skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
If the question of the poll was "My son eats carrots, what level of piano-playing does it equal to?", would you then say that eating carrots and playing the piano are fundamentally the same, because they are both reducible to physical laws and are just manifestation of different kinds of brain activity?

We all get it, and we all agree - programs can be viewed as a subset of mathematics. Every CS undergrad knows this. It is conceptually misguided to view this piece of information as revealing anything deep about what programmers do, just as it is conceptually misguided to view our ability to reduce both fishing and singing to brain activity (or to reduce everything to the laws of physics) as saying anything deep about what fishermen do. It doesn't became any less misguided simply because examples exist where math can be directly applied to programming, and vice versa.

It is philosophical mumbo-jumbo because you are taking two activities with clearly distinct meaning in everyday language, and instead of simply acknowledging that we can invent a new meaning for them under which they are the same, you instead convince yourself that this new invented meaning is the only fundamentally correct one (or somehow "deeper"), and that it also has the power to show that the 'everyday' meaning is wrong. But you are not showing anything about things we already know - you are simply presenting new, different ways of looking at them, that bear little relevance to the question at hand (A circle is topologically equivalent to a square. Does it mean that our 'old' preconceptions of difference between circles and squares are now wrong?).

The activity of doing mathematics, as those words are used in everyday language, is different from the activity of programming, even if in some senses (perhaps in more than one) they can be viewed as the same. The activity of running is different from the activity of fishing, even though they can be reduced to similar building blocks.

I do not object to the mathematical connections you present, I object to the philosophical interpretation you give to them.
Interesting thought. I've personally been totally sold on SteamOS since it was announced, but it had simply never occurred to me that it might have any more utility than the strapline of playing games on your TV.

Now I'm just more stoked for it.
Actually, we are not really 100% SaaS.

Over half our sales are still On-Premise: download and install. Shock. Horror.

From a tech standpoint that's tough because the same web app has to run under Windows IIS and then scale to handle SaaS customers in our own cloud setup.

Barrier? You should see the crap you have to handle in order to just install .NET web app onto say a financial company's hardware. SaaS guys have it easy!

In terms of Enterprise Sales we have lead generation activities with inside sales folks who provide product demos. Took a while to get it right. Trade shows, banners, magazines - none of this stuff works for us in enterprise sales, where customers hand over tens of thousands of dollars for a software license.
EDIT: I'm talking in general. I mine litecoins (and sometimes other alt coins), not bitcoins, so that's what I'm most familiar with.

Big pools are popular for a number of reasons:

1) Lots of hashing power means lots of blocks found means more payment more often, even if it is less coins. People get impatient and leave smaller pools if they aren't getting paid right away.

2) Network effect. It's the first Google search result. This might be the biggest factor.

3) Probably more reputable, so I'll probably get paid too, most pools have honest operators but some can shut down shop and take coins people haven't cashed out yet and run or do other shady things.

4) Probably less downtime, beefier hardware.

I don't know the specifics of GHash in particular if there's anything that makes it more appealing.
> I believe it is a common strategy for (especially) women to exploit this in order to gain some sort of advantage over their partners following a breakup.

Perhaps the reason why women seek TROs and ROs is because they are much more likely then men to be the victim of physical assault, stalking, harassment, or murder from their partners or former partners.
> Apple probably lacks both of these conditions right now, the usability of my iPhone is deteriorating so fast that I might as well switch to Android.

Can you elaborate on this?
I also have to second the notion of Leanpub being a great platform for distribution...being able to go from Markdown to PDF/mobi/etc is wonderful. I've half finished a book on regular expressions (and shamefully haven't done updates in awhile) but earned about $1,700 so far, despite the book being free and not doing much promotion for it besides occasionally tweeting it: https://leanpub.com/bastards-regexes

The publish-as-you-write model is similar to Greenlight's Early Access, and easy to maintain on the author's side.
And what about epub or mobi files?
No (invoking Betteridge's law of headlines).

Also this article is silly.

"So, yes, if you want to call this fantasy, pie-in-the-sky thinking, I’m guilty as charged. If you think the near-term future of software development will be based on some platform other than the laptop/desktop, I wish I could agree. All these “ifs” aside: if I were Apple, I would be looking over my shoulder. At Valve."

He sums up the ridiculousness far better than I can in his own article.
"God made the whole numbers; all else is the work of man." -- Leopold Kronecker
Very nice post. The most interesting part for me was your pricing - brash, yet smart at the same time. Good for you, man. You'll hit $50k in not time. Keep it up.
I kind of think it's a problem (pedagogically) with Java's model specifically, not purely distance from the metal. I wouldn't be surprised if there were other high-level languages that caused similar trouble, but I also wouldn't be surprised if some did not.
I think modern Android and iOS devices could do that just as well.

I believe not supporting Flash has more to do with Apple/Google strategies (i.e. not depending on propietary third party software) than actual hardware limitations.
So, was the overlay more effective at conversions than no overlay at all?

I think this is a great article about how to measure overlay timing effectiveness, but didn't convince me that overlays work at all in general.
The point is not that it's impossible to numerically sort an array of numbers in JavaScript; it's that calling the sort function on such an array doesn't do that. That's a surprise to most developers, I'm sure, and surprises in languages and libraries are bad.
Doesn't look like it. You fund it with bitcoins which it converts to euros
hopefully they can create an app ecosystem that not only consists out of games.
Well the alternative is for Apple to rush updates unchecked.

How about an app that exploits the user, damages the phone through some sandboxing hole, and whatever?

Sure, those can still happen even with checks, but a whole bunch of them is removed.

(And yes, people have used updates in the past to pass malicious changes to apps).
There is even some evidence that double-spending attacks have already happened. You don't strictly speaking need 51%, that majority just ensures that your chain will win out over time. The original bitcoin paper[1] details the probabilities involved for nodes controlling < 51%, if anyone is interested it is a short and good read.

It could be even worse than that however. Another post on BCT[2] talks about a "time warp attack", where at 51% node could effectively mine all remaining bitcoins in one fell swoop.

[1] http://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

[2] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=114751.0
If I'm going to my news feed, I'm expecting to see NEWS. Not people/groups etc. I might be interested in ...
Same for me around 10% even less are actual news posts from the first page I see on my "news feed".

Check Facebook or twitter for a comparison ...
The reason for this is that there is a strong possibility that person could be acquiring a firearm to assault or murder to the person who filed the restraining order. A temporary halt to your ability to purchase firearms in sensible in that circumstance.
In high school I was blacklisted from an admin position for demonstrating that you could write in Digital Command Language a program that simulated the login environment, stored login attempts, and then after three tries exited to the real login environment to let the user in. In college I was nearly expelled for just mentioning to the IT guys that they didn't have a password on some database, and I could get in with just telnet. These attitudes haven't changed much since 1990 at least.
They are backed by cex.io which is an exchange that trades GH/s for BTC.

They are able to run a pool for 0% fee, along with mining a couple of other altcoins makes them a more profitable pool than others.
The crappy rubber-contact dell one my company gave me. I used to like my Filco Majestouch with Cherry Brown switches but I feel better knowing that if I spill coffee or damage it somehow I won't be out any money. I'm going to stick with cheapo keyboards.
Former iCal/iSync creator launches Nephorider: visualize your AWS setup
So even gambling sites use Bitcoin! That double-spend attack sounds so weird, I wonder why it's even possible. Why does Bitcoin trust the owner of larger amount of BTC (51%) more than those with less? I thought that trusting every client equally (less) would be a greater advantage, than trusting the largest group of clients. That part is hard to understand.

What would happen, if due to a war many of the datacenters on earth were destroyed and we would only have 1/4 of the computing capacity left. Would sending BTC become impossible, or is mining not possible then?
When you mine on a pool you are giving that pool complete control over your hashing power. For example there's pools that completely switch which coins you are mining every once in a while (every few minutes to hours) up to the pool operator.
Yes, the overlay became more effective. Saw 4-5x increase in sign up rate in some cohorts. It certainly gave a much higher sign-up rate than without any overlay. In fact, just trying a dismissable overhead banner was also not working as great as an overlay.
Why not show the overlay when the user performs an action rather than after a delay? For example, displaying it when the user scrolls to the bottom of the page content. Or half way through but display it in a way that doesn't interrupt reading (as a fly-out from the right hand side perhaps)?

The optimal time to display something like that is when the user is engaged, interested and open to receiving more content from the site - not "after an arbitrary period of time".
Not to mention that the HN link might have even expired by the time you get to click it :-)
Am I the only one who thinks this is a step backwards? Electoral Roll data is already publicly available on EC websites, with probably worse data security and privacy procedures than anything Google would implement. Anyone who has seen one of the Indian government's 90's era websites, half of which are regularly defaced by 'hackers', and the other half blinding you with blink tags and marquees, should have been looking forward to something designed my competent people.

Rather than derail the procedure completely, they should have negotiated on having systems completely based in India with hardened outwards-facing security.

This is all coming from a CS student who recently came of voting age and wants to participate in the democratic process but has so far been completely put off by how wasted his efforts have been, and how hard it has been to get anything done (like get the correct spelling of my name on the roll).
A restraining order means no contact, period. Life isn't kindergarten. Just because it's "online" doesn't mean that kindergarten rules apply. "No touching" doesn't mean "let's see if I can get away with just touching you with one pinky." A friend request, even if easily rejected, is definitely contact, as much as a text message or a phone call (which can also be blocked). The issue isn't how easy it is to block, it's whether the person under the restraining order tried to initiate contact with the person being protected by the restraining order.
What classes as a small business? Up to what size? I don't have figures but I have worked for 2 in the past that wrote software for Windows, one solely existing for the software, the other for complimenting their services with a side software product. They managed to turnover > £1million and >£4 million respectively.

Do we need to have thousands of companies listed in order for their software to qualify as "software" in your eyes?

The main point was that Tim ignored desktop native software in his analysis of software, which I felt was an oversight given that probably 98% of jobs involving a computer use desktop software all day long, software that was purchased. I do not see Doris in the admin office using a web browser all day long for her job.

Just because you and I might not be buying desktop software in droves does not mean that there isn't a market for it, a pretty sizeable market. Home users might not be buying masses of desktop software but companies still do, particularly through licensing. Tablets haven't changed the way many people do work at work. At home perhaps, but not work.

I am not sure what your point is or why the size of the business is important to what software is being produced...?
The post is all about how to reduce that same feeling. Convert hate to love, if possible. ;)
No, actually. Unlike you, I have been talking about the issue with people. People that aren't very tech savvy too. A lot of them will comment with "I have nothing to hide," or just "I don't care, it doesn't concern me," or even "it's a good thing" and most of them give more credibility to what's written online than to a single person explaining them various reasons how that system can be abused.

That's why I feel pro-privacy projects should explain why privacy is good. Because a lot of people don't seem to realize that. Kind of like you didn't realize that it's not me who needs a well-worded explanation (though I would surely spread it).
If you don't control light in your bedroom or correctly use a quality blindfold, research shows you could still be trashing your sleep related hormones. From 6 to 12, you have a lot of daylight to block, and just a little bit is enough to mess with you. Also, your body was designed for a year-round average of 12 hours of reduced light.

I've considered a similar schedule. Lots of potential drawbacks to it.
How did you go from being an adequate to exceptional programmer?
I'm new to web development and am primarily self-taught. I know enough to get my own site live, make it look good, and make somewhat nuanced decisions about its architecture and the best method for accomplishing X task.

But now I feel stuck. I just started working full-time as a software developer (!) and was hoping this experience would help me learn a ton--however, for whatever reason, work is relatively slow and I end up doing what I already know or am left out of any "teaching" going on.

I'm a little nervous I'm stuck when it comes to my skills and don't know what to look/ask for next. What experience/situation allowed you to learn the most? Was it an awesome mentor, a great freelance project, some course you took? Is it something I could find at work or does real learning come when you're working on your own projects?
> we would need to compare it with the terribleness of having no expedient legal recourse ...

We largely have this data. Historically there were no TROs, and domestic violence was higher than it is today. However, there is no evidence that domestic violence is lower as a result of the "easy TRO" process. Instead, we see that incidence of all violent crimes have plunged in the past 30 years.

I would wager that domestic violence rates fell in conjunction with overall violence rates. And that TROs had little, if any, impact on them. This would mean that TROs are likely to be net negative, because they add a new negative of false accusations.
>Nitpicking: LaTeX is a bad example because it's bulit on TeX, which does have macros. :)

True, had TeX itself in mind!
Well, with Microsoft (and many other software company) ready to pull the plug of updates on this OS, I hope you have faith in your antivirus to stop every unpublished exploit.
This article misses the point of steam boxes, entirely.

Misconceptions the author appears to be under:

1.) Valve are releasing hardware. They are not, and do not plan to.

2.) Laptop steam boxes will come in the future. This makes absolutely no sense, the entire purpose of SteamOS is big picture mode for TV gaming. It's not even meant for desktop gaming, yet alone on-the-move gaming.

3.) Ironic that in his discussion of where Mac users might flee to he says "Dell and HP got nothin’." when one of those companies is creating one of the first steam boxes which Valve announced on Monday (Dell)

4.) Also ironic that in that same paragraph he dismisses Linux, without realising that if you close the gaming part of a steam box all that's left is linux. Not even a new OS based on a linux kernel, just linux.

Just a really poor article which didn't need to be written.

Disclaimer: I work in marketing on behalf of one of the steam box manufacturers, the above views are my own and do not reflect those of any company.
I don't know if I can accept the prognostication of someone who thinks that in 2003 "any self-respecting developer was carrying a MacBook, preferably the one the size of a small aircraft carrier". My preferred development environment has been Linux running on a _desktop_ since I started programming. Why would I move to the much less capable OSX or to a neutered version of Linux, when I can just install fedora or ubuntu and have a much more capable ( and in my opinion better ) workstation ?
The reason plugins are not in the main git is that each of them has its own repo. Which begs the question - why are they copied from a release zip and not cloned from repos?

There are a few more funnies there: .gitignore does not ignore the binary files added by these scripts, if there is a new node-webkit and then LightTable release and you re-run the script, your local old node-webkit copy will overwrite the new copy you just downloaded :)

Someone needs some solid packaging help. Oh and node-webkit people need a LOT of very good packaging help. Their build process is so convoluted, it might actually spawn an extra-dimensional entity.
Which statistics? I'm honestly curious.

I presume you've read http://blog.startifact.com/posts/python-2-gravity.html?

All the new python3/python2 libraries I've noticed adhoc recently have been doing the horrible 'polyglot' one-code-base-support-python2-and-python3 thing, or been in python2.
I've had good managers, and bad.

A good manager knows his people, their skill sets, and how they work. He knows what work he can give them, and how much and what kind of supervision they need.

Like this; Ann needs only to be given a goal, and guidance. Bill works best with a daily walk-by. Charles needs constant and close supervision.

He will be able to tap dance with _his_ manager, explain what his people are doing, and why, and run interference as needed between 'management' and 'politics'.

Most of all he knows _people_. He may not know exactly what Bill is going on about when he talks about 'fsck' but he can tell when he's being bullsh*tted.

A bad manager can't do any of that.
"They should be ashamed of themselves," said the man walking out of a strip club. It's what he always says when he walks out of a strip club. ;)
OS X fragmentation. A problem?
Does this case clarify whether the Google+ invite was sent individually and deliberately, or as part of a mass "find friends" style feature and thus inadvertently?
Bitcoin, litecoin, dogecoin:  How to explore the block chain
I am thinking the writer saw a nice piece of hardware that wasn't made by apple and for a second he is thinking what would happen if he stepped outside the reality distortion field that consumes the west coast.
That is a good point. We tried that but were not convinced about whether we are able to capture's user intention only via scroll tracking since our pages have images and users tend to quickly scroll through to get a "feel" of the content.

The post details how to show overlay at a more effective time. Intent is to use time spent on page as a proxy for user engagement since scroller tracking was not so effective.
I also suspect the relative ease of relocating a large number Australian's to the UK would have a big impact (ease of getting visa's etc).
I know far more people who have no reliable memory of pre 7 than I do of any that have no reliable memory of their 20s.

Now, you seem to be saying it is simply a matter of the age of the memory. But you are completely disregarding the study, which shows that children around the age of 8 have a massive dropoff in what they can remember from a scant 2 years ago. This isn't a case of 2 years being a significant time. Indeed, they went out of their way to show that at age 6 they had a high recollection of things 2 years prior.

If there are studies on this at other ages, I'm interested. But the dismissive "older memories of course are lost" seems somewhat rude. Do you have specific questions with their techniques on how they established 7 as a significant age? Do you just think there would be other significant ages, as well?
'Heat maps' find cervical cancer
I disagree completely, it's good to know from what position someone is arguing. And it's also interesting to see that someone with similar experience to mine came at completely different conclusion. So thanks nostrademons for the comment. While I disagree with most of what he wrote (I agree only with social factors trumping technical ones)it was still relevant as a whole.
I encourage people to look at the paper Transactions as Proof-of-Stake & The End of Mining[0] defining a form of the idea. BitShares[1] (due out in Q2 2014) will implement this.

[0] https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=1138.0

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BV55IrZi7g
I think they do them to, but I never use them because I don't read programming books on anything other than my PC since I keep the book and the code side by side.
> they are much more likely then men to be the victim

That's the common belief. How do we know it's true, and not a "just so" story?

My investigations into this led me to CDC reports (and others) showing that DV / IPV was largely 50/50. Harm was more often done to the smaller partner (i.e. women). But women also tended to use more weapons in their attacks.

These reports aren't hard to find. Most people don't look.
Five Lessons From Bitcoin
once you move pass the $100 mark per instance you are much much better off with a dedicated server. With OVH you could even start with $60 or $80.

I sorta agree although I think the barrier is somewhat higher than $100/month.

One of the biggest wins with a service like Linode is that if hardware fails, you often don't even need to know about it. And if your server were to fail, they'd either get you running again from your image pretty quickly or you could at least spin up a new VPS from your backup.

With a dedicated server, no matter how cheap, getting back up and running again can take a while even in the best of situations unless you're running hot spares or are already load balancing. It takes time to commission new boxes even at the best of the dedi providers and usually you'd just wait for hardware fix/replacement which can take hours.
I've never said that when walking out of a strip club.

But I guess you're defending the 1 weird trick linkbaits because they work or something??
Just commenting to say thanks for mentioning the bongos! My house-mates thought I was mad when I bought them as a student, but it quickly turned into a house favourite. I would still recommend them to this day if you can get your hands on them.

Re: flow-state - perhaps the only game where this is possible at any level of intoxication.