skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
For people interested in a cleaned-up, commented and de-obfuscated word2vec, I recently ported the original C code to Python [1].

My HN submission of this endeavour received no love, but I think it's worthwhile nevertheless as the Python code is not only more concise, readable and extendable, but the training's actually faster too [2].

[1] https://github.com/piskvorky/gensim/blob/develop/gensim/mode...

[2] http://radimrehurek.com/2013/09/word2vec-in-python-part-two-...
Homeland and The Long Game
In Haskell it could be
sum $ filter (\x -> mod x 3 == 0 || mod x 5 == 0) [1..1000]
but I don't think that detracts from the article. He said up front his solution was over-engineered. That's nice in this case, because it lets us see how the type annotations look for very small, simple functions so we can get an idea what they looked like. I know some Haskell and Clojure, but I'd never actually looked at core.typed. This was a nice, basic intro to it.
happy to elaborate and discuss
This is exactly how I see these new ebooks, not so much as actual competitors to the oreilly kind of books (because they are more concise), but as longer form thinking than blogs. There's a lot of enthusiasm on self-publishing books, and maybe it will be short-lived, but I hope that in the long term we'll have more and more experts in our community who will share their knowledge on niche topics in the long, self-contained and polished form that books are!
I've been waiting for someone to step up and become the Tesla of motorcycles: ie, hell with the costs, we're just going to make the greatest bike possible. Very cool to see it.

That dash is both awesome and scary as hell. Stravassholes on bicycles are annoying; I can't imagine one on a motorcycle with 120 ft-lbs of torque.
On Parenthood & Making Mistakes
Apple's App Store rules forbid time expiring trials.
>His own spy agency failed to report him missing which is pretty suspicious all by itself.

It's the British government, one of the most bureaucratic agencies in the world. The fact that the form to notify the police wasn't lost while bouncing around is the only surprising thing to me in that sentence.
How Do You Fix Long Island, and the Suburbs In General?
So who are we actually (legally) donating to: You personally, lavabit as a company or the nonprofit? What does legal expenses include: are the lawyers paid full wages or are they working pro bono or at a discounted rate? Please note that I'm totally fine with all people involved being paid, they do have to earn a living. It might influence the amount of money I'm willing to give though.
Experience Mapping - A tool for understanding and mapping customer experience
Yes, they are.

One of the other purposes of Advertisements are also to create impressions and Branding. You don't have to necessarily click every ad. :)

And with such visual tools ad making is very easy and reachable to all. A great project by Google. Kudos.
With Visual tools like this we can interact with more depth. And lets not forget this is free too.

They might bring better ad-making experience overtime with built in ad-templates.
All this will bring more Appealing ads.

And Eye catching ads serve as — Branding and Brand-remembering for Publishers, users notice them and remember(clicks not important in Branding)
The revolution, discovery of fossil fuels and antibiotics, international trade, etc, were all widespread before the invention of computers. You could argue that operations research (a branch of applied math that deals with logistics mostly) has evolved concurrently with computer technology, but the former has one or two decades of a head start in terms of adoption by private enterprises.

I think it's more like computers allows us to do the same stuff faster and at a broader scale, but it has had little impact so far in which stuff do we choose to do.
That doesn't seem to be the case for me. OS 10.8/Chrome 29.
The clojure code is pretty idiomatic and clear to anyone that's done work in lisp-like languages.
I think jobs can be more fulfilling give you value in pursuing your interest beyond what's possible outside of a job. Such as a lab with expensive or hard to acquire equipment for research or fabrication. In some cases, it can be an opportunity to solve a problem beyond normal bounds of home hobbies.

But programming many jobs seem like the types of thing you can do even without the job.
Totally agree, at most companies, it's a dead end job, then your skills became obsolete and you drop out of the job market. Most people are out by 35.
I think you are right. It should have said relatively unproven technology for SQL DBMS implementation.
Here's what it's like to be an authority ;)
These days a lot of folks take the HTML route into programming. They start by fiddling with web pages, then add CSS, some Javascript and then building backend stuff. But this is a risky route to take. You might end up being just good enough to make a few bucks at it, pick up some PHP or Ruby on Rails, and drive yourself straight into a dead end.

None of this is really programming. Sure there is a bit of going through the motions, but you have all these frameworks supporting you, whether HTML or Rails or whatever, and you fail to get to the heart of the matter.

Far better to get a book like SICP (now freely downloadable) install one of the free Scheme packages out there and struggle through writing all of the code for all of the exercises in that book. It will be tought. You will suffer. And at the end you won't have much to show for it; i.e. no pretty websites. But you will have trained your mind to think the way programmers need to think. And you will also have learned to persist in the face of disappointment and failure because that is what programming is really all about.

Of course, there are more marketable languages like C# and Java and it is definitely worth while to work through exercises from a good book in a similar manner, but you won't get as good an education as someone who pushes through SICP. Those of us who learned programming in an imperative language like Java, are now either in a stagnant rut adding features to big balls of mud that hang like chains around the neck of our employer or else we are slowly pushing our way along the path blazed by SICP.

If you already know a bit of programming in any language, you could also take Functional Programming in Scala followed by Reactive Programming at Coursera. They run these courses a couple of times a year and they are good. SICP is recommended reading for this course even though the language is completely different. True programming is all about mathematics and using it to solve problems in a simple way. You need to understand functions, sets, boolean logic, lambda calculus, algebra, category theory in order to truly excel. Mathematics is something that you build inside your head and something that you can apply to any programming language or platform.

By the way, most CS degrees do not teach this. If you find a school that DOES teach this, then by all means, get the degree if you can afford it. But too many schools leave the real stuff for the Masters and Doctorate level folks. If you self-learn, like I did, then you can do better. But you better be prepared to work real hard because most of the time there is no course to keep you on track. Learn every day without fail and you will get there.
Another language with a Turing complete type system is Shen [1] (previous life as Qi). Just wanted to put that out there as its a Lisp dialect that really pushes Lisp out there.

[1] http://shenlanguage.org/
Thank you for the thoughtful reply. I do in fact agree it is probably unreasonable for people to expect automatic code generation to be hand-editable without disturbing the machine-editable workflow, but it is something that comes up a lot.

I see that Google's tool also seems to produce rather inscrutable output (see my edit to my original post). This does sound like one of those really hard problems where is pretty much impossible to balance the needs of the machine-modifiability with human-readability.

Thanks again for the reply!
More Hands-On Impressions of Valve's Odd New Game Controller
(ns my-ns (:require [clojure.core.typed :as t :refer [ann]]))

(ann my-keys (All [a] [(t/Map a Any) -> (t/Coll a)])
The game is developed in Scotland so it must be intentional.
This is completely shameless. Several of the commenters here, such as "onewong", are sock puppet accounts for the company. See him/her previously giving "good job!" type comments to esharef (the founder). Other account with a similar comment created just for this post. A Y Combinator company manipulating HN with shill accounts? Really?
No thanks, Google. I'll use free software to make web pages.
Pretty sure that he was being constructive. Did you look at the code?
I believe in pair programming within a team, at least a couple hours a week. I credit it as something that has accelerated my growth as a programmer through the years, and people who I respect have said the same thing. I think it's great on hard problems, bringing new team members up to speed, cross-training, and generally learning how other people think when they code.

The studies I've seen say that it also produces better code. I'm not convinced that 40 hours a week is necessarily the right way to go, but many places I've known do 0.

Other people hate pair programming at all. Those people would not be a good cultural fit for the kind of place I want to work.
Qaeda Plot Leak Has Undermined U.S. Intelligence
Let's oversimplify for the sake of showing the calculation...

There are 4 stocks in the world, A, B, and C, and D, all trading at $25. I invest $100, buying $25 in each.

Now lets say that I know for sure that stock D will go down because I'm going to whack the CEO. So I sell my $25 of D, and put it in A, B and C (A stake of $33.33 in each - let's assume fractional shares are ok.) If Stock D goes to 0, while the others all double. I have a net gain of $100 - $75 from the stocks I already held, but $25 from the new investment, and I've avoided $25 as well.

Let's say you lived in a world where shorting was ok. If instead you invested $25 in A, B and C, and shorted $25 on D, you would gain $75 in A, B and C, and $25 on your short of D. In essence it's the same $100 profit.

Now this only works if A, B and C are also going up.

Let's say that D does move on the event, but A, B and C don't. If you do buy back D after the event, you ultimately are in the same position in both cases. In the shorting case, you have $100 in securities ($75 original, plus $25 of D bought near 0) and in the "sell now buy later" you sell back $25 of A, B and C to buy at the bottom.

Net - you create the effect of shorting.

This falls apart if you want a very concentrated bet, but it's a way that long-only professional money managers who compete against indexes find a way to effectively short.
Exactly what I've been saying for the past few months. It's just another fad.
SD Times Companies to Watch in 2014
An out of touch older individual slagging on video games? How totally unique and unsurprising. /s
Couldn't open existing HTML files. Seems files must be created in GWD to be edited.
Oh definitely - Rockstar know what they're doing :)
I think there are far better games for market PvP such as EVE Online, Guild Wars, or Kingdom of Loathing. Making profit on the WoW AH was very formulaic (refining raw materials into the largest variety of items possible to maximize turnover - see JC shuffle), the best route was to find botters who would sell raw materials to you below market rates, and the huge number of shards made markets much less interesting.

Every action also required far too much clicking, which meant many people just used tools like autohotkey (cheats, although nobody ever got banned for them), and having to relist products constantly to beat minor undercuts was a terrible experience.

WoW AH is to virtual markets what hitting a pinata is to hitting something that fights back - it's simplicity makes it unrewarding.
You mean day 179?
It's definitely an ad tool. The help section is entirely about making ads. If you look closely, the responsive layout is strictly for the ad, not the website.
While individuals are different, valid and useful generalizations do exist. Growing up (and living in) Indian culture is different from growing up and living in the US, which is different from Japan, from Germany, etc.

I assume you are in the US. If you met an Indian person and evaluated his relationships and belief systems based on your American standards, you'd get a very misleading picture. You need to understand cultural context.
Assuming efficient market, insurance industry will do best in more volatile conditions. The reason is insurance is essentially risk trading and they have the advantage of having access to more information and therefore can come up with more optimal risk trading strategies.
Why Kickstarter projects are always delayed
I've had good cofounders and bad cofounders so below are my take but as always, take everything with a grain of salt.

When you work with people who truly hustle and are putting in their time to get things done, it is VERY noticeable. Anything short of this, is also very noticeable in its own way.

I've met significantly more people who are less engaged than I have people who are on point and pushing things forward. Once you've worked with both types of people, you generally get a feel for the difference and what you are truly looking for.

Without knowing anything else, I can personally say that if I were in your shoes, I would not be happy working with said person moving forward. The biggest red flag is the inability to reach a person. That is never okay in my book.
Whole Fruits can help risk of diabetes
I happily pay $60/year for Strava. But I would never buy the app.
Rebase is good for when you need to rewrite or clean-up history. For example: all those "WIP" commits you'll frequently see aren't exactly helpful. If you want to rewrite history of a branch that others are actively working on, well then you're going to have A Bad Time™.
> I seriously don't care that's he comparing core.type

...so you object to his solutions because you don't care about the point of the article, which is what forces him into those specific solutions.
Do you know about LyX? I loved that program for my math classes (mostly proof writing). Personally, I liked the shortcuts it provided so that I didn't have to write raw LaTeX for everything.
Mac users may find the Windows layout confusing or frustrating.
I understand OP's sentiment and I'm glad that he (assuming he's a guy) at least admits that some of this is youthful idealism having a tough run-in with reality.

That said, I don't think he has to stay stuck in this mentality. And, there are many benefits to being "just a software engineer". Much of it depends on your attitude towards life and what you're expecting and/or hoping to get out of it.

First, it's important to recognize that as we get older, we'll eventually have to confront the fact that not all of our dreams and ambitions will come true. If you look at the number of thought leaders in the industry in ratio to the total number of programmers, very few make it to the top 1%. I don't think it's a zero-sum thing, it's more that at a certain point, people give up and decide to do something else. OP may be one of those people who decides that because reality didn't match his expectations, he's just going to give up. On the other hand, he could decide to push himself and his understanding of what it means to program to a new level. And then he might see new opportunities in his current job that he hadn't noticed before. I know that this can sound hopelessly fanciful and idealistic, but it really is true and quite possible; I speak from my own experience here.

Second, one of the most awesome things about programming - regardless of the type you're doing - is that it helps improve your mind. Since I've been in the tech industry, I've found that my thinking tends to be cleaner, more rigorous, and more realistic (though not always, of course). I have an easier time understanding difficult topics than I used to and I also find the process of learning easier than in the past. For that reason alone programming is a worthwhile pursuit. Who doesn't like their mind to work better?

Finally, OP has some growing to do and should try to realize that his current predicament has much to do with his attitude and little to do with his actual job. As other posters have noted, this problem exists in every creative industry. You were excited about the pure fun of it when you were younger, and now you feel mugged by reality as it were. Part of this could relate to our model of education which sometimes makes it seem as if academia is much preferable to actual private industry work. Like they said in Ghostbusters - "they expect results in the private sector!"

My advice to OP would be to try and balance his current work responsibilities with something fun outside of work, something that gets his juices flowing. Learning to bring a sense of play into your really helps, otherwise yes...the sense of drudgery can kill you. So the trick is to learn to stay positive. Sounds like a tall order but it's definitely doable.
Easy enough: only american people (or people in america) enjoy the legal protection of the american constitution. So the only fight that can be fought here is for americans. You'll need to convince your own government to fight for your rights.

please note: IANAL, but that's what I gathered so far.
Blackberry hits out at Gartner analysis
The second edition of Eloquent JavaScript (You need to gen the PDF by yourself)
I don't try to find out how long it will take but how to do it. So the first time the item is on the list is 'How can I do this?', and it will transform from there. Each time it counts as a full-blown task. Usually there are some older items as well where no further overhead is needed and which are well-known. And I feel ok if I get 3-5 in total done. (Simple ones are 'Do the laundry', 'write this email where you know exactly what to write'.)
> I seriously don't care that's he comparing core.type [sic]

Well then I'm afraid the article has nothing to offer for you.
Proxy.sh VPN Provider Sniffed Server Traffic to Catch Hacker
I don't actually think it's a fad per se - startups will always be looking for new ways to drive growth. The media hype will die down when the next job title is invented but growing the customer/user base will always be the #1 problem startups face.
I think people underestimate the systemic restrictions placed on the Indian Middle Class, and fail to realise the connection to a larger problem India faces, viz. drastic shortage.

You want to become a doctor? Too bad you don't have an MBBS. We don't care whether you decided to become one only during college, and are willing to spend a few extra years catching up.

Except for diplomas (by which I mean qualifications like CA, which you theoretically could get without attending classes at a college) doesn't place a prerequisite on having a degree. Every master's program I have come across requires a bachelor's degree. Some are more flexible, admitting degrees outside the relevant fields. But most are not.

The reason is pretty simple : In a country like India where anything good suffers a big shortage, people generally prefer to stick to rules, creating many false negatives. This is because no one wants to take up liability in case a false negative crops up. "I followed all the regulations and suggestions," they say.

So anything that involves an expected, and common path ends up needing college degrees as prerequisites. For the Middle Class which cannot afford to wait out a few years, they have no choice but to toe the line. Only if you have any capital (and in India, connections) to begin with, can you expect to change the system. (The author here is a businessman in the crudest sense : not a very conventional career path in a lot of families).

My parents generation mostly got their jobs before the liberalisation of the economy in 1991. In those days, a lot of people dreamed of government jobs : stable, decent paying, and allows you to slack off. In spite of globalisation, we cannot expect their mindset to change a lot after they've fought so badly for jobs, right? This old mindset comes into play when they suggest us to go to college : they've seen decades of public sector employment, this new path (entrepreneurship) seems new, and they honestly believe they are trying to help you. There is no ill-will here.

I do agree one can still earn a good living without college in India too. But I feel what I said has a considerable effect in societal status of middle class people (most of whom are not extraordinary), and this in turn makes people want the college degree.
From the outset, I learnt programming by craving to build a thing. It started with tic tac toe that I built in vb6 in school, with computer as a player, sound and lighting effects. Then I built a full-disk media player/ image explorer hybrid. Followed by a multilingual word processor with screen reader and brail keyboard input and ...Finally full-stack web apps.

At the core of my learning was always a desire – that I wanted to build this thing, and rest was the details that I figured out from the internet and MSDN CDs (yes, that used to be my primary and definitive source during initial years of learning.)

In my experience, when I'm passionate about building something, I do not need to motivate myself to learn the details.

Edit: Finally I also did post graduation in CS to cover the gaps of CS fundamentals. Degree is also essential for getting a job at reputed companies which usually have it as the first filter to auto-reject candidates.
It's possible that French law is right and Google is wrong. It's possible that Google is right and French law is wrong. It's possible that Google is right, French law is right, and the regulators are wrong.

Ya think Google is short on lawyers to test this in court? My opinion is that a lot of people (regulators included) have just awoken up from a Gkoolaid hangover and that may account for the zeal. They feel betrayed and feel like idiots for having bought it. What Google sold as "hip" or "we just want to have fun and change the world" just isn't going any more. Google is just another money hungry, duplicitous company, but with a lot more power. Maybe more power than Microsoft ever had, since Google control e-commerce and advertising. One algo change and your store will be gone, unless you advertise on Google. That's power.

P.S. I suspect that this story will be on page 2 soon, as is common with negative google stories.
It's not even a moral issue. If you go through 5 apps which are useless, at a $1 each - that's $5 down the drain. You got nothing for it - arguably you wasted your time.

The proverbial cup of coffee on the other hand, that's a sure thing. For $5 I'll be warmed, caffeinated and have a delicious drink.
"consider replacing pizza with sushi, beer with wine, and ping-pong with Zumba."

Where do I sign up? I'll even take 2 buck chuck. ;)

That could be an amazing place to work. I'm kind of sad that's not a real job ad now.
Wow. Just at a glance, three minicomputer companies that have since vanished: DEC, DG, Prime. On the UNIX side, Sun and SCO, for mainframes Amdahl.

But I remember well downloading stuff from gatekeeper.dec.com.
As someone who's trying to get into web development (not professionally), apps like Macaw makes me want to buy a Mac. Windows is so limited compare to Mac in this regard.
Mandatory recommendation for Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid [1] by Douglas Hofstadter.

Now I know most HNers are no stranger to this book, but if you haven't read it I encourage you to pick up a copy. A lot of people will say that it "changed the way they think about everything" without going into much more detail, so I'll just tell you how it did so for me. I've always been an analytical thinker, but the most useful thing this book did for me was teach me how to think mathematically. It showed me there was immense beauty in mathematical thought.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del,_Escher,_Bach