skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Winston Churchill talks about how the Brits sent info to Stalin at the very highest diplomatic levels that he was going to be invaded. And later when Winston met Stalin, Stalin said that he thought he had to do everything to avoid provoking the Germans as they had started their previous war by pretending to have been attacked by the Poles. Stalin said that he hoped he had more time.

So its easy to read into this account that Stalin knew well that he was probably going to be attacked, and rather than 'not wanting to believe it' in a wishful way, rather balanced doing nothing to provoke Germany with taking defensive steps and decided on the former course rationally.
Reputational damage operates over much longer timescales.
Your claim was "Without side effects you couldn't do anything." I was rebutting that claim. Again, unless you want to claim that libraries "don't do anything."

The more specific claim that you need side effects for a program to do anything is also false. You can prove mathematical theorems with programs that have no side effects. Of course now you'll say that that only works because of the compiler, which does have side effects, but that's really just moving the target so you can be "right" (as you did with this post).

Even if theorem proving isn't good enough, since the entire purpose for having the term "side effects" is to be able to usefully discuss referential transparency, the other poster who noted that IO can be an effect and not necessarily a side effect was correct. If IO is isolated, it is not a side effect, it is just an effect. A good example of this is the execution of the main action in a Haskell program.
That's some delicious satirical sociopathy. I feel you man.
You mean a server issue? If re-upping means re-selling the data, send me your ideas. :)
> Counselling is being provided to the special forces team.

I bet American special forces would need counselling if they were away from combat for too long.
You can criticize all you want, but on hn it helps if your criticism is accompanied by an argument.
Oh man yes please to this. The timeline is effectively useless right now.
You may have just given a toolbar permission to mine Bitcoin from your computer
I've Become Comfortable Numb
I don't get the whole "curved" thing. I quite enjoyed getting rid of "curved" displays with the switch to LCDs.
I think you mean cp -a. cp -R doesn't preserve permissions and other goodies of tar.
The network so awful it can't prevent fatal crashes on bridges but so awesome it can pick who dies when they happen.
Have you seen https://draftin.com/ ? I'm not affiliated but I've used it a few times as an editor and it works pretty well.
>"One way I think HN, Reddit, and other link-recommendation sites can put power into their users' hands is to allow each user to tweak the recommendations algorithm to suite their own preferences." //

This.

When scores were removed this was my reaction; if you don't want scores why does that mean I can't have them?

Diverse algos for ranking would also work against gaming of the system IMO.
Trilead VM Explorer 5.0 Released
The goal of HN and reddit may be different. Reddit seems to want to be everything to absolutely everyone. I dont know what the goal of HN is- is it known?

If the goal is to draw in those who are most likely to make good founders and convince them to join ycombinator, then what you want is somewhere between echo chamber and reddit, but it is closer to echo chamber.
Salesforce $1 Million Hackathon Update - Two Winners
Hydrogen Atom Simulator [2007]
In popular reddit subs, you can't have an unpopular opinion. Your link submissions and your comments get downvoted to oblivion. It also happens in less popular ones.
And how often does this happen:

"Police regret this incident and would like to extend their condolences to the family of the man," Icelandic police chief Haraldur Johannessen told reporters.
As mentioned elsewhere, I give about 150 talks a year, and have been doing presentations for over 25 years. Jamie is exactly the sort of presenter that gets otherwise jaded, bored, and disengaged kids back into enjoying science. Yes, this was to secondary school aged students, probably about 15 years of age, and I've seen him excite and engage similar audiences, and get them buzzing about how science can be interesting.

Maybe he doesn't write well, but his account was of this incident, and not intended to be of the science content.

Maybe you're right, maybe we should be beyond the "science can be cool" stuff, but my personal experience tells me we're not. Not by a long chalk.
I may not have sufficiently thought this through, but what about having them take off from and return to mobile flatbed trucks? Use them for last-mile delivery rather than all the way from the warehouse.
I think it'll be hard to match portions of the command to their boxes if there were no lines at all. How would you know that the `v` in `tar xzvf foo` matches the 4th box?

Having a single line when you hover could help, but sounds confusing for new users that are unaware of this feature.
Nor have I heard. It still says it is to the dept for review.
Yes, particularly since the primary examples of penny-pinching seem to be buying furniture that is not fancy enough, and charging employees $40/month for parking garage (I'd love to have that! too bad I have to pay a good deal more for an open-air employer-owned lot. Well at least we get to exercise when we walk from there to office, and when we scrape the snow off in winter...)
I can't think of a modern OS/ISA combination where that's the case. State will get saved on a kernel mode stack (if not somewhere else totally). This is because the stack pointer is controlled by user mode, and you don't want it to do something like set the stack pointer to some area in kernel space, and then invoke a software interrupt in order to overwrite privileged code or data.
Yes, I realize he is talking about index funds vs high cost mutual funds or paying an adviser for stock picks. And I agree that direct investing in stocks should be superior to high-cost mutual funds. (In fact, even if we did believe in the EMH, that would only mean the expectation is roughly the same as an index fund, just with a lot more volatility.)

Still, the default advice of the supposed world's greatest stock picker is to stick with index funds. It's not, "Here are my rules of thumb for picking great stocks," or something along those lines. (I strongly suspect that Graham's advice would have been the same if index funds had been an option in his time.) That suggests to me that at the very least, he clearly believes that picking stocks is difficult. So sure, Warren Buffet, someone who you would expect to be highly biased toward stock picking, doesn't completely rule it out. But he doesn't endorse it in general either.
This strikes me as needlessly snarky and cynical.
I remain convinced that "find" also contains a text editor and a Pacman game, but I've never cared enough to read the damn enormous man page. Also, not every system has "find", but everything I've used has "du" and "grep".
I am still having the problem mentioned above, using safari on a mac.
All the time? We've just become too cynical to believe it, or pay it much mind.
I'll point out that the find command is 21 characters, while mine is only 17. Efficiency!
Indeed. Just a few looks and I realized that I needed to stop until I get home. I know I won't be getting much sleep tonight.
"The existence of runs is not evidence against randomness."

If you flip a coin a hundred times and it comes up heads 98 times, you're probably safe in assuming it's a biased coin.
I could already imagine a joke about American cops sounding something like:

- Friend: "Have you heard the news about the Iceland police killing a man for the first time?"

- American cop, confused: "What do you mean? The first one today?"

It also reminds me of this story:

http://www.thewire.com/global/2012/05/german-police-used-onl...

German police shot 85 bullets against people in the whole year, while American cops shot that many in a single person. The rapid rise of militarized SWAT teams that attack people in their homes even for minor offenses is also very scary.

http://www.salon.com/2013/07/07/%E2%80%9Cwhy_did_you_shoot_m...

http://www.salon.com/2013/07/10/militarized_police_overreach...
Of all the problems migrants in Qatar face, computer things being called master's slaves is not one of them. You can take a shot at trying to help them, but I bet you'll just continue to tackle a non-problem.
Check your cable's version if you're using the latest MBP. Also, check if your output device can handle it. My dell u3011 can't handle even 2560x1600 through HDMI (which it has 2 for some reason).
I'm tempted to add a place holder for all the variations of this forkbomb, until I teach the parser about functions.

You'll be amazed how many people try this (or other 'malicious' commands), presumably thinking I'm executing the queries. ;)
Visualize Google Hot Trends
This may be the largest back pedal in the history of backpedaling.
U.S. approves Microsoft purchase of Nokia’s mobile business
Again: Show your math. How do you figure out what the "externality" is? What's to stop you from saying it's $500 per barrel of oil consumed if that would result in your desired policy outcome?
Yes, you have a point (plus, those stars, they burn the eyes).

But, your detractors will say yours is two processes and theirs is one. Efficiency!
The bitcoin script system only really allows by hashing. People have gotten very hyped up about the programmability of the scripting system in Bitcoin, but anything slightly interesting still requires trust in one or more arbitrators.
Likely someone posted this not to ridicule Cliff Stoll, who is a wonderful and charming writer, but to point out the similarity between his idea that the internet is a poor substitute for existing systems and will not hold up to its promises and the sea of incredulity about the idea of Amazon ever successfully delivering via drone, or even Amazon suggesting that they will try.

I'd extend that comparison to the reflexive outrage about self-driving cars, Google Glass, MOOCs, Soylent, Bitcoin, Wolfram|Alpha, Hyperloop, Tesla, and similar interesting projects that, for whatever reason, are described as doomed to failure or labeled as harbingers of the collapse of civilization.

Oh, and about that last paragraph. Cliff Stoll is almost entirely right--the internet is a terrible substitute for many kinds of human contact if there is a direct comparison between the two. That argument is still being made today. Google Hangouts does not beat a face to face meeting with a friend or business partner, following a live concert online is sad compared to being there, and few would prefer "cybersex" to the real thing.

But where Stoll is wrong is the exact reason why the internet succeeded when he thought it would fail. The internet succeeds where it can substitute real life where the real life version is not possible. It should be easy to come up with all sorts of those scenarios, including the ones Stoll mentioned.
Ha. Still sticking to their guns: "...while the Upshot mobile app used pre-existing code, this did not violate the hackathon rules. Use of pre-existing code was allowable as long as the code did not comprise the majority of the app and did not violate any third party's rights." I think it does more damage than good
Hi! Post author here.

Totally agree with that last statement.

That said, I tried to write the post to be geared towards the beginner audience. And I remember when I first started iOS development, UITableView seemed weird.

It comes with two delegate objects with separate responsibilities (delegate and dataSource) and is pretty ubiquitous, so you may interact with it right away when first starting iOS development, before interacting with the many other classes that use delegates (and the, what, 3 others that use dataSources).

To a beginner, that tends to make UITableView stand out as an unusual thing.

I'm hoping pulling UITableView apart, and explaining the machinery can help make those design decisions more clear.
To minimize noise and visual pollution, it would be better for these drones to fly low, along existing roads to take advantage of existing noise abatement measures (e.g. noise barriers walls, berms, roadside vegetation, etc.)
> If you flip a coin a hundred times and it comes up heads 98 times, you're probably safe in assuming it's a biased coin.

OTOH, if you flip it several billion times and it has a run of 98 heads, you can't, on that basis alone, conclude that it is a biased coin.

You can't just pull the run out and treat it as if it was the whole universe of data.
Ask HN: What is your preference for sketching layouts
What software or process do you use when designing something new e.g. a new site or a procedure your users will be going through while using your software?

I use PowerPoint for creating layouts and pen & paper to visualize the interaction processes.
Your complaint is also irrelevant to the guy's article. Both you and the person you're complaining about think you have something relevant to the audience. You seem to think that your view of what's good to talk about is more important than somebody else's.

Me, I think the complaint about the bad UI is totally on topic here at Hacker News. I hadn't noticed it before, and was interested to have it brought to my attention. And I agree that it's terrible UI.
On a bike that doesn't go backwards when you backpedal..
Great counter-point. Just to be clear, I'm not knocking that index funds are a good investment option - I'm knocking the often repeated mantra that if you are going to be lazy, invest in index funds.

The the truth is, you can't be lazy - it's simply not an option. It's the burden of having savings. You need to research your investment decisions and understand your financial goals even if you decide you want a passive investment strategy. Why? Here are a few scenarios where investing the majority of your savings in index funds probably won't make sense:

i) You are approaching retirement age and will be living off your savings in the next few years. You have saved just enough to live out your expected lifetime.
ii) You are a young hacker and will be bootstrapping with your friends in a few years (sounds familiar?). You are close to saving enough to pay for your personal burn & even server costs for a year.

i) & ii) are clear cases where the users need liquidity and are unable to handle index fund volatility.

No one lazy would realize this. The truth is those who decide they don't want to actively manage a portfolio still need to understand a lot of things (savings accounts, CDs, annuities, bonds, treasuries, etc.) before they decide to jump into index funds.

Essentially, I think investing is a part time job regardless of your strategy. It's the burden of having savings.
Been a useful tool for long while now.
People looking to create texture atlases/sprites might find a tool like Texture Packer (http://www.codeandweb.com/texturepacker) handy.

Out of interest, does anyone use a web-based sprite/atlas generator exclusively when working?
Yes, really. I don't think you understand the leeway that C/C++ give implementations when they encounter undefined behavior. Your mental model of how the code "should" be compiled can go out the window when an optimizer designed to work properly only on well-defined code goes to work:

http://blog.llvm.org/2011/05/what-every-c-programmer-should-...
It's definitely not true. Walmart just opened a store in Tyson's Corner, which is a suburb of DC and is surrounded by some of the richest areas in the country and, though not as urban as downtown DC, it's far from rural.
I personally haven't ever seen a bike that goes backwards when you backpedal. @dangrossman, thanks for the info -- TIL.
Nothing that right-click, save, upload to imgur couldn't accomplish though.
a) The best people of your side, may not be the best people to talk to the other side. Think rhetorics and clarity, vs depth, knowledge and insight.
b) It can be gamed, especially online, by people being moles.
c) There is usually a lot of context, "axioms" that make something "obvious" to you, but are too many to easily say to the other side.
Definitely not as impressive as some of the other commenters here, but I'm 6 days into a 'Write 1,000 words for 100 days' challenge and find this inspiring. I've noticed after day 3 that the writing is coming easier, and I look forward to the feeling of getting it done.

I moved from Wordpress to Medium after a day, as Medium took focus off of themes, widgets, and everything else besides the writing and allowed me to just write. It's pretty exciting seeing the read stats and realizing that something you're writing (as off the cuff as it may be) is being read by hundreds of other people. Thanks for writing this, and I hope to get as far as you do in improving my writing and making it a habit.
yes. but how many competent teachers are there?

I'm thinking most teachers can be replaced by software while benefiting the student.
He certainly did, in July 2009 [1]. To quote him in context:

Though my tip though for the long term replacement of javac is Scala. I'm very impressed with it! I can honestly say if someone had shown me the Programming in Scala book by by Martin Odersky, Lex Spoon & Bill Venners back in 2003 I'd probably have never created Groovy. So why Scala? Scala is statically typed and compiles down to the same fast bytecode as Java so its usually about as fast as Java (sometimes a little faster sometimes a little slower). e.g. compare how well Scala does in some benchmarks with groovy or jruby. Or this. Note speed isn't everything - there are times when you might want to trade code thats 10x slower for more productivity and conciseness; but for a long term replacement for javac speed is important.

His dissatisfaction with Groovy concerned more than just its speed, and originated much earlier, see his very last Groovy mailing list posting [2] in Dec 2005 just before he left the Groovy development team:

The MOP and introspection APIs do NOT solve the horribly broken name resolution rules in the current RI of Groovy [...] I see no argument yet for why we have to throw away decades of language research and development with respect to name resolution across the language as a whole [...] It just feels totally wrong to break Closures across the entire language just because of some use cases for Markup.

Groovy is sloooooooow, its recent static typing is buggugguggy and not even used by Grails or Gradle, and its closures are broken. Its "recent surge in popularity" was also probably based on deception [3]:

Groovy, which turned up in the [Tiobe] 18th spot last month [October 2013], slid back down to a number 32 ranking [Nov 2013]. "After a long discussion with one of the Tiobe index readers, it turned out that the data that is produced by one of the Chinese sites that we track is interpreted incorrectly by our algorithms. So this was a bug," Janssen said. "After we had fixed this bug, Groovy lost much of its ratings." The ratings slip takes Groovy from a 0.658 percent rating last month to 0.393 percent this month.

This has happened before. In April 2011, Groovy fell from #25 to #65 on Tiobe in a single month after they increased the number of search engines they monitor. Groovy had begun its short-lived rise just after December 2010 when Groovy tech lead Jochen Theodorou "volunteered" his services to Tiobe to help them improve their algorithms.

[1] http://macstrac.blogspot.com/2009/04/scala-as-long-term-repl...

[2] http://groovy.329449.n5.nabble.com/Paris-write-up-tt395560.h...

[3] http://www.infoworld.com/t/application-development/c-pulls-a...
Ask HN: What are some interesting applications of Bitcoin aside from currency?
For example, there is a "proof of existence" being built using the Bitcoin protocol [0] and a distributed prediction market [1]. And this great post by Albert Wenger of USV hints at a universe of possibilities [2].

I'm very interested in what else is possible, and what else is currently being built. My guess is that others are as well. Thanks!

[0] http://www.proofofexistence.com/about
[1] https://freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/felten/bitcoin-research-in-princeton-cs/
[2] http://www.usv.com/posts/bitcoin-as-protocol
I presume Coinbase does all this Know Your Customer stuff and is registered in all 50 states? They are the most legitimate US Bitcoin service I've seen, it sure would be a shame for them to be shut down.
A fixed gear bike will do that, and they're not terribly uncommon. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsmYe6Hxg0c
But certainly, CD-ROMs (or today's equivalent: Khan Academy and MOOCs) can take the place of no teacher?

There is free education to be had today that wasn't available in 1995. It's not better than the face-to-face education we had then or now, but it's quite a bit better than going without any education at all due to location, circumstances or finance.
Sort tables fast with Sortable.js
The "curved" that we got rid of was convex CRTs.

The "curved" people want is concave screens so that, at the optimal viewing point, all points on the screen are equidistant for the viewer (people with multimonitor setups often approximate this by angling some of the monitors, but concave monitors would avoid the need for this.)

The idea is convex < flat < concave.
http://dnsimple.com/
Is Array in Javascript
Feedback may not be absolutely necessary in all disciplines (endeavors? arts? crafts?), but for some things it can be vital. I recently found out that discs in my lower back are closer together than they should be, and my spine is slightly out of alignment in two planes, probably because of bad posture (the day job) and incorrect form during high intensity workouts (which I need to even break a sweat). I'm thinking that getting a physical trainer or other specialist to critique my form would probably be a good idea, especially if I want to continue my workouts.
Not really. In Iceland they understand the man is crazy, the culture examines the underpinnings of crime, their prisons are for rehabilitation. In America, we practice punishment and retribution, he is a terrorist; a menace; the threat must be stopped.
Pay $2,000 to be homeless
IMHO - There are 3 distinct types of conversations at professional events.

1 - I want to sell you something. (Something can be part of a company too)

2 - I want a job.

3 - Let's connect and be friends. (This includes "Let's hook up" but that's a dangerous objective at professional events. And would require much more space)

If you go too quickly down one path, and then switch to another, it looks insincere. This is also why it's hard to sell to friends. If you're pitching a VC, and then ask about their kids, it's awkward. If you're looking at someone's dog pictures, and then ask them for money, you look like you were faking the interest.
Dunno, I've found Reddit seems to upvote controversial opinions much more frequently than HN. HN definitely filters out anything that is out of line with the consensus...
The only reason any of us put up with it is the community.

It doesn't matter how many engineers there are here, it's Paul Graham's forum and he seems unwilling to fix these sorts of issues. There have been several threads where I've seen offers to fix it.
When I saw this title, I knew you'd be at the top of the comments.

Glad the industry is heeding your call to action! :)
Beyond Stupidity. Read her comment "security code...527"