skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I am not English major, but I am pretty sure that the idea of becoming a writer by reading pieces of other people's texts is wrong. This is simply not enough. There is a "second component" in good writing, and it is not just about language usage.

One could read Selinger or Pamuk or Sartre or Hesse, to realize that this second component is much more important, while masters like Nabokov whose speciality is playing with words might show you that wording is also important.)

The transition from reading to writing ones own texts, not imitating or copy pasting is also not clear, and, of course, one never could become a good writer only by excessive reading. Writing and speaking are different cognitive tasks from reading or listening.

So what? Reading of good code is important, it teaches style, how to be brief, concise, precise. But where to find the good code? Well, the recursive list functions in Scheme are worth reading. Some parts of Haskell Prelude are worth reading, some macros of Common Lisp, etc.

The code of "the top writers" are worth reading. Code from PAIP or On Lisp or SICP are obvious examples, while some code, like from Practical CL which is mostly a mechanical translation of OO stuff only adds more confusion.

So, reading "good" code is still the must, the same way that reading Catcher In The Rye or Zen And Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance or Atlas Shrugged is still the must.

But programming is about writing, which means expressing ones own ideas and realizations and understanding, so one must have these in the first place.

In this sense programming is like writing a poetry - it must emerge and form in ones mind before it could be written down. The best poetry is written exactly like this - committed to the paper suddenly as it emerges, without any later changes.

This reflects the process of "emergence" of ideas or profs in a mind of scientists who are continuing to persue a problem for years - suddenly it is here, as if it came from subconscious. It seems that the best code, like these classic Lisp procedures or parts of Prelude has been written this way.

Of course, reading Java is as meaningless as reading graphomans or some lame and lenthy political pamphlet in a third-rate newspaper.)
Maybe you could clarify what you meant in the comment I replied to then.

It seemed like you were saying that a laptop with Windows 8 somehow precludes "some people from doing something productive" just because the Metro interface is there in the background.

I'm saying that hasn't been my experience whatsoever, using a Windows 8 laptop for development work.
Anchors?

Tables?

Or my very favourite: last match wins, which shortens your ruleset considerably.
If you're going to accuse a leading provider of "misleading or false guidance" you need to provide some evidence.
This is a little disconcerting. I have 3 computers backed up with Backblaze. I had a successful 350 GB restore last week. I hope that wasn't an anomaly.
Yes, RCD - Residual Current Device is the same thing as a GFI.
The Peta Age (2008)
Coming from working in IT support, it's frustrating to me that you've made a big public ordeal over something that, firstly was fixed by rebooting your PC, and secondly you haven't tried downloading the file a second time. I'm not necessarily defending Backblaze here, but posting this when it doesn't work quite right the first time seems a bit harsh. I feel like we need more information before we all grab our pitchforks.
FYI I left Backblaze for Crashplan for the same reasons.

I believe Blackblaze also removes the backup after some number of hours, so if you don't download the backup by then, you're in big trouble.

Crashplan also allows external and network drives to be backed up.
I was talking to a friend with a sample size not much larger, but he was monitoring traffic for a signup page through Google Analytics and watching his list on Mailchimp. Over a dozen clicks on the email signup button, but only one person in Mailchimp (who he personally knew).

As a follow up, there's this:
http://www.jasonleister.com/more-double-opt-in-nonsense/
From what I gather, my situation may be the anomaly. Still concerning though. I'm still processing a 340 GB restore in the hopes that this one will go better. We'll see.

Your success has me hopeful!
For this very reason I've always backed-up to both an encrypted external HDD and another encrypted copy in the cloud.
No it doesn't. Especially when it comes to HTTPS.
The most elaborate "Hello, World" program ever written.
Will Code if Taught
Hello,

I am a student who is passionate about technology but has no experience coding. I am currently taking an introduction to computer science course online at Stanford, but I feel like hands-on experience with a startup would be better than cookie-cutter course work. I am hoping that somebody has a position open for an unpaid intern who is willing to work in exchange for being taught how to code.
Regarding cosmological expansion, a million years has virtually no impact on us reaching ~4.8 billion galaxies at 0.99c. [1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQTfuI-9jIo#t=1670
From page 151:

is so unpredictable that "you cannot determine what his reaction would be in any particular set of circumstances." ____ stated that FEYNMAN was known at Los Alamos as a reactionary, because he was so conservative in his ideas and would not go along with the ideas of many of the people there of the same profession who were much less conservative in thetr thinking than he was. ________ stated he considers FEYNMAN to be a person of good character and completely loyal to the United States.

...

____ stated that FEYNMAN is not the type to be influenced by people such _______ as he makes up his own mind concerning every problem and a inclined to make a decision although this decision will not be popular with the group with which he is in contact.
Could you elaborate? Same reasons in that you had slow or broken restorations?

Also curious: have you had to restore with CrashPlan, and if so, how has that process differed?
While it might help "normalize" a programming career, it also reinforces the idea that no matter what a woman has accomplished (or is capable of) in her career, her physical appearance is at least as important when evaluating her accomplishments.

Full disclosure: I am a woman. I am also a student and CS major. I happen to be conventionally attractive, and rather than inspiring me, this kind of article contributes to certain fears I have, going into the industry. If we want to inspire young girls to be interested in programming, we should highlight the work of people like Marissa Meyer, who have worked really hard over many years...not give them the impression that being born tall and beautiful is as important as their resumes.
Renaming Tool
I recently worked on a Java project, and the ease of renaming classes and variables (via IDE) was really refreshing.

So, I wrote a somewhat-crude tool to make the experience of renaming things in Ruby (or other dynamic languages) a little bit nicer and more IDE-like.

The primary use case I had in mind was renaming a class, along with all of its associated "require" statements, all in one go. For a heavily-used class, this can be a little annoying.

You can find the source here:
https://github.com/skatenerd/rbname

And a video of a typical use case:
https://vimeo.com/82157486

I'm wondering if this tool addresses a problem that other developers have encountered. Is this useful to you?
"No it doesn't" what?

That it's ok to trust https to keep a huge download completely error free?
I wanted to teach high school at one point but couldn't. I was an adjunct lecturer at a college.
Well that's just not cricket.
I'd like to see more of coders from different interesting backgrounds having their 5 minutes in the spotlight reaffirmed as coders.

I'd like to see dancers who code, news anchormen, judges, soccer players and boxers who code (although last two might be harder with all the micro concussions).
Fan boys will try to tell you otherwise. But lets just admit Firefox is slower then Chrome. Its a fact. Even though i have been an Firefox users for longer then a decade.

Try Opening "Tab from Other devices". Firefox will stall.
Try using Feedly and open link in a new tab, Feedly will suddenly response very slowly.
There are also other page loading performance which Blink/Webkit leads. Not to mention Google's way of implementing advance preloading technique which seems to win as well, even though Firefox has something similar.

Yes I understand the geeks and tech cares about DRM. Yes I understand about implementation of Web Standard and Freedom. But most users dont. When ever i see users complaining about why not switch to Chrome on their computer. I just say no. I FORCED the usage of Firefox on 100s of computer in the office. If not, I bet users would choose a Chrome anyday.

So the point is, Mozilla needs to seriously think about its execution model. It needs to be efficient and not spread itself thin.
I feel the same frustrations with Piwik as I do in GA. In addition, my goal is to build something with an integration time under 5 minutes.
You feel that a 4 year degree is enough depth and background to learn all of the details of most technical fields to contribute original research to them? To me that seems unlikely and if someone could pick all of that up then they would already be in the Newton category and probably bypass the PhD process altogether.
There is no excuse for independent download software to fail because chrome is running, I don't care how fixed it is by a reboot.
The poorest president in the world
For me, this validates a lot of what I've often felt. I'm tired of being told, by feminists, that the reason I'm in computer science is because "white males are encouraged"; I want to tell them to get shoved in lockers, bullied, dumped in trash cans, harassed in the bathroom, and having the worst dating life in high school -- then tell me how "encouraging" is was. The reason I'm in computer science is because I enjoy it. I've often said to feminist friends that one does not go into computer science because they are encouraged - they often go into it because that's what they like, regardless of what anyone/society tells them. From what I can tell, this woman, the supermodel, felt social pains similar to mine and perused her interest nonetheless. I applaud her for that.
If you don't like the color change switching into the Start Page, there's a setting that uses a dimmed version of your desktop background as the Start Page's background too. It sounds trivial, but makes a big impact on how jarring the switch between them is. At this point, I usually just Win + type instead of Win + S because the Start Page just seems like an overlay over the desktop for me now with that one setting change. Similar to the Launchpad feature that OS X added a few versions ago.
I admire your plight and wish I would've taken your route. Good luck.
So you can! Well that's embarrassing. Guess I could try using the thing before I stick my foot in my mouth.
Their selling point is "Unlimited data backup for your Mac or PC, just $5/month." If you're in tech that should tell you it's not for storing "mission critical data" (paraphrasing the blogpost).

For $5/month you can also not expect round the clock, seven days a week personal attention.

Don't get me wrong, Backblaze seems like a kickass service for an off-site backup of my personal data.
I confess for the three journals I read most frequently, I also get paper copies delivered, because I find I browse and have ideas cross pollinate better that way.
I hit Win, type "ie" (short for iexplore.exe) and press enter. It only starts the metro version if it's set as your default browser.

You've made some pretty bold color choices, that would be distracting. Set your background to be your desktop wallpaper. Then the start screen just looks like an overlay, rather than a context switch.

1. http://i.imgur.com/WyiizIR.jpg

2. http://i.imgur.com/ROxIXp0.jpg
“OK Glass… Pull out.” This may be the most ridiculous Google Glass sex app yet
Interesting. You'd think that a custom radiation-hardened x86 or ARM variant would be sufficient.

Are there any space exploration vehicles running Linux?
But their arguments will become so spacious that you'll need 5 screen-lengths to debate with them

I think you mean 'specious', though I guess 'spacious' also fits that description.
I hope you'll scale up to other big cities with very expensive lunches.
Moxie did a great post on private contact discovery and why, as far as we know, it currently isn't practical:

https://whispersystems.org/blog/contact-discovery/

The bottom line is, you can't make a find_friends function that's remotely privacy conscious or secure against the approach taken here against Snapchat. Snapchat are effectively offering a public phone directory at this point, and they won't be able to fix it.
IBM isn't hip, but it's still a meaningful company that's thriving.
It does not go without saying that you should use wired connections instead of wireless. Wifi has a perfectly good error detection mechanism that gets layered on top of the TCP mechanism.
The point the poster above is making is: Generally when you see posts with not a whole lot of troubleshooting which are decrying that the major component of your entire company (IE: restoring backups), is fundamentally broken, usually this leads to PEBCAK. After 10+ years dealing with users who claim that $ITEM is broken (yet has been working for years for the majority of customers) sets off the PEBCAK meter in that either they are doing something wrong, or more troubleshooting is needed before jumping to conclusions. If further troubleshooting does seem to point to an edge case, then finger pointing can begin...
I also lost a drive recently and found that while uploading to them was a breeze, the download was coming in at 14KB/s.
I thought I was the one having a problem, but maybe not.
I agree with your point to a certain extent -- I've spent many years in IT Support as well. With that said:

* I went out of my way to avoid Pitchforks, merely calling attention to an issue and also ensuring I blamed myself enough
* A 6GB download took 12+ hours. How many times am I supposed to wait for critical data that long to have it fail, and what happens when I try my 340 GB restoration, wait weeks, and it fails?
* I think there are many potential better ways of doing it -- breaking into chunks and verifying each chunk as it is downloaded, any sort of check before the application says "complete", a little more finesse than merely using 7-Zip, etc. There are ways the experience could be improved is the point I'm making, since as customers this is the part where Backblaze really earns its keep.

I have no desire for pitchforks, which is why I pointed out that the CEO was extremely helpful and that I'm hopeful the problem will be resolved.

This is not an attempt to shame / dump on Backblaze; if they resolve the problem I'll very much still recommend and use them. However, both sides of the issue (my idiocy/negligence and Backblaze's areas for improvement) seem to be worth discussing.
AngularJS WebGL Directive
Not sure how accurate this can be if you have everything behind a secure login.

We have clients trying our SaaS software but nothing is on their website to indicate such, its all securely hosted by us via login.

So unless they are sniffing traffic, reading our secure web logs or our potential clients are posting on social media, there is no way they would know.
> So why does she matter? Because regardless of the reality, programming is still seen by the masses as a well paid janitorial function that only uncool, socially inept, nerdy males should do. (Notice that I didn't say could but should.) This is why a lot of people have a "I'm too good to stoop down and do this" attitude, when it comes to things like programming. "That guy should do it instead of me." Programming or most technical occupations just don't command the same level of respect in the West like a finance, legal, or medical job does regardless of the pay.

And the reality is that a lot of programming jobs are well paid janitorial functions. There is a lot of self delusion happening in the American programming industry that one needs to be a certain level of smartness (Observe posts on how all genius programmers have been programming since their youth). It really doesn't. There is nothing inherently complicated about most pieces of software related work. Note that this doesn't necessarily mean that there is not a lot of hard work in doing this efficiently. It is just that American programmers are loud and opinionated on how it takes years and years to become a good programmer. In India and China, people don't spend time thinking about the level of intellect required to write code, they just do it. In fact, dozens and dozens of them, of both genders. Now, there is a lot of that code that is bad. Yet, that is merely the normal distribution working at scale.

People need to think of programming as another job. Just because you were a snowflake and were oppressed in your high school doesn't mean that whatever you do in life is touched with some special magic that makes it inherently removed by people of other sub-cultures.
Your situation is an anomaly, or this specific incident?

You _have_ actually tested restoring from your only backup solution at a service you've been evangelizing for years, right?
Thank you for the positivity :)
Just over 'SSL' itself isn't enough, even if it was enough. There are so many broken configurations and weak ciphers that just having a lock on your url bar isn't enough.

https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/index.html
What makes you think the issue has anything to do with Backblaze, rather than something specific to the OP's machine?
Or over wireless. Absolutely.

If there was data corruption in the HTTPS stream, it wouldn't decrypt correctly or the packet wouldn't checksum correctly and it would be retransmitted.

TCP works just fine over wired vs wireless.
Is Perl really short of newbies?
Expound? Are you saying human intelligence grew from our deception?
Another bad title.The article says:

"The poorest half of the world’s population—that’s 3.5 billion people—control as much wealth as the richest 85 individuals."

and:

"The world’s richest 1 percent control nearly 50 percent of global wealth."

Right? Those are not the same thing.
A good point: "mission critical" is an overstatement and I should phrase that differently. "Critical" to me means personal value (i.e. family photos), and not necessarily in terms of timeliness (i.e. business related).

And to clarify, I don't expect personal attention. Contacting the CEO was because I thought there might be a legitimate problem with a server and support hadn't responded, and writing this blog came after I'd attempted to follow up with support but hadn't heard back for over 8 hours.

I've stated this elsewhere on the thread but I'm by no means out to shame Backblaze. I think there are some UX points worth revisiting, and I may be looking at another provider, but I'm not trying to damn the company. I think it's a discussion worth having on how they might do things better (and also how I might do things better).
If they are a real company (i.e. not a patent troll) and they're small, then they might appreciate the revenue from licensing their algorithm? Typically, per sale licenses are small. It is the volume that makes them look like big revenue streams.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermodel
0. I am not a lawyer.

1. Note that "algorithms" cannot be patented (in the US) [A]. Application of an algorithm to solve a specific problem can however be patented.

2. I am assuming you have access to the said patent. With '1' above in mind, read through the said patent multiple times, paying attention to the "claims" and see if you are actually violating them. Ignore if you have already done this. Just know that the claims are the most important part. Unless what you are selling includes everything that is needed by the independent claims of the patent, you are not violating.

3. If you find that you would be violating the patent, things will be against you if a lawsuit happens, as this will be considered to be a case of willful infringement, since it is already clear that you are aware of the patent.

4. If you are adding some real value on the top of what is claimed by the competition's patent or product, you may consider filing a patent of your own invention, if any, and if patentable. I know HN crowd is generally against patenting, so that is your call. This will NOT help you overcome the competition's patent, but would come in the way of your competition copying those aspects of your invention that were not already there in their product or patent.

5. Last but not the least, you may consider working in association with them rather than competing. Patents and laws aside, there is often a better human-friendly way of doing things.

Having said that, at the end of the day, evaluate your risks and rewards for this and other projects you may have in mind, and pick your best bets.

[A] https://www.google.com/search?q=patent+algorithms
So how does (did) a special inquiry like the one that was performed on Feynman work? It looks like publications were searched and people were interviewed, but does anyone know how those searches were prioritized? I've googled a bit and haven't been able to determine if there's any established procedure that doesn't rely heavily on the discretion of the officials performing the investigation.
> If we want to inspire young girls to be interested in programming, we should highlight the work of people like Marissa Meyer, who have worked really hard over many years...not give them the impression that being born tall and beautiful is as important as their resumes.

It is funny you say that because guess what showed up on my Linkedin news feed the other day. [1]

[1] http://qz.com/166317/why-it-makes-sense-to-pay-beautiful-ceo...
Whenever a cloud service failure is posted to HN, there are always posts basically telling the OP that expecting the service you paid for is a silly idea.

Why isn't the SaaS industry in general roundly criticized as the fly by night hacks they always turn out to be when someone gets burnt?
Quiz: Cop or Soldier?
Yep, you weren't. Glad to know I wasn't the only one. Speeds varied for me, though the transfer did take much longer than the estimates. And that makes sense, given that I'm sure it's a ton of bandwidth to deal with all of those multiple restores. All the same, setting some expectations in those situations would be helpful, too.
BugshotKit
> You may not agree, but I think having more women and minorities in programming would be a good thing.

When you say minorities, who exactly do you mean? Silicon Valley has more non white immigrants writing code than 'young white dudes'.
Haha, I appreciate the defense. At the same time, I understand the economical aspect of the service, and there is a measure of "you get what you pay for."

To be fair, I wouldn't call Backblaze hacks by any means, but I understand your point about the business responsibilities of companies and not giving them a pass just because they're a price-friendly SaaS.
It's interesting how HP, a loyal Microsoft partner and OEM, is now selling an old "outdated" OS. I think HP is the first major OEM to do so, and definitely not the last. Microsoft really screwed up with Windows 8 as they made it to complex for the average person, coupled with inconsistent UX. Build something people want, or at least, give people something they want.
He's not even sure that Chrome.exe was at fault. Why are you so quick to assume that it's Backblaze's fault in this one customer instance? He could have just reinstalled his machine, did a lot of weird configurations, etc. and not have even rebooted his computer a single time yet. Anyway, my point is that there is a lot of missing variables and information to make such assumptions. The customer is _not_ always right, you know.
How close are we to a real Iron Man suit?
Grandfather could marry grandson to avoid estate and generation-skipping tax?
Henrietta Lacks' family finally gets say in genetic destiny