skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
What flags this for me is that if you have an organism in hand, it's easy to do more analysis to provide evidence that it is not terrestrial. At the moment, I'd still say that the hypotheses of "their probes was contaminated", "our model of what particles are in the stratosphere are wrong and this is fully terrestrial life", and "they're flat-out lying" remain higher odds based on this evidence than "they found extraterrestrial life". In our own atmosphere.

They even mention a test they could run, but they did not wait to run the test before announcing. Not a good sign. Especially since that is not a lengthy test to run, compared to the speed of publication....

I of course reserve the right to change my mind based on more evidence; I have no problem with the idea that our stratosphere models may be wrong, for instance, and if extraterrestrial really is raining down on our stratosphere, so be it. Let facts be the judge. But some sort of biochemical or isotope evidence this is not just another extremophile would be nice.
Yes, the command "publish.coffee" is a CoffeeScript tool which publishes a given game target to the CDN. The different colorful letters represent the state of each asset as it moves through the upload pipeline, e.g. "U" for unchanged and "F" for finished.

Our engine and Project Atlas are written entirely in CoffeeScript, but that's not a requirement of game code.
We need to stop masking passwords
We may be seeing the same HTML5 demos on HN, but we're living in two different universes. In my world, I always open up these demos in a browser that's incompatible. If I do manage to get them working, my reaction is always like wow, I saw better native demos 10 years ago, and those just worked.

Let's be honest. JavaScript, DOM, and CSS are terrible technologies to base any gaming system off of. As a gamer, performance is critical and stuttering ubiquitous in HTML5 games is unacceptable.

For a gamer who disables mouse acceleration, had a CRT until low latency gaming LCDs were available, and tracks his Star Craft APM, what does HTML 5 buy me other than performance issues?
What I learned from this article was: if you ask vague questions you tend to get vague, boring answers. Even from a billionaire.

For instance, you could have asked things like: What's the craziest business proposal somebody has made to you? What's the biggest business opportunity you missed out on, and why did you take a pass? Did you have a concrete, well-defined goal for success, and if so, what is it/have you met it? Looking back on your career, what would you rather have done differently? Who's the most interesting/famous person you've met, and who would you still like to meet if you could?
I don't know specifically about the ISS, but I found http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardigrade fascinating. Multicellular, and "can withstand temperatures from just above absolute zero to well above the boiling point of water, pressures about 6 times stronger than pressures found in the deepest ocean trenches, ionizing radiation at doses hundreds of times higher than would kill a person, and the vacuum of outer space. They can go without food or water for more than 10 years, drying out to the point where they are 3% or less water, only to rehydrate, forage, and reproduce."

It's "some of them will survive in outer space", though.
Overestimated global warming over the past 20 years [pdf]
I think there are pros and cons of HITRUST certification.

On one hand, it does indeed have documented standards, and provides something for organizations to work towards and be audited against. On the other hand, especially for covered entities, an OCR audit (or actual breach) would not distinguish between whether the organization is HITRUST certified or not.

Said another way, it couldn't hurt, but we generally don't recommend it to clients who aren't otherwise interested in it. The last thing that we want to suggest is something that might provide a false sense of security.

Frankly, while certainly not trying to bite the hand that feeds, I think compliance standards are sort of a racket. Every year at conferences like DEF CON, there are presentations like "completely owning a PCI compliance network!" Even following each rule, if the purpose of security is to pass an audit instead of to genuinely secure information, there will be problems. HIPAA, for its lack of actual certification, at least is generic enough to request real security controls be put in place.

I'd rather have my information at an organization that cares about security instead of one trying to pass compliance standards.
Context is so important.

I remember seeing this on reddit and thinking that surely it must be staged satire, poking fun at the types (pun intended) of people one sees around Chelsea. Without the context of it being a piece of (really rather compelling) performance art, the photo looks like a person who is trying very hard to be noticed.
RTS = real-time strategy. By "hardcore" they probably mean lots of fiddling and attention to detail will help you win games.
I'm not convinced that web-based is automatically doomed among the hardcore. I think that Quake Live the most popular game in it's subgenre (Arena FPS), and it's still hanging on as an esport, with a slot in Dreamhack as well as weekly tournaments. Granted, Quake Live has the massive advantage of being a resurrected version of Quake 3 Arena--but it does make a precedent in people's minds of a hardcore web-based game.
I actually agree, but a weird thing happens to me where I get pissed at people saying these things about someone else, or about groups of people. I can totally let personal insults to myself roll off my back, because like you I've seen a lot of internet.

And I agree that the face-punching probably won't actually happen in reality. But the widespread phenomenon of supposedly normal or good people talking about complete strangers having "punchable faces" feels ominous to me. I guess my problem isn't with the insults as such, but rather the widespread cultural acceptance this kind of attitude has gained.

Sorry, but you can't decide you hate someone based on their appearance and also be a good person. That makes you a psycho. Look, we all do this to some extent in private moments. But turning it into a group sport? And, again, the acceptance of it all?

People who talked this way on the internet used to be called "internet tough guys", and we scorned them. Now it's de rigeur. Maybe it's just the new form of hating communists. Maybe we just need to have someone to hate, and it's not that big a deal. But it feels bad to me, very bad.
I'm sorry, not following this, the word is "versus", a verse is typically something like a unit of a song. Or is this American usage, in which case what do you call a "verse"?
The first step for that is to acknowledge it.

Could you believe the people in customer service had not realized what they were doing?

They were going home depressed, feeling so bad, because this focusing made them live this reality.

Just making them notice and putting some simple rules made a world of difference.It was also much better for our customers.
What are you going to sell - games and/or technology?
For reference, here is the front page of the Journal of Cosmology:

http://journalofcosmology.com

The paper contains almost no detail about the methods used, and lacks involvement of a diverse group of authors. This indicates that the authors are not thinking hard enough about alternative theories to explain what they have found.

For instance, the paper contains this sentence:

"It is also unlikely that the fragment could have come from commercial aircraft, which fly below well below our stratospheric sampling height."

And goes no further. Completely unacceptable.
One of the reasons I love programming is that it has a tight feedback loop. It gives me small challenges throughout the day which need solving. Each time I solve a problem I feel like I have achieved something and it makes me happy.

You need an actual task to achieve and you need to want to achieve it, otherwise why bother?
http://alternativeto.net/
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, but still, this is good to see.

I imagine this discussion in the scientific community will go on for many years, perhaps decades. I'm still not convinced that Viking didn't find some evidence of life on Mars back in the 70s.
On iOS it still uses multi-association wifi for the actual sharing, but it uses Bluetooth LE for the discovery. That allows it to be active at all times, which is very important given that on iOS most of the time AirDrop will be initiated while the app receiving the drop is completely inactive.

Just tested this, and my iPad doesn't show up until I open the "control panel". Still it'll save battery by using only bluetooth for the initial scan.
"In the absence of a mechanism by which large particles like these can be transported to the stratosphere, we can only conclude that the biological entities originated from space" so, just because we don't KNOW of any mechanism by which large particles could be transported to the stratosphere, we conclude that the particles originated from space - even if we obviously don't KNOW of any mechanism by which life could originate from space and fall on Earth? This looks like very very weak reasoning.
He said later in the article that his clothes were a function of budgetary constraints. Maybe he couldn't afford well-fitting glasses.
For certain things, it is unfortunately one of the few options. Slashdot is a wasteland nowadays. Hackernews is good, but the emphasis has been shifting to startup finance rather than hacking. Programming subreddits are some of the best sources for info, at least in combination with others.
this is awesome. and wow they have been busy. devotees will remember the bomberman clone 'powderkeg' that was on the front page about a year ago. i'm even more impressed by the progress than the tech.

new favorite platform, and hopefully new favorite RTS.
>Thinking about her own troubles in creating something viral, she remarked, “It’s too bad you can’t figure out a way to exploit this somehow.” Other than sometimes posting my Twitter handle on pages where I saw the picture, I couldn’t do much.

Since this is hackernews, it would be interesting to discuss this portion. What would be the best way to use this to propel oneself into success? It seems he was granted a strong brand for free. Mostly negative, but also with some positives. My idea would be to try to be even more hipstery, to really validate peoples impressions, and then try to sell things associated with hipsters: Second hand stuff. Organic, fair trade, hand made clothing. Maybe try to appear in a commercial for glasses.
I don't know much about marketing so sorry if this is completely wrong. Just wanted to put some ideas out there to start a discussion.
Does anyone know how they're going to lock the cursor into the browser window?

A common feature required for RTS games is being able to just push your cursor to the edge of the screen to move your viewport. (Since it's played full-screen.) It seems like a browser game would be missing this key feature.
I don't understand why people hate on others so much, for no reason at all. What is the point? Just let people do whatever they damn like, it isn't like their interests are affecting you. How do people grow this mentality? I have never once negatively judged or put down someone because of some "weird" interest they had, such as preferring to use a typewriter. I seriously don't understand.
Insertion sort is dual to bubble sort
Pack opens to public, adds new features for dog lovers.
thanks :)

the only other caution i'd give anyone contemplating this regards quality control - you can't always count on the manufacturer to make sure everything is ok before they ship to amazon for instance, i'd recommend supervising the manufacturing process if you can, i met a photographer who had a large run of art books printed in the far east, he basically slept in the factory during the print run, every 2-4 hours they would wake him and he'd check the printing - it was a few days or a few weeks for the whole job 24/7

or i guess have an agreement with the printer that they will reprint and ship any defective items at their own cost.
Browser can request cursor control
Hire more/better designers? No-no! Let's put money in the hedge fund instead.
There is a series on PBS in the US called Earthflight. It's breathtaking: http://schedule.wttw.com/series/20052/Earthflight-A-Nature-S...
Given the "preload any data the user might need in the next 2-5 mins" statement, how do people suggest we handle live streaming of updates (eg commentary on a sports event)? Presumably websockets are ok as it's more of a "push" model for the network than a "poll" model?
Hiroshi Yamauchi, Who Helped Drive Nintendo Into Dominance, Dies at 85
Tesla Is Developing A Self-Driving Car
There isnt much bad that I see about it but it isnt supported by most vanilla kernels, so for example to get it on ArchLinux I spent a little time to get that into a kernel, only later to find out I forgot my virtualbox modules. Hassle.

I think the idea of unionfs should be in a kernel.
When he does it, it's phony hipsterism. When you do it, it's pitiable nerdism. When I do it, it's cool. :)
Are you going to sell your engine and toolchain too?
Nice post. Question for you: feature selection is certainly the most important part of ML. But yet, the focus of most ML texts is on the algorithm zoo and they gloss over feature selection. Are there any good references on the variety of techniques, with examples, of feature selection best practices?
Definitely intentional. I like to color up language or throw a curveball in a well-understood idiom. Nobody does that anymore, and they used to do it all the time. Now we just reuse the same tired idioms over and over again. Blah.
In theory, this is a valuable thing, a bridge between the divergent worlds of developers and managers. In practice, however, I’ve never seen Cucumber used this way. Non-technical people don’t read code, no matter how easy it is to read.

I don't know Cucumber at all but I find it fascinating how this software seems join a long list of hopeful but discarded "human readable coding" systems - both Cobol and SQL were touted back in the day as ways non-programmers could write code and consensus seems to be that the human-readable part just made things more difficult on the balance.
Right - it's fulfillment by amazon, multichannel fulfillment. Regarding the child article, I'm printing with a century-old company based in Michigan. I'll be flying out to see the first ones come off the line. Doesn't guarantee quality but it helps to keep an eye on it.
Yeah, I can't see very clearly on the little map posted. Some of the routing diagrams appear to go into SF proper, but the suggested station location appears to be just south of Oakland (tptacek says Hayward). It's on the BART line, but yeah, it's like an hour to SF on the BART, then.

I don't see how poorly chosen station locations invalidates the plan, though - those are just proposals, perhaps because it would be much more involved to estimate land prices within the city. It'll make it much more expensive than the figures they mention, but that doesn't make the overall concept much less interesting, since the land rights will almost certainly still be much cheaper than an on-the-ground solution like the current HSR that we seem to be willing to build.
Portlandia has a similar joke

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlGqN3AKOsA
Pear OS 8 Linux Distribution Will Be Inspired by iOS 7
Late one night in the early '80s I was bored and found myself paging through the code for WordStar (best I can remember) with 'ddt' on my Kaypro. Just page after page of Z80 disassembly and blocks of data… when suddenly I came across the words:

"Nosy, aren't you?"

In my sleep addled state that was one of the funniest things I'd ever seen.
> I saw better native demos 10 years ago, and those just worked.

Agreed. But you're missing the point. In those 10 years those of us who played in the native universe will not be the target market any more. Just like we listeners of Pink Floyd and Metallica aren't the target buyers of Justin Biebers and Lady Gagas of the day. The latter are as successful, immersive and relevant to those who matter.

> JavaScript, DOM, and CSS are terrible technologies to base any gaming system off of.

Now this is an opinion based on the current_level_of_performance (which I agree is not at the expected level.). But it's not a great way to judge what the future could hold. It's definitely a bet, like you said let's be honest with this.
Standing up for GMOs
Indeed! Mouse scroll in Project Atlas works pretty well at the moment. We aren't using the Pointer Lock API yet due to some input latency problems. A related Chromium issue is here: https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=168459
JavaScript, DOM, and CSS are terrible technologies to base any gaming system off of

They are, but I very much doubt these guys are using the DOM or CSS. And if they're using asm.js then they're using a very different JavaScript, too.
That link doesn't even entertain the notion that the tube is not fixed to the pylons (even though it quotes the white paper saying exactly that).
Also unlike Steam you might have to re-download the whole thing if your browser decides to clear the cache for whatever reason. Can't play underground, on a plane or while camping as well (not a typical scenario though - nitpicking a bit).
I am really speechless, honestly.

I for one will support her indiegogo project which is here:
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/let-s-help-ashana-go-to-co...

Considering the top story here right now it may be ok if we just nod, put two thumbs up and support this with real money.

We would support her and her awesome friend, and teach other consultants (sic!) and/or ordinary people to make a difference.
iOS 7 app redesign goes viral
Ask HN: Learning SQL
I have been offered a position at a startup, primarily coding in sql. The only problem is I have never used sql before. Any advice for learning sql (mainly oracle, possibly postgres) will be helpful. There is only one I know of at the company who is a full time sql programmer - a full-time DBA, who works in a different location. My background: Python & C.
of course, if you program for anything like you do for "real man hardware" - by which i mean targetting hardware and not a software platform e.g. a games console or a proper native app, part of the 'web stack' etc.... you never have a problem like this. :P

eventually you realise that C isn't fast enough and you can make it faster, but nobody else cares because they spunk clock cycles and bytes everywhere like they have billions of them (which of course they do... :D)

...and suddenly every language and platform is solving problems you never had because you just weren't a bad programmer to start with, and instead of solving your problems they are just tying your hands to prevent other people from shooting themselves in the feet.
>And why I wouldn't want them? Are you deciding what I want or not?

No, Apple's deciding and the market votes with his wallet (and judging from their actually buying stuff --and at the quite expensive end of the market at that--, it has voted much in favor of those decisions for a decade or so).

There's always some people, call them sui generis, or mavericks, or loonies, that do want a floppy drive in their laptop, and not even because they have a specific business needs. They just love these flexible plastic suckers. Others can't live without physical Blue-Ray disks (just as some people swore by Betamax or quad cassetes).

And in the case of phones, some just got to have a 440 dpi screen (despite not seeing much different from 300), near field communication, wireless charging, 4G support in 2009 when it would burn through batteries of the era in 1 hour, and what have you. It's their choice. Just not a very popular one, or what most people would call sane, especially going forward.

So, feel free to use whatever, just don't complain if it's not what the era you live in deems relevant.
I can definitely relate to the feeling. For a full 1.5 years after my ex and I broke up, it felt like my friends were being deliberately cruel, first by continuing to involve her in various events, then by continuously posting about stuff they were doing with her on facebook. For a long time, it felt like they were actively trying to push me out of the picture or drive me to jump. The only difference is, this woman wrote an article about how that feels.
WATCH: iOS7 vulnerability allows lockscreen bypass.
I guess. T-shirts just seem like one of those hyper-cheap things that companies can give out with their logo. Not much different than pens or foam 'stress toys'.
Meanwhile, a more reputable report against life on Mars:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/20/science/space/mars-rover-c...
That is a well known crackpot article, already debunked by biologists and astronomers alike: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/01/16/diatomsiiiiin-...
If they have protein in their samples and find amino acids of both chirality, then get exited. If they only find the chirality naturally occurring in earth based life: forgetaboutit

My bet is on the latter.
AFlattr blocked by Amazon
Are The Startup Fellas Hellbent On Destroying Education Even Literate?
If one needs to be launching only a fixed set of programs fast, perhaps give CRIU, checkpoint restore in userspace, a try? Give the program time to warm up and load, checkpoint it, then restore a copy: run an already copy, rather than repeat the startup afresh. Post on CRIU from the same day: https://plus.google.com/113218107235105855584/posts/CNkhcV43...
I'm currently on training on higher floor in the office, it's such a contrast to my usual desk. On the higher floor they have LOTS of natural light and there are only about 30-40 people on the floor with huge desks and lots of space in between each desk. It's so nice and quiet too.

On my floor (much lower down the building) there are about 100-120 people crammed into tiny little desks with hardly any natural light. It's so noisy with everyone in close proximity you can hardly hear yourself think, let alone getting on with coding.
Ha, I know what you mean. But it's not the kids I'm worried about, it's the adults.
Then again, imagine if it happened to you, and all of your friends were continually reminding you of it, forwarding you more and more tumblogs where the meme was propagating, commiserating, condemning your ex, etc., et bloody cetera. It'd make almost anyone feel somewhat strange.
Whoa awesome and very well funded it seems.

I think Artillery.com would be a natural partner for our WebGL-based 3D content creation platform. They should check it out at http://clara.io Similar to how Unity3D is a natural partner to the desktop 3D content creations tools like Max/Maya.
One possible mechanism would be a weather balloon.
>Corralling them as "internet nerds" seems a bit like you're trying for some bullying yourself.

Exactly. Encouraging the stereotype that in addition to having deserved bullying in high school for their poor social skills, nerds deserved bullying because they are mean spirited and just waiting till it's their turn to be the bully.
You keep implying Apple released a phone with legitimate antenna issues. My understanding is this has been pretty much shown to be false. Apple was responding to a media shitstorm and Jobs said the issue was "overblown." In other words, it was probably an extremely rare, if not completely non-existent, issue but was magnified due to the fact that it happened to a well known blogger.
Helping one person with a rich benefactor and indiegogo campaign is pretty much the epitome of a local newspaper human interest story with literally nothing to say about fixing these broad topics that all of society must deal with, any more than a church community holding a bake sale to pay for someone's stroke rehab is a solution to our country's broken health care system.

Frankly even seeing this story on Venturebeat/HN reeks of a Valley-centric libertarian-friendly "pat ourselves on the back" moment.