skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Eventually those who need static typing and parametric polymorphism will switch to Haskell anyway, where both are done in a much better way, both syntactically and implementation wise.
It's 7669 in hex.
<T>. they know who they are.
I actually like 3D (usually). It may be a gimmick, but it's one I actually like.
> I knew how to calculate with radians, but never understood their basis until viewing this animation, despite asking people on a number of occasions what the benefits were vs. degrees. (They never gave me a real answer to that question, and certainly never derived the basis for radians.)

Well, the way I think of the basis for radians goes like so:

1. All circles are similar to all other circles (assumed without proof), so there's a relationship between the radius of a circle and its circumference.

2. Angles, being scale-free, ignore the size of a particular circle; if an angle captures 1/3 of a small circle, it will capture the same 1/3 of a larger one, or a smaller one.

3. We can use the combination of an angle ("How much of the circle are we talking about?") and a radius ("How big is this circle?") to specify an arclength along the edge. We do it by multiplying the radius by the angle, and then by a conversion factor.

4. The radian measure is chosen so that the conversion factor mentioned in step (3) is equal to 1, which is easy to multiply by.

Here's the problem: out of a normal-sized group of randomly selected math students, expect between 0 and 1 of them (generally 0) to be interested in hearing you say this.

There's another argument for using radians (related, but not obviously so, to the first), which goes like this:

1. When measuring in radians, the trig functions behave well when taking the derivative: d/dx (sin x) = cos x and so forth.

2. If we used degrees (e.g., call dsin x the sine function for degrees instead of radians), we'd get all these awful constants mucking up our computations. d/dx (dsin x) = (180/π) dcos x, and d/dx (dtan x) = (180/π) dsec^2 x. The fourth derivative of sin x is sin x, but the fourth derivative of dsin x is (1049760000/π^4) dsin x. So we use radians to measure angles for the same reason we use e to measure logarithms -- they are more correct.

That one has the double disadvantage of being something no one wants to hear and drawing on applications they haven't yet heard of.

There's a shorter, less accurate version of the first approach I presented, that goes like so:

1. A circle's radius and circumference are both linear measures; they both have units of length to the first power.

2. Therefore, the conversion between them is a dimensionless (= unitless) number, a constant.

3. Radians are the unique correct constant for that "conversion" (there can't be more than one, any more than there can be more than one constant that converts meters to kilometers).

This is short and easy to say, but is sloppier and unsatisfying to precisely the students who care.
Doesn't Go already do runtime code generation to implement closures?
Can someone show this to Aaron Sorkin so we can be sure that he does a much better job than Matt Whiteley...

[Not that Sorkin would ever produce anything other than a stellar script, anyway]
I think that eventually movies/games will be like experiencing something as real as a dream, ie on the track that the Oculus Rift is going.

The 3D we have now is just okay I guess, but most of the time I choose to see 2D versions. At the end of the day, I just want to enjoy a good story... and on film preferably, as digital still looks too TV-ish for me.
I read my RSS feeds in Mozilla Thunderbird.
I would play up the extension as an accessibility enhancement, and cite the ADA and accessibility guidelines. This makes the point about the users' 'right to transform data' more clearly -- access and transformation is about usability, and usability is a legal right.

The administration will greatly fear an ADA action, or arguments that come even close to them, while drawing parallels. Students crying 'Freedom!' is old hat, and will get a less effective response.
It's not so much that cargo cultism "works" (however defined); it's that if everyone is doing it you're obviously not going to do worse than they are by doing the same thing. So from a relative standpoint, you're home free.
Oh I'm not disagreeing with the logic, it's just that our industry moves as a herd, if there aren't large orgs doing it it's hard to justify to manager types.

Manager types barely tolerate literate programmers, let alone someone who can make something that a mouth breathing moron can't understand.
"They are doing something that 600 million years of evolution never prepared them for. This is a deep problem, which no amount of technical tweaking can fix. Nothing will fix it short of producing true "holographic" images."

I've no knowledge of the field, but I am reminded of Clarke's first law:
"When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong."

Is it totally off-base here?
You made a point and quoted "studies" without spending the time to include references. When someone asks for the particular studies you are referencing, as to understand your perspective more clearly, a patronizing link to a generic search on LMGTFY does not help.
Can you add an RSS Feed. Also why is the homepage forcing Javascript as the default instead of ALL languages as default with selection of each or all on the side (all option is missing).
Today, I'm the Edge Case
Very well stated. And you're right, no need for scare quotes.
Do we disagree about something? If so, honestly I don't know what it is.
He's not saying it's impossible. He says true holograms would do the trick.
That is exactly my problem with 3D, total gimmick. Not to mention how dim it is compared to normal 2D.

A director cannot get away from having something come flying at you. I recently went to see the 2nd Hobbit (in 2D) and it is so painfully obvious when you can tell something is supposed to be "flying at you". What is this Disney World?

I am however looking forward to VR people making "Ready Player One"-like movies in the future where you are truly immersive.
Sounds good. And sorry for the snarky tone in my original comment. I try to avoid such things, but, alas, the HN edit period is over, and I am now chained to that comment forever.

P.S. I think the reply to your comment by lvs has some good thoughts.
It's interesting that this model has been unsuccessful in the US, but fits the demand profile perfectly in other wealthy countries.

The American market, as always, is difficult to move.
(random user posted the link here) While writing text file design doc I was looking for a way to create boxes and stuffs like and came across your cool site. Just want to share & bookmark it via HN. Sorry for the unexpected traffic :D Thanks for this project !
Interesting word to apply to anything related to golang. Seems more accurate to suggest that golang (and interest) is an alternative to pretentiousness.
oDesk, elance, fiver.com
Thanks for this comment. If you have the time, could I ask for your advice about this route? I'm a Windows sysadmin who's been working to transition into programming. I've made a few webapps, which I somewhat enjoy making, but lately I've become interested in data science.

I have a stable position now where I have a lot of time to learn new things not directly related to my job. I've been trying to figure out if I should simply take advantage of that while not working in a related field or to look into a business analyst position. In fact I was just contacted a few days ago by a recruiter for just such a job!

Would creating public demo projects alone be enough? Or should I get some experience -- even just as a spreadsheet jockey -- while potentially having much less time to devote to learning? To give you a better idea of my situation, I oftentimes have days where I can spend half of it learning whatever... and my boss is even fine with that (and has encouraged me to move on to better things, since I can't really go any further here). Any insight that you can offer would be very much appreciated.
That clock is wonderful. Thanks for sharing it.
I have mixed feelings about the "correct" answer. Davy showed that wires glowed when enough current was passed through them. Does that count? Swan improved on that with his lightbulb lasting longer, but a few minutes life is incomplete. Edison finished the invention.

Me, I tend to give the credit for the invention to Edison, while acknowledging that he stood on the shoulders of others. It's how credit is done for most inventions.
I think the designers of Clojure intend it as a language for experts. In many fields non-experts can make nice progress, but they need to be aware that they may stub their toes.
So, pull requests, code reviews, pairing, etc. are available and well established as means for helping people make the transition from beginner to journeyman (person) and beyond. If I know how to walk, but not how to ride a bike, I hardly think others should be denied nice bike routes.
It is quite conceivable that a $28M gift now would be perceived to be less significant than a $10M gift in late 1980. (media leading us to believe that 1B is the new 100M and all of that)

It is also conceivable that Woz seems distant from this huge financial figure not because of his being a successful "one-percenter" but due to a fundamental disinterest in money.
You're pretty much spot on.

Roger Ebert is the sort of person who believes any technology older than him is normal and anything newer is inherently wrong because it's not what he's used to. We didn't evolve to blend a series of 30 static images per second into seamless motion, but we cope with that so well that no-one actually thinks about it.

Eventually 3D will become consistently well done instead of a gimmick, and it will be just another thing to use when crafting a movie like colour, moving cameras and depth of field.
It was RyanC again, no?
If I remember correctly (haven't seen it since 1999), _Pirates of Silicon Valley_ has a scene depicting Woz discussing this with Jobs, stating he's going to do it because it's the right thing.
Protecting the Free Speech of censors, or "The system works"
Go does not generate code at runtime.
Yeeks, I've been found. ;-)

For the record, I found that memo to be very significant and also quite reassuring. However, it exhibits the same kind of terminological muddled-ness that I was talking about in my earlier comment.

Or maybe it does. Yale is a private organization. The University of Alaska (whose president wrote the memo you linked to) is an avatar of sorts of the government of the state of Alaska. In what sense is such an institution restrained by constitutional limitations on government? This seems to be a surprisingly poorly settled question in U.S. law.
I use generics every day in typescript. I'm waiting to use go until it has them.
an example app would be awesome !
Gravity was the first 3D movie I've seen, and I was quite pleased at how little they decided to gratuitously do that.

On the other hand, there are numerous animated films I've seen on DVD in the last few years (Despicable Me 2 being the latest example) that had entire sections that clearly existed for no other reason than to justify the 3D ticket price.

I enjoyed Gravity, the 3D effect occasionally added to the experience and didn't detract much. I wait for the next time 3D really adds to the experience before I do it again, and I'm guessing that will be a long time.

The 3D ads before Gravity started (including Hobbit 2), on the otherhand, were often unwatchable.
...starting with definition of the problems...
Don't forget the Volt was practically being given away, which certainly skews the market some.
An electric kettle uses a lot less energy than a pot on the stove to boil water. I wonder how much water you'd need to boil to break even?
I've completely moved on to C-m instead of RET and C-h instead of Backspace. I did this after feeling some stress on my right pinky (it would twitch involuntary when I laid in bed after a long coding day,) on which occasion I also switched from Dvorak to Programmer Dvorak (sharing the load from typing square brackets and curly braces among other fingers.) My left pinky, on the other hand, didn't suffer much because Caps Lock was already remapped to Ctrl.
I suspect the opposite but we'll never know. It seems clear to me that jobs had the vision and ability to make things happen which is typically more important than the technical know-how.
you're awesome! you totally get the idea, people if the language does not fit your needs move on!!!! I mean seriously making all the fuss about generics even though that Go is being used in major projects (Cloudflare, UK.gov) yet we see more people arguing that is not right.

I'm glad Rob Pike and Co. don't give a rats a about such opinions.
Leading architecture site Dezeen creates category just for tech companies
Wow - I don't even know where to start. . .

>>>>> They most certainly help members of their respective congregations.

You missed this part of the article:

"In 2010, Catholic Charities USA reported expenditures of between $4.2 billion and $4.4 billion, according to the Chronicle of Philanthropy, which publishes an annual list of the 400 biggest charities in the United States,"

I'm pretty sure NONE of that is going directly back to congregation members. It's charity, which means it's earmarked for other people who need it more than the church does. I spare you the biblical quotes, but that's why they do it, it's part of their religion and belief system.

>>> But they also can do a lot of harm, like you know, oppressing people by opposing same sex marriage, or pretty much anyone who doesn't share their religious beliefs.

>>> Since we're focusing on catholics, what good is done by denying all of your employee's spouses insurance coverage, just so you don't have to extend the benefit to people in same sex marriages? http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03....

Unreal.

I'm not going to take your bait troll, but nice try.
Can we just please build an exact replica of Google Reader that can handle power users?
"SWATing" is a common "prank" skids pull. Good money says the attacker did it for the same reason they stole the db (they can), you guys are hugely over-thinking this.
TL;DR: long winded bad analogy, but maybe helpful

That doesn't sound quite right to me. Not that it is wrong, but maybe looking at it the wrong way?

For the discussion, I propose an object has some state, and can receive messages and send messages in response.

A class is the abstract idea of what an object should be like. To break out the bad analogies, it's like ordering from a restaurant menu. You ask the runtime for an instance of a class. If you want something special, you have to have it put on the menu first. Prototype restaurants have no menus, but they have the dishes on display, and you can order those. Or, if you're so inclined, just point at your neighbours' food and order what that guy's having. If he's eaten half of it already, you'll only get as much as he has left, but luckily you can add combine it with other dishes or ingredients as you go.

You can see that if we put some rules in place about which objects can be copied, and what happens during copying exactly, and we call some special objects classes, and use them to create other special objects we call instances, a prototype-based object system can be made to behave like any class-based object system. If we bake those special rules into the language, we make the computer's job easier with hard-wired shortcuts.
Dear GitHub: Please make it possible to "follow", or at the very least, star an Organization. I want to bookmark https://github.com/rtc-io, not a particular project they are doing.

Organizations, as currently implemented, are the opposite of "social". Spend some of that $100 million and fix it please. Thanks.
World's most confusing article. SWAT effect I might say.
I hate the "Great Man" theory of history. It misses everything. Hitler was responsible for NAZIsm in Germany lets SO many people off the hook (including people in the US, UK, etc.) and "Jobs made Apple" takes credit away from so many others who not only deserve it, but in aggregate deserve ALL of it.

I'm a Jobs fan in many - but a fan of what he actually did (minus being a douche), not the myth.
> I don't know of legitimate websites that obfuscate their JS. (Minification doesn't count.)

What exactly is the difference between obfuscation and minimization? Could you write a program to tell the difference between a JS file that's been benevolently minified versus maliciously obfuscated? For that matter, how do humans tell the difference between minification and obfuscation?

I think that, if you define "obfuscation" as "transforming source code into a less readable form," then most automatic program transformations -- especially those specifically intended to reduce the size of the resulting code -- will also be obfuscations.

Of course, if only malware authors would make their products comply with RFC 3514, these problems would go away; security sandboxes and antimalware programs could simply and effectively filter based on the intent of a program's author, rather than static or dynamic analysis of the program's code [1].

[1] http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3514
Auralizr – Hear yourself transported to another place in real time
3D strikes me as superfluous. Our brains already look at the images projected onto a 2-dimensional plane and infer the third dimension. It's absolutely a gimmick, and don't get me wrong, it can be fun, but it doesn't contribute anything meaningful to the viewing experience.

Call me when the brain interface is ready and we can actually travel around in the space, because that's another story.
You might be interested in this book. It's required reading in many CS curricula:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Mythical-Man-Month-Engineering-Ann...
which 2 indian places do you consider to be better?
Docker author here. I really doubt performance would be a problem. Namespaced linux processes access devices the same way every other process does: by getting a file descriptor to it and making syscalls against that. What we need to figure out is a portable way for a docker container to declare "I need access to the following devices". I would love to work with anyone interested to add that to the docker APIs for 1.0. I think long-term stable binary delivery is an important thing to do and I would like to help.

Ping me at solomon@docker.com about this anytime.
Another factor is simulator sickness. Even if you could get the perfect 3D environment going (say via the Oculus Rift), your inner ear will start to complain that what it is seeing is not matching what it's feeling and your stomach will thinks its been poisoned and induce vomiting.

The only way '3D' will ever work is if the movie is jacked straight into your brain, ala 'Strange Days'.
Opium Poppy Growth Booming In Afghanistan
i don't get it.... ???
I have used odesk successfully for some small data entry jobs.
A small price to pay for what? What are you supposed to be achieving by causing the candidate least aligned with your interests to take office?
I think it would be really helpful if Google disabled automatic updates for extensions. Letting third parties to push modified code to clients without any user intervention is just so insecure that I can't believe it actually is a feature. Just the fact that Chrome updates automatically is bad enough.
I think I have seen 4 or 5 movies in 3D and Gravity was the only one which was well made.
> We didn't evolve to blend a series of 30 static images per second into seamless motion, but we cope with that so well that no-one actually thinks about it.

While this is mostly true, 30fps is not good enough to the point that no one notices. For example, even with the relatively little gaming I do, I notice when the fps falls to 30. In movies, the Hobbit was shot at 48 fps, and viewers complained that it felt to life like (this is likely just a way of saying 'more lifelike than I am used to').
A Rare Connection: My Photo Shoot with John Schneider
I brought up dana roasting and red rock cafe not because they only have great coffee, but also they have a great atmosphere with lively discussions amongst thinkers and live music to boot. No coffeeshops in san francisco has that great combination.
Google's knowledge graph eating into Wikipedia page views?
I have been writing Go daily at work for about a year and a half. It is now my primary language, and my default choice for any new projects, the way Python used to be. Before that, I come from a background in functional programming (and still find functional programming to be my favorite paradigm).

It seems to me that there are two disjoint sets of people: those who write Go regularly, and those who complain about generics in Go.

Of course, you can interpret this either way you wish!

1) Perhaps those latter people would like Go despite its lack of generics if they only bothered to get familiar with idiomatic Go.

2) Perhaps the lack of generics is precisely what prevents them from writing Go on a daily basis.

But as someone who actually does write Go on a daily basis, and has for a year and a half, I can honestly say that I've only ever missed them a handful of times. And I say this as a functional programmer who is used to being able to call "map" everywhere.

In fact, if I had to prioritize the things that I wish I could change about Go, generics would not be in the top three - not even in the top five[0]. They're just really something that I don't miss anymore.

[0] I could tell you what they are, but that'd be making it too easy - give Go a shot, long enough to realize you really don't need generics as much as you think you do, and then you'll probably have a good idea of the good, bad, and ugly when it comes to Go.
I think Gravity is a special case, Cuaron (and/or his team) can make depth out of flat 2D, Children of Men had me speechless quite a few times (the motorcycle ambush...).
it would be interesting if they could get a diag mode working though :)
I remember reading about a holographic jeans advertisement that was supposedly projected out towards a sidewalk, I think in NY city. This would have been about ten years ago.

Maybe I'm mistaking real life with a movie.

Does it ring a bell with anyone?
The NYT is executing a decade-long return to payment-based reporting. The early parts include easy-to-circumvent paywalls so that they can have some price discrimination [1] while also setting the social norms that payment is expected for web content. The later stages will likely include more rigid restrictions on content -- but that will only fly once "pay to read" is something people expect from expert content on the web, rather than are surprised by.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination
Yes but the point is that Apple only existed because Jobs worked to make it exist, despite not having any money of his own.
Isn't paying customers to choose their chips anti-competitive? I wonder what the EU Commission will have to say about that. Didn't Intel get fined €1 billion for something very similar during netbook age a few years ago?

http://techcrunch.com/2009/05/13/intel-fined-over-e1-billion...

I mean even if Intel isn't the biggest player in the mobile chip market, they're still #1 in chip revenues overall, I think, and it seems quite silly to have one competitor pay customers to choose its chips over the competition's chips. That can't be legal, and if it is, then it shouldn't be.
Digital thermostats work on electrical resistance which is more accurate than bimetallic thermostats. Also bimetallic thermostats basically only switch at one temperature whereas most digital thermostats can handle a range. If you intend on using a kettle for both coffee and tea, that range is desired since the ideal temperatures between coffee and tea is quite significant.