skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm pretty sure there are significant movements around attracting "everybody" to programming already, btw. This is "computer science week" in the USA, for crying out loud. If you want to join a discussion, try reading hacker news to get major announcements like "president of USA says everyone should learn to code", or to hear about the"programmer bootcamp" options that are trying to attract non-programmers to the profession. There are also lots of programs starting in elementary school aiming to attract kids, for instance.

Perhaps a change you could make personally, as a step to making it more broadly attractive, would be to stop advertising it as something only introverts with no social skills would like? (What percentage of people are in that group? Less than 50?)
4 Big Mistakes You Want to Avoid When Learning Programming or Coding
Get 150 million e-mail addresses from Adobe hack. Match vs Disqus users. Profit.
It always amazes me how Google can release something that seems cool but is really just a way to get us to do their work for them, for free. I'm not hating on Google, I really think it's interesting and seems to be something common in the tech world.

Are there any examples of business practices like this 20/30 years ago?
> [The bug is okay because] if something has a negative score it's not going to show up on the front/hot page anyway.

I...what? This is just wrong. If it were not for the bug, then many posts with a negative score would show up on hot pages. Due to the bug, many posts which would otherwise show up do not. The bug is changing how things are working, and it is doing so in a way which has clear impacts on hot pages.

> In summary, there don't exist listings in which the discontinuities at 0 really matter

To the extent this is true, it is true only because there is a bug in the code that hides posts with negative points from the hot pages. What you are saying is that it doesn't matter if posts with negative points are shown on hot, because posts with negative points are not shown on hot.

...I hesitate to even ask this, but, well: Do you actually understand the bug, and the impact it has on how posts are sorted? Because your attempts at explaining it make no sense. The reason negative posts don't show up on the front page is because of this bug. That's why the bug has some (slight) importance; it is not the reason why the bug has no impact. It does have an impact.
Even bicycle tire?
Since you host it yourself you can't compare it because you on the variable cost of servers and you time to maintain them.
The same could be said of all economic activities going back to biblical times. What's your point?
This confuses measuring continuous variables with discrete indexing. I'm certainly not arguing that zero isn't a well-understood concept.
I think the "learn to code" movement doesn't really mean to turn everybody into a software engineer. The same way we teach maths and writing to everybody not because we want them to become mathematician and writers.

Learning to code doesn't mean learning a dozen hip frameworks to pump out apps for the appstore. It means learning how to decompose problems into very simple parts and how to write down instructions for solving these simple parts so precisely that even a dumb machine understands.

Being precise and having the ability to tackle complicated tasks are useful in other contexts too. Learning to code teaches how to think in an unusual way.

Furthermore it's nice to know at least in principle how the things that you use every day work. Everbody should know how an internal combustion engine works. Not in sufficient detail to be able to build one, but well enough to explain to their children when they ask. Because maybe their children will want to build engines someday.

This is why people should learn how to code. It's not necessary that they learn how to build shiny things, they should learn the very basics.
I'd recommend you open up your console when visiting the site:

_.-~-.
7'' Q..\
_7 (_
_7 _/ _q. /
_7 . ___ /VVvv-'_ .
7/ / /~- \_\\ '-._ .-' / //
./ ( /-~-/||'=.__ '::. '-~'' { ___ / // ./{
V V-~-~| || __''_ ':::. ''~-~.___.-'' _/ // / {_ / { /
VV/-~-~-|/ \ .'__'. '. ':: _ _ _ ''.
/ /~~~~||VVV/ / \ ) \ _ __ ___ ___ ___(_) | | __ _ .::'
/ (~-~-~\\.-' / \' \::::. | '_ ` _ \ / _ \_ / | | |/ _` | :::'
/..\ /..\__/ ' '::: | | | | | | (_) / /| | | | (_| | ::'
vVVv vVVv ': |_| |_| |_|\___/___|_|_|_|\__,_| ''

Hi there, nice to meet you!

Interested in having a direct impact on hundreds of millions of users? Join
Mozilla, and become part of a global community that’s helping to build a
brighter future for the Web.

Visit https://careers.mozilla.org to learn about our current job openings.
Visit https://www.mozilla.org/contribute for more ways to get involved and
help support Mozilla.
> I ask for your first orange then you give me that one, in your first hand

It's the difference between ordinals and cardinals. In human languages I see ordinals as a pure shorthand: you could just as well say "give me orange number zero", except it's more cumbersome. I honestly can't think of a context (in human languages) where ordinals would be something more than a mere convenience. I believe the existence of ordinals is a technically unnecessary historical artifact: counting was invented before zero.

PS: I doubt people number their hands. A person would say "in your left hand", not in "your first hand".
Google's grant doesn't give women a whole bunch of money solely on the basis of being a woman. They have to first qualify for Hacker School, and then they have to qualify for financial aid. Once they do all that, they get some money to help cover expenses while attending the school.

> or African American male teachers.

So then, what's the problem? They're still men, which is apparently the defining factor. That comment doesn't really help your case here; it just makes you look petty and a little bit racist.

> Is there any grants that gives men money just for the fact that they have male genitalia and are willing to enroll in education?

Gender has nothing to do with genitalia. You really aren't informed on this topic, are you?
interesting that Cree broke it...
http://www.cree.com/News-and-Events/Cree-News/Press-Releases...

It's probably not completely "white"
Why don't/shouldn't they?!

Theres a security problem with Disqus.

Apparently it (genereal technique) is "old news"

Apparently Disqus doesn't care enough to fix it.

Demonstrating the attack may be the only way to get them to care.
Personally I believe in the right of conquest, so I don't have to agree about that.

I mentioned it just in case there is someone who doesn't believe in it (which would cause them no end of trouble dealing with the reality of current nations - but somehow only Israel is singled out).

Israel won those wars (which it did not start I should point out) over that land and that's all there is to it.
I also dropped iOS over this and am pleased I did. The Bitcoin Wallet software on Android is amazing: no-one I know who has seen it in action wants to buy another iPhone.
> there are plenty of men who got into computer science because it's lucrative

And they're useless dilettantes we should drum out of the profession, not double down on. Any scholarship that doesn't focus on obsession will merely switch names around on the mountain of garbage our industry is producing.
Actually, yeah, it will be cracked, by someone.

And E-Mail-addresses aren't passwords; trying a few hundred variations for each firstname for each lastname is perfectly feasible and should crack a nice percentage of these hashes.
Firefox 26.0
Mac - https://download.mozilla.org/?product=firefox-26.0&os=osx&lang=en-US

Linux - https://download.mozilla.org/?product=firefox-26.0&os=linux&lang=en-US
I think your comment could be very offensive to a victim of rape. Women who are forced to have sex are not prostitutes.
> Certainly making journals free and open is a step in the

> right direction, it reduces the financial strain on

> Universities and researchers. It also the opens the doors

> for amateur scientists to do solid independent

> (predominately theoretical) work.

Actually, open acess journals are more expensive to univeristies and scientists. Instead of the university paying for a fixed subscription fee out of the "overhead money" it collects, the scientists themselves have to py a fee per paper published out of their own grants.

http://www.plos.org/publish/pricing-policy/publication-fees/

This clearly penalizes funding strapped researchers and even those who are more productive. Those $2900 per paper adds up quickly.

Edit: formatting
websocketd --port=8080 bash

Then in the browser console:

ws.send("ls")

I just ported bash to the web :)
This rings so true. Lots of Google's databases are built on user work. Map listings, ingress, Google Voice fuelling Google Now recognition.... come to my mind right now. But it is amazing Google responds to user needs and makes products that lots of people use. So ultimately, it remains connected to the user and makes novel products. Win-Win.

Yellowpages?
He didn't created the concept but took the ideas from Dwarf Fortress and he says it :)
http://notch.tumblr.com/post/227922045/the-origins-of-minecr...

But still minecraft makes a 2012 macbookpro overheat like no other game, I get 80°C while Minecraft alternative clients/servers barely make it to 70°
From the same person, but not from that email address. Bad idea, but as per the article people expect these posts not to be linkable to their e-mail address. Why? Well, obviously, because that's the way Disqus works "usually".
I tell myself that I've got to pay the bills, be an adult, etc., but is it really worth it when everything can be over in an instant?

One of the reasons we work is to obtain the means to do nice things with family. E.g. travelling to some beautiful mountain range and enjoying it together. Family life becomes better with variety and new experiences.

We should draw the line at somewhere. If we are working ten hour days six days a week, we have lost balance. Unfortunately, the income distribution seems to become so bad that a considerable amount of the population can do nothing else than to work.
> The Unix approach to syscalls worked, and Unix is alive and well. The MIT approach was quite possibly impossible to implement, and the system they were building is extinct.

The "MIT approach" in Worse is Better discussed the extant PCLSRing scheme on ITS (not a theoretical one) and the different approach that Unix took. Saying that it was "impossible to implement" is just flat out wrong.

ITS is an ancient time sharing system that predates Unix. It was written in assembly, ran on PDP-6s and later on PDP-10s, and had fallen into disuse when Gabriel wrote that essay (MIT would stop using it the following year).
The success of Unix had nothing to do with its solution to the PCLSRing problem.
The news is that Disqus is relying on that.
Mac - https://download.mozilla.org/?product=firefox-26.0&os=osx&la...

Linux - https://download.mozilla.org/?product=firefox-26.0&os=linux&...
I have read that because teaching funding is usually from the government, "legal reasons" mean there are not many sex specific funds. Perhaps we need to find a private source of funds - bill gates puts a bunch of cash into educational stuff, he might be interested.
As much as I think that people should be free and hate the government telling people what to do, I sometimes wonder if a situation like this can only be prevented or alleviated by force.

Why do people like this keep having more and more kids (a freedom)? Birth control is free for them. Why doesn't this family move to a more affordable state or city (a freedom)? Why don't they move somewhere where they can find jobs (a freedom)? I don't care if their jobs are picking fruit or mopping floors, Illegal aliens live better than this. Why do they blow all their money as soon as they get it (a freedom)? They live rent free and make 33,000 in combined income. This is like the after tax incomes of someone making 40k+ a year. This is more money than my single income in-laws have (after they pay their taxes and the mortgage bill) with their 6 children and they are not living in poverty. They have a minivan, they go on vacations to Disney Land. Their kids have clean new looking clothes. They Are not malnourished or un-bathed. They suffer none of the plights that the family in this article do. Why? It is about choices.

I almost want the government to (I don't want to say it but) force people who have proven that they will never do the right thing to do just that.

I actually don't really want this loss of freedoms. There is a better way, but will it ever happen? How can you re-instill good standards and moral values in a selfish and morally bankrupt generation? Religious conviction used to fill the role of prompting parents to do the right thing, but now it is heavily watered down and in many cases gone altogether. Ever since good standards and moral values stopped being passed down from the majority of fathers and mothers (who rarely divorced back then by the way) things have been and will continue to get worse. Eventually things will get so bad that it will come down to people (like this family) losing their freedom (in essence a partial return to slavery) If they want to continue living off the government.

I was just thinking about the efforts in government to make minimum wage $10/hr nationally. Well now why would these parents go out and get jobs making $10/hr? they would have no more income than they get from welfare today. Plus now they have to go work 40hrs per week? Do you really thing that they would do this?

Mike Rowe was on CNN recently saying that there are over 100k job openings currently. Most of them are labor jobs that people just don't want (they are actually hard work imagine that). Many of them start at 40k per year yet still no one wants them. Well why would they? they get an equivalent of that much right now for doing nothing.

This country is in a downward spiral. This family is only a symptom of it.
Ha ha! That's so cool. Hey, off topic... what's your IP? ;)
Yes, there is all the difference in the world.

"The threat of starving tomorrow" is not a condition invented by ruthless capitalist patriarchs or whatever the claptrap of the day is, it's the basis of the human condition for all but the last ~20 minutes of the species' time on this planet.

The fact that in most rich countries we generally, mostly can expect to eat tomorrow no matter what happens is still a state of unimaginable luxury for a large portion of the planet's population (although quickly shrinking).

The idea that everybody should be free to do (and especially not do) whatever they please without ever suffering adverse consequences is still a fantasy for most, even in the rich part of the world. Using it as some sort of objective universal yardstick next to having a gun to your head is lacking proportions on an epic scale.
Maybe you're right, (maybe) all the women statistically disappearing from the computing field are moving to other engineering and science jobs. We could throw any number of untested theories at that simple statistic.

Honestly though, that's irrelevant because WHERE they're going is not what I'm addressing. It's WHY, and HOW can we reverse the trend of anti-diversification in the computer industry? If they're leaving for other industries, even scientific ones, there's nothing wrong with the individuals choice but there's something less-desirable about the computer industry, and I doubt it has anything to do with the raw content of a computer related job.
What ? Take a moment to convince yourself that sorting by sqrt(f(up,down)) will produce the same ranking as sorting by just f(up,down) (provided that f(up,down) is non-negative, as this particular function is )

Consider a set of points in the X/Y plane. If you want to find the one closest to the origin, you don't have to find min(sqrt(x^2+y^2)), only min(x^2+y^2), which is much cheaper.
A appeal to authority fallacy will get you nowhere. I will counter your appeal to Google with my appeal to Mozilla. Mozilla believes in a mentor program and non-exclusive aid, which is exactly the right way to approach imbalance. It also helps that it has been proven to work in eliminating gender bias.

If you want sources, do you own research. like I said, Sweden education system tried and failed and that fact is not hard to find for yourself. Others has published articles such as http://www.scu.edu/ethics/publications/iie/v5n2/affirmative.... which paints the discussion as an debate with two sides. I do however like to point out that the only side that actually do research on the efficiency of preferential treatment programs are those who are against them. I have yet to see any study that show preferential treatments to be beneficially.

Can you provide any source what so ever that preferential treatments has ever worked to eliminate gender bias? Ever? Surely such sources should be all over the web?
Sex underrepresentation isn’t a problem itself. It’s a potential source of problems—if you saw some statistical outlier while profiling software, you’d pay more attention to it and verify whether it’s causing issues. Homogeneity of any kind tends to create bias and brittleness.

When you ask women why they don’t program, there’s a mix of normal things like “I don’t find it interesting” and “I prefer X”; but many also say “I don’t feel welcome”, and I would like to improve on that. In the same way, when you ask black Americans why they don’t program, a disturbing number say things like “I never had access to a computer”.
I'm in Bulgaria, not Romania. We have similarly great residential Internet speeds and I think the article is wrong in attributing them to the sex industry. (I have no idea whether there are a significant number of similar businesses here in Sofia.)
I think the net connection speeds are due to a combination of two factors: a very dense population (think 10-20 floor cheap residential towers from the times of socialism) a wildly unregulated market. The result was a zillion of small, very aggressive ISPs wiring up neighbourhoods with LAN cables for 5-10 EUR/month "all our router can handle" speeds (only international traffic is metered, national - where the torrent trackers and other torrent users are - is virtually at wire speed).
What's New: http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/26.0beta/releasenotes/
Actually if you had to do this kind of thing in C or any other non-homoiconic language, the right way to go would be to define data structures that represent your mathematical functions, and manipulate these structures to compute the derivatives (by pattern matching of the represented mathematical expression, exactly as you would do in Lisp using Lisp code which kind of is its own AST). And you would have to embed an interpreter for the mathematical expressions encoded in the data structures of your program, so you can not only manipulate the expressions, but also use them (which also comes for free in Lisp).

See Greenspun's tenth rule of programming.
>Well to be fair the "Why Vagrant?" page [1] isn't exactly clear about whether this is a tool for building throwaway environments or if it's something I should use to build out production systems

Perhaps not, but there's this wonderful tool called Google to help find out more. Also Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vagrant_(software)
"Marginalized people in tech — women, people of color, people with disabilities, LGBTQ people, and others — have less free time for a few major reasons: dependent care, domestic work and errands, and pay inequity."

Why do LGTBQ people spend more time on domestic work and errands?
15-odd years ago that was still a lingering point of debate in programming, before computers had lots of memory and disk to spare, so I eventually wrote my own memory manager for C++, since do-it-myself is my default approach to everything. At the time I was using a Metrowerks IDE, and surprisingly, my memory manager outperformed theirs by a fair bit (and allowed for some nifty debugging of other common problems, like memory leaks).

I set it up to support multiple heaps in the application, so that the application could have a heap for, say, network support, and a separate heap for something else. The memory manager used a modified best-fit algorithm and generally didn't have problems with fragmentation. If the application ran out of memory in one heap, it wasn't completely crippled -- a malloc error in the buffers heap wouldn't prevent a dialog from being displayed from the UI heap.

It also had a "reserve" heap that could be made available to the application in particularly dire situations, and since the blocks in each heap grew towards the heap's table, it had a function that could analyze and compress the table to squeeze a few more bytes out of the heap.

There was very little overhead and it worked nicely.
Having to pay for multiplayer on the PS4 is somewhat unfortunate compared to not paying on the PS3, but the article really doesn't do justice to what a great value PS+ is. I was an Xbox 360 gamer for most of the last gen but did buy a PS3 later on to play The Last of Us and some other PS3 exclusives and ended up getting PS+ on that machine just because the free game offerings were ridiculously good, way better than the stuff Microsoft has been doing in response on Xbox Live (giving away super old games like Halo 3, Gears of War and Asssasin's Creed 2 which most games who would be interested in already have). I now own a PS4 and don't mind the cost of PS+ because I'd be keeping my PS+ subscription active anyway.

Backward compatibility for consoles is rightly a thing of the past. I don't want companies to have to worry about making the hardware massively expensive (see: PS3) or reducing their ability to innovate by moving to new architectures. If I want to play PS3 or Xbox 360 games, I still have my PS3 and Xbox 360.

That aside, I do agree with the gist of the article.

I've noticed a relatively recent trend where big companies have no problem releasing a new version of something missing massive amounts of functionality missing from the previous version. I guess Final Cut Pro was one of the first big obvious instances of this, but it is happening all the time now from new consoles to Google's Map app, to lots of other things, and it can sometimes be really infuriating as a user, especially as we move into a world (via SaaS, web apps, forced updates, etc) where the app ecosystem virtually forces you to upgrade things on a constant basis with no easy ability to keep using the old thing that worked better for you.
My email is firstname@companyname.co.nz (I have a few of these at different companies). I'm fairly confident this isn't going to be cracked any time soon by random MD5 hashing.

(of course, my real name can be extrapolated from my HN username)
My point is that (1) "has been going on for ages" and (2) "is an economic activy" are not sufficient qualifiers to show that something is (3) OK to go one and/or good and/or beneficial to society.

(Which was part of the argument the parent made).

I used the slave trade as an counter-example to his point, because while it qualifies (1) and (2), most people will agree that it's not OK.