skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Interesting take on things. In particular, this makes my blood run cold:

The playback "device" maker category includes vendors of plugins available cross-browser via NPAPI, of course really just Flash and Silverlight these days. It looks likely to include OS/browser vendors who purvey non-standardized CDMs available under cover of EME only to certain select OS/browser combinations -- possibly only each its own OS and browser!
Yeah, because I really want to spend hours upon hours studying obscure incantations that someone decided to be making sense.

WiX (and MSI, for that matter) is a disaster.
If you're starting to get back pain, you might need to exercise more. Consider a walking or biking routine, and some back exercises[1].

Also, set an alarm to get up from your desk once an hour. Just taking a trip to the bathroom or the water cooler will help keep you active enough.

[1] I do this routine a couple times a month: http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/back-pain/LB00001_D

(Building some lower-back strength with deadlifts would be the next step, but might be more than you need just to avoid pain.)
Chris Guillebeau had two American passports for precisely this purpose. Also, you have to send your actual passport to get some visas and that leaves you without a passport for weeks at a time. So having two helps there too.
I don't hate these companies. But I do think their existence is damaging to society. The world is a big place, but these companies operate in the country I live in, invariably pay no tax (or little enough so as not to be meaningful), and generate/perpetuate inequality - which itself is associated with a host of problems from crime to mental well-being to economic growth itself.
If you need to justify upgrades I would recommend measuring build speed savings in teams - vs 2012 & vs 2013 build faster than 2010 in my findings.
Split a few hairs there.
British scientist 'solves' mystery of Himalayan yetis
How do I bring in code samples when all of the code I write has been for my previous employers and therefore is owned by them? Can't I be good at what I do without spending free time away from family and hobbies doing it even more?
>Use Windows+X as your new start menu afterwards - it rocks. In fact I wish earlier versions of windows had that!

If you mean launching apps with Winkey+number then it isn't new and is most definitely in Windows 7.
That applies much less to non-US entities communicating to other non-US entities who happen to have significant bandwidth between them running through the United States.
Applets, whenever I used them, were also much, much slower to load than Flash.
Started really good: "Facebook is right. HTML5 isn't ready,"; "The fact is, it's the wrong tool,"; "We're years away from this being fixed.".

...then went downhill:

"...and in JavaScript."
This isn't one comment to HN with 127 spelling mistakes, it would be equivalent to 1000s of people as part of a collective group contributing 1000s of spelling mistakes over the past 15 years, then all of a sudden fixing a ton of the mistakes.

Your argument is wrong but your point is correct. In the above scenario, should they be applauded for fixing 3 year old spelling mistakes that someone told them about 3 years ago...
Engineer's Solution: Neutral Redistricting so Reelection is Less Assured
My advice was "learn from them", not "copy them". There are certain aspects of Mittelstand companies that make them more appealing to what I'd describe as important qualities in a company. Long-term thinking, being involved in their communities, etc.

It was a counter argument to a massively Silicon Valley focused industry. A plea to extend the horizon of what constitutes a best practice.
Mir is partially shipped, it's on the Touch (Phone) images.
The first thing I did when I saw Famo.us last year was rip into the code. With a little persistence, you can pretty easily use the code without waiting for their release.
Ping Pong Fight Club for Startups in Amsterdam (Video)
"As a rough estimate, 95% of functions in any code base should be so simple and specific that their signature is all you need to use them."

Welcome to reality!

What is simple for one guy is really hard to understand for an another one.

What you expect is that every bigger function must be split into dozends of smaller functions, only to have a cleaner parameter part. But this make the code flow unreadable.
> Operator Overloading

That's scary
Right, scientific and technical people will get extra scrutiny. Under the US's threat model -- moral or not -- it is not the janitors and artists you worry about, it's the people visiting our nuclear, biological, and high-technology facilities.

The fact that this has very bad side effects on technological progress is important, but it's not like the government gives smart people scrutiny because it hates smart people. This behavior is brutally rational if you just look at their primary mission.
I had registered with Microsoft my copy of Windows 98, and they mailed me a CD with an upgrade to SE for free when it was released.
More Than a Year Later– An Embarrassing Confession To Make By A Wannabe Coder
No, Windows+X shows a small "start menu" with some simple often used functions like cmd prompt / task manager / control panel / run.
Can you autograph an e-book?
That's pretty fast for a commuter IMO. In heavy city traffic 15mph is probably above the average for cars? [quick check on Google, single search, only gave me that [some?] Melbourne rush hour traffic averaged below 20km/h (~13mi/h)].

TBH 15mi/h seems about right for an all ages accessible motorised bicycle.
No - winkey+X (the actual X key) throws up a new menu. See below:

http://i.imgur.com/Tmq3iWp.png
Forgif.me - Funny GIFs for your pocket
> Does there need to be a handw-written integration to every kind of blocking resource, or is there magic happening here?

Yes (to handwritten integration), but it's incredibly simple. We can transform any callback-based API to a fiber-blocking API within hours of work.

> What happens if a thread loads from a MappedByteBuffer, and the OS needs to read from disk to satisfy the load? What happens if a thread loads from some far corner of main memory that has been paged out, and the OS needs to read from disk to satisfy the load?

The thread will be blocked, but it isn't likely to be much of a problem. It's perfectly OK for the fiber to block the thread occasionally (hopefully rarely) – the work-stealing scheduler can deal with that because it runs in a thread-pool; if one thread blocks other will steal its work and do it. It's just not OK for fibers to block their thread very often. The scenarios you've described involve missed caches and so are rare by design.

> Those situations go beyond the power of lightweight threading systems i have seen before. They're not fatal problems, nor even serious ones for most programs, but they're part of the reason that lightweight threading hasn't, and can't, become the general solution to threading.

I agree. Quasar fibers are by no means meant to serve as a replacement for threads. They are specifically targeted for cases when you want lots of concurrent "threads" that interact very often by passing information (either via messages or a shared data structures), and so block and wait for each other a lot.

If you have a long-running computation: use a plain thread.

Actually, one of the cool things in Quasar is an abstraction called a strand. A strand is simply either a thread or a fiber. All of the synchronization mechanisms (channels, condition variables etc.) provided by Quasar work with strands - not directly with fibers -
so you can use them both in fibers or threads. In fact, you can run a Quasar actor in a thread rather than a fiber.
Hixie: The purpose of DRM is not to prevent copyright violations
You can't have a stable multicultural situation where a part of the population can make multiculturalism impossible. Yes, you must have rule of law. You must also promulgate the ideology of multicultural tolerance itself. You cannot tolerate a certain level of intolerance.
If the premiss is that only the ideologues care enough to vote then I don't see how open primaries fixes that. This goes back to the changes that moved the senate elections to public vote as well.

I don't see how anything could be passed that goes away from the current system; it would be attacked as curtailing freedom in one way or another (remember who we're dealing with here...) The only solution I see is encouraging the non ideological portion of the general public to start participating in elections. I fear that's a tall order though.
Ultrahaptic Prototype Lets You Feel Gesture Controls In Mid-Air
"Improvements have been made to better support users who prefer a mouse and keyboard experience to access applications."

That's pretty strange wording and makes it sound like desktop users are an afterthought compared to mobile devices.
You are right, I don't believe in the rhetoric of trickle-down economics, because it is just that: rhetoric. The US is a good case in point for that.
No

* https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2013-October/...
* http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/28032.html
My prototyping framework http://framerjs.com uses the exact same approach, divs positioned with only css matrix transforms. Great for high performance animations.

I've sometimes thought about building a full fledged ui framework on top of it but it doesn't work (exactly the same) in all browsers. And I suspect offloading everything to the gpu by default will lead to other sorts of performance issues but I'll have to test this.

Framer also includes spring physics and is fully integrated with Photoshop. You should check it out if you build prototypes.
3 Hiring Mistakes That I Made Early On
Personally, I think they ended up getting excellent advertising value for their money. Especially with the win and that being a big news story.
One one hand you could call this "debunking." On the other hand if it's true it demonstrates that many of the people who claimed to see Yetis were not stoned, drunk, hallucinating, making things up, or misidentifying something completely ordinary. They really did in fact see something that looked very strange to them.

That's one of my pet peeves with some skeptics. People are not that stupid. I do believe many people who claim to have seen UFOs, for example. I don't necessarily think they're aliens or whatever, but I do believe people have seen very odd things in the sky that defy easy explanation.
Enjoy the fact that Bing gets sent everything you ever search for on a Windows 8.1 machine. Whether your intention was to search the web or merely the local machine, Microsoft knows.
Would someone criticize you for fixing them?
Myst creator Cyan Worlds announces Kickstarter for Obduction
If you want more information about new features/packages have a look at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SaucySalamander/ReleaseNotes#New_fea...
> Variadic functions

Doesn't PHP have that already? http://us2.php.net/func_get_args

Edit - Checking out that parent link it seems:
Currently variadic functions are implemented by fetching the function arguments using func_get_args(). The following code sample shows an implementation of a variadic function used to prepare and execute a MySQL query (I'll be making use of this example throughout the RFC):

Firstly, by just looking at the function signature public function query($query) you cannot know that this is actually a variadic function. You'd think that the function can only run a normal query and doesn't support bound parameters:

public function query($query, ...$params) { /*...
$userData = $db->query('SELECT * FROM users WHERE id = ?', $userID)->fetch();
You thoroughly missed the point of this discussion.
There's a principal/agent problem with documentation too. The writer of it rarely gets the benefit. Many times they will never see or meet anyone who does. But they have a lot of other competing priorities from highly visible requesters.

I am interested in examples of companies that get this right.
I agree with the post directly after his.

I think, of Flash/Silverlight and EME, the former is the lesser of two evils.
> As someone who doesn't use the dash, I am wondering what's in it for me.

All other packages are updated as well. (Freshly rebased on top of Debian unstable.) So it really depends on what you are doing and which packages you are using.
If the JRE allows someone to make a system call, it's a feature. If the plugin allows the same call, it's a critical software bug.
Why not attend by telepresence? Let him present by video and hook him up with a Double or similar internet-controllable robot to talk to people around the conference. Or go full-on Bluth and pair up with an American proxy wearing a headset.

This sucks, sure, but there's always another way.
Hover.ie
Package your Webapp for Ubuntu Touch
Mprpc: A lightweight Python RPC library using MessagePack and gevent
I like "learn from them". In my opinion there are lessons to be learned everywhere. These mittelstand companies are certainly doing something right.

If that's the massage, I comletely agree. If Berlin can actually create new breed of start-ups that shows certain characteristics of mittelstand companies that can only be a good thing.
Governments on the 'same footing' vs. human beings on the 'same footing?' I respect people everywhere sure; but dictator x is not deserving of disproportionate influence.
Parents Protest National Common Core Standards
Well, I can really say what it should be...

But I put one-liners in a function when the one-liner is hard to read or too error prone (missing a detail won't lead to a compiler error, but to a bug).
Some places are more cunning. I've read reports of countries looking for stamps from the Taba border pass (a border between Israel and Egypt) and not letting someone in base on that (since if he passed through Taba he was either from Israel or going to Israel, even if the Israeli stamp was not in his passport).
It’s really not that bad. WiX is actually pretty decent, definitely not a “disaster”. It might look more frightening than InstallShield because you don’t get a nice UI that allows you to set up an installer with a few clicks, but I mean, we’re programmers here, surely editing textual configuration files is not an issue? It took me somethong like 30 minutes to replace our old InstallShield installer with WiX.
I'd reply to that: Various types of freedom and a higher degree of respect for your privacy (I know, it's not a cure-all solution, but the next step that needs to be taken by society).
How long did the upgrade take? I'm just wondering if this is more like a service pack, or if I'm going to lose a better part of an afternoon doing the upgrade.
waiting erlang features:

-pattern matching

-atoms

-tuples

-lists

-hot code loading

-function arguments matching

-tail recursion

-term_to_binary binary_to_term

-lightweight green processes with PIDs

-receive...end

-begin...end

-pash

-and other nice features from erlang
> since, as we have seen with Lavabit, End to End encryption is no good if one end can be forced to surrender their keys.

I'm not sure I made myself clear: my position is that the encryption needs to be done on each end-user's PC, not on some centralised service such as Lavabit.

While the USA could extract the secrets from one person, if that person is living in the USA, it is harder fro them to do so to people outside the USA. Although they could burgle people's houses and extract information that way, it doesn't scale and they certainly couldn't do it to all the people in a country.
It's funny to see how there is so much Apple scrutiny. We get similar or probably lower security with other apps like Whatsapp, SnapChat etc. If you don't self host your architecture, it is always possible that a third-party can access it. I think that should be an accepted risk. Even BBM (Blackberry messaging service) which was considered to be extremely secure was forced to give access to the Indian government.
"the electric motor shouldn’t be able to propel the bike when it’s travelling more than 15mph"

Curious now whether that's actually what the law says, if so it seems badly drafted. That would appear to mean a physical limit on the motor is required rather than just a software control - as then the motor would "be able" to propel the bike faster but he device as a whole, unmodified, would not.
Francis Maude installs Wi-Fi network to bypass 'rubbish' government IT
I find it difficult to believe that there are people who know about RSA, but not about Adi Shamir.
Not much to elaborate. You're told to bring a stack of documents if you have a scientific or technical background, such as CV, a list of publications, an invitation letter from your US host, a letter from your university etc. If the embassy official isn't satisfied, you are asked to send more documents to a state.gov email address. On one occasion they wanted more information about my work as a programmer before I started my PhD. When they asked me for more documents I was tempted to joke that it doesn't matter what address I use, the email will reach the required destination anyway.
Retinafy everything
Cloud service for SVG generation.
I'll stick to 12.04 LTS for desktop and server and wait for 14.04 LTS for desktop and server. 9 months support made *.10 releases less exciting, for me somehow.
Version control in your Gmail
Been in Thailand 10 years - honestly most Thais don't care one bit about the letter of the law. A banal example might be that unless there's a helmet check stop, you can drive by any policeman without a helmet on - nobody cares.

The work permit situation is not that clear either - there are different interpretations depending on who you ask. If you are here, but your income is entirely in another country, it's legal according to officials - the law just was not made for that situation. The law is to prevent foreigners from working illegally in Thailand - if the foreigner basically "brings their own job" to Thailand it's a different story.

Who can prove what you're doing on your computer? Will they ask the NSA and the IRS for assistance to uncover the company you're building? And if not, how could they tell whether you're not a trust fund kid playing Counter Strike all day long?

Once you start hiring people here, you'll need legal assistance, but even that is relatively straightforward. I know many with BOI companies here, with 100% foreign ownership.
Why switch a language just 'cause it's the popular thing on SO? Stick with a language till you got the coding skills done. Switching language after that is pretty easy.
I keep wondering: if we applied 50% of the effort we applied to stopping SOPA, what would the world look like?
I didn't spend my VC money on Armani suits (a true story)
Whenever Druckenmiller (a friend) is challenged by seniors, who also come to his talks, that he is trying to start an intergenerational war, he has a standard reply: “No, that war already happened, and the kids lost. We’re just trying to recover some scraps for them.”

Are there still any scraps? I thought you ate it all!?
That's interesting, I'd never thought of visualizing a thousand of something that way - I'd have thought using tiny indistinguishable units that cover each other up is admitting defeat from the get-go. I've always thought in terms of those little centimeter blocks they have to visualize powers of ten in grade school. A thousand is simply a 10x10x10cm cube (a cubic litre), quite easy to visualize. There are a also a thousand millimeters in a meter, and a thousand people is also a common order of magnitude for a group of people in a school context (population of the school, or a single year of students, or the number of people attending a sports game, depending on the size of the school).
He meant brute force in its qualifying strategy, like a brute force solving algorithm. Athletes train very hard and smart in their sport, but generally don't consider the sport's popularity and what country to play for.
that's going to vary highly depending on hardware and your link speed, but I just did in on 3 relatively newer PC's with SSD's over a 30Mbps connection, and it took between 30-45mins.
Not really. I'm talking process more than result. The question is whether their process and your processes mesh well, and watching them work on something could well provide information that static commit histories lack.

As mentioned, I'm a bit skeptical that an interviewer can reliably extract that information.
Raw changelogs aren't the issue. Submitting minor-minor bug fix releases is the issue.
It's for internal PHP runtime use only. IIRC we're adding it so that our bignum library is nicer to use.
Politics in America have always been ideological, bitter and partisan (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLj6yY4P_Rg). 150 years ago this country split in two over ideological issues and then we fought a horrendous war to figure out who was the winner.

And everyone keeps talking about default, but failing to raise the debt ceiling does not cause us to default. There's plenty of revenue, and plenty of other spending to cut before we get there.
For those of you in the Cambridge area, he will instead be giving a talk at MIT tomorrow.

'DISSECTION: A NEW PARADIGM FOR SOLVING BICOMPOSITE SEARCH PROBLEMS'

https://calendar.csail.mit.edu/events/116296
I still think we will muddle through it. Things that aren't sustainable don't continue. People will start charging more to lend to the US. Systems will feel stress. Health care will be rationed because there is no other way. Everyone will work longer because there is no other option. We may need to inflate some if our wealth away to lighten the debt load.

The wake up will be someone else's system collapsing first (Japan? France?) which will cause global economic stress. After the flight to US dollars, our borrowers will force us to get our act in gear.
If it works and is sufficiently performant - is there anything wrong with the fact it's written in X, not Y?

And if it doesn't, then there's certainly a reason to optimize.
Yes. 18 year-old fashion models or recording artists are fast-tracked with a cultural visa.

I guess it shows what the priorities are. Science? Dangerous! Skinny girls with weird clothing? Come on in!
The same can be said of programming in general.

It's true that msi is different from other installer builders, but it's for a reason. And if you have a concrete project you can build while following along with the wix tutorials and book, it's not difficult, it just takes some time.
I'm just doing the upgrade at the moment: the download was 3.4GB and was maxing my connection, but the install has taken an hour so far, but this isn't on an SSD. The process looks like it's coming to an end soon.
I did a fresh install from MSDN iso onto a disk cleaned with diskpart from a USB stick (see [1]). I didn't do an upgrade. I wouldn't ever upgrade Windows manually after a screw up going from Vista to 7.

To do a full clean install on my Lenovo T400 with Samsung 840 Pro SSD off a fairly old Sandisk Cruzer took less than 10 minutes.

[1] http://wudt.codeplex.com/
Leadership, community, and how I got Hacker News’s second-highest average karma
There's a counterpart unpacking syntax which will likely also get merged in, meaning you can have:

function query($query, ...$params) {}

and

$params = [3];
query('SELECT * FROM table WHERE a = ?;', ...$params);
I've been thinking you could hook up a cam/mic to one of those Roomba vacuum 'bots and then you could cruise around the conference and network with your colleagues just as though you were there. I understand those things have wifi already, so....

The coolest part would be bumping into other Roombas that represent colleagues from elsewhere (you'd need a way to distinguish from an ordinary, autonomous Roomba). There could even be a Roomba room just for them!
Wacko in the Morning 10/17 by The Wacko Network | Entertainment Podcasts
For my workstation as a web developer, I use Ubuntu with LXDE running the latest releases as it's always nice to have the latest software, if I had to support users I would use 12.04 though.

Servers is quite nice with 12.04 though, and that's what they are designed for.