded and presided over the formal definition in such a way that the formal definition itself embodies this tension. Because of this, C has a relatively unique view on how programming languages work, and how language in general should work. Specifically, I will argue that the 1989 ANSI C standard introduces the concept of abstraction by ambiguity into formal language specifications. Paradoxically, this ambiguity allows the knowledgeable programmer to be more specific than would otherwise be possible, while retaining the extensional benefits of abstraction. This has implications for philosophy of language in general, which I will briefly address.

"This work is situated in the emerging field of critical code studies (Marino). Although there has been related work dating all the way back into the 80s and 90s (Knuth; Winograd; Landow; Kittler), most studies that self-consciously look at code itself from a perspective that goes beyond computer science are a very recent phenomenon (Fuller; Chun). If much of my investigation seems overly broad, then, that's to be expected: just as a Polaroid photograph develops with broad splotches of color, only acquiring precision at the end of the process, likewise a new investigation must be satisfied with the faith that its clumsiness will be turned into precision with time. Many things herein are assertions with little corresponding argument, yet assertions which nevertheless to me seemed interesting enough to present for consideration in the hope that they might function as depth-soundings for future navigation."
The problem isn’t piracy – it’s competition
> Not the editor..

You say this as if there's ever anyone else.
What was claimed: Field X has resisted "uselessness" (to some arbitrary extent, assumed to be noticeable since the author felt like mentioning it as being significant in relation to the humanities) due to influence of the commercial world.

My claim: influence of commercial world is extremely unimportant for most of the important parts of Field X, ergo, commercial influence has had almost no bearing on keeping Field X "useful", regardless of whether or not Field X is actually useful.

Statement to support claim: the vast majority of what we consider 'science' (lumped in with engineering by the author) consists of a theoretical backbone tested against reality, which has nothing to do directly with commercial interests in theory, and often in practice. Examples include mechanics, EM theory, quantum mechanics, relativity, genetics, number theory, integral calculus. You would have a hard time proving that these things, which all have a basis in reality, are that way because of "crass commercial necessity", as the author claimed.
Consulting, sort of working, yes. Very limited hours basically retired, but still helping out here and there. In an earlier era, to say the least. He never went quite to the level of parking his RV in the clients parking lot, but he came close a couple times. For one client I think he visited every office in the country over the course of one fall for an upgrade project. I don't think he ran a net profit, but he probably paid quite a few expenses. He said something once about 3piece business suits and RVs don't mix very well.

All I remember of his advice on this topic was private parks are completely deserted during the week during the school year, and there are public parks in the middle of nowhere for the weekends.

I have been to private campgrounds (as a tent camper) and even in season during the summer, the difference between 3pm Thursday and 3pm Saturday is spectacular.

The airstream sounds like fun, have a good time! As an adult child I had to drive to my parents house many a time to take care of the mail, check the place out, etc. In fact I watched the 9/11 attack reports on their TV, I happened to be there that day. I would imagine snail mail and stuff like that (vehicle registration?) is quite a challenge for a true nomad.
A lot to learn from "Business Records FISA NSA Review"
What happened to that ex-MS guy? :)
"...for commercial purposes"
Marketing Features vs Benefits (2000)
"a language that...allowed far, far less flexibility in the way ideas are expressed"

that is a design goal of Java, and it turns out that "everything is a class" is a really expensive way to write software. As in large systems take thousands of man-years and $100MM and contain AbstractFactoryFactoryProviders. Not because the engineers are bad, but because that's what you end up with when everything is a class.

Sometimes, Scala codebases are criticized because they use monads or have too many arcane unicode symbols in them. But I'll take scalaz over AbstractFactoryFactoryProviders any day. At least scalaz makes sense.
Holocaust? That almost sounds as if it was the jews' fault for living in a country where they weren't the ethnic majority. Otherwise "ethnic tensions" had nothing to do with it. The tension if at all was pretty one-sided, and the genocide on this scale and sophistication can't easily be compared to multi-ethnic nation-states.

Segregation makes problems worse, not better.
Totes. The one big difference though with open source projects versus client work is that the logistics of collaboration in open source never changes. It's always somewhat async and almost always communicated in writing, with various tools to help (JSBin, Gists, Diffs, IRC, email, etc.). With clients, the biggest complicator is negotiating how to communicate with them, which can occur for every new project and on every move. Time zone differences compound these negotiations because so many people expect phone or video calls to sync up.
Just for fun, here are a few more writers I think do justice to both sides: Stanley Cavell, Bernard Williams, Charles Taylor, James Conant, Cora Diamond.

After writing them down, I'm noticing they're all analytic philosophers who lean a bit continental. I wonder, what are some examples in the other direction?
Animals cannot sue.
Ideas will persist as long as there are willing believers, no? Young-earth creationists are still alive and kicking...
Why should you get rid of sugar? and Why? Read below.......... or not.
If you're going to take a holiday, take a proper damn holiday. "Digital nomads" are fictional characters from Charlie Stross novels. (Or, if you're unlucky, Cory Doctorow novels.)
"About twenty minutes after my meltdown I emailed the CEO of the company. I was in tears, because I wanted the job so badly, and I explained that to him. I said that the guy was an asshole, really belittling, and didn't reflect the values of those who I had spoke with prior"
- To me it's perfectly clear who was the real asshole there. Bitching about technical problems to the CEO, haha..what a loser. You didn't have the caliber to handle, you should have not blamed anyone else but yourself.
Inspired by "The Qlobe", written in Ruby http://mamememo.blogspot.de/2010/09/qlobe.html
Initial Geek and Tech-Press Reactions To The Last Four iPhones
Yeah, I got that first time, thanks.

It is not trivial to separate commercial and non-commercial purposes. Creative commons licenses still don't have a clear criteria. So as it goes with copyright, this just has a chilling effect on the education of some compsci fundamentals. I just dont get why MS would do that, is it a competitive advantage?
Why are people in America so eager to help out other countries?

We have so many people in need here.

Is it just more glamourous to be Leonardo di Caprio in Africa on an zany adventure than help some poor homeless family on the streets of Tagg Flatts Oklahome?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_poorest_places_in_t...
I've been in Phnom Penh for the last 3 weeks. It may not be as relaxing as Sihanoukville or somewhere else smaller but for me it's been the perfect place to work and focus.

I found a nice (enough) apartment for 120$/month that is extremely close to the largest market in PP and Olympic stadium, where I exercise daily. Right outside my front door I can find excellent meals cooked by my friendly neighbors for less than a dollar. I'm here for at least a year, but probably longer; I love this place.
Or South Korea. I know South Korea was invaded, but cannot remember they started slaughtering people before becoming rich.
My jaw literally dropped, I had to check the source to make sure this was just it... Really impressive. I love these kind of works of art
>Americans have an anti-nationalist, universalist ideology

American isn't ethno-nationalist, but is strongly nationalist. And it certainly isn't universalist:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_exceptionalism
It's normal for people to be upset when they're stressed and frustrated and it's good for interviewers to be kind and help them through it. Freezing up shouldn't be a disqualifier by itself, it's just a barrier to finding out whether the candidate has the skills and knowledge you're looking for and one that the interviewer has a vested interest in helping to overcome.

On the other hand, stress and frustration are part of the experience of being a software developer. Lots of developers, myself included, would be better off learning to handle them productively.
Very funny. I'd say this is he generally true in the US as well, at least in philosophy departments. In English departments a little less so.
I'm a big fan of Murphy but its comprehensiveness means you lose some detailed explanations. Bishop really gets at those details (so does EoSL).
I have to remember to check their YouTube channel for the talk!
Ask HN: Growth Hacking for e-commerce site?
I'm founder and CEO of BootstrapMaster.com. I'm looking for best growth hacking methods for e-commerce sites like mine. Do you have any ideas?
thanks, i added a subtitle after your feedback :)
Oops, that's not the passage I was thinking of. I'll try to find it again, but basically he says that when they needed to hire programmers, instead of using a site like monster.com or jobboom.com, they went on the OCaml mailing lists, posted the offer there. They got a few responses (~15 I believe?) and of those, 10 were worth a phone interview and 5 were worth flying in to NYC for a face-to-face interview. I think they ended up hiring 2 or 3 of those candidates. He described the process as being very easy because 1) OCaml programmers are interested in working with OCaml, 2) the typical OCaml programmer is better (or at least more curious) than the average programmer, because they went ahead and learned a relatively unpopular language that's unlikely to help them get a job in 99.9% of workplaces.
...and with well-connected, rich parents, of course. I was very surprised to read how involved these parents are in their precious snowflakes careers, at times it read as if they were still high-schoolers instead of functional adults! I guess that with that kind of support there is virtually no way you are ever going to screw up or find yourself in a difficult situation, with or without a philosophy degree.
Really, most Windows apps are bad at backup, and it's not Microsoft's fault. Even Thunderbird is bad at it - what's wrong with a menu item called "backup" and "restore"?

Most apps fail because they store crucial data in various undocumented directories, plus the system registry. Even worse, some like to store critical data in hidden directories.

Backing up an app and its data, and restoring, on Windows should be as simple as a single xcopy command.
You're completely right. I totally forgot adding corruption in the analysis. Sorry.
Tempest (codename)