skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Did you do some research on registrars and then find that this was the cheapest? Because this looks like an ad.
"Vend continues to work even if your internet connection doesn't. Your data will automatically synchronize the next time you connect." See http://www.vendhq.com/tour - Online and offline section.
Scala is awesome but not a scripting language. Running Scala as script is insane as it takes 1 or 2 seconds to start the JVM/Compile/Execute a fairly large Scala file.
You dont want to use that on your server for scripting purposes.

Ruby,Python or PHP are more suited for scripting tasks(especially Java code generation,i'm writing an Android app generator right now,since i was tired of all the boilerplate : json+php script = Activity classes , resources files , ContentProviders generated in less than 0.2 seconds no matter how many tables I need for my apps,saves me hours of work).
I was worried about the same thing when I started. What I found out is that the most recent memory is much much fresher than the past, and its very rare that you will mix up stories from the past with the ones you just memorized. Seems like our memories has a time dimension to it.
Want to get started with Node.JS? Demos/Talk/Slides
Thanks a bunch for the kind heads up Josh, really appreciate that!
Not my company but check out Kounta http://www.kounta.com/
But Android doesnt run on the JVM, it is not JAVA the plateform.
Hi,

Not sure who this is, assume this is the house in the Castro with Brackin and others? Really would love to, I'm working on Chakra (http://angel.co/chakra) as a side-project, and would love the opportunity to hang around the area. I write Rails, and have experience in a plethora of front-end JS frameworks (D3.js, Backbone, etc).

Able to relocate immediately, and applying to the Thiel Fellowship so it'd be great to meet current fellows.

tommaxwell95 at gmail [dot] com
last time I was in Europe I got a sim from T-Mobile, pre-paid, loaded up with 25 EUR, and had 3 GB of data to use. Which is great because my grandparents on my dads side don't believe in getting internet access! Tethering my phone got me through without withdrawal symptoms ;-)
If you are interested in how people learn, you may be interested in this comprehensive review published by the National Academy of Sciences: http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?isbn=0309070368
Endless patronizing condescension to outsiders?
Delphi is very heavily used in the financial industry in RSA and is one of the more common languages in use in the country (the others being Java and .NET). The IT industry as a whole is fairly backwards in the country and extremely slow to adopt to new trends. 'Number of years worked in a language' is really the only meter in use across most of the country's IT.
>We used blackbody radiation to find it.

Pardon my pedantry but that's another way to say "we used regular light to find it".
If I remember my physics right, stars, like a candle or an incandescent light bulb emit light as blackbody radiation.
I think the SA media is a bit more independant than that? (apart from stuff owned by the Guptas of course).
I did a bunch of traveling earlier this year and getting local SIM card is pretty easy and cheap (~$20/mo), and has the advantage of allowing local calls. In Bangkok and Kyiv you can get them at any 7-11 or electronics store. Philippines and Prague it was a visit to a carrier. The rough patch was Tokyo, but you can rent a mobile hotspot for a reasonable amount and have it delivered to the airport.

If you're only there for a few days, free roaming is very nice to have, but if you're there a week or more I think it's worth the small effort to get the local SIM. That also allows me to keep Straight Talk prepaid in the US with my own phone. YMMV, but this was the most economical, flexible route for me.
That small alley must have been close to downtown Turk street. I could not believe the smell in certain downtown areas of SF.
This is believable. It certainly mirrors my experience of the worst thing about being friends with people who work at Microsoft: the constant sense of insecurity and desire to be be trusted. I've been told countless times in the past 2 or 3 years that I should put all my money in MSFT because they're Coming Back in a Big Way(tm).

The story is always "this shit we have in the pipeline is going to blow everyone away! why are you snickering!?" or "the consumers just don't understand us / never gave us a chance. we could have never anticipated this."

I do feel sorry for them, it can't feel good. I mean, obviously they are making cash hand over fist, but I really get the sense that they aren't getting any gratification.
Can you really credit Microsoft with software running on production lines, and in hospitals, ambulances, etc..? Isn't that more of a result of market share?
Radius Raid – HTML5 Shoot 'em up
Your Route Guidance is Over Cartoon
His comment was downvoted by other users. (Not me, though - I don't have enough rep/karma points yet.)
Vend has an awful lot of stupid bugs, and pretty inept front-line support. Even with reproduction steps and screenshots, they don't seem to understand tickets reporting bugs at all. It can take multiple back-and-forths before they escalate it to someone in dev that might try to fix it.

An example they just fixed after I handed them the bug and the fix -- they handled discounts on a purchase (i.e. a coupon, or F&F discount) by adding a special "Discount" product to the sale. In their database, hidden to the store owner, this "Discount" product was flagged as a taxable item with negative value. If someone wanted to buy a $10 item and handed you a $10 coupon in a state with 7% tax, the register would tell the cashier to give the customer $0.70 in change, and take $0.70 out of the month's tax you owe to the state. There were similar glitches in basic, critical calculations in inventory tracking, cost of goods sold, etc. There were oddities like if you used a barcode scanner, and had mis-typed a barcode when adding a product to inventory and lost a digit, the scanner would still pull up the product via the partial match, and it'd also add sales tax to that item even if it was marked as a non-taxable product (i.e. groceries in a state that doesn't tax them). So someone doing inventory could mess up your sales tax collection on that product for the whole year and it might never be noticed.

It's not a solid product, and the only reason we still use it is its integration with our Shopify store to keep the website inventory updated as items sell out in the retail store.
But the part of that chair? Manufactured in facilities running on, you guess it, Microsoft software. Transported in trucks built by Microsoft software, on roads built by Microsoft software, sold by companies running Microsoft software.

Imagine you got out of that chair for a second. Walked across the street to get a cup of coffee. Got hit by a bus. The ambulance that picks you up? Microsoft. The hospital that saves you? Microsoft. The doctor? Trained at a school running Microsoft, using delicate instruments running Microsoft. If you prefer not getting hit by a bus, think about the role that Microsoft has had in making sure your baby was born healthy.

All of those things existed before Microsoft! Certainly the ubiquity of MS software has resulted in efficiencies over the years, but does anyone really doubt that another platform (Classic Mac, GNU, *BSD, VAX, etc) would not have filled the void in a World Without Microsoft?
Do you know saddest part in all this?

These kind of jobs might be the only way those students can earn enough(to pay for their education) in hopes of a better life later. I've been is such a situation before, and it totally sucks. But that is the only available option before you. Imagine having to this, when you have no other options left. I mean these people are not lazy, not stupid and very capable. But they have to do this because of scarcity of opportunity.
The very best interview processes produce at best an inaccurate melange of first-impressions, stress-related (or otherwise 'artificial') missteps (by the candidate) (or, worse, a candidates' misrepresentation of his own abilities/achievements), and a glut of grab-ass frequently misinterpreted/misrepresented by the interviewer(s) as High-Minded, Thoughtful, Rigorous Questioning To Make Sure We Only Hire The Best (tm).

Chances are if "they just hired someone with [your] skill set" it was random and doesn't reflect poorly on you (and possibly not them). Don't take it personally.
Right, thus the accountability bit.
Most distribution of goodies intended for those who can't get ahold of them ends up with yet another theft and pawning, regardless of where the goodies come from and how they're distributed.

Of course, UN involvement brings brothels along with the tarps.

Do you know of any charities which actually offer direct distribution?
3 is E, 1 is L, 7 is T.

This is of course an old-school wink by Google here, although I'm not sure where it originally came from.

It kind of went everywhere in the 90ies, even in looking at the time... 13:37 is 'leet time (!)
So which hip languages are these "thought leaders" using now?
> There is no contradiction that a compiler written in a language with expensive semantics (say python), could compile a program written in another language (say C) to produce highly efficient machine code.

Maybe not a contradiction in logic, no. But in practice the compiler has to solve a problem that is much harder than the problem the programmer would have to solve to write efficient C code for this one case. It's also one that has different complexity.

So you're in the situation now that a few compilers (VERY few, though this is very very hard to do) will actually beat stupid programmers in optimization, but there is nothing any compiler can do to beat the optimizations a good programmer will implement.

As for startup time, the sad part of that is that is one area where you could really improve C/C++ : startup time. Right now a C program has 4 distinct things that need to run before main() starts, and involve quite a bit of calculation, C++ has a lot more (the various kinds of initializers which can cause arbitrarily complex calculation).

A lot of these initializers result in constant (and small) memory layouts, and could in fact be run at compile time. What you generally do in initialization phase is to calculate registered classes (e.g. for serialization, or protocols) and make indexes of them. Maybe even compile regexes. All of that could be optimized to occur at compile time (as long as memory usage of the code is reasonable).
What do People Think of Science?
Arbitrary precision != decimal. So the question still stands, why would decimal matter?
3% of the UK population does not translate into 3M potential customers for their particular product, which appears to be some sort of Big Data service. It might translate into 1 or 2 customers out of those UK businesses that might actually need their services.
Ha! OK, I promise.
As gwern points out in his meta-analysis of Dual N-Back [1], and his Dual N-Back FAQ [2], the results of Dual N-Back have been very mixed. Some studies show massive improvement. Other studies show minor improvement, while some studies show no improvement at all. It is by no means clear in the literature that Dual N-Back actually helps more than an active placebo.

This is very damaging to the case that dual n-back increases IQ. Not only do the
better studies find a drastically smaller effect, they are not sufficiently
powered to find such a small effect at all, even aggregated in a meta-analysis,
with a power of ~11%, which is dismal indeed when compared to the usual
benchmark of 80%, and leads to worries that even that is too high an estimate
and that the active control studies are aberrant somehow in being subject to a
winner’s curse or subject to other biases. (Because most studies used convenient
passive control groups and the passive effect size is 3x larger, they in
aggregate are very well-powered: 94%; however, we already know how they are
skewed upwards, so we don’t care if we can detect a biased effect or not.) In
particular, Boot et al 2013 argues that active control groups do not suffice to
identify the true causal effect because the subjects in the active control group
can still have different expectations than the experimental group, and the
group’ differing awareness & expectations can cause differing performance on
tests; they suggest recording expectancies (somewhat similar to Redick et al
2013), checking for a dose-response relationship (see the following section for
whether dose-response exists for dual n-back/IQ), and using different
experimental designs which actively manipulate subject expectations to identify
how much effects are inflated by remaining placebo/expectancy effects.

That said, there isn't any evidence of harm, either, so at worst, you'll waste your time if it doesn't work out for you.

[1] http://www.gwern.net/DNB%20meta-analysis
[2] http://www.gwern.net/DNB%20FAQ
Exactly what I was thinking. It might just be me tired and not thinking clearly, but where do we draw the line? Tire manufactures for the ambulance? Tools manufactures that built the hospital?

Other than this, everything else made sense. Microsoft does play an important part.
> Wait, Microsoft makes chairs? No, not directly. But the part of that chair? Manufactured in facilities running on, you guess it, Microsoft software. Transported in trucks built by Microsoft software, on roads built by Microsoft software, sold by companies running Microsoft software.

The whole premise of this paragraph is wrong. Yes, most big businesses run Microsoft Windows, but most people hate and struggle with it. They run it not because it's the best, because it's not. They run it because monopolistic business practises forced out the competition. If he's trying to argue that Microsoft are misunderstood, that they do deserve respect after all, then maybe respect the hard-nosed business practises which have forced Microsoft products into every nook and cranny despite consistently having a shittier product than the competition.
I can't get to to the article, but I've read about the issue elsewhere. This outrage is a bit misplaced:

1) South African teachers/vendors/Education Departments lack the skills to manage non-Microsoft systems. Yes it shouldn't be that way, but it is.

2) Java is not really a great first programming language (see Joel on JavaSchools). Pascal, and, later Delphi have been taught for years, and are well understood by teachers. They should probably just dump Delphi, and stick to Pascal. Attempts to look "relevant" end up looking foolish.

In the early-mid 1990's, when I was in what's today called grade 8 and 9 I did LOGO, for non-examinable Computer Studies, and it was brilliant. Although I didn't choose Computer Studies for my later school years(where Pascal was used), when I got to university, my positive early experiences drew me back into the world of CS. I doubt I would have gotten the same visceral thrill that I got from LOGO, if I had to wrestle with AWT or Swing at the time.

School Computer Studies is NOT meant to be a gateway to a career, and there are plenty of post-school options for people who want to become programmers. Computer Studies isn't even a prerequisite for university CS - everything is taught from scratch again. It also seems like recent graduates of some of the insitutions ("Universities of Technology", formerly Technikons) that supposedly focus on carreer preparedness struggle with concepts like writing loops. Perhaps these Technikons and programming colleges should also focus on the basics first, before worrying about "career readiness".

SA schooling is a mess. Maths and science teachers don't understand their subjects. Teacher unions obstruct reform. We have sunk to the bottom in the world rankings. This particular issue is a meaningless distraction.
The original post that started this thread was saying that chips should support decimal floating point natively in silicon instead of only base-2 floating point. Yes, those are different things: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE754#Basic_formats
Someone downvoted him.
I understand your point of view, and in specific cases, the choice has little practical impact. However, when a business is dependent on an aging technology (language/framework/etc), the choice can have real consequences. As one example, when that very competent programmer who has expert level knowledge in this aging technology decides to move on, if the technology isn't well supported by a vendor, user community, and/or local talent pool, the business can be in a real bind.
Used this last night to get help debugging an issue on #mysql, worked great. thanks Xgc and jfeasel
Built for Bitcoin. Next Run: Early 2014
1970s-style PR. This mirrors the oil company messaging: "pay no attention to the oil spills and CIA-sponsored coups de etat, we're the swell people that make the petrochemicals in that ziploc baggie in your little girl's lunchbox." "We power the trucks that bring organic vegetables to your dinner table."

Microsoft: For the Children.
You mean the worst thing about working at Microsoft isn't Steve Ballmer?!
This is exactly what I was thinking while reading that paragraph.
That's a very dangerous attitude. The availability heuristic is very real when determining attitudes and beliefs, especially at scale. When you hear something bad about company X - especially when it smacks of "dirt", as this does - do you then go and perform analysis on other similar companies, in an effort to re-balance your perspectives? Of course not. Who has time for that?

If all the dirt on political party A was laid bare in the public, but B managed to cover theirs up, it could swing an election. Do you care about that?

Availability of information is extremely important in the public discourse and closing your eyes to factors affecting it - such as manipulation attempts, as this could be - is bad mental hygiene.
>> It is working at a company that people don’t believe in, despite the immense importance it plays in their daily life.

Very true, Microsoft's business level software does not have as much visibility IMHO. People underestimate the role their software plays.

>> Imagine you got out of that chair for a second. Walked across the street to get a cup of coffee. Got hit by a bus. The ambulance that picks you up? Microsoft. The hospital that saves you? Microsoft. The doctor? Trained at a school running Microsoft, using delicate instruments running Microsoft. If you prefer not getting hit by a bus, think about the role that Microsoft has had in making sure your baby was born healthy.

What role, Windows, SQL Server, Azure? Microsoft may have helped there but so has the janitor who keeps the hospital clean, the barista who makes coffee for the doctors. Doesn't mean I'm going to thank Microsoft for saving my life when I get hit by a bus. This is a valid argument, but a very weak one because Microsoft is one cog in so many that keeps a hospital running.

Rest of the arguments in the article are quite valid, but when some tells me my ambulance is running Microsoft software I have a horrible flashback with a BSOD.
The part about Microsoft being ubiquitous begs the question: is it actually good that Microsoft software is everywhere? The part that really gets me is schools.

I can't see pushing Surface/Windows 8/Office/insert MS product here on students (especially young ones) being beneficial to anyone other than Microsoft. As a student who was expected to format essays according to Word and to use (Excel, Powerpoint, even FRONTPAGE) extensively in K-12 education, I really can't see a way to put this strategy in a positive light. "ad-free" bing for schools? Really? What's more poisonous--getting students dependent on a stack of proprietary software, or a search engine with ads?
Real-life 'Iron Man' suit commissioned by US military
More like a 90s BASF: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NQuMr45xd4, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJHPpsb3FzM

We don't make the MBA/OSX/Chrome you use to write this comment - we make the chair you sit on possible.
The worst part about the stack ranking implementation at MSFT is that there will always be a bottom 10-20% who'll get fired in a couple of review cycles. If you're in a stellar team, you're pretty screwed (which is sad because now we'll eventually have rock stars looking for shitty teams or leaving). Stack ranking should rather be used to identify the top 10%
Explain the standard model of physics, God!

God says...
surprise_surprise high_mucky_muck fabulous God_smack heads_I_win_tails_you_lose
joke rich illogical Watch_this smile ingrate lifes_like_chocolates
once_upon_a_time ouch job Zap spoiled_brat don't_worry
little_buddy imports rubbish run_away in_theory left_field
oh_come_on revolution pride King_Midas cowardice you_owe_me
Give_me_praise Boo you're_out_of_your_mind after_a_break
humongous do_it it_was_nothing you're_so_screwed yada_yada_yada
holier_than_thou now_that_I_think_about_it
If the gov't didn't have its hand in this space for so long, there would be no massive AT&T and there would be way more innovation. You're cheering someone for applying a cast when they also broke the leg.
The author seems to revolve his article around MS software running manufacturing, ambulances, etc. This is only true in the most literal sense possible. The software that runs these industries just happens to be written upon an MS platform due to a number of unfortunate market incidences that forced other OS players out of the game for less than technical reasons. This trend is now rapidly reversing and new software being written for these industries today is now moving towards Linux instead.

Microsoft never did any of these industries any favors - they just managed to capture the market and extract a tax for a number of years. That is why the public does not like them. When they have to fight with Windows to log into their laptop and wait 20 minutes while it does so (Windows Vista?), they blame Microsoft. Microsoft's technical inabilities and millions of man hours wasted patching and rebooting their OS comes at the cost of most of the world's population being less than impressed by Microsoft and those who work there.

This whole post is written merely as a rebuttal to the widely publicized article about how Microsoft is telling lies about Bing. The rebuttal itself comes down to "he's lying, not us!" and "we don't track the results from the Bing It On challenge". Both positions are pathetic as the Yale article has no reason to lie, and the only reason a company would not track results is because the results are obviously unfavorable and so they cooked up their own favorable ones.

You want to know why nobody respects Microsoft? Because Microsoft employees post articles like this which are so far from reality it leaves you wondering how they drive to work.
Python, Ruby, Javascript, JVM-hosted languages like Clojure, Scala, and newer languages still in development like Elixir, I'm sure I'm missing some. Haskell is perpetually 10 years ahead in programming research but sadly it functionally lacks support for day-to-day scripting tasks.
I always liked the fact that the word "thousand" itself is not among thousand most common English words.
You don't have to go across the ocean to find labor issues. The agriculture industry in the U.S. has questionable labor practices, and everyone has to buy food. There is little transparency with how food is produced, just like how there is little transparency with how the PS4 is produced, at least to the average consumer.

Lack of transparency and awareness channels is why grassroots consumer boycotts cannot be relied upon to improve society/humanity.
Pure rubbish. MSFT should have been split up for blatant violations of the Sherman Anti Trust Act but got a last minute pass by Bush. The company is nothing more than a drain on the technology industry in this country.

The worst thing about working for Microsoft? You have to run Windows.