skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> Until things become more transparent, the handful of backend engineers willing to write in a functional style will keep using OCaml or Erlang.

Hey Keshav!

I think it's a more complicated story than that. Our ambition is larger than converting existing functional language programmers -- a lot of whom are happy (and passionate) about their current tools.

I think it is a much wider stratum of smart people who want to do things that were hitherto impossible (or impractical) without a vast amount of built-in knowledge and algorithms. And their potential will be unlocked by the "curated computing experience" that we provide.

Personally, I want everyone to be able to do the kinds of cool things that I regularly do on weekend projects, and that I know cannot be achieved in anything other than Wolfram Language.

And frankly, it'll be good for all of us to have an influx of new people with new ideas from different backgrounds who want to build and compute new and different kinds of things. Our tribe is still quite homogenous.

Although I suspect that at first it will be threatening to those of us who derive our pride (and job security) from being masters of somewhat arcane tools, processes, and knowledge.
Even before I clicked the link, I knew it would be by Matt Levine. He writes excellent Bloomberg View pieces. He formerly wrote for dealbreaker.com, a snarky site that covers the travails and misdeeds of Wall Street.
Story of Your Life is one of the greatest short stories I've ever read. I don't think there's an author in sci-fi who I hope writes a full length novel more than Chiang.
Cheers Scott, I consult in this space also, though recently I've been trying to productize my way out of it. I built http://killswit.ch to help folks like us who are one person agencies and have to deal with sending traffic to sites they don't control. It sucks when your KPI's suffer because of someone else. Let me know if you want to give it a whirl.
The other huge problem here is that Google's FeedFetcher doesn't respect robots.txt. (Their reasoning is that it is acting at the direct request of a human to retrieve a specific resource, so it doesn't count as a bot.) Because of this, there is no easy way to stop it from hitting your site.
This article seems to grow by another page or so every time I visit it. Ahh, graduate students.
> Ultimately the US has failed to tame Afghanistan - as expected - but really the world isn't better for my smartass comments.

> The real opportunity was to do something radically better, and really think outside the box.

This isn't right. The problem was not enough people making comments like you did. The real opportunity, which you were supporting, was to not invade in the first place. You did more to make the world a better place than a lot of people (wrt this issue).
It really scares me that $37k is the cost of something like that.
Cats seem more than capable of shredding the entire roll in-situ even if it's "under".
hahahaha XD
To add on your point - the "grinding" is designed to be very different.

If for whatever reason your game concept involves parts of grinding (say, extending game length; allowing less-skilled players to gain extra power by extra grinding to complete challenges they otherwise couldn't; providing less intensive background time to facilitate communication/chat in a MMO; etc), then in a 'pay' game you still try to optimize the grinding actions to be as fun as you can make the grind to be; but in a F2P game you would optimize the grinding to be intentionally frustrating in order to push players over the edge of paying.

And that whole concept of mutilating a fun activity to be frustrating is a bit evil.
I have cookies disabled and yet it says "Cookies enabled: Yes". I did verify there was no "Cookie" header sent.

What's with that?
This is a real problem in US government. Democracy is a moral issue of the times, not a practical one. Unfortunately, that means essentially all public policies relating to it are idiotic. :/
It's because the DIY hobbyist is catching up: http://dalybulge.blogspot.co.uk/
>Automation has now entered the automobile. Alas, the automobile industry refuses to learn the lessons from aviation automation. The automobile engineers believe that they have solved the problems: cars will drive by themselves without any incidents. Humans will monitor the driving and if there ever is a problem, they will simply take over. In fact, the requirement for people always to monitor the self-driving automobiles is now incorporated into the law in some locations.

That's a legal requirement so people can test autonomous systems - which is very important. It's not suggesting that self-driving cars should always rely on a human to monitor them.
DaaS - DDOS as a service :)
Yes, a cat converted me from an over to an under as well.
"...keeping secrets is no big deal. Every family has them."

Uh, I would note she immediately goes on to mention her father's classified work - so, maybe everyone has secrets but not everyone works in a classified capacity for the US Government (though the group is now fairly large).

This is significant because Victor Marchetti and John D. Mark in The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence described how already in the 70s the CIA was growing more and more to be a hereditary sect, something that one might imagine would make this separate group even more insular.

Indeed, this is the only interesting comment in an article which I would agree otherwise just simpers and grovels to the cachet of the spy.

Aside from Marchetti, I'd also recommend Phillip Agee's Inside the Company: CIA Diary - a book which shows this "Company" as neither harmless or romantic.
That's fun, but seems to be fixed:

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=+Planck+mass
I made this a while ago, which turns the insanity up to about 13.

https://github.com/ryancdotorg/dnsstore
I'm having a very hard time finding that claim in Crito's comment. Are you sure he's saying that?
That's not true at all. If you use secure encryption to store plain text, and proper use of HTTPs to transfer said text, that's secure. It's not as bad as obfuscated text. What you've said is just plain untrue.

One problem with storing passwords is that there is no good reason to. The other security issue is that people reuse passwords. So everyone should be creating hashes instead of encrypting passwords, but encrypting text, and transmitting it securely is still secure. This API didn't do that, it did a lot of things wrong, but these comments are all pretty ignorant as well.

It's just one inane comment after another in this thread.
How is the Vietnam war (US involvement 1961-1975) a prime example of the US military of the 40's and 50's?

Wouldn't Korea (1950-1953), the occupation of Japan (1945-1952) or the occupation of Germany (1945-1949) be better examples?
Malaysia Airlines: 'falsifying passport details to allow passenger on board'
Contents of this page should be changed
I may be cynical, but I think we're only just now entering a world of hurt where home automation system providers learn about information security the hard way.

Also, pretty funny: http://i.imgur.com/ouoxxoZ.png
Craziest looking foiling boat I've seen is still the International Moth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SN1gSkqvy0
All 3 references to the purported advantage of "under" with pets are not peer-reviewed publications. Anecdotes are not data!
Ruin the industry ? No, but it changed the industry nonetheless. Imo most pay-to-play games aren't really games in the truest sense of gaming. A game like Clash of Clans or Candy Crush is played by millions but would it do well in a real game review ? Is it real fun at the core to entertain gamers ? No, because those games are more like playable advertising entertainment than real games. There's a place for both though and some pay-to-play games are worse than others.
OpenID Connect Identity Protocol Launches with Support from Google and Microsoft
When I asked O2 Germany to do this, they told me they would have to block mobile internet as well.
This is fiction. At best (long journeys) planes have per-seat co2 emissions comparable to an entire 5-person car, that's 5x. On journeys where planes actually compete with cars, double that. Add to that the 2-4x multiplier (greenhouse effect of co2 injected into upper atmosphere vs ground level).

These aren't controversial numbers, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_aviati... . And really, a plane is more like a bus than a car, where planes lose by a lot more still.

But it's silly to compare to cars as if matching cars would be ok - car co2 emissions are also very bad.
He uses standard techniques. Just compare to Dave Barry.
This is what I came to post here.

Random tech news -> Random news -> Random
CURSO INTERNACIONAL  DE CONSULTORES EN GEOBIOLOGÍA Y SALUD DEL HABITAT
What do you say to people like Guy Steele who believe that small languages that can be grown by their users are the way forward, and do not want to pay to use a closed source programming language, ever?

(fyi I'm referring to this famous talk he gave http://youtu.be/_ahvzDzKdB0 )
15 best free fonts for March 2014
Google Glass and Privacy. But Whose Privacy?
Also:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4499435

https://aboutmybrowser.com/

http://www.browser-details.com/
I used to have an orientation preference. Now I have a wife.
Show HN: Newbies exploring Topological Data Analysis with R
You're correct - you shouldn't ship an app with a secret key embedded. That would be a flawed implementation.

It's hard to be specific without knowing what you're doing. If you have an app that connects to a third party API like Twitter, that's one situation. If you have an API that other app developers will connect to - that's a second scenario. And third is if you have an API and you write your own app to connect to it.

OAuth handles all three of these scenarios but in #1 you are a consumer, in #2 you are a provider and #3 you are both.

Check out 3-legged oAuth for an example of how to allow apps to talk to your API on behalf of a user, without that user having to give their password to the app. It's actually pretty interesting, clever and simple all at once!

HTTPS encrypts the traffic - making it difficult to sniff. It doesn't actually provide authentication though.
That's a great idea. A hackathon on a train would be ridiculously fun, even cooler than the Startup Bus.
What kind of tech work can you do in Lake Fuxian? Or are you doing remote? If remote, then ya, there are a lot of nice places in China to hang out in, though personally I would pick Bali or Thailand.

Kunming was ok 12 years ago. I'm getting old though.
How does the C++ committee actually work, if the experts can have these kinds of open questions?
I agree with you, but change SQLite to MongoDB and you have a significant share of the "next big startups," at least.
There's a very easy solution to this http://i.imgur.com/ZMHEx.jpg (for any sort of public toilets)
I have lived in Shanghai for the past 3 years but I also lived here from 2001-2002. Back then, there were buildings constructed that were totally empty and it seemed ridiculous to think anyone would live in those distant undeveloped areas. Fast forward a decade and now Shanghai has 20 metro lines instead of two, with each metro station under a sprouting mini-city, complete with its own H&M, Burger King and Starbucks. It seems like the urban planners placed tem all perfectly close to each other, like settlements in Civ. The condos that stood empty 12 years ago are now at full capacity and people are moving even further out into the exurbs where more empty buildings await them. The energy and buzz in Shanghai is just as palpable as it was 12 years ago and although there are some ghost cities and failed projects across greater China, the megalopolises will easily compensate for them. The United States has its share of empty, abandoned cities (Detroit, anyone?) but when you visit San Francisco or Manhattan, you would not know it.
LMAO. I'm cracking up at the mutual exclusivity of that statement.
Let's just be clear, that being a "cat convert" is just accepting practicality over preference. As an over, you all know the orientation you'd prefer.
It's entirely a matter of how the user is introduced to spending money in the game.

Trading card games require an initial purchase - most people purchasing them are aware of what they're getting themselves into. You know there are lots of rare cards that you'll never see, and you're fine with that when you buy your deck(s). For one thing, this filters out a lot of people who would gripe about having to pay. But also, if you play enough to really need the best cards, usually you've accumulated enough cards that you can trade with people to make any deck you want. This places a sort of spending cap on the game, after which you can compete with the best players in the world - which can be a pleasant surprise to players who haven't thought that far ahead.

Modern free-to-play games start out free, then surprise users with ways to spend money in the middle of the game. As you play on, even if you do pay, you discover that there is no limit to the amount you can spend - and you see that there will always be better, more powerful users who have spent more than you. Lots of users become bitter about this once they've invested some amount of time (and/or money) in the game world.
Can you mention the company? We're interested in using Haskell and I'm looking for reference experiences, particularly use in startups.
Alternative titles :

"How to make your code unreadable in 55 minutes"

"How to make your code hard to debug in 55 minutes"

"How to introduce bugs by copying a regex that you don't understand and neither did the author"
Well, it seems they took the entire API down in response:

http://api.criticker.com/

Due to a security breach, the Criticker APIs have been taken off-line for an unspecified amount of time.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

And here I was, looking forward to actually verifying if this stuff was true...
The title takes a reasonably interesting boat and ruins it with inane link bait. Sometimes when you try to make something great look bigger than it is you've ruined it.
What a dumb quote. Disregarding for the moment the wording, "willingness to steal from his own government" combined with the fact that he worked for the NSA absolutely gives Snowden the credentials to speak intelligently on these topics.
Startup pitch: Motorized TP holder that uses a scale built into the toilet seat do identify the "user" by weight and flips the TP roll in accordance with the user's preferences.

Should I contact TechCrunch now or after VC money?
I am off the impression that the quantity and scale of attacks which was seen in 9/11 is currently being restricted by a locked door in airplanes, and less passive passengers.
I think it's a pretty good choice. I've been using it for almost a year and a half and I visited their office when they were 4 people. It really makes sense for a real-time system if you don't want to build your own real-time message bus.
Deputies: Newsweek Bitcoin story quoted Satoshi Nakamoto accurately
Perhaps it's time to finally attack the source of USA's ID theft problem instead of trying to hide the unhideable?

This is a problem mostly limited to USA and just a few other countries. In most places worldwide such an information leak could be used at best for marketing/spam targeting, not for stealing money through ID theft. The differences are mainly in legislation and liability, which then get reflected in policies of credit institutions that make it much less viable and thus much less widespread.

To put it simply, the information that, say, your spouse or mother would know should not be enough to get credit in your name, bill expensive services to you or gain access to your accounts. If some lender gets duped by their negligence to check who you are, then they got defrauded and it should stay as their problem - mostly to motivate them to put actual effort into preventing this.
I have lived in Shanghai for the past 3 years but I also lived here from 2001-2002. Back then, there were buildings constructed that were totally empty and it seemed ridiculous to think anyone would live in those distant undeveloped areas. Fast forward a decade and now Shanghai has 20 metro lines instead of two, with each metro station under a sprouting mini-city, complete with its own H&M, Burger King and Starbucks. It seems like the urban planners strategically placed them all perfectly close to each other, like settlements in Civ. The condos that stood empty 12 years ago are now at full capacity and people are moving even further out into the exurbs where more empty buildings await them. The energy and buzz in Shanghai is just as palpable as it was 12 years ago and although there are some ghost cities and failed projects across greater China, the megalopolises will easily compensate for them. The United States has its share of empty, abandoned cities (Detroit, anyone?) but when you visit San Francisco or Manhattan, you would not know it.
Where mastering hopefully means to just avoid them whenever possible.
What specific device and software are you using? Perhaps the problem can be fixed once it's identified.
Martha says over. http://www.marthastewart.com/248076/toilet-paper-debate edit: it starts at the 8:45 mark in the video
In this case I think that distinction is artificial. For both Snowden and the government, there's an integral relation between their actions and their opinions.
Congressmen like Mike Pompeo sit in the House of Representatives, which governs the whole US.

Rep. Pompeo is on the House Intelligence Committee. He most likely honestly hate what Snowden has done and represents a part of the country which is very anti-Snowden. This is easy grandstanding for him.

He's misguided, in my opinion, but that's "why".
What happens if you are hydrofoiling 2ft above the water and hit a 3ft wave, especially at speed?
This has very little to do with Python developers deciding between version 2.7 and 3.x. If you wrote a library or an app in Python 3.x packagers should require the appropriate version of Python as a dependency. Sam with v2. Developers shouldn't worry about that.
Blinkist – Read a book in 15 minutes.
This looks like something a lot of startups could benefit from, even those who can't be arsed to care one whit about security otherwise.

By the way, the alt-text for the portraits on your "About" page needs to be fixed.
That'd be nice, but since CPython is supposed to serve as a reference implementation (and not necessarily be the bleeding edge of speed) I don't hold much hope of performance improvements becoming a top priority (except to make Python3 more compelling than Python 2.x strictly on performance criteria, which they've largely accomplished if I understand correctly).
Businesses in NYC can operate 100% tax-free for 10 years
I think the congressman knows he can't single handedly stop Snowden from speaking. But he can do his part to contribute to an atmosphere of pressure against Snowden speaking to nudge the probabilities in his preferred direction.
Cubical planet ? I wonder how they plan to handle gravity :].
Top of hackernews:

* How not to write an API

* Nest is launching an API

Kidding aside, I'm excited to see interesting uses of Nest's API in the near future.
Thanks for the talk, I'll watch it tomorrow (gotta catch Snowden's interview at 10am).

But in the meantime, I'd say: pick your battles.

Many developers, including me, moved from Linux to OS X so they could get on with their lives.

And we pay for things much lower on the abstraction hierarchy: CPUs and GPUs and their proprietary IP, physical hardware, various industry-group protocols and standards, OSes in some cases, hosting.

And we know from experience that the whole hierarchy tends to move down as we build on it -- maybe the time has come for that to happen to languages, too.

If, in time, the things that WL is doing inspire higher-level, free languages to raise the abstraction (and semantic) bar, I think we'll all benefit. For now, we can only do what we do because we're a private company.
Two things:

1) In the same breath you say they're willing to pay and not willing to pay. If they're not willing to pay $40/month, it seems either they're too low on resources to afford even $40 software or your software doesn't provide enough benefit to justify the cost. You have to find a solution to this first or you'll have a long, uphill struggle - regardless of this customization problem.

2) How much do they really, really require the customization? If you talk to the users of any SaaS software, almost every single user will mention a customization they wish they had. But yet they're still using and paying for the software. Your job isn't to provide the 100% complete solution. Your job is to provide enough of a benefit to justify the cost of the software.
A few comments:

1. The scenarios illustrated in the piece seem horrible but are biased. Consider this: a VC invests $20 million in a business and acquires 50% of it, valuing it at $40 million post-money. Assume the remaining 50% is owned by founders/key employees. Five years down the line, the company hasn't done so well and is sold for $10 million. Without a liquidation preference, the founders and key employees get $5 million: a decent payout for losing $15 million of investor money.

2. Fred Wilson repeatedly makes the point that when VCs invest in a company at a valuation of $X million, they are not valuing the outstanding stock of the company at $X million the same way a public market would. Instead, what they are doing is buying a bond + an option. The liquidation preference is the bond part of the equation: the investors are betting that the company is worth at least its liquidation preference (which, at 1X, is the amount they invested). The upside that the company might have if it succeeds is the (deeply out of the money) option.

3. Today, 1X liquidation preferences are standard and widespread, and entrepreneurs have it good. If you want your eyes to water, go read/ask about liquidation preferences in term sheets after the dot-com crash ;)
http://youtu.be/sZVIj5TUSKE
Like any ANSI/ISO committee, you need to be a member to seat on those meetings and discuss everything language related.

To become a member you need to pay for it, so most members are employees from compiler vendors.

Everyone else only gets access to what gets published as public information, hence the doubts due to not being present in those meetings.
Show HN: Topographical Map of a 12 X 12 times table (in R)
ROIKOI Launches Leaderboards For Professionals
The Embassy, SF really fits the bill. It's beautiful. http://embassynetwork.com/location/embassysf
Well the idea of building as much as possible into the language is old and has repeatedly failed. Languages like PL/1, APL, and to a lesser extent PHP have all tried and failed at this. People do not need huge languages with as much stuff as possible crammed into them. What they need are languages where you can be reasonably certain, and maybe even formally prove things about the execution of your code (putting everything in The Cloud (tm) also hampers this), and they need to be able to grow the language to fit their needs (e.g. Scheme, Haskell, Clojure, etc... are all pretty good at this).

The whole idea of claiming "moar data" solves everything comes across as incredibly naive and ignorant of what people like Tony Hoare, Dijkstra, or Alan Perlis have said about computing.

There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult -- Tony Hoare