skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Controversial is different from unspeakable--just because people get in trouble when they talk about something doesn't mean it's not spoken about. I read PG's essay as about something deeper.

To give an example in the present day: imagine you believed a gender or race was literally subhuman, in the sense that you had every right to do whatever you wanted to the Thing. That is something that was a widespread belief in the past but is now simply unspeakable. Note that we're not talking about race and IQ, which is still "allowed" to be spoken of, in the sense that people can and do talk about it, even if other people vociferously disagree with the person. But also note the framing the race-and-IQ folk themselves use when talking about it: they bend over backwards to claim that they think race has no bearing on whether a person has rights or equal moral status. It's always framed as a purely scientific statement which, although perhaps having policy implications, says nothing about the moral status of the person designated as more likely to have a low IQ. Someone arguing otherwise wouldn't be denounced but altogether written out of rational discourse.

When PG talks about the unspeakable assumptions and fashions of an age, that's what I read him as talking about. In general, I mean, not about race in particular. It also goes to show that just because something is a widely shared assumption of an age doesn't mean it's wrong.[1]

[1] But isn't it interestingly meta that I can reference universally shared moral assumptions and use the fact that they are universally shared as rhetorical evidence that they're good and useful?
Not with the current model. Since it's charged based on allocation rather than usage, in effect people with low usage subsidize those with high usage.
I totally agree with you, and I think everyone commenting on this thread should stop and read Sam Harris's "Letter to a Christian Nation". It pretty much covers all the questions being asked here.
Here's the thing: I pay company X for a package delivery service from a number of locations to me. Then a while later I discover that company X is charging these locations or otherwise they "cannot guarantee that each packet arrives", and in practice it turns out that often packages without extra payment do indeed get "lost" en route. Sounds weird? Welcome to AT&T Inter-network Package Delivery Service, or AT&T Internet for short.
Do you want to switch to metered service? Most people don't, because the value of a predictable bill is higher to them than the savings they'd theoretically get from metered billing.
I don't see a reason why a modern language, static or dynamic, could not have both a compiler and an interpreter. Most Lisps have both, Haskell has both. Also, most interpreted languages actually have a compile phase before the actual interpreter.

I do agree with you on that any platform should have a staticly typed language as a first class citizen.
ObjC's dirty little secret is its capability of playing nice with C++. There are huge C++ code bases with only Obj-C UI frontends both in the OS X and the iOS market.

As long as your Obj-Next doesn't come with superb C++ compatibility you won't get the serious players on board.
The also talk about asymetric keys in [1]. And moxie from text secure is highly regarded in crypto circles.
But it's just plane incorrect. It conflates ethics with aesthetics.

>What scares me is that there are moral fashions too. They're just as arbitrary, and just as invisible to most people.

It may appear that morality behaves like fashion, but it's doesn't, or at least it shouldn't. The key ingredient here is that in fashion, there is no wrong, only taste. Thus, you can pull back the curtain on any would-be wizard trying to force you to conform.

In ethics, on the other hand, screaming a bunch of hurtful crap at people, just because you're "not supposed to do that" isn't cocksure cleverness. It's wrong. It hurts people. There are good, justifiable, reasons why you shouldn't say them.

Do we have taboos we shouldn't have? Sure, but if we are going to talk about them, they should be within a moral framework, not in some empirical mess of hey-that-shouldn't-be-that-way.
It's really The Guardian's fault for completely botching the PRISM reporting. They thought DITU (a department of the FBI) was a server and from that misunderstanding came to the ridiculous conclusion that the tech companies gave the NSA a backdoor into their systems.
I let them figure it out themselves. "Hmm, if Santa is real, why don't we hear the bells?" Same for the Tooth Fairy. "Wait... fairies aren't real." "OK, so how does the money get there?" "Well... I guess you put it there." "Your words."

I try hard to never explicitly lie to my kids. Sometimes I have to pad my words. Like to answer "Are you going to die today?" Well, maybe, but a rather low probability. That scares them a bit, so sometimes I have to reassuringly tell them no. I feel bad about not being totally truthful, but I think the confidence and security for them is worth a loose interpretation.
> If corporations are so evil why has their pay fed my family, paid for my house and created so many amazing products we surround ourselves with.

"If farmers are so evil why have they fed my family, paid for my house and created so many amazing products we surround ourselves with" - said the cow.
Musicians might have figured out an ingeniously simple way to game Spotify
It's likely legal stuff, when stuff isn't available in the UK or another foreign market, it's not that they 'don't care' it's that they simply haven't worked out all the details, or simply can't.

The EU has a completely different set of laws than the US does, so promotions need to be rolled out separately.
Not defending MS at all but what is the alternative for them? What people want is the judicial oversight. But can Microsoft really go to a court and say "hey judge, we're Microsoft, we want a warrant for Microsoft to provide this"?
"Son, I'm sorry, but Santa isn't real. We just pretend he exists to make Christmas more fun. However, Jesus, the dude who came from the Sky Wizard and rose from the dead and tells us about heaven, we actually celebrate Christmas for him and he's totally real."

The juxtaposition of the Santa and Jesus myths has always baffled me. It is truly a spectacular example of the mental hoops people will go to get past their fear of death: even when they are given an opportunity to question their wider beliefs when the truth about the non-existence of Santa is revealed, they are somehow able to effortlessly compartmentalize the "real" unbelievable stories (like rising from the dead, etc) and the "made up" stories (Santa visits all children on Christmas, elves make the toys, etc.) You couldn't make this up if you tried: we piggyback a widely acknowledged fake myth about a man with superpowers on top of a widely believed myth about a man with superpowers, and "grow out" of the former but will go to the grave with the latter. It's the ultimate troll.
He risks legal action for libel, given the definitive title of his post "ABOUT THAT TIME GOOGLE SPIED ON MY GMAIL" compared to the indecisive evidence presented.
Before more people come in to defend Google, ive known for quite awhile that theyve been snooping their own employees emails. Before gmail went live nearly 10 years ago, there were beta accounts one could get. The only way you could get one was via invitation, and people were willing to pay money for those invites. This one girl i knew who worked at google decided to sell her invites to people. She was selling them to friends. Some how google found out about this. It was against company policy for people to be selling these invites. But, they found out she was and fired her. Thr rumor was they somehow pieced the info back to her. But unless the forced a confession out of these people, we surmised it was because she was sending all of these invitees paypal links for payment. She even told us later thats the only way they could have k own she was selling invites to gmail. So, yeah, not surprised by this at all.

Personally, i use my own smtp server to do all of my mail. It is not completely secure since the nsa can see everything, but its better than trusting google or hotmail.
I fully expected the essay to be on that topic.
What I have in mind is more loosely defined than LL(k) and in a way more restrictive than a general LL(k) grammar, but LL(k) is probably a good way to formally capture something close to what I had in mind. I try to avoid using the term "almost regular" as it is imprecise. I only used it since it was relevant to the context and I'd heard Rob Pike describe Go as having almost regular syntax several times.
I think "Rise of the Stupid Network" is still as applicable to AT&T as when it was written in 1997. http://www.isen.com/stupid.html
Looking at the evidence is not enough. You really must repeat the experiments. If you want to measure the gravitational constant, it's easy. If you want to measure the changes in the global temperature is much more difficult.

Let's pick a less controversial example. If I want to verify the existence of the Higgs boson, I need a pick a shovel and start digging a 10 mile circle. Then ... ??? There is an unknown particle that is a very good candidate to be the Higgs boson and I believe that in a few years the existence of the Higgs boson will be confirmed. But I don't have any chance to measure it myself.
Yeah, as I note in the docs it's pretty Trival and a quick 10 minute hack around :) Don't take it all too serious. But the last point about .NET and StringBuilder() used to hang around in my head during the dark days of my early ASP.NET development.

Not sure about the file reads, defeating string interning seemed to be the point that helped show any really difference. Quite an interesting/cool topic that.
Does HP actually make anything in their products other than the case?
Applies to golf and pool for me. But I start off as a bit better than average while sober, in the zone at four or five beers, then I fall off a cliff after that. Relaxation and looseness apparently have a very narrow maximum window of effectiveness while drinking. Go past it, and you're hosed (but I always had fun getting there).
Yes, that's the point of the old "I don't know how Richard Nixon could have won. I don't know anybody who voted for him" quote ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauline_Kael#Alleged_Nixon_quo... ). It's hard to remember, but Nixon won a larger share of the vote in 1972 than any previous president, which left McGovern fans somewhat shellshocked.

The quote is often used a proof that Pauline Kael was clueless, but, IIRC, she began by saying "many of my liberal friends have told me ...," i.e., she wasn't truly perplexed by Nixon's victory. Instead, she was pointing out that there are downsides to being insular about politics.

The difference between you and the vast majority of the population is that you recognize there are dissenting viewpoints held by people you've never met.
>However, we are so far away from producing anything remotely close to that level of AI, that I fear their work is ungrounded. It strikes me as fun quasi-SF rather than serious engineering.

Really we have no idea. True nothing around today is remotely close to human intelligence, but the question is; will AI be a slow gradual process, or will someone make a breakthrough and suddenly make a lot of progress very quickly? In any case, it won't happen at all if people aren't working on it.
4 things I learned from my failed startup
I would have to agree with MS.

Someone sharing proprietary info using your email platform, and its completely in their right as per eua to look at it, then damn right they should have reviewed the leakers account.

The guy knowingly received proprietary info.

Eff is almost like a troll sometimes

For one summer between semesters I worked for a MS call center who handled hotmail which we could read peoples mail if wanted.
We didn't as MS has great auditing
Also, video games.
What... what hosting provider will not notice this? Shouldn't their abuse mail address be glowing red?
Right on. Thanks for sharing!
If my country's is anything to go by, I don't think so. The thing is, people are great at labeling themselves as religious of <faith> while managing to progressively ignore everything that doesn't fit what they actually believe in. Which is why, for example, 60%+ of Portuguese and Spanish Catholics support the legalization of the abortion, let alone milder subjects like contraception and divorce.

So since religion as a label will stay for much longer than the actual harmful religious beliefs, people tend to disregard religion as the problem in itself. The ones that harm based on religious beliefs are just considered "fanatics".
I'm not sure what your link has to do with your quote… Anyway, this blog post is not quite right.

While I agree capitalism is a more pressing problem than AI right now, it won't kill us all in 5 minutes. A self-improving AI… we won't even see it coming. There is also much more brainpower dedicated to "fixing" industrial capitalism, than addressing existential risks such as AI. And industrial capitalism doesn't need fixing, it needs to be abolished altogether.

Corporations are even less autonomous than the author thinks. Sure, kill a CEO, and some other shark will take its place. On the other hand, those sharks are all from the same families. Power is still hereditary.

If the people were truly informed about how the current system works, it would collapse in minutes. To take only one example, Fractional Reserve Banking is such fraud that if everyone suddenly knew about it, there would be some serious "civil unrest", to put it mildly.

The same does not apply to an AI. It's just too powerful. Picture the how much smarter we are from chimps. Now take an army of chimps, and a small tribe of cavemen (and women), which somehow want to exterminate each other. Well, the chimps don't stand a chance, if the humans have any time to prepare. They have fire, sticks, lances… Their telepathy have unmatched accuracy (you know, speech). And they can predict the future far better than the chimps. Now picture how much more intelligent than us an AI would be.

It's way worse.

---

Now, this new agey speak about information taking a life of its own… It doesn't work that way. Sure, there's an optimization process at work and it is not any particular human brain. But this optimization process is nowhere near as dangerous as a fully recursive one (that is, an optimization process that optimizes itself). And for that to happen, we need to crack a few mathematical hurdles first, like Löb's theorem.

But that's not the hard part. The hard part is to figure out what goals we should program into the AI. Not only we need to pin them down to mathematical precision, but we don't even know what humanity wants. We don't even know what "what humanity wants" even mean. Hell, we don't even know if it has any meaning at all. Well, we're not completely blind, we have intuitions, and a relatively common sense of morality. But there's still a long road ahead.
If anyone is looking for pants that resist liquids, have good flex, travel well, and still have a fairly trendy cut to them, check out the Levi's commuter pants/gear [1]

I'm a bit of a trendy fop and I love them. The fabric has a bit of spandex in it, which makes them super comfortable and flexible. Even though they have the spandex, though, they also have a normal/natural sheen, so people will just think you're wearing regular slacks and not space pants.

They're made for cycling, and they also work pretty well for that, as well (which is really where the give of the spandex shines).

They run about $80 MSRP

If you want to spend an unhealthy chunk of dough, and get pants that are pretty much amazing, you should check out the Outlier OG's [2].

Again, they're designed for cycling, but they're made out of a straight up tech fabric called schoeller dryskin [3]. They're relatively water resistant and dry really quickly when they get wet. The fabric has a nice give to it, and is comfortable. Those would set you back about $180, though.

I'm a bit of a bike nerd, and do a lot of commuting by bike. Toured ireland for five or six weeks as well. I also like clothes with a good cut. I've found cycling clothes like that tend to offer a lot of functionality that makes them good travel attire and there are a number of companies out there making things with a good cut to them. Like I said, though, I'm into feeding my foppish vanity; If you're not, well, more power to you :)

[1] http://us.levi.com/family/index.jsp?categoryId=11844101
[2] http://shop.outlier.cc/shop/retail/new-og.html
[3] http://www.schoeller-textiles.com/en/fabric-groups/soft-shel...
Show HN: Youtube removed Facebook from its 'Share this video' feature
Open up www.Youtube.com , locate any video, click on 'Share this Video' , you will not see Facebook as an option. I think this is a big move. Any ideas fellas?
There is a massive bias for white founders (~87%), to the detriment of minorities (~13%). This is masked slightly by the fact that Asians dominate minority founders (12% to 1%). These numbers are "under-representations" in relation to university populations, even for asians. [1,2]

[1] http://www.cbinsights.com/blog/venture-capital/venture-capit...

[2] http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/01/how-amer...
On the side of the winners?
Dear OP: why do you think the Win32 C APIs still exist? Microsoft have offered .NET for Windows since 2001. It does everything you're requesting but it hasn't replaced the completely hideous Win32 C APIs.

Bluntly: there is a class of programmers and programs that cannot be written without:

* C linkage

* Calling of and calling from C

And a further class of programs where:

* Garbage collection

* Significant runtime

* Safe code

Make acceptable performance impossible. This class of programs includes .NET itself which is entirely written on top of the Win32 C APIs.

If you want a runtime on top of Objective-C, you're welcome to write one yourself. It could offer everything you're requesting without needing to change anything about Objective-C.

Oh wait, there are literally dozens of runtimes on top of Objective-C. Not to mention official bindings to Python and other languages. Sure, none of them are very popular but if you want to write in something else: go ahead.
Rise of the Stupid Network
We shouldn't have left tables in the first place. Design (including flexible responsive design) is ALL about grids.

Since they didn't have them in the early days, the used HTML tables, which weren't designed for that, but have lots of the needed behavior built-in.

Then came the idea to use floats, which was a horrible idea. Floats weren't designed for layout either (they were designed to, well, float simple elements, e.g let text flow around an image and such).

So designers, instead of abusing tables (which weren't meant for layout, but at least had what was needed), they started abusing floats (which weren't meant for layout AND didn't have what was needed, without ugly hacks and workarounds).

Flexbox and the Grid Layout are actual layout systems, designed for that very purpose. Finally.
SF Lyfe, our version of 2048
What would be the use case for the interpreted version? I would assume it would be usable for the development process, surely running interpreted code on devices would be a total waste if compiled code is available?
Kind of the way it is with every service, unless you take extra measures to protect yourself. E.g., PGP, careful selection of data you upload, or just not using any cloud services in the first place.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-primitivism
Author here. Please try not to get too caught up on the interpreted part. It’s far less important to what I’m trying to get across here in the essay. Yes, implementation matters, but what we’re implementing matters more. And don’t ignore the benefits of being interpreted, like having a more dynamic runtime. Being able to modify a system without needing a recompile cycle is a huge win.

See also more thoughts on the essay: http://nearthespeedoflight.com/article/2014_03_20_assorted_f...
I use my ipad as a second monitor occasionally, using air display. It works well to throw a browser up on and test. Or, even if you don't use air display, as long as you're okay with the mobile browser for the testing, you can set up a local network, and just navigate to the test address.

It's not ideal, but it's nice.

I find the size of my multiple monitor setup is less a concern than being able to mentally divide tasks/contexts. ymmv
204÷
Alright Microsoft, your days on the run are over. We, Microsoft, have gotten a subpoena against you. Now cough up that data, us. I mean you.
>Tables got a very bad name because they were abused back when they were the only thing available for layout: "if the only tool you have is a hammer..." Yes, but sometimes data is actually tabular.

Not only that: layouts are actually tabular (grid based) themselves. That's why tables were, even if not created for layout, an untuitive fit for doing layout work.
Scripted Selenium
Flappy Bird popularity took about a month from beginning to end. I suspect 2048 is going to take around the same amount of time.
Author here: Objective C is far and away mostly used for creating user-facing software. I want a better way to do that. That’s what the essay is about.
Of course I can and will keep up with every vulnerability for every service that is running and facing the Internet.

I do not accept the risk of waiting for some vendor to release a patch. If there's a hole, read the report, determine whether your config/build is vulnerable, rebuild.

Why would want to patch something you are not running or use?
> There are various characteristics of programming languages that can make it much easier to implement them as interpreted languages rather than compiled languages, and vice versa.

It is all about convenience and effort one is willing to invest versus return on investment. As any good CS compiler design course will show to their students.

Back in the 70-80's most languages had multiple implementations offering both compilers and interpreters as part of their toolchains.

Only on the early 2000's I started to see this phenomenon of mixing languages with their canonical implementation.
Author here: you are correct.
Can you tell the story that explains why Apple has done nothing with IndexedDB for years while every browser vendor implemented it a while ago? Because the story as I see it is very clear: Apple embraced the web when they had very small market share, and they're doing the opposite now that they have a good chunk of the market. Walled gardens generally aren't very profitable if you have only a tiny fraction of the market.

Of course, it'll be hard for you to tell a convincing story because (AFAIK) Apple hasn't even commented on IndexedDB. Strange, for such a well-established open standard. Even MS has supported it for years!
Why should the on-disk format of a programming language have anything coupled to a specific use-case for browsing that code? If viewing just the definitions of a method is useful (ie, viewing the header file) then your editor should just let you do so. Letting that bleed into the way the files are organized on disk at the cost of DRY seems a terrible design choice as it serves no purpose other than to make up for poor tooling.
His "evidence" could just as easily be explained by the fairly common practice of fingerprinting inside information to catch leakers.
There are still use cases for header files which would require additional syntax if headers are to be generated from .m files. Also the use case of forward declaration comes to mind which would totally lost with an implementation only system
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I understand that in the same way that computers aren't inherently bad, but the ones infected with malware are bad.
Is a law necessary for that case either? That's just simple poor job performance from the hiring manager.