skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
When I was a teenager, back in 1993, I played with this this genetic image generator by Karl Sims, running on a Connection Machine with 32768 processor: http://www.karlsims.com/genetic-images.html
(At the Pompidou Center, a contemporary art museum).

It obviously blew my young mind, with the 16 screens, the ability to select an image as the seed for the new series, the endless playability and the vertigo of not being able to ever go back and find any series again.

I don't know if a Cray would have been less or more suited to that kind of interactive installation.
But it surely was a incredible feat for the time.
Having a cleaner more targeted platform goes a long way. The bandwith consumption is a lot less on mobile and content specific communities often provide a more-targeted user-centric experience. They are quite similar, but sometimes being a little different, a little more focused, and more niche can go a long way.

edit: I also do not think these services are mutually exclusive.
The use of [Debatably Volatile Term] (hereafter DVT) is poor branding for a project or product, unless the cultural baggage associated with DVT aligns with the purpose of the project/product.

Assume that DVT has different connotative definitions to different audiences. If some of those connotative definitions are negative, then the use of DVT as a brand name will repel people who primarily associate DVT with that negative connotation.

Let's say that you decide to publish a project, and you choose a DVT that has positive connotations to you. If people point out that DVT has negative connotations they are not necessarily associating you with those negative connotations, they might merely be pointing out the weakness of DVT in branding.
Your anecdata, voluntary, sample-size-of-one survey has completely changed my mind. I feel terrible for having thought this was tacky before. To whom do I submit my abject apologies?

EDIT: Also:

Banishing any sort of word play because "the women"...

Straw-man.
a) How about "brochure"? b) Someone that runs for the hills when seeing a command called "bro", will also run from "man" even before they now about eithers meaning. Of course, these poeple don't exist, because anyone using this is a grown up man or woman.
Not really an answer to your question anymore, but this is perhaps a little-known anecdote.

The group within Microsoft that produced Encarta had a lot of teachers in it. After Encarta was retired, that group took it on themselves to create a lean competitor to Blackboard. The effort lasted about 2.5 years. It suffered from a lot of internal political resistance, because at the executive level, competing with Blackboard was viewed as being neither a smart battle, nor 'synergizing' enough with the Windows/Office prime directive. However, what eventually killed the project was the recognition/fear of how much bureaucratic resistance there would be from schools themselves, and perhaps to a lesser degree the tangle of privacy laws. That is, overall it was decided the risk/reward didn't make sense.
Disclaimer: I'm involved in a small LMS startup

It's funny to me because there's so much low hanging fruit in the business training industry but the clients tend to be absolutely fearful to make decisions beyond the norm.

The hardest part of convincing businesses that they don't need Blackboard or Moodle is reminding them all the features they don't use. Last year I featured our application to a client. I have a pretty scripted event that starts with creating a course with content in a few minutes and had people clapping because of the simplicity.

Despite that the first questions are always going over the "Feature Checkboxes" (Oh, you don't have wikis? What about a ticket system?)... it can be a very long sales cycle.

That and SCORM, oh man do I loathe SCORM
I know. Still, there is a difference between them not having consent because they weren't given consent, or because they haven't even asked for it. Maybe not legally, but I morally for sure. (I simply assume that the article isn't leaving out that they asked her, and that she said no.)
All the self-service aisle kiosks I've used are horrible machines that scream at you for tiny deviations.

Their UX reminds me of the Onion's video: "Franz Kafka International Named World's Most Alienating Airport":

http://www.theonion.com/video/pragues-franz-kafka-internatio...
This is not a problem with the professors. It's not about their age either. It's a problem with Blackboard.

Blackboard creates a lot of potential work for professors which often has unclear educational value (or is expected in addition to their regular work). It's not evident that it's a good investment of their time.
Maybe a stupid question but - are there regulations ISPs might use against this? I know it's illegal in most places to resell your bandwidth to neighbors and I wouldn't put it past them to equate giving away with selling.

I also wonder if HBO and other channels might get overzealous and shut people down for the p2p nature of it.

But all that said, this is the obvious future of the web until we have a true, free, ad hoc/distributed network and on some level I can't believe it took this long to get the ball rolling..
I must say I am one of those listening only users.
I like the like system and the stream it creates.
Only downside is since they updated their website it doesn't seem to work smooth on opera anymore.
I use the site a lot less after that, since I will have to boot up firefox.

I like how the music of today is becoming more eclectic, less taboos on what genre you can and cant mix.
And I get new music from soundcloud, youtube searching/discovering was never my thing but on soundcloud its easier.
Why would this hypothetically offended person not by offended by "man"? They would not use it(as offended as they are), therefore they'd never learn it meant "manual", just as they wouldn't learn that "bro" is short for "brochure"....right?
It's a nice idea, but I think the "can I get my paying customers to visit kickstarter" is the smallest and least useful of the possible markets.

Kickstarter is attractive because it serves people who do not (yet) have paying customers and so is audience building as well as validation. This requires an existing audience (afaik) so it's less vital.

the area I think this will truly shine is in corporate budget allocation. A backer for internally committing budgetary funds to new features will allow a huge range of options and voting preferences to be put within a company - hell it's pretty much the first step on the road to democracy within corporations (franchise for the owners of budgets)

this is actually one of those ideas I would want to actually do - it's got legs. anyone else got any thoughts?
> You should remember that there are actual people behind the words on your screen before you say something awful like this. This is not very nice.

I take it all back. I'm sure he's the life of every party.
Ultimately, it also makes the refusal of orders impossible, and then it could get really hairy real quick.
Could someone please explain to me -- why do people actually use this software enough to hate it?

I am a math professor at a university which uses it, and so I use it to mass e-mail my students and to record grades. And for nothing else.

I can see it has a billion other features but can't fathom wanting to use them. It looks like it is designed to make simple tasks tedious and clunky, and the article confirms this impression.

Is it that professors don't want to learn HTML and maintain simple course webpages? Are faculty trying to do some kind of automatic grading? Do administrations require profs to use the obscure features? Are ... ?
On windows it's the same. Although I think I usually install ipython outside of virtualenvs, because I tend to always use it.
Caltrain is a train, not a subway. I don't know the technical difference, but the trains are bigger and heavier, and the tracks are not elevated or really separated from their surrounding cities, and the "stations" are really "platforms." In other words, the suicide threat is along the entire length of the route, from SF to San Jose.
Academic software is notoriously hard to get right. Every school does things slightly differently and has a slightly different culture from other schools. Sadly, the people who are in the best position to design good course management software -- the students themselves -- are also the least trusted for the task (and also tend to be less reliable as workers, given the realities of being a student).

What really saddens me is when a school does design its software in house, then throws that away and buys Blackboard or whatever else.
This is pretty cool.
Can I suggest that you either increase the time limit, or have a 'start' button (but not a stop button).

I ran into to problems. One, the first question ran down most of it's time while I was reading your intro ('before I noticed there was a timer). Two, I cut many of my answers short because 20 seconds just isn't enough time to read and type out the answer. I liked the time limitation, but kinda wish I didn't feel rushed.
Everything I wish I knew before installing OpenBSD on BeagleBone Black
> I would be hard-pressed to think of a worse first language than C. You want to introduce people to the concepts of programming, which means abstractions and high-level thinking. C forces you to think in terms of the computer and its memory, which is just the opposite.

People should learn two programming languages at the same time, a very high level one such as Python, and a very low level such as C. Combining the top-down and bottom-up approaches to learning, simultaneously, yields the best results for most people. While learning Python, someone can begin to look inside the abstractions and get a feel for algorithmic complexity and such stuff. While learning C, someone can see how to use it to build an OS such as Linux.
As a co-founder of Picnik, I was surprised by this article. It contained several errors which is pretty astonishing given its brevity. Here are a few corrections:

1) Sposato was not a founder of Picnik. He was hired by the two founders, myself and Darrin Massena.
2) Sposato did not decide to sell Picnik. Naturally he was very involved in the process, but the decision was ultimately made by the board (which Sposato was not on). I can tell you that it was not an easy choice.
3) Picnik was not a "photo-sharing" site, it was a photo editing site with very limited photo sharing.
4) "One-third of our 25-person team, including my two business partners, quit right off the bat”. Both co-founders worked at Google for slightly more than a year. Sposato was there for about two years. Most of the people who left were marketing support or office management. We did lose our lead designer to Apple, but I don't recall any other product related departures in the first year.

Picnik was amazing. Great team, we had a lot of fun and millions of amazing customers. It was very rewarding to work on a product that your customers love. Selling was a tough choice. Picnik was very healthy, profitable and growing. We felt like we were able to capture much of that value in the sale price and also have the opportunity to work on a product at Google that we felt would have a huge impact.

Unfortunately for us, within our first six months Google decided to focus on Google+ and there wasn't room for any other photo product outside of Google+. I completely understood at the time why Google+ was important to Google, it just wasn't important to me. So I left. I don't know how we could have been able to predict the shift in focus to Google+ even with perfect visibility into Google. From what I gather, such a large shift in focus and investment was a unprecedented in Google before Google+.

I think Google is a great company, I have a super high opinion of the people that I met there. Perhaps this wasn't the optimal exit for the Picnik team, but it was pretty damn good.

-mike harrington
2,000 student hackers expected at Santa Monica hackathon this weekend
Ah I see, although wouldn't backers mostly be our users or people who are familiar with our product if it was on our own site funding features?

I think we'd go with credit card option as that's what we plan to use on the site

Either way it's awesome idea congrats on launching
Often, the people who are required to use this software are not the people who purchase this software for an institution.
While I agree that the name 'bro' was incredibly poorly chosen, I think the use of 'curl' may have less to do with weight-lifting analogies than the fact that it's an incredibly complex command with a 2280-line manpage.
> I would be hard-pressed to think of a worse first language than C. You want to introduce people to the concepts of programming, which means abstractions and high-level thinking. C forces you to think in terms of the computer and its memory, which is just the opposite.

This is actually exactly why I like the idea of C as an introductory programming language. Most of the time it's very clear what you are doing there is no magic. Mathematics also involves abstractions and high-level thinking, but you don't start out with calculus or linear algebra. You learn the basics then you abstract them.
This looks rather useful, though man pages should also contain examples, but a desperate command to just reach the examples would be nice. I would have called it "how."
Palo Alto High ("Paly") is next to the train tracks, but the suicide cluster was from Gunn High, across town, not from Paly.
Yes, but don't obsess about them. Prospective employers will usually ask for a resume. They won't read it very carefully. Remember the cardinal rule of resumes: the only purpose of a resume is to secure an interview.

If you work for BigCos or as something in tech other than a developer, Linkedin might matter as much as your resume (you still need one, though). If you're a startup dev, Github can have a similar impact.
Yep, so it is.

http://www.kumiyamashita.com/portfolio/profile/
Context matters. I take it from your comment that you're a man. If you were in a female-dominated profession like nursing or elementary school teaching then yes, I think things like that would wear on you pretty quickly after a while. Every time, it would be a tiny little reminder that no matter how hard you try or how successful you are, you'll still be a bit of an outsider.[0]

Some people would probably be more consciously aware than others of the fact that the 3 letters "bro" are a reference to "bro culture". Here are a few groups of people whom I think would be most likely to notice: People new to tech; women who've had bad experience with "brogrammer" types; "brogrammer" types themselves. It seems like a bad idea to adopt any policy likely to make the first two of those groups uncomfortable while signaling approval toward the third.

[0] Side notes: 1. Those professions are making a real effort to change these patterns to be more inclusive, too. And 2. Gender inequality in tech is nevertheless a more pressing problem than gender inequality in nursing, because tech is considered a higher status career.
So, I could download pedophile pictures with my neighbor's wifi bandwidth?
Thanks Jamie,

I wish I could say Java was my target market, but unfortunately, I'm more focused on javascript. The app will of course work with Java, and it will be open-source so maybe somebody will inplement some killer Java features.

Have you tried SublimeText or LightTable? Did those not fit the bill as lighter than Eclipse but better than Vim?
I agree, having more time / money is not enough, but it's a prerequisite.
We use it, it works fine.
Yes, it's a good option to pick a language with no powerful IDEs (static analysis and proper automated refactoring) as those are harder to move on from later on (IntelliJ IDEA or Visual Studio vs any typical Python/Ruby notepad). If you are using a basic text editor then you really have to learn the language and have fun debugging.
http://www.google.com/patents/US6988138
Talk about a daring public outreach initiative.
http://pinboard.in/

For $25/year, it'll scrape and save everything you bookmark, and you can view that copy even if the original site disappears.
ISO New England Burns Jet Fuel To Keep The Lights On During January Cold Snap
True true!
> I think you mean that classes are first order, but I don't want to put words in your mouth

please do. i'm a language user, not a designer.

> what features make javascript or Python a good reason to switch?

or, for a mostly-disinterested (in programming, i mean), entrenched group of users like biologists, this question becomes more like, "what features would necessitate a switch?" same question for plan 9 vs. linux or any technology that's trying to do a better job of filling a need that's already being met.
...and, of course, the answer is that there are none. perl has notions of object-oriented-ness. it's possible to build in your own type-checking. the backwards compatibility thing is definitely helpful for the sciences, and it's free, so, like the fortran routines that parts of numpy ultimately wrap, their code can live on.

i mentioned python and javascript not because i think they're such great languages but because i feel that they're in that position relative to perl. of course, unlike plan 9, python and javascript got a lot of users.

> treat large files as if they were arrays/hashs (lists/dicts) without loading them into memory as such.

not totally sure what you mean here. isn't that what databases are for?

anyway, for a new code base that's going to evolve a lot and possibly get scrapped entirely (i.e. most hn readers' situation), python is worth checking out.
Yet another link-bait title...

It should be 'Oracle killed Java APPLETS'
This is true in industry as well as education. In fact, it's why the enterprise sales cycle and pitch deck is so much different from what you might think sales is like.
I tend to agree if we're talking about client-side Java served up through a browser. But client-side Java has been going downhill for years. Server-side Java on the other-hand is alive and well.
In the context of the above: Here's a question to the experienced entrepreneurs. If a startup wants to take on Blackboard. What would be a good way to go about doing it?
The main idea still applies. C and Scheme show very different aspects of computer science, so even those people will need to choose a focus.

If all you want to do is "become a programmer" you'll discover that you'll never get there, as there's always more to know. If you're asking yourself now what language to pick, you'll later ask what to learn next, and once you've done that, ask again. Asking what first language to pick is just the first manifestation of a potentially never-ending bad habit of never gaining focus. This applies to both web apps and computer science.
Python has a decimal package in stdlib. It provides an arbitrary-precision floating point type. The performance will obviously be worse than with floats, but I doubt it matters in an intro programming class. The only real drawback is that there are no decimal literals.

Actually, several languages I know of have decimal types in stdlib. Two that do not are C and JavaScript.
What it’s Like to Be a Woman at a Bitcoin Meetup
I'm sure I have, somewhere in the 422482 comments I've written on HN. Candidly: operating a startup has many times been a drag on my family, but only when I was Doing It Wrong. The biggest myth in startups is that you have to live and breathe them to make them work. That's bullshit. Lots of people live and breathe stupid companies that come to nothing, and lots of people do a disciplined 9-5 that gets more done in 8 hours than the founder who lives at his desk gets done in a week.

It helps not to look at it as a game. Matasano is a business, growing steadily, with a serious team and serious management. It isn't something that might pivot after some networking meetup thingy tomorrow, or if Facebook buys the wrong company next week.

I'd read a lot of 'patio11 if you're interested in this stuff too.
My thoughts as well. Falls into the category -1st world problems.
Apple continues hiring raid on medical sensor field
Orcale does not care about the desktop - and Sun never managed to make it user-friendly (e.g. annoying Java Updater popups on every start, trying to install the ask toolbar, etc). However, Java will stay significant on servers and on Android (as Dalvik).
It would be a better comparison in some ways, you're right. Still, when I've picked up a 13" MBA, it's felt more similar to an 11" MBA than a 13" MBP to me, in large part I think because of the difference in thickness: both MBAs are "0.3-1.7 cm" while the 13" MBP is 1.8 cm all the way through. The weight also puts the 13" Air halfway between the 11" MBA and 13" MBP.

Not knowing more about the specs of this hypothetical 12" machine, I'm theorizing it'd be approximately halfway between the 11" and 13" Air in size/weight. That of course may not be right, but it seems unlikely to be way off. So, while my comparison is hypothetical and imperfect, I don't feel it's quite apples and oranges, either.
Wow. Incredible.

Just wow....
tl;dr: The author passionately hates Blackboard but never once tells us why (just links to a Google search: Blackboard sucks).

This piece has zero information content. Very colorful language and prose are used, but there's no meat in the essay, just filler. I'm not familiar with Blackboard or this space in general, and I'm none the better after reading this. Not sure why it got so upvoted.
Now there is an interesting possible future: the american empire is brought low by a massive investment in robotic soldiers from the same contractors that brought you healthcare.gov and the veterans disability payments system.
I've been reading Google gossip since the early 2000s and it's always been my impression that it can be just as political and inane as any big corporation.
> I have found out in life that women can also be dependable, fun to hang out with, and not "complicate things."

And there's nothing contradictory about that. Just because 'bro' is a man who might be all of that, doesn't mean that a woman can't be the same thing. Maybe she will not get the same nickname or term of endearment, but neither does that imply that she is qualitatively different from a 'bro'.
> You want to introduce people to the concepts of programming, which means abstractions and high-level thinking

Completely disagree, what you describe is more "Software Engineering" than "Programming".

To me, learning to program means learning to describe the way to solve a problem in fully comprehensive and exhaustive steps, with a very limited set of tools and primitives to work with (data, operations and flow control to begin with). You can do that in any language, so your choice is really up to convenience and context.

As the basic tools of programming become second nature and problems to tackle become larger, then it's time to move into SE, abstractions, organization and etc. You can still do that teaching in pretty much any language.
All of your criticisms are on point. Also note that all of the women in the cast with anything close to a major role, even the ones who affect the plot, are ultimately only used as romantic tension. Yes, this is a show about a white- and asian-male dominated industry, but the female characters they have are utterly wasted. Some of the plotlines revolve around gender issues, which makes it even more surprising that the show itself is, in the end, so stiltedly male-oriented. It's a major disappointment to see new show after new show, even on theoretical risk-friendly platforms like this continue to waste their female talent and portray women as eye candy and sex objects rather than as human beings.