skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
A non-event, but for the minor annoyance of:

Impacts would be felt on interdependent infrastructures, with, for example, potable water distribution affected within several hours; perishable foods and medications lost in about 12-24 hours; and immediate or eventual loss of heating/air conditioning, sewage disposal, phone service, transportation, fuel resupply, and so on. Kappenman stated that the effects on these interdependent infrastructures could persist for multiple years, with a potential for significant societal impacts and with economic costs that could be measurable in the several-trillion-dollars-per-year range. http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=12507&page=77
Thanks for taking the time to reply to these questions.

>But of course, that more experienced peer group also tends to be much humbler and aware of their shortcomings as well, so I'd say the article still addresses that.

I have to disagree: however humble they might be, someone on the projects I mentioned has to have a deep enough understanding to know how to handle the cornucopia of problems that can derail it: unexpected soil problems, dependencies not working like intended, aerodynamic lift not being as high as the model.

I compare it to my understanding of long multiplication, which I've tested against students new to it. "How do you do it?" Here's how. Why is it done that way? Well it's an expansion of this formula. "Why in this order?" If you don't do it that way, you're actually multiplying these other numbers; you have to correct for it like so. "What if I forget some of the entries in the multiplication table?" Then here's how you multiply single digit numbers; here's multiplication as a version of addition. "What if I forget how to add?" Break out the number line, let's review.

That kind of understanding is revealed in any large-scale, finished, working product.

>The way it was meant to be brought back around to the nurse's situation was that, she actually was really good at what she was doing for her level of experience and progression through schooling, despite knowing that she had a long way left to go. As to what observable shortcomings other students had compared to her, I cannot say.

Then I don't understand how this was supposed to reassure her; if I offered an explanation, I would test its implications against the rest of the scenario: is there a way overconfidence manifests in the typical student? Is she returning the (correct answer) "I'd have to ask someone" more often than the other students? As it stands, you've just listed something that might be consistent.

Remember, the problem is not that "she was good for her level of experience"; the problem was that "she was called the best student they'd ever had".

(I note with some irony that, for you claim to know general competence levels just after college is itself seemingly outside your knowns!)
> But what if you had so much money that you couldn't possibly want any more?

There's such a deeply narcissistic undercurrent here.

If you ever find yourself having too money money, what that means is you have too few people who you are using your resources to help.

Being rich shouldn't be, "Well, I've got a yacht and a motorcycle, I guess I'm good!" It should be, "Ah I finally have enough to help X. If only I could get more and help Y as well." You aren't rich enough until the whole world is rich with you.
How do we know the Big Bang actually happened? (BBC iWonder)
There are plenty of Lisp books that are just as good or better imo:

The Little Schemer

The Seasoned Schemer

SICP

Lisp In Small Pieces

Practical Common Lisp
You will be amazed at some of the things people get really passionate about.
I have tried Mail.app (with Gmail IMAP for now); it's quite nice, but has some issues such as poor expressiveness in search.

notmuch looks interesting. I do use vim heavily, but I'm not sure I want to read all my mail in fixed-width... wonder if the web client is any good.
Agreed that this was one of the issues I had with Backblaze - I constantly would lose all of my external drive backups when I went on a business trip, come back, and all my backups would be gone and I would have to start over again.

I finally ended up just purchasing multiple hard drives and using superduper to clone/backup.

Crashplan wasn't an option - would take 60 days to do a 1 Terabyte backup, and I don't leave my laptop connected to the externals that long.

I'd be willing to pay more money to backblaze to have them retain my external hard drivers for a longer period of time.
"He makes an assertion that isn't true. That it's just as possible to raise money somewhere else other than Silicon Valley. Is it possible? Yes. Is it as easy/fast/convenient? Not even close."

His assertion was based on his personal experience, as further detailed. For some of us, it is far easier to raise money locally than in Silicon Valley. Therefore, any statement which states it is categorically "not even close" without taking into account the target for the statement and their given situation must therefore be false.

Furthermore, the assertion of the author he cited was that it's just as possible to raise money, which is the statement he derides as false, and then categorizes his own statement of false by saying that while the author is correct, that it's "just as possible," it's "not as easy," which was not the assertion of the posts author.
I envy your work style, but I'm constantly afraid I would then be poor when I'm old.
What's your retirement plan? Do you even have one yet? Don't take me wrong, I'm in my mid 20s and I live in a country with offers you an ok retirement.
Cupcake fail
Flappy Bird is coming back to the App Store
One of the thing i immediately noticed were the price /GB over the years. We had literally no decrease since the flood in 2011. So three years later we are still paying for about the same price per GB.

But that is finally going to change. As Google lower their price, i see this as HAMR finally coming. With both Seagate and WD promised to get 20TB HDD by 2020, and with a 60TB version after. We have a clear roadmap of what is coming along. Which means Google could now price their storage by it.
Lol @ Color reference. Whether WhatsApp, SnapChat are in league with Broadcast.com, The Learning Company, Geocities or Exite is debatable.

I'm still trying to wrap my head around how Groupon justifies any valuation considering how much they fritter away on staff T&R (flying non-local sales staff to other cities to spend 3 hours with one restaurant owner).
It wasn’t intended to be derivative, but yeah, our current branding is extremely MVP. We’ve been much more focused on building the product and learning how to delight our users. We’ll likely revisit this once we have some more bandwidth.
I saw that Icculus was already cloning the repo... only a matter of time I hope.
Technology cannot be suppressed. It's an axiom of history. One way to phrase it is "change or die," but a more optimistic way would be "change is life."

An important question for the future is how to make it profitable for studios to create media. If the revenue dries up, then so will the studios. I've heard Zuck likes Game of Thrones. In the future, there very well might not be anyone willing to invest money into creating Game of Thrones. Not at that level, anyway. The visual and epic experience that you're used to circa 2015 might not be sustainable circa 2035. Would Zuck fund Game of Thrones directly if needed? What are some ways that such an investment could make sense? Would crowdfunding make sense? The largest crowdfunding campaign still pales in comparison to the budgets required to deliver something like 7 seasons of Game of Thrones. Crowdfunding might not be the answer. There may not be any answer.
I assume you do keep the camera roughly on your face while working.
According to https://www.unrealengine.com/register, "Mac OS X support hasn't undergone serious developer testing yet". So, it's supported but may be buggy
Some people get really excited about boxes. I could see making a collection of boxes in different styles being a neat project, though there's certainly some busywork involved.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tUHJnl8qPM
I have very often worried about how much goes undone, because it can't be done for a profit. As a musician who has never made a cent from it, I know that I make what I make because I want to. I know there are people who make crazy art/tech installations, who probably don't make money.

Still, I always wonder, what if any amazing things are technically feasible right now, that nobody is doing because there's no clear business plan?
Sadly, not in Oregon. Seeing chargers (even slow ones) pop up at the slopes I frequent would probably be what it took to get me to pull the trigger.
Not fair - its hasn't gotten all three of those things. Its convenient only if it isn't cheap. Ditto for common.

I don't get that conclusion - flying used to be a very expensive premium product? Not 20 years ago - ticket prices haven't changed all that much since then, at least out here in the Midwest far from any hub. I pay the same to get to the coast as I paid in the 90's to get home from school at the coast.
Hah! Nope, I'm a French expat/immigrant living in Denmark.
Really? Think about all of the good the industries have brought to the world and all of the good they still can bring!

Film and music are driving forces for society. We need them.

Their own ignorance and inability towards copyright form sucks. I agree. I don't think that should doom them into obsolesence. I'll also argue that wouldn't happen. They would, somewhat righteously, kick and scream until copyright law tramples on internet freedom.
This is crazy. You probably end up hiring the most convincing bullshitters. How can't you see that.

The reality for most engineers is that it depends on outside factors 99%. Engineers try to be rational. Here is what the real-world answers to your questions look like and I bet you never heard them.

Are you diligent and consistent with your work?
IF it's being rewarded, yes. If I get yelled for missing the deadline, then no. Do I get credit for doing diligent work or the credit goes to somebody else who managed to get more visible things done less dilligently?

Are you the kind of person that bursts through work in a flash?
That's a straight-out stupid question. There is work that should be done in a burst(like a fix) and there is async work that can be done in chunks or in the background(planning, monitoring or support). Nobody is exclusively committed to burst/no-burst, or at least it's very rare.

Do you prefer to work alone or in a team?
Nonsense question. It's more of a question for you rather than the interviewee. Everybody wants to be on a good team and everybody hates to be on a bad team. Also is teamwork rewarded, how are politics resolved? How do you manage politics? Who gets credit/blame for the teamwork?

How do you feel working with people below your position or above it?
Same as the previous question. How do you manage politics? How is credit/blame distributed? What power do I have to push changes up and down the chain? How would you handle an under-performing member up the ranks?
Here's a short excerpt from a talk by Alan Watts that I find incredibly powerful:

"What if Money Was No Object" - https://youtu.be/C_sbcSRMsOc

If you're looking for something longer and more in-depth, the late David Foster Wallace's talk on a similar subject is incredibly sincere and motivating:

"This Is Water" - http://youtu.be/dexIA_OfLzg
I hate these theoretical scenarios because my practical brain kicks in and I start asking questions like:

Do I have lots of money making money not important/critical?
Does everyone also not have to worry about money?
Do my kids/family also have the same "money free" existence as me?
Am I able to travel without incurring any cost?
If I do have tons of money, am I allowed to spend it on other people/causes?

I don't need attention so that's not a concern, but the money issue is too complicated to simply take it out of the equation for me.

If I ignore my practical brain ... my priorities would be my kids, my wife, my immediate family and community in that order.

Spending time with my kids, making sure they have everything they need, most of what they want, and simply loving them (without being distracted by providing for them) would be the easiest and most gratifying part of not having to worry about money.

However being super-rich wouldn't solve any of these issues for me as I would feel a great burdon to help those in need. If my family was taken care of, the logically extends to my community, and those around the world most in need (similar to Gates) What a nightmare to know that you have more money than anyone and are in the best position (besides governments) to help people. I don't know how Bill sleeps at night.
Please, Pakistan is warlike and aggressive because they have been manipulated by the US into believing they can take on India (with US support).

> genocidal violence against Muslim Indians.

What's this about? Partition killed as many Hindus and Sikhs as Muslims and pre-Independence India had little communal violence that wasn't explicitly fomented by the British in order to serve their own ends.

If you're so well read in south asian history, you should also know that there are more muslims in India than in Pakistan and that pretty much none of them would like to switch places with their Pakistani siblings.
So is selling stuff before it actually exists the new norm?

I get it when you have a kick-starter, but when you're already established doesn't it come off as a bit shady and scummy?

Are they low on money and desperately need to cash-in asap?
Are they worried their product will be poorly reviewed b/c they aren't confident in the quality - so they're trying to lock-in buyers?

EDIT: I'm just putting out the question "Why do they have a preorder system? What's the rational behind it? Why just announce it when it's available?"

Preorders are a way of locking in buyers. You can trick a few people into buying it, that may have otherwise not bought it when it was actually released (maybe due to negative reviews, or a change in their financial position). Except... why would you ever want to do that with developers? So why are they trying to do that? I don't get it
Those projects I want to work on didn't jump into my head unbidden. The ideas arose from years of coming to grips with real-world problems that don't have entirely satisfactory solutions. If I untether myself from the work that led to the ideas I want to pursue, then where will the next ideas come from? And how will I know whether they are worth pursuing?

Excellent insight. One of the issues with the retired leisure lifestyle is that your scope narrows and you don't have very many interesting problems to work on. ("steak or lobster?", "Gstaad or Monaco?")
Some clients want exclusivity for the period of the contract.
Cdist 3.1.0 now manages existing ssh keys
The Oculus SDK is C++, but I'm sure there are bindings for many languages. Probably the easiest way to get started is with C# in Unity. If anyone is feeling adventurous, you can even access it in JavaScript! https://github.com/DanAndersen/cupola
Bulk Download Images(ZIG)
I came in here to say just this! A fantastic book in so many ways. I read a lot of it on my own and learned more than in many of my classes on similar subjects. It taught me a huge amount about C, systems, architecture, memory and more. Very cool stuff. It starts with x86 but goes over at least the basic differences between it and x64.
You are missing the peer pressure part. Even if you don't need money & don't need attention, people won't let you live being content. The greed for money+attention, in my view, are the biggest vices. Unfortunately, they also drive growth & innovation.
You cannot expect to get all of millions of programmers out there to do the right thing. Statically, there are hundreds of killers, thieves (not talking about piracy) or even people that want to see the world burn.

We need to figure out how society should work in the new conditions.
The author agrees - he is asking what should you do "when you're ready to be useful to others again"? It doesn't strike me as narcissistic.
Severe Space Weather Events--Understanding Societal and Economic Impacts (2008)
so it's strange but that's not quite how it works,
Here's a pretty good explainantion of what those numbers actually mean: http://deloachwatchservice.com/other_stuff/water_resistancy....
Lots of things. But if there's no business plan, then you'd be doing it for yourself. And honestly, doing something for a lot of people is vastly more helpful to all of us, than sitting alone at home with your toys.

My friend Tom always asks me, when I'm suggesting rolling our own whatever (software) "Joe, we CAN do anything. What SHOULD we do?" meaning how should we spend our limited time and effort most productively. And the free market is a great measure of what's productive.
As a Pakistani I find this report alarming. However I also believe that the situation, especially the army's view of the Taliban, in particular groups under the TTP, has drastically changed. The TTP's brazen attacks on the Pakistani military in recent months have prompted the army to respond with force. In particular, the army actually is waiting for the govt's green light to clean up North Waziristan. It recently launched air strikes [1] on Taliban positions, and until a couple of weeks ago a full scale military operation similar to the a successful one conducted in Swat in 2009 seemed imminent.

Ironically though the Sharif administration is not entirely in favour of an operation. Some of the complexities include the fact that Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is governed by PTI which disagrees with a military operation entirely.

Currently there is a shaky ceasefire between the govt and the TTP. However a new splinter group called Aharar-ul-Hind, forked off from the TTP and carried out a daring attack on a court in Islamabad a few days back [2].

Interestingly enough, the new TTP chief Maulana Fazlullah is supposedly based in Afghanistan, and there is a worrying, ironic prospect of TTP raids from Afghanistan into Pakistan after NATO withdrawal.

1. http://edition.cnn.com/2014/02/25/world/asia/pakistan-airstr...
2. http://www.geo.tv/article-139849-TTP-splinter-faction-Ahrar-...
Ulrich Drepper wrote a terrible paper titled "What every programmer should know about memory"[1]. It covers basically everything involving memory. It's much too long and really only is relevant for programmers who want (need) to make optimal use of memory. I wouldn't recommend it, but every time someone realises how slow some memory things are compared to other memory things, I guess it's obligatory to link it. So here, don't read it ;)

1] http://www.akkadia.org/drepper/cpumemory.pdf
I haven't read that post. But I think you could have said the same thing about things like global illumination - well, in terms of processor time - yet look at how much more advanced realtime lighting is today than a decade ago. As for artwork and disk space, grass for one can easily be procedurally generated.
> I will most likely soon build my own static site generator, because none of the ones out there do exactly what I want.

Why bother with the templating? Use Jinja2?
I am not advocating for a suppression of technology.

I am advocating for belevolent empathy towards those technology affects. I am advocating for action that helps people change with the tide, not prevent it.
I hope you are reading this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7430111
My biggest problem with being happy with what I have is the lack of motivation to improve and better myself.
I swear, there are times when Derek puts up a post and I wonder if he's in my head seeing what I need to see at a given moment. It's eery, but damned handy too.
Likely you'd be dead!
I know, I actually started developing with the Unity engine for a side project about 6 months ago (I'm primarily a web developer with no previous game-dev experience).

The fact though is that you can publish commercially (even to mobile app stores) without a Pro license. The reason why making the base version free is commercially viable for them (aside from their hope that some users upgrade to Pro) is because of the success of their asset store.

Pretty much all Unity developers spend money on the asset store even if they're on the free plan. I myself have spent a few hundred dollars on the asset store of which Unity gets a cut thus allowing them to immediately monetize their free users.
"the overly abstract world of C" I chuckled at that. Looks like you have a fun tutorial though; I'd like to go through it more.
Unfortunately, from the FAQ[1]:

Q: Can I create a product containing an octocat?

You may not use an octocat, created by GitHub or by you, for products or merchandise without written permission from GitHub. This includes, but is not limited to t-shirts, toys, stickers, etc.

[1] http://octodex.github.com/faq.html
Stupid question: any major drawbacks to using this method?
Sorry, I was wrong. The government of Pakistan are the good guys.
This graphics programmer disagrees.
Beautifully said. My mind always goes there too.
> This is not going to happen. Early adoptor content will always be higher, just like it is for many other things. The new Stephen King book is going to be $25 in hardcover for a while before it is $5.00 in paperback because all of his rabid fans are happy to pay that much to read his new work immediately.

Not entirely correct. For one, hard cover books are viewed as a luxury item by most. They last longer, look better, are easier to read (bigger print), etc. That does cost extra money, although I'm fairly sure they do get more of a profit from hard cover books.

Second, there are types of media where what you're stating isn't true. Take music, for instance. The price of CDs don't generally go down as an album ages. In fact, I seem to remember stores like Best Buy typically selling them for cheaper the first few days of a release.
Techstars PBC coming to NYC
We need art. We do not need out of touch, culturally hostile, value-destroying, rent-seeking middlemen to make art happen.

Every single technological leap has been vehemently opposed by these dinosaurs. Without fail.

I don't know. Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I believe less and less that the industry cartels' behavior is about simple shortsightedness and greed, and more and more that their behavior is about control of human culture and suppression of culture they don't control.
> Film and music are driving forces for society. We need them.

Absolutely, but you seem to have equated those creative activities with the current organizations built around the previous distribution models for the output. We need the creative activities, but we now have a huge number of ways to directly connect people creating film and music with people who want to watch them.
I agree. It doesn't have to be everyone. It doesn't even have to be in the thousands. As long as the right people for a given situation are willing to go out and help, I think that is enough.

10 people can build a rocket engine, but only 1 person is required to explain how it works and why it's a good thing.
Ruby's method uses something like a hashtable internally.
It is so annoying to meet random people that I just don't do it often. Because you have to put a lot of effort into the conversation usually.
Most of our concerns about money are definitely 1st-world. Keeping up with expectations - school, housing, car, travel. Most of the world doesn't have these concerns.

And we don't (have to) have them either. Its voluntary. There was a great book "Your money or your life" which like those others referenced here, talked about how the pursuit of money becomes a lifestyle, instead of enabling one. Lots to think about there.
One day, Clojure is going to sweep the JVM world and all of the declarative folks are gonna read & weep and wonder how their lives were before USSR collapsed.
A great observation - in fact, that could apply to more than just software.