skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm a founder of a well-funded venture-backed startup. I wear many hats: product manager, coder and growth hacker to name a few. I smoke weed every day, sometimes multiple times per day. I have a few observations about working while smoking.

I cannot and do not smoke when I need to interact with my employees, investors or partners as I find it very hard to be at my sharpest wit verbally. So when my schedule calls for that, I skip.

However, there are many other times when I find my smoking to be a secret weapon:
1) There is zero question that I'm at my most creative when smoking. Sometimes a solution to a product or marketing challenge seems hopeless. In that instance, a smoke seems to unfog the mind and ideas that I never had sober just jump into my head. Good ideas. Ideas so good that if anyone around me knew how I came up with them, they'd probably be shocked.
2) Coding - A smoke will focus me for hours on coding. Sometimes I have a smoke, start coding and what feels like a blink of the eye is 3 hours of the most productive coding I'll have all day. It's false to think that the code is of poor quality, quite the opposite. I find that the mental model sustained in my head while coding becomes even more clear - it's like instead of just visualizing the model, it's like I'm inside it.

Some commentors have complained that they become lethargic or foggy. I'm sure that individuals react differently, but what I've found is that Indica strains should be avoided - they tend to have that effect on almost anyone. But a high-quality Sativa makes me alert, creative and highly motivated.

Look, everyone is different. What works for me may not work for you. But I wouldn't shy away from it if you think it helps you. Just keep it to yourself and those that you trust and let everyone else judge you by your results.
If someone can create a simple Firefox/Chrome addon that takes imgur .gif links, and automatically converts the URL from this:

http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/666/838/7fb.gif

To this:

gfycat.com/fetch/http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/666/838/7fb.gif

I'm sure it would easily become a top 20 addons hands down.
True. The BGE already worked great, including Python scripting and Windows export back in 2000. It was really impressive to edit in Blender, press a button, and run the game.
JS: Common Regular Expressions Made Simple
Is this a research project, or something that will be released to the public?

As someone that's spent a lot of time learning how to get c# to perform, this sounds fantastic to me. I can't wait to see it.
As someone that has been meaning to learn, its a beautiful language and beautiful script. My motivation comes from a love of ancient history, so being able to read original texts make me happy.
The reason for GIF is simple: It autoplays on mobile web reliably.

There is no other reason not to use video.
Huh. And so is PHP...oh wait no.
Ask HN: What book changed your life in 2013?
Ok this question is a shameless attempt to find out what the HN community has been reading in 2013 but the caveat is that the book must have had a meaningful impact in the way you live your life. That's fairly open ended and can include anything such as new programming languages learned, health and fitness, investment philosophy, relationships and so on. Choosing one book is an artificial constraint but it does help with focusing on that one big change. Also the book doesn't have to be from 2013 only that you read it during the year and it in some way changed your life.

The most significant book for me was in the area of health and fitness as I finally read The 4-Hour Body (2010) by Tim Ferris. I'd read about many of the topics he covers before but they just didn't stick until The 4-Hour Body. What I like about Tim's approach is that one should experiment to see what works rather than following a rigid plan. I tried many of his suggestions and some worked for me while others didn't. The binge day was particularly bad so now I just follow the same plan every day; as well I had to increase the amount of carbs before my last meal of the day to get a better sleep. But experimentation and tracking my results has made all the difference from other diet and exercise changes I've attempted in the past. It's definitely worth the read even if experimentation and tracking are the only things you get from the book.

Thanks for a great community and I look forward to your suggestions.
Kudos to Blender! I would not have completed my 3D animation degree graduation project without it, years ago, and I picked it back up just a couple months back for video composition work. Looking forward to doing even more in it once my new computer arrives.
It doesn't fall off because of some skittishness on YC's part about taking a stance on these things or w/e. It falls off because HN is designed to throw off anything that is more inflammatory than interesting to read. I believe that this is for the sake of community preservation. This is going to fall off because it's going to be a comment section full of people misunderstanding things and shouting at each other, not because of any admin flag.
"But women chose not to join the tech industry because it is not an appealing option"

The point I am making is, people (women, blacks, latinos etc. and that includes the rabble who whine about "greedy companies hiring foreign workers") should not expect things on a platter. There is no giant conspiracy to make things "uncomfortable" for women or minorities.

A case-in-point is the success of Indian-Americans & other Asians in tech. I recently read that nearly 1/2 of startups in the valley has an Asian co-founder. It's not like tech had welcome buffets & red carpets laid out for the Asians.

While I too find the absence of women and non-Asian minorities in tech troubling. That change can only be wrought by starting up (pun intended). Reminds me of the saying by Gandhi "Be the change you want".
It's a little hard to setup, but the python powered neverending soundscapes you can get at http://boodler.org/packages/ are pretty awesome...

Boodler FTW!
My guess is "Windows Modern app" => Mod

So Windows RT becomes Windows Mod and runs only Mods; Win 8.x runs Windows programs and Mods; potentially the Xbox One can run Mods, etc.
A quote from the article: "Just $1 million invested in a dynasty trust, and earning 12 percent a year, would swell to $1.9 billion in 85 years". So my question is how do I find a investment vehicle that gives me 12% return compounded year after year?
Transferring from a Community College to a state 4-year is very common in Florida. I dual-enrolled in high school and wound up only a semester short of my AA, so I stayed and finished it up before transferring. The local CC does a very good job at preparing students and giving tutoring/other services necessary to teach students what they need to know, which Universities can't really do, and MOOCs flat out fail at.
He said woman cannot be in technology because they aren't interested in computers from a young age. But rather than seeking why women are excluded from technology even as children, he just blames women for not being interested in hacking. Either he believes women are intrinsically non-hackers, or he acknowledges it is a cultural/social issue but refuses to hire or fund anyone who does not have the exact life trajectory of Mark Zuckerberg.
I go out every night and mostly only at night when it's -20C. I do stay in when it goes below that usually, you just need to get used to it and dress properly.

This is just something you need to change yourself and get used to, it won't get any easier if you just ignore the cold.
"rabble rabble install gentoo".

I sort of agree with his suggestions that putting all of the npm packages in one basket is pretty silly, but the rest is just drivel.
It has always seemed to me that the reason accurate multi-chip emulation is slow has to do with trying to serialize an effectively parallel computation—a bit like why symbolic AI never got off the ground.

Wouldn't a better approach to this problem involve some sort of FPGA expansion card (or OpenCL code to get the GPU to mimic one) programmed at runtime, for each game, with the traces of the original chips composing it?
I met Rose Broome a while back! Really cool to see she's founded this now.
node is OVER
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlGqN3AKOsA
Ask HN: Did Snowden expose truth, or merely himself?
What format are you converting the GIF to?
By coincidence, I was going thru my bookmarks this Sat morn and found a link to Ev Bogue. I couldn't remember who he was, so I googled him and found he is person who makes his living writing provocative things and someone doesn't like that:

http://charliebroadway.blogspot.com/2011/07/is-everett-bogue...
All you have to do is read his bio on his web page. It's the ultimate downer list. Of course (for him) Node is done - his life sounds like it's done. What a shame. Good thing we don't have a planet of people filled like him - hating on pretty much everything. If we did, we'd obviously never progress or any progression would come out of some negative act.

Maybe he'll get over it in a few years? In the mean time, those of us who have things to do, because we actually appreciate life, will keep inventing, thinking, striving, working towards the next great thing we love.
> you have a lot of Google employees here, and Google is a bit handicapped when it comes to patents at the moment. This is why you hear a disproportionate amount of anti-patent rhetoric.

Do you actually belive this?

> most engineers are either ignorant about patents or quite proud of their patents.

Cooperate America seems to be the only echo chamber that belives software patents are a pretty neat idea.
Unfortunately limitations on mobile audio will make this next to impossible to work on mobile for the time being. I wrote howler.js (http://howlerjs.com) to solve this issue, but I'm guessing your source audio files are too large to use Web Audio reliably on mobile (this would be the only way to play multiple sounds at the same time).
I just got some SPL shipped to me today. I have a theory on how to make lime juice clarification easier, but will be making some French Fries too.
Gestão de Tempo e Produtividade para Engenheiros
Jesus, what is his problem? It seems someone or something upset him, and he ran off and wrote the "worst" possible thing he could about Node, GitHub, and Mac users.

There's good diversity in languages in our field. Get over it. There's a good reason GitHub has done so well. Get over it. There's a good reason why Macs are the most popular amongst designers. Get over it.
You don't have to extract a dime. Shoot people who fail to pay whatever you estimate they should, even if they would have had to borrow or steal in order to make the payment - inability to pay would be no excuse. Make sure the payment is a reasonable, manageable amount if someone, for example, consents to being monitored, or opens their books to whatever extent the "attacker" would like. If they don't consent, greatly overestimate their income, maybe even as a statutory default assumption of income.

You wouldn't have to shoot very many people at all to maintain whatever amount of control you wanted over other people's lives.
The dominant American stereotype of Asians is that they are intelligent and hard working. It's called the "Model Minority" theory. It makes sense that the industry would be inclusive of Asian Americans.
modulo?

Begging for a deep water horizon, aren't ya, Microsoft?

God says...
laziness face_palm absetively_posilutely California I'll_be_back
wazz_up_with_that car fun conservative cursing job smack_some_sense_into_you
okay you're_so_screwed how_goes_it music you_think_you_could_do_better
thats_just_wrong jobs imports dance class__class__shutup
Is_that_so ice_cream you_hoser goods make_my_day I_just_might
run_away Ramsay what_a_nightmare I'm_done big_fish why_is_it
that's_no_fun hey_Mikey_he_likes_it
> You'll find crap in C++ like const *const char &, and hell if anyone knows what that really means since even though the pointer to a const to a const reference is consted to hell and back, oh look you can still increment it. They'd have been better off to just invent a new keyword: doesnotfuckingchange and stop there.

As I recall, Stoustrup originally wanted to call the const keyword 'readonly', which is a more accurate description of what it does (const data is not constant, it's read-only: something else can change it while you're not looking, but you can't change it). They didn't, for compatibility reasons with C.

That said, the const keyword allows you to move contracts about, e.g., "this method does not alter its object", from the programmer's head into the code where it can be checked by the compiler. (unless you have people doing stupid things with mutable or const_cast).

But yeah, C++ has flaws. Big flaws [1]. Anyone who tells you otherwise is probably uninformed or lying. The interesting question is, why do people keep using it in spite of its flaws? Certainly a large part of that is inertia, but I don't think that that's the only thing. I think there's a niche where there's really not a lot of good options other than C++, and that's quite unfortunate. But "C++ sucks" removes the possibility that there's anything useful there, making discussion of better alternatives (e.g., would D work? what is it about C++ that makes it useful? how do these languages compare? etc.) impossible. See, for example, Rob Pike's complaint about why C++ programmers aren't all moving to Go, which essentially ignores a bunch of reasons why you might use C++ (since Go is not a replacement for them). See [2], [3].

[1]: http://bartoszmilewski.com/2013/09/19/edward-chands/

"I’ve been looking for a good analogy of what programming in C++ feels like and I remembered this 1990 Tim Burton movie, Edward Scissorhands."

[2]: http://blog.grok.se/2013/10/on-comparing-languages-c-and-go/

[3]: http://commandcenter.blogspot.se/2012/06/less-is-exponential...
Ah, but you forgot to note that this language is being developed in the context of a research operating system, so there's no guarantee it even runs on Windows ;)
Jitsi also has a Web RTC driven video chat when combined with an XMPP server: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-YGw3bgB_s
https://jitsi.org/Projects/JitsiVideobridge
https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi-videobridge
Ah, acronym fun time...

Ministry of Disappointment

Machine of Delusion

Money only Dollars

Or do Android release "Rocker"?
How to Win Friends and Influence People

I had avoided this one for years due to its age and because reading it seemed to imply one has no friends and no influence. It gets long-winded in parts with a few too many examples, but it's excellent. Definitely something everyone should read once, no matter what type of job or lifestyle one leads.
Interesting. The mentioned emulator (bsnes) appears to have source code in the Ubuntu repositories, so I'm going to try taking a look at it.

On an unrelated note, does anyone here have a sense of how useful semi-specialized hardware could be for emulators. Obviously emulating a specific system in hardware is easy (at least in principle). However, would it be possible to create hardware specialized for emulators in general. This would probably be multi-core devices that could synchronize between cores at a configurable rate. The obvious downside to any hardware approach is that if the assumptions are wrong, it is likely far more difficult to patch the problem with sacrificing most of the benefits hardware gives you.
The pattern on the stone by Daniel Hillis changed the way I look at computing and software. It is just simple book, but explains the computers in the initial pages using sticks and stones, in all seriousness and leads the reader to appreciate how the "principles" of the machine we use is no different than built using stick and stone. This outlook changed the way, I look at computers.
> He said woman cannot be in technology because they aren't interested in computers from a young age.

No, he never said that. He said that there are fewer women in tech, not that "women cannot be" in tech.

> But rather than seeking why women are excluded from technology even as children, he just blames women for not being interested in hacking.

He never did this either. Find me one quote where he blamed women for their lack of interest? The only thing he said was that the real way to solve this problem would be to get girls interested in hacking at a younger age, but that that's a difficult task. Does anyone actually disagree with that?

> ...but refuses to hire or fund anyone who does not have the exact life trajectory of Mark Zuckerberg.

YC invested in me, and I'm black. There were girls in my batch, too.

Rather than actually listen to the points being made, reflect on the nuances, and engage in conversation honestly, you'd rather feign outrage over falsified "facts" and make-believe quotes. This is exactly why discussions like this are always of such low quality.
Ah, I'd missed that update. Thanks! I prefer this to the current workflow.
Where will it kick off next?
Target confirms PIN data was stolen in breach
Quiet by Susan Cain

This book profoundly affected me because she convinced me that many of my mannerisms and preferences are completely normal, and even positive. She also confirmed a lot of my suspicions that open offices, group work and the like are not as beneficial as they may seem.

Her TED talk[0] hits most of the major points in her book. If you enjoyed that, her book is a must read.

[0] -- http://www.ted.com/talks/susan_cain_the_power_of_introverts....
http://cssload.net
is there any way to contribute besides donating?
If I understand your question correctly, you should look into PAR2
I used to use try/catch with an empty catch block in Java all the time. The exception could never in fact occur, but the compiler required me to either add a catch block or declare that my function raises an exception, when it fact it doesn't.

Yes, I did include a "this never happens" comment. That is my favorite comment, but only if it is true.
Yes, but this "model minority" had to work for it, hard-work, perseverance and grit. It's not like, a group of elites decided one fine day "OK, today we anoint Asians"
>" You have to do all the same memory checks, use valgrind, make sure you've got destructors, and then that's made more complex by templates, object lifecycles, exception rules, etc.. Frankly C++ doesn't have better memory
management than C, it just has more complex management."

I strongly disagree with the author, and I suspect he is biased for the "old school" C++ (as he called it). For instance:

>make sure you've got destructors.

Objects allocated on the stack are guaranteed to be destroyed and hence their destructors to be called. Which is very convenient if those objects are owners of a resource (like a DB connection).

>"and then that's made more complex by templates, object lifecycles, exception rules, etc.."

Object lifecycle are well defined but if all is an OOP problem not a C++ one.

As for the rest, the beauty of C++ is that if there is something that doesn't apply to your project, then you don't use it. Your are not required to use exceptions or templates if you don't want to.

> "Frankly C++ doesn't have better memory management than C, it just has more complex management"

Again, if you want to it can be complex, or it can be the same management you would do in C. That's a flexibility that simply you don't have in C.
IIRC it's been at least a decade.
Same here. It is pretty much pointless to discuss this issue. Any opinion that doesn't align with a hyper PC standard is getting framed as "controversial".

Votes/Flags are the silent voices of those who can't afford to get drawn into a battle with potentially severe consequences about an issue which they have personally relatively little to gain from.
Don't believe everything that crosses through your mind. Control your brain.
There are very few situations in one’s life when things really suck, like when someone close to you passes away or when you’re attacked by a vicious gun-man. Even in these situations you cannot and you should not let your emotions take complete control over you.
How far you could get from New York in one day—back in the day
I second the book as well as the above praise for the book as one of the greatest. I have read several chapters from the book and have loved them all.

Question: I haven't read The Princeton Companion to Mathematics. How would you compare these two?
13" retina mbp with 512gig ssd and 8gig, external 30" dell monitor w/ das keyboard when working at my home desk.

A variety of dev including C/C++, C# (windows in a parallels vm), Python, Node and Erlang. Typically have multiple VMs available when doing dev - mainly FreeBSD, sometime Ubuntu.

My MBP is a unix machine I don't have to worry about. Things just work.

With some embedded work, I do need to jigger with drivers, but I don't do a lot of those projects.
'Riders in The Chariot', by Patrick White!!

Big bulking book, worth every minute you put into it.
This is a good book. The simple tip of asking people about themselves when unsure of what to talk about does work in a pinch. I also found it interesting that Susan Cain (see my comment in this thread) largely derided this book and the others like it that came out at the same time.
Thank god someone is doing this. I'd been looking for a way to dedicate a core of my laptop to animated gifs.
> But yeah, C++ has flaws.

Stroustrup dixit: "Within C++, there is a much smaller and cleaner language struggling to get out."

Rust?

> The interesting question is, why do people keep using it in spite of its flaws? Certainly a large part of that is inertia, but I don't think that that's the only thing.

Ownership management. Which has been expanded into full lifetime management (including that of borrowed pointers) in... Rust!

Static polymorphism. Which is implemented in a crappy way in C++, but at least is doable:

1. Non-specialized templates: Type constructors.

2. Concepts (sadly only in the heads of programmers): Type classes.

3. Exported typedefs and type traits: Type families.

> See, for example, Rob Pike's complaint about why C++ programmers aren't all moving to Go, which essentially ignores a bunch of reasons why you might use C++ (since Go is not a replacement for them).

Dude must be completely deluded.
And they even let their the conflicts of interests influence the development of their programming languages. C# is the best example. There are more reasons why C# has poorer performance and less libraries outside of Windows but most can be tracked to the interest in Microsoft to have something tightly enough controlled and bound to Windows.
>To support cops and prisons, government will need to pay in money that they have to seize in the first place.

Why? A government could declare Beanie Babies the dominant currency if they wanted. All they have to do is say that you have to pay your taxes in Beanie Babies, and that all of their court judgments are only settleable in Beanie Babies. You will be rushing to buy treasuries denominated in Beanie Babies and paying for them in bitcoin.
I'm a fan of bitcoin but I don't think it's scalable enough yet to make such a large change, since every full peer has to see every transaction. A possible solution is for most people to use offchain transactions, with service providers who use onchain transactions to settle balances periodically. But then you have centralized services that can be attacked by governments. Or you put them behind Tor but then it's pretty scary trusting them with your money.

Then again, I'm not a millionaire because in 2009 I thought bitcoin wasn't scalable. Maybe they'll solve it before it's a problem.
No; it's going to fall off the front page because 10% of readers were irked by the story.

That is taking a stance on how to approach discussions on sensitive topics and is exactly what I was talking about.

What would happen if that weren't the case is pure speculation; because for all we know a common consensus would quickly emerge if these discussions would be allowed to run their course.