skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Indeed, I wish I"d gotten a degree in evo bio, as its proponents are able to predict nearly everything about human behavior.

After the fact, of course.
This tendency will not change in even the slightest way. It's not about not having the information available in the world. It's about what fits in people's heads. (It's also about the need to back up moral pronouncements with stories.)

Albert Einstein may or may not be legend five centuries from now, but he's a legend today, and we've got plenty of documentation of him (including a ritually-preserved blackboard that he filled when lecturing -- he was considered a legend before he died).
Reminds me of a similar idea I had related to remapping body motions from a motion-based control scheme in a game, to real world assembly lines. "Solve the puzzle and get $10 in Labor Points towards your next iPhone!"
So basically it's the same reason most software sucks: because most companies suck. Thanks for your insight, I appreciate it.

Years ago, when I was helping out my favorite bar get back on their feet, I had thought it would be a good idea to develop a POS system. I wasn't capable of it at the time, I was just out of college and knew very little about running a project. Nowadays, I've got quite a bit of experience in inventory and ERP systems, but I also understand the market a little better now. For one thing, the people who complain the loudest are often the least willing to pay more for better.

This all got started because my business partner and I were doing some on-the-ground research into what makes a small business owner tick. We have an investor who has a Great Idea that is completely unworkable without a ton of data that these sorts of places are either uncomfortable providing or unwilling to put in the effort of providing.

And one of the constant refrains we heard in our interviews was that these people hated their POS system, knew it was partly their fault for not using it correctly, but didn't have the time or inclination to get into it more. We're talking owners of walk-in wine stores and pet grooming shops. Places where the owner is behind the counter, running the place, or directly managing the staff. They all opened their businesses because the business focus was something they loved, but they ended up spending most of their time wrangling data systems and tax compliance. It's a major frustration point for them and we'd like to do something about it.

Do you have any insights into the types of support contracts that these sort of places are running? I'm considering trying to sell my services as "labor for hire" to help small business owners clean up and figure out how to best use their POS. It's something I could get bootstrapped on right away and I think it would build relationships that could lead to more business opportunities. And it seems to fill the need that most of these owners have, in that they know that their systems are a mess but they don't have the time to do anything about it. But I'm concerned that the typical POS company has their customers locked into a support contract that would not allow a 3rd party access to the system.
I've also read (somewhere) that consistent property order provides a performance gain for minification, although the benefits are presumably tiny.
It is truly an awful scenario. As I stated recently in a comment on this subject, Federal contracting is a Rent Seeking scenario: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent_seeking

I have a weird role: I work at a company which does tons of Federal contracts, but also has lots of private sector work. I keep my sanity by doing short term consulting with private clients. There are some sharp people working the Federal side, but it really is awful.

Winning a contract is EVERYTHING. It is a writing contest, and you can be sure that the Federal contract officer knows jack shit about the actual fundamentals of the project. The Contract Officer is a paper pusher whose job is to look at the line items in the Request for Proposal, and examine which company's proposal best "hits" each line item. And of course they will select a low bidder, which often is a bid too low for the company to even profit, simply meant to get their foot in the door.

The staffing of these Federal contracts is horrific. You get entire teams of "change management" people. I'm currently assisting on a personnel system for a major military organization. I recently had to witness an entire discussion by the change management team on removing hyphens from a particular term to help the branding. I almost threw up in my mouth.

The people I work with on the Fed contracts, in general, don't touch technology when they leave work. Therefore the only browser they use is IE8 (according to the customer org, it is more secure......) they do nothing outside of J2EE/.NET (usually just one of the two) and they HAVE/WILL never build a website that supports more than 5,000 enterprise users (concurrently).

It is incredibly easy to look like a wizard amongst this bunch, but the experience of the Federal world has made me avoid these projects like the plague. The incentives at the business level (and therefore the high salary jobs) are ALL for winning contracts. Performing well on the work won is just viewed as another cost center.
It's a set of trade-offs. I could run my own cloud stack and all too but I don't want to deal with it.

I could push to a self-owned git repo, but bitbucket and github have lots of nice tools already built around them. When they have issues with their servers/disks, most of the time I won't know and don't have to do anything.

Now, by all means, have contingency plans. Keep pushing to that self-owned git repo, have back ups and such, but I think people just don't want to worry about things.
I'm _deeply_ excited about Elite: Dangerous - it's pretty much the only videogame I think that could these days, thanks to how it opened my eyes and captured my imagination as a youngster.

The idea of OR on top is brilliant, too - seems like a great fit for a cockpit-based game.

Question: only the OR dev kits appear to be available at the moment. Is there a public roadmap for a consumer version?
grippy wheels are tricky. You can't use urethane, but instead need to use rubber, which is a lot less efficient (heavier and slows you down too much as it takes too much effort to push with the deformation/heat loss). What you can do is buy grippier wheels and swap them onto your board (get maybe a 78 hardness compound) and get wider or bigger wheels too. Easy to swap out.
Regarding waterproof batteries, I agree entirely.
I'd disagree with that. In my area, the software dev population has just become segmented as different languages and tools became popular. When I started the JUG, there was an active Perl group and a Linux group but little else that drew a crowd. Now there is a strong Python group, 2 Ruby groups, a Scala group, a Clojure group, an FP group, a big data group, a Node group, Android and iOS groups, and probably a handful I've not even considered.

I know most of the other groups still draw smaller crowds than JUG, and there are several possible theories or justifications for that which have nothing to do with language popularity.

This of course is anecdotal and represents Philadelphia, but I'd imagine other locations have some similar experiences.
In Portugal, I know of about 5 systems that were developed by either companies of family members of politicians or by companies were one of the shareholders/owners were the decider on which company to use.
The INEM (emergency response unit) hardware and software was sold by to INEM by the company the person deciding on which company to use created and then left INEM. Sorta went like

Public Contest -> Manager creates company and submits project -> Manager chooses own company -> Manager quits INEM to 'work' at the new company. This is public knowledge but there isn't much we can do about it
Acer C720 Chromebook
Think how stupid both sides will look if actual deaths can be attributed to their political posturing over fiscal matters. E.g. "Little Jimmy died because he couldn't get essential treatment. How can you try to make that ok by saying that you were both playing chicken, but the 'other guy' should have backed down?"
Political organizations exist for political reasons.

So if you get elected to "do something" about orphans, you'll create an organization to do something. The goal of this organization is political: appear to be making progress on the orphan problem. At the very least, do not appear in the news as an example of government waste.

The current website problem is a political failure -- it looks bad. But that's just a short term consideration. The long-term bet is that over the next decades, the ACA will bring great political benefit to the political party that supported it, no matter what other things it does.

So when we evaluate projects created by political organizations for political reasons, the success criteria is much different than commercial or non-profit projects. I don't think this is a failure. Maybe a bump in the road, but it's nothing that won't work itself out over the next year or so. (And be long forgotten)

Remember, a lot of government contractors made money building these sites. A lot of people had jobs. A lot of committees and functionaries are able to add this to their list of good they've done in the world. Not being able to actually use the site for a while is a small pittance compared to the real, measured benefit the sites have created. So far. If it drags on for a long time, the political math could switch around the other way, but I doubt it.
Right. I thought I understood what it did, but then I watched the video and now I have no idea.
Whilst this is cool and all, I think more people are interested in whether PS4 will use it as well.
>> "Also I am really looking forwards to the day I can't get my kid seen by a doctor because there was a budget fight and the government shut down."

Do you not think that doctors would be one of the essential personal not effected by a shutdown?

And do you seriously believe the US would completely ban private medical care? We have the NHS (free health care for everyone) but we also still have privatised care which you can choose to pay for if you want. It's 2013 and the US still doesn't provide free health care for its citizens. Pigs will fly before they not only do that, but ban private care.
Let's see... Avoid novelty; Only take on easy things; Don't think creatively; Do things the most convenient way; Don't network.

...in other words, live a stationary life, do the same things you always did in the same way with the same people.

I don't know if any research exists to support this but it seems pretty likely, to me, that this will make one less intelligent.
Today fucking paypal suspended our account because there was 2500 euros income from one of our clients...
One of the few things I agree with our current government in the UK on is their move to bring government IT in house from external companies. That decision has led to Government Digital Services, who are building out http://gov.uk/, and a few other digital departments within government.

A friend of mine works at the Ministry of Justice, and told me recently he has the easiest job in the world, because even if he were to just sit at his desk and do nothing he'd be delivering a better service than the agencies that proceeded him, and saving the ministry huge amounts of money.
Considering Bing steals Google search results[1] this test makes me laugh. I guess when it comes down to this debate I like and use many of the services Google provides so I have no problem using their search engine and seeing their ads. Also with the history they've built up using all my previous searches I rarely have to go past the second result to find what I'm actually looking for.

[1]: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/microsofts-bing-uses-...
A colleague of mine used to be some kind of manager/director at that company (in another country though). He once described his former job as "milking the government".

They hire the lowest quality engineers (e.g. the cheapest), and then bill them outlandish $/hour to work for government agencies. The project plans are packed with useless stuff, and are designed to exceed initial estimations. They get paid by the hour...
You make a good point. I guess in the general case it's "not simple". I've built a number of inventory and ERP systems, so it's kind of my wheelhouse now. But yes, such systems aren't necessarily trivial without a rock solid design. I can build a goodish ERP system now because I have experience, but to someone just entering the field it has a lot of good looking corners that turn out to be awful decisions.
AWS Activate - Get Your Startup Off the Ground With AWS
Here are two no-BS, straight forward guided meditations by Sam Harris, one is 9 and another 26 minutes long.

http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/mindfulness-meditation

Here is a bit more background on it: http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/how-to-meditate

There is plenty of scientifically backed studies and documents out there when it comes to mindfulness If you are a skeptic though, as am I, be wary of the masses of esoterically/religiously contaminated resources on the web, when it comes to meditation.
Surely there's some overlap.
Take out your headphones, or mute them before trying it.
>> Android ... essentially force you to use Java

> You can use many languages which compile down to Java Byte code.

And then you end up with subpar performance and application size :(

I had high hopes for Mirah for Anrdoid development few years ago, but it unfortunately fade away. It was basically Ruby like language that compiled down to pure java bytecode without a need for any runtime. That would fit Android perfectly.
Not really. Forth is nowadays only used for tiny embedded systems.

In contrast, C is the glue language for pretty much everything. Even the latest operating systems like iOS and WinRT use C as the base level API language that is callable from anywhere. They do have significant libraries and conventions to manage that (Apple uses CoreFoundation, Microsoft uses COM), but it's still C.
The affordable care act mandates people get health coverage, prevents denial of coverage due to pre-existing conditions, provides centralized services to purchase health coverage, and expands federal programs for medicare and medicaid. Your local doctor isn't going to refuse to see you because they are still paid by an insurance company, and not the federal government.
Shame it doesn't support minimal syntax preprocessors like Stylus still.
Please explain to me how an exchange stood up by the government which enables you to find a private insurance company to purchase insurance from is involving the government in your use of the private insurance.

The new system acts as a facilitator for people to purchase insurance on an open "exchange" market. The government has as much to do with what happens afterwards as the NYSE has to do with how my 80 shares of Exxon perform. If the stock goes down, I can surely blame the Exxon board, or an oil spill.... but it certainly has nothing to do with the NYSE.

You should read about a law before you talk about it.
This title deserves an award.
Paris has its own Paypal Mafia: How Exalead spawned dozens of startups
... are you really wasting your time reading auto-generated code? Why is this on the front page of HN?
Planet Hadoop
Done. https://github.com/chkoreff/Fexl/commit/ce1d0f596ab3043e0edf...
It is easy to see that. What's needed is somebody to shake up the whole government contract procurement system. A gigantic schlep right there...
Beware of potentially politically motivated garbage quotes. The referenced Washington Post article quoted an "insurance industry official" who would only speak anonymously:

“Very, very few people that we’re aware of have enrolled in the federal exchange,” said one insurance industry official, who like many in the industry, spoke on the condition of anonymity out of concern for possibly offending the Obama administration. “We are talking single digits.”

So one guy allegedly in the "insurance industry" who won't give his name has said enrollment has been in the single digits. Not overall enrollment mind you, just what this one guy has seen come across his desk.

But that's how this article has been spun. Millions of people! single digit success rate! as reported by "some guy". A sad state of affairs indeed.
There are a lot of interesting things to say about a $634M website that didn’t work when it should have, but what pops out at me here is the description of “poorly written code.”

This article even links directly to some of the code, which A) looks fine? and B) is like “Yeah, the problem wasn’t with procurement regulations or clear requirements or public-private cronyism or managerial competence, it was that damn person who told the computer what to do and the computer didn’t do the right thing.”
I think my partner is currently using Vend for his tourist-town restaurant. I'll have to check it out. I've got a TODO task point to setup a "shop simulator", a basic Linux VM to see what exactly it takes to work end-to-end. I've been involved with all of the constituent parts at some point in my life, but I've never had a chance to see the big picture all at once.

And yes, Users are the worst people from which to get requirements. You can get a rough idea of where their problems lay, but you won't get any good ideas for how to fix those problems from users.
Generally: get government out of the business of procuring custom software and shift to procuring outcomes.

Something like these healthcare exchanges should have been put to the market in a from where the revenue is directly tied to the end goal: The successful purchase of health insurance by customers (or whatever is the case here, I'm not intimately familiar with the mechanics). Have providers bid on the full thing by revenue pr. successful transaction + an SLA that deducts an appropriate penalty if it isn't met.

Ideally, you don't even need to pick a winner, you can just say that any provider that successfully operates such a marketplace will get the revenue per transaction and let the market sort it out. End users will gravitate towards the sites that are fast and easy to use, "Consumer Reports" will test them etc. Lean, agile shops will win. Clunky, well-connected, but technically unsophisticated government contractors will fail.
Infrastructure of Mono is not in any way comparable to proper c#. Also how come MonoDevelop's latest version doesn't work on Linux? On Windows it became Xamarian and it is ok ish, but I would not use it for a major project, refactoring tools are more or less non existant. On Linux they are stuck with the old version of MonoDevelop
> I don't always have to go looking for the function definition

That's because you get it inline for you with Xcode's autocomplete. IDEs do this for other languages, and the effect is the same.
Poll: What are your liked and disliked programming languages?
This is a combination of these two polls:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3746692
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3748961

That resulted in this chart:

https://i.imgur.com/toGKy21.jpg

Since that poll is ~18 months old, I thought an update is in order.

This poll also adds a few new choices: F#, Go, R, and Rust.

Vote as many choices as you'd like.

Note: By voting for a language you are not up voting this poll. Please up vote this poll to keep it alive.
Actionscript - Like
Actionscript - Dislike
Ada - Like
Ada - Dislike
Assembly - Like
Assembly - Dislike
C - Like
C - Dislike
C++ - Like
C++ - Dislike
C# - Like
C# - Dislike
Clojure - Like
Clojure - Dislike
Cobol - Like
Cobol - Dislike
CoffeeScript - Like
CoffeeScript - Dislike
ColdFusion - Like
ColdFusion - Dislike
D - Like
D - Dislike
Delphi - Like
Delphi - Dislike
Erlang - Like
Erlang - Dislike
Forth - Like
Forth - Dislike
Fortran - Like
Fortran - Dislike
Go - Like
Go - Dislike
Groovy - Like
Groovy - Dislike
Haskell - Like
Haskell - Dislike
Java - Like
Java - Dislike
JavaScript - Like
JavaScript - Dislike
Lisp - Like
Lisp - Dislike
Lua - Like
Lua - Dislike
Objective-C - Like
Objective-C - Dislike
OCaml - Like
OCaml - Dislike
PHP - Like
PHP - Dislike
Pascal - Like
Pascal - Dislike
Perl - Like
Perl - Dislike
Python - Like
Python - Dislike
R - Like
R - Dislike
Rexx - Like
Rexx - Dislike
Ruby - Like
Ruby - Dislike
Rust - Like
Rust - Dislike
Scala - Like
Scala - Dislike
Scheme - Like
Scheme - Dislike
Shell - Like
Shell - Dislike
Smalltalk - Like
Smalltalk - Dislike
SQL - Like
SQL - Dislike
Tcl - Like
Tcl - Dislike
Visual Basic - Like
Visual Basic - Dislike
Other - Like
Other - Dislike
resources['ffe.ee.myAccount.testthing'] = '<span style="color: red">Reduce The Number of keys<a href="#" onclick="alert(&#39;hey&#39;);">This is a Links</a></span>';
Learn AngularJS Magazine Style with Flipboard [Article Collection]
LMAO, it is true, I only have a very basic knowledge of Swedish but i helped a lot "True Kvlt".
" Whilst Uni-President is pulling back for now, analyst Nice Wang at Yuanta Securities in Shanghai said the price battle may not be over"

heh

On a more serious note, i think it is much better for the consumers if the major players in the fast food game are keeping product quality at a relatively constant level whilst giving away free things (Opposed to the american method of making food quicker and cheaper)
Interesting theory. I like it.

Nice to see you around here, Svante!
Mostly English. In ridiculous quantities.

I miss thought leaders using French, or Latin :-(
> there is no way that I know of to get money out of the Bitcoin system in a way that can't be tracked.

https://localbitcoins.com/

> LocalBitcoins.com is a marketplace for trading bitcoins locally to cash or online payments of your choice.
From a quick google, then reading some wikipedia then linking the source, it seems its about 5~% of households

http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/oss/oss2/papers/concentra...
It's certainly one of the weirder titles I've read on HN (and off HN too for that matter)
Thanks. This is our first version and we focused mainly on keeping this simple so that we can get it out and test our idea. We didn't want to get our hands on OAuth for this version which is why there are some obvious ones (LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram etc.) missing. One of our biggest goals with Shyahi is to create an app that anyone can use. We will be adding more services soon.
> Stack allocation is irrelevant for most of what the application is doing.

Well I disagree with that. In C++ it is quite common for most objects to be allocated on the stack. I have never heard stack allocation being described as irrelevant. Of course if the language puts everything on the heap then that statement might be true.
WaPo: Here’s why we refused NSA’s demand to censor names of PRISM companies
Out of interest; Myers Briggs - are you an I or and E?
Very easy for a swede.
No idea what it costs, but GDS[1] is doing a pretty good job on http://gov.uk. My guess is that only the savings on closing hundreds of sites [2] justifies it. Maybe it also prevents some of the uk citizens from not going nuts while trying to do gov business online ;)

[1] http://digital.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/
[2] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/hundreds-of-government-we...
Java and IoT In Motion
I had a similar complaint about Venmo. Yes, it was pretty, but dammit, they should have known to scrub their CSV export for newline characters and commas. There was just a lot of apparent sloppiness to the actual working of things under the hood, even if the front of it was clean and smooth.
I was thinking the same after getting the first 6 or so right. I ended up with 14/20 right, and I'm not familiar with metal bands, IKEA, or Scandinavian names.
Much too easy as a metal-head as well. My only gripe is that there are a lot of bands in there that aren't death-metal. Every kind of extreme music isn't death-metal people!
So in no way did they copy Google's which is implemented in C++ ?

Though I agree with OP - these projects and Java are here to stay for the foreseeable future.