skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Isn't that like saying "Is trig on the level of precalculus or algebra?" It depends on what you are doing. Plane trig and spherical trig are worlds apart.

I think that this says more about the level of programming that people are doing than how hard programming is.
but the free entry museums, art galleries and libraries don't seem to get full of homeless people.

Security Guards.
What I learned in 2013
Am I the only one who feels that rap/hiphop has become the dominant culture in tech (see VC darlings Rap Genius)?

These days, having a traditional professional demeanor and not knowing a thing about Drake seems far more likely to get you ostracized.
Could a Civil War-Era Law Stamp Out Bitcoin?
I guess you don´t need high tolerances when the guns are going to be used by untrained troops. Just an example I recently saw a Nigerian policeman walking with his Ak47 on his hand, using it as a walking stick. The Ak was doing the distinctive noise of a metal bar hitting the ground hard. As the Ak didn't have muzzle brake that could protect minimally the barrel, I guess there is not much accuracy left in that barrel.
If that happens in the middle of an international airport, I can not imagine how they are maintained and used in the middle of the jungle.
I would say: Lambda-Calculus
Thats the one! It's seriously impressive, I can't wait to play with it
Top 5 Wordpress Plugins to Manage Traffic Statistics
3 reasons why video marketing pays off - Across the Board
Agreed. This "answer" made me really suspicious. Why wouldn't they provide source for example? Aren't those tpb guys all about openness/transparency?
Web Developer (m/w)
There can always be outliers. Just because you can remember a lot that young doesn't mean everyone can. You could be a one in a million.

After all, Phineas Gage basically got a pole through the brain and he survived[1]. Doesn't mean everyone can do it.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_Gage
Where Do You Register New Domain Names?
Most users who already use websites have heard about domain names and they know what they are. Although .COM domains are already very popular, they are no longer as appealing as they once were, because they don't mean anything as such and all of the cool, short names have long since been registered
Web Operations Engineer (m/w)
I completely burned out about three years ago and took a break. I was working at a digital agency and the work was good but the hours were really crazy with tough deadlines. It was all exciting but then I just burned and couldnt just write anymore.

I decided to take a break, went into banking - Yeah! Worked in the front office and doing clerical tasks for about a year and it was extremely refreshing. It was a huge bore a lot of the time but the break was helpful because I had plenty of free time compared to previous job so I could spend the time doing side projects and learning a lot of stuff online.

After one year away, I had spent the time learning new things and tools and was really excited to get back into full time development again. And now pretty happy I did that. I guess I needed that.

You dont have to take another job or career change. Just take some time and do the things you liked about development or try new things and you'll get the mojo back. But defn take a breather I guess. A couple of days away
.SCIENCE new domain names
La Communauté scientifique n’a qu’à bien se tenir car elle se verra prochainement offrir un “univers” pour communiquer sur Internet: des noms de domaine qui se terminent en .SCIENCE.
I agree Off-TV play is a really nice feature, but in my opinion the cons outweigh the pros.

- Few games use it in any meaningful way.
- It's bulky and unfamiliar.
- It muddies the image of what the console is (is the tablet the Wii U?)
- It raised the price of the console significantly.
- It threw away the momentum they had for something none of their install-base wanted.

While I love my Wii U, it's destined to become another 20m failure. I hope that I'm wrong and that with time they can really iterate on their online functionality and get some better 3rd party support, but I'm not optimistic. If nothing else the 3DS is killing it, so it's not like they're going broke any time soon.
Conversion Copywriting Hacks for 2014
In my experience, when they do that it means it will be horribly expensive and they want to be sure to get your email so they can spam you regularly about their incredible one time deal of only 99,000$ per seat !!!111ONE!
Ah okay, I'm already taking prescription cannabis.
Thank you all for the replies.
The google hangougs video chat does this pretty well - a lot more smooth than this example, although doesn't support modeling of movement such as head rotation IIRC
I get requests through every medium described here, as well as coming into the office to ask me. Email is nice in that you can have a relatively long description that will be searchable later on. It can have formatting and attachments (you don't get the same level of formatting IM, and afterwards it isn't as easy to search).

Also its kind of nice to not respond immediately when I am in "in the zone".
but implanting something into a military device

While I understand they'd try such things against countries they consider enemies, I disagree it's a good strategy when it involves allies - pursue such a strategy and you soon won't have any allies or respect.
Kano the DIY computer raised $1.5M on Kickstarter: interview on StartupCamel.com
* Bering strait
Google+ invite lands man in jail
Chrome extension to collapse HN threads:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-collap...
In 2013, over one billion searches were made on DuckDuckGo
How to Lose All Your Content Search Ranking: A Cautionary Tale
A more classic quote about their approach to tech is (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunpei_Yokoi):

Yokoi articulated his philosophy of "Lateral Thinking of Withered Technology" (枯れた技術の水平思考?, "Kareta Gijutsu no Suihei Shikō") (also translated as "Lateral Thinking with Seasoned Technology") in the book, Yokoi Gunpei Game House (横井軍平ゲーム館 Yokoi Gunpei Gēmu-kan?), which consists of a collection of interviews. "Withered technology" in this context refers to a mature technology which is cheap and well understood. "Lateral thinking" refers to finding radical new ways of using such technology. Yokoi held that toys and games do not necessarily require cutting edge technology; novel and fun gameplay are more important. In the interview he suggested that expensive cutting edge technology can get in the way of developing a new product.[10]
Save yourself a click -- it's another PHP and JavaScript rant.
I agree the client side situation is a mess, but I think its getting better.

The biggest problem is the conflict of interest between the major browser makers in that they are also handheld device makers.

They have every incentive to keep the browser dumb in order to keep devs using java/objc and staying on their platform.

Firefox is really the only thing that has the influence and power to "save us" (obviously barring anything unpredictable).

But last I checked, they were still bankrolled by Google, and their browser has stale market share.
Thank you for your reply, Hackpad does look very promising.

How do you make sure that documents get found and stuff does not get duplicated? Is there a central Place where you store links to important docs?
They don't. You pay for roaming. However, in summer 2014 there will be no more roaming charges for the EU (forced by the EU commission on the carriers - the carriers were playing dirty all along, e.g. TMobile and Vodafone have companies in many EU countries, but customers still pay roaming charges in "different" networks provided by different subcompanies). This still won't mean free mobile for the whole EU, as most networks only offer free calls/texts/data in their local networks, while you have to pay a little if you're in another operator's network (in the same country).
I know its not necessarily avoidable in practice due to legacy reasons, but my main takeaway from this is that Haskell is not for high performance code.
"It’s a pity some people still build important apps in PHP..."

Getting real tired of seeing these baseless statements from so called software professionals.

Here is an off-the-top-of-my-head list of features of modern day PHP:

* yield

* event

* pthreads - yeap, real threads.

* closures (including support for $this)

* consistent hashing api

* "finally" added to try-catch

* empty() now supports expressions, rather than only
variables.

* array and string literal dereferencing

* foreach support for list() - foreach($array as list($var, $var))

* array_column

* traits

* short array syntax

* namespaces

* json manipulation is second to none.

* runkit - all kinds of danger here
It’s a pity some people still build important apps in PHP and Spring

PHP/Spring only sucks if you dont know how to use.

Functional Programming is getting a foothold on the mainstream, because if you care about performance you care about concurrency

Since when FP is high performance and better concurrency support?

Pick the right tool please.
I'm sure I'm missing something with this particular one, and I'm sure it's got a lot of clever tech behind it, but is the end result actually achieving anything more than a simple video of the same walk?
Nice announcement, but where is the actual source? The github repo "build instructions" currently tell you to run a script that downloads a binary release from CloudFront, unpacks that and runs whatever was in in it. Sorry, that is not source. Well, at least not complete source.
Where is the source for the binaries that are being downloaded and build instructions for them?
Rap Genius Google Ban – The Snitch That Sold Out Rap Genius
Rap Genius paid the biggest price for trying to game Google in the battle that was arguably the hottest topic during the Christmas period.
I wrote my own hash table[1], in the intrusive style, which puts the burden of checking for double insertion on the user. This allows me to do O(1) insert and delete and only rehash when expensive lookups due to collisions are encountered. For some use cases, it can speed things up greatly.

Also, due to the intrusive style, the table is usable without any dynamic allocations.

I wonder how it compares to the one in the article, if anyone is willing to adapt the benchmarks... :-)

[1] https://github.com/Peaker/small_hash
Yep, spot on.

> it could have real value for researchers.

Yes, historian researchers but not legal researchers, I'm afraid.
Isn't Logic a subject in maths? I upvoted Discrete Mathematics, because that's the area of maths programming is in, but at the same time I programming is infinitely more simple and intuitive (to me) than Discrete Mathematics is.

Anyway, we had two logic courses (Introduction to Logic and Advanced Logic) which also have close connections to programming.
Teen Reported to Police After Finding Security Hole in Website
It's not at all, it's a rant on the massive disparity between server-side and client-side development.
A test taken in a high school is different from a guy walking across the campus asking people who might want to be somewhere to draw a map for them. If you notice here: http://imgur.com/a/1w6fC

Most of them didn't seem to spend more than a few seconds to draw the map, if you made them sit down and have them draw the map the results might be different.
I love that he reused a ThinkPad keyboard. I think I'd use this without real casing.
> I love macros (in lisp) but you shouldn't need to use them that much. They aren't always good.

Isn't this true for almost everything? For example a while back there was this talk "Stop writing classes", where someone argued that you should just use functions for many simple cases (with nice examples etc).

Generally you should abstract on the level most suitable to the problem at hand. Some problems are best (for some value of "best") abstracted with a global var, others with a set of functions, others yet with hierarchy of classes. Syntactic abstraction is just another tool in your toolbox and it is very handy sometimes; of course it's not fit for every problem. But no one is going to do a "Stop writing macros" talk anytime soon, just because no one is writing macros - most languages lack them completely or have only silly string-oriented preprocessors, and even in languages that support them macros are feared and avoided.

I would just like to see macros go "mainstream" - if this means they'd be abused a bit (like classes/OOP now, for example) then I think I can live with it. Probably - it's quite possible I'd come to regret it very quickly :)
Ugh, I would have hoped by now we'd be moving to the US implementing privacy laws. Instead it seems like we're moving in the opposite direction. Corporations are learning how to spend money in the EU to stop pro-consumer legislation as effectively as they do in the house and senate. So we're stuck with out of date legislation.

I just hope that this is Google being desperate and trying to use PR to stop the new data protection guidelines because their lobbying efforts are faltering.
> What’s worse is that you can’t even count on people accepting the mobile-app updates you send them.

There's a good reason for this: companies routinely push updates that either (1) change the user interface, usually for the worse (Google Maps), (2) remove functionality, or (3) introduce bugs/reduce stability (e.g. Viber). No wonder that customer's delay updating as much as possible.

Almost every time I update my apps, I'm sorry that I did it. The only reason I do it, is to remove the annoying Google Play icon in the statusbar.
The author does not even touch on the ease of use for paying for content; in the case of in-app purchases the walled gardens are far ahead of the open web.

I'm not quite sure of what to make of his claim that he does not know of anyone who is making money from the walled gardens. Epic Games famously stated that Infinity Blade actually makes them more money than Gears of War when figured on a man-years vs revenue basis. http://www.ijailbreak.com/applications/infinity-blade-ios-ep...
The Eclipse Foundation and the Free Software Foundation consider that both licenses are incompatible.

"The EPL and the GPL are not compatible in any combination where the result would be considered either: (a) a "derivative work" (which Eclipse interprets consistent with the definition of that term in the U.S. Copyright Act ) or (b) a work "based on" the GPL code, as that phrase is used in the GPLv2, GPLv3 or the GPL FAQ as applicable. Further, you may not combine EPL and GPL code in any scenario where source code under those licenses are both the same source code module.

Based upon the position of the Free Software Foundation, you may not combine EPL and GPL code in any scenario where linking exists between code made available under those licenses. The above applies to both GPL version 2 and GPL version 3."

http://www.eclipse.org/legal/eplfaq.php#GPLCOMPATIBLE
That may be true with Apple (WebGL please?), but I haven't felt that way about Google before. I've always seen Android as a means to an end for them, to get more people using the web. Any further reading?
It’s a pity some people still build important apps in PHP...

I wonder how that could be. It's almost like people chose to use PHP and it works for them. Like they made an informed decision and actually ended up going with PHP. Maybe they are just too dumb for their own good. Or maybe PHP is actually a perfectly sane choice for lots of cases outside of your FP ivory tower.
"NodeJS isn’t really functional, but if everything’s a callback and you’re single threaded, who cares?"

Anyone could elaborate on what this actually means?
Oh, (wild) sourdough is actually optimizing for flavour. Yeast is not a great cost in any case.
I like how no one is paying heed to the "Don't use Docker in production" warning on the Docker site. Every once in a while they release a version that's buggy (like 0.7.3) and we fix to the previous version and wait for the next version.
I wouldn't say that. Subscriptions are far easier to take on the web.

In app purchases are usually pretty optional as is content.
I think the fact that you can buy 4 liters of White Lightning for that money instead negates the necessity to find somewhere warm and indoors.
I applaud the effort to bring hardware / sensorial innovation on handheld devices, but yeah the 3D ended up in the gimmick bag. The only time people turn it on is to show how it is to newcomers so they understand why they turn it off.
This company is amazing, I think it has a real potential of changing the way people learn about computers!
I can recommend this recipe: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/08/dining/081mrex.html?_r=0 (video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13Ah9ES2yTU).

It is very little total work (15 minutes max) and makes great bread, but it does require some planning ahead because of the long rise time.
There is the pretty much the same concept in Paris, except that you pay per hour.
http://anticafe.fr/en

They have plugs all over the place and the wifi is much better than in any other cafe, which makes it a really nice place for working.
Because I expect that as a a paying customer.

GitHub has no obligation to improve them, sure. I am just opposing the view that GitHub is handling all this so much better. The only difference is that they leave the product stale instead of shutting it down.
Software engineers are typically good at building things meant for other engineers. That's why some of the most robust, rock-solid, reliable pieces of software engineering are, e.g. OS kernels and language compilers. So Tim Bray is right in saying that we needn't worry about the server side. The server side is in good hands.

Also true that the client side sucks, and I see only one way of fixing it: engineers have to work in a highly disciplined, tyranical kind of an environment. For example, the reason you don't see a lot of technical error messages on iOS (and you do see them a lot on Android) is just that: someone has to constantly remind the engineers that software they are making is meant for humans, not engineers.
My feeling is that the fairness effect comes into play strongly with open source distribution models. People are willing to play fairly (i.e. not re-distribute source code that's probably only a google search away anyway) when the author does the same.

Frans De Waal demonstrates an experiment with Capuchin Monkeys showing this effect in action.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v425/n6955/abs/nature01...

http://youtu.be/lKhAd0Tyny0
Those are great features.

However the objection people, including myself, have with PHP is that the legacy stuff is inconsistent junk.

I still use it on occasion but it pains me.
10 Startup Founders Share The Best Advice They Ever Received
Hi, I'm Tomo - the owner of the DogsOfTheSeason site.

I don't know about the timestamps, but I guess it's possible to write several stock recommendations and delete the ones that do not make profits. Also, it is possible to build dozens of sites like DOTS and promote only those who consistently earn money.

I can assure you that I don't do any manipulations with my performance. I don't do almost any marketing for DOTS. The number of my subscribers is very small and if it starts to grow significantly, I'll limit the maximum number of subscribers or raise the subscription price.

I guess there are sites that do manipulate with the performance, so you have to decide for yourself whether you're going to believe me or not.

I noticed that links on my page http://dogsoftheseason.com/subscribe (actual emails) were not working due to a missing script. Now this is fixed.
12 ways to be more productive in 5 minutes
Would you buy a device that keeps you awake while driving?
One of the biggest causes in traffic accidents is sleep deprivation
http://voices.yahoo.com/5-most-common-causes-car-accidents-4947668.html
I almost had an accident experiencing this myself. My best friend had an accident this way. We are not the only ones.

The solution consists of an Eye (camera + IR camera) connected to a mini arduino (or similar) that watches the driver by looking at its face and detecting if eyes are opened. (see http://www.visagetechnologies.com/html5/ ) .
When your eyes are closed fox X seconds, a notification sounds loudly.
Possible addition: Heart rate sensor in the steering wheel so when the HR drops(you fall asleep) the system notifies you as well.

Technically this seems a pretty simple device to build.
If the insurance companies cooperate (cheaper insurance when using this device) This should be a financially viable product.

What do you think of this?
Javascript does not have threads, so the only way to use it on the server with decent multiuser performance is with async I/O and callbacks. So he's saying people are using NodeJS because it made it possible to write server-side apps, regardless of its other features.
IAmA - Sir David Attenborough
Same here. Medium-sized company(250+), we used plow for quite some time, but switched to Confluence recently. With Jira as task/bug-tracker works splendidly, and the interface seems to be approachable for everybody.
Nespresso isn't that great either.
The final Haskell code, while being low-level, is not unreadable jumble. Maybe you're talking about the generated Core or the C-- code.
Hey dad, glad to hear that your 11 year old is interested in and able to do some programming. It's one of my favourite pastimes as well as my career. The poll is not meaningful, however.
His point about web vs iOS vs Android hit home with me. I've been a pure iOS developer for several years now, but the constant nag on me is to support Android. I assume it's the same for people that know the Android side. Unfortunately, it's not a 5 minute job to port over... if you take pride in building something great for one platform, you'll want to do the same on the other, but they have quite different paradigms, not to mention requiring a separate language and device set.

I guess in the past (on desktop) this wasn't as much of an issue because Windows had such a large market share.
That's odd. I was in SF recently and had decent HSPA+ and LTE coverage pretty much all throughout the peninsula.

May I ask what device you use, and what plan you're on?
Mathematics can easily be applied to anything from cooking to theoretical physics. That doesn't make any of these things math or the other way around. You can use math to solve a programming problem (perhaps to a greater extent than in cooking) and you can express many of the problems in mathematical terms, but in the end math is an abstract tool and programming is not.