skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
100 lines of lisp? That's like, a billion lines of C? ;-)

I agree with Thomas(!), clarification of the guidelines would go a long way.

There are certain topics that bring out the flamewars more than others, and those should get particular attention. Most things political, sexism, nutrition (weird but true), and so on. Most of all I think it's important to reinforce the idea that you can disagree with someone even on deeply held beliefs and still be civil about it. Moral certitude does not make it ok to be mean.
I think about work in the shower, before bed, etc. But watching "Frozen" with my daughter, I totally forget about work. Or when my wife unceremoniously hands me the baby with a "I already changed a poop diaper today, your turn."
Now that the moderator's identity is public, a useful next step would be a public log of all moderator actions. lobste.rs has one[1] and the transparency is great.

[1] https://lobste.rs/moderations
Windows seems to be quite passive-aggressive about designing everything to require its own proprietary components.
You're basically describing WAF. Even your sketched up syntax is very similar to what it does. Here is how you run candle.exe which is a part of WiX using a one-off rule:

return ctx(
rule = 'candle.exe -nologo -out ${TGT} ${SRC} -dMySource="%s"' % dirpath,
source = ['%s.wxs' % group],
target = ['%s.wxsobj' % group]
)

It has canned dependency node generators in libraries for most popular languages:

ctx.objects(source = glob.glob('src/*.cpp'), target = 'OBJS')

Here you don't specify the names of the target object files directly and instead let WAF's c++ tool figure them out. On Windows, they will be .obj, on Linux .o and maybe something else on Mac.
I'm going to keep writing essays. I don't usually decide what to write very far in advance though.

Yes, I'll be working on Arc again. (I've been working in Arc regularly, since HN is written in it, but I haven't been able to spend much time thinking about the core language for the last 5 years or so.)
This thing plays way too slow. Got bored and closed it.
This is silly. Few places seriously expect a junior developer to be familiar with new frameworks. They expect to get a Java kid fresh out of school. And the fixation on getting things done rather than careful consideration can--and does, I did it as a junior, it's part of becoming not-a-junior--leads to getting the wrong thing done. Spending a week moving mostly sideways is no different than spending a couple days thinking and discussing and a couple days moving mostly forward, except you might make more progress depending on exactly how far the cowboy missed the mark in their haste to just write code, bruv. (And the cowboy will miss. Everyone does, even if you're a genius. Not that groups of developers can't miss, too--but after a while you start to realize that they usually miss much closer.)

The role of junior engineers is that they are teachable and can generate value while they are being taught; the role of senior engineers is that they are teachers while both generating value of their own. There is no rarity to junior developers, there's potential plus inexperience. And that's it.
I wouldn't call it user error to abuse your cables to the point of failure (they should totally be tougher), but I'm also realistic: many companies cheap out on the cables, and it's difficult to tell from looking at them whether they're cheap or not, so if you want them to last, you have to assume they're fragile and be careful with them. This attitude has gotten me far with my MBP power adapters, which have both been working flawlessly since 2010 despite a lot of other people apparently having theirs fall apart.
Yeah you know it's a problem for me :P
Wikipedia has some norms that, if imperfect, actually do seem to impact the site. "Civility" is a norm that seems to have a significant impact, and it's hard to think of a case in which incivility --- which is prominently featured every day on HN --- is ever worth hosting here. "Assume Good Faith" is another norm that seems to cut pretty closely to what Paul Graham was trying to say with his "collegiality" norm.
What will be interesting, in my opinion, is how they draw the distinction.

They don't have to draw a distinction, of course. The last time a finance patent came before the Supreme Court in Bilski in 2010, there were two theories about why the patent in suit wasn't valid under 35 USC §101. Four judges agreed with each theory, leaving only Justice Antonin Scalia to decide. Scalia joined with the conclusion of each side and the theory of neither, leaving the situation even more confused than before.

Most likely the exact same thing will ensue this time.
The Gatsby Curve: How Inequality Became a Household Word
He's making a bitcoin-fueled advertising engine for companies to sell patented dietary supplements on Facebook.
I think its great to see that the people that work at Mozilla feel strongly about ethics and what they consider to be right and are passionate about their product.
Nothing compares to Bell Labs. Google is an amazing software and networking company, however the majority of its contributions are in the field of Computer Science, specifically in distributed computing and networking.

Bell Labs made significant contributions to Physics (solid-state and optics), Chemistry, Electronics, Computer Science (operating systems, graphics, speech recognition, networking), Materials Science, Communications (here they pretty much invented an entire field of study) and the design of so many everyday things (they had an entire team that focused on just the design of your telephone wire) that is would be impossible to imagine what the world would be like if they didn't exist.

If Google didn't exist, search would still have been solved, maybe a decade or so later. If Claude Shannon didn't work at Bell Labs when he did, it could well be the case that we wouldn't have come up with such an elegant theory of Information even today, and therefore the world would look nothing as it does.
HN has had at least two server failures I can recall within the last year.
There are many kinds of 3d printing that would be amazing, but that we are nowhere near close enough to doing. First we have to see the same technology working well in factory environments. For instance, imagine a machine that manufactured clothes in place, tailored to your size, by just scanning you and taking a base design. Say goodbye to all the complex inventory problems that you find in clothing retail today, all while increasing sales, because in other stores, what they have might nor might not fit you well.

That kind of printing by retailers seems like a more likely incremental step towards major economic change than having it all work off of home printing. We don't make anywhere near enough purchases out there of 100% plastic items, or where plastic could be a viable replacement.
I got a BA in a totally unrelated field, graduated when I was 22, spent two years working in a bakery, went back to school for CS, completed a 4 semester Master's program in 3 semesters, and got a job when I finished. I've been working for a few months and I'm turning 26 in a couple weeks. You'll be fine.
Were scientists from the past worried about this when they worked to improve medicines and public health that has increased the global average lifespan from 31 years to 70 years in the past century?

No one knows the answers to your questions, but I think there will be solutions to those problems. Birth rates are averaging out and hopefully starting to go down. Automation of work is going up. The reach of education has increased.

Also even if everyone was immune to death by aging, some actuaries showed that humans will still be limited to 400 years due to accidental death.

I think that people in different parts of the world today have life spans that are 1/2 to 1/3rd of other countries. Maybe if we're not losing all our most experienced and knowledgeable people to senility, old age, and death, we may come up with solutions more quickly.
I suspect it is because the comment adds little to the conversation. The possible responses are:

Me too.
No, you don't.

Consider the downvotes as editorial feedback. How could your post be better? Adding supporting rationales, details, or examples which explain why you love HN might improve the communication of your ideas.

On the other hand, sometimes posts are simply reactive and cannot really be improved. In that case, consider just deleting the post...in the best case, do so before receiving downvotes.
Most pessimists aren't being overtly un-constructive. But there are some very common species of negative comments that are clearly that: for instance, glib or sarcastic dismissals; and uncivil, hostile, or accusative criticisms.
I love the "spring" strain relief on my ATH-M50 headphones.
It's ok to ask something of general interest. The point is that HN is not YC customer support.
This reminds me (pretty obviously I guess) of the split in saltstack (Python based Chef/puppet killer). Build highly specific tasks and then have policy decide which ones to call in which order.

Whilst salt is not aiming at Make-for-DevOps it certainly is something that is in the realm of possible.

The gap between compiling a bunch of source code that becomes an executable and a bunch of source code that becomes twenty servers running fifty apps is very very small.
Decisions like that are pretty much always subjective. Moderation is, in large part, about taste. Count the number of upvotes the comments saying that people appreciate your taste are getting, and remind yourself that we've already declared faith in you even in non-objective situations.

(note that this is the standard pep talk that has to be delivered to moderators everywhere from time to time, and indeed that my friends periodically deliver to me when I'm worrying the same way you are :)
Ahh, bigger as in "involves more people" rather than bigger as in "moral crusade to change humanity".

Yeah, no thanks. Once I get the construction crew out of my retirement home, I'd like to deal with as few people as humanly possible. I don't even like the social interaction of dealing with cashiers, I love the self service lines.

If I hit on a retirement hobby that requires more people, I'm sure I'll always just be able to just form a company and hire people to do the work with my swimming pool full of money.
I reckon your message broker might be a bad idea
The sheer number of patents involved, and the generality of said patents is what discourages future innovation.

It's a complete first man advantage, anyone coming after that has to deal with the fact that 130+ patents already exist. Sure, some of these are probably extremely valid, but seriously, 130+?

So we've got some revolutionary new technique that allows real-time visualisation direct onto the user's retina, your brain can't distinguish it from reality..

Yeah, but the user is seeing something that's not physically present? Got that one covered. Pay up.
Just FUD, it's a hard fork, bitcoin has passed for this situations
Wow, those are great posts. Pity I never saw most of them on the front page...
A log of moderator actions seems like an invitation to many years of debate over the moderator's actions. The current system, of sporadic conspiracy theories regarding moderation, actually seems preferable to me.
The US elections are equally rigged - you vote for which faction of the mil-ind complex you like, and whether planned parenthood is funded - but not anything like wars, which simple continue as scheduled.
Minecraft: The Story of Mojang (2013)
I love Notch's management style: 'We have to decide what the full version of the game is. That's kindda the first step. The next step is to do that.'
Decompilation isn't even needed. They know the credential being sent so an if(strings | grep -c "foo") != 0 SendEmail() is all that is required.
1) No such thing as long hours for the sake of it. It's always to get more "done". And like I mentioned in my parent post, there's no such thing after a certain number of hours.
2)I don't believe it's possible for a company to do that, or at least not to the extent that you're saying.
3)Based on some of the interviews people have had here with Google, it seems that Google could use some more "reward based on performance" in their culture.(or a lot)

p.s. Keep in mind that my competition point still stands. Longer and longer hours are of no good. It's a slippery slope. And yes, I think such competition is poisonous and detrimental, even if some more work gets done. Working more hours just pulls everyone down,* in regards to your free market comment. It's price competition.

*even if it's not projection, but actual performance. Soon enough, everyone is working more and more to catch up to you, and everyone's miserable. That's not sustainable practice.
I would suspect the complete lack of content; we like our signal to noise ratio to be as high as possible around here, and applause lights don't really contribute to signal. Sorry.
it is taking up most of my time - but boy the series of blog posts are shaping up awesome :-)
>> "His submission list
https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=gruseom
is a fine example of articles that "gratify intellectual curiosity.""

While I agree with you it's interesting that only one submission in the last 84 days has had significant up votes. What does that say about the people on HN or the kind of stories they are looking to find here?
> Because borders are a perfectly valid and relevant criteria over which you can tell who is potentially dangerous.

Sure.
Contracts let to 2011 Crystal Drive #911
I would look into replacing at many things as possible in my kitchen with printed items.

Broken spatula? Print a new one. Friends coming over for drinks? Print some wine glasses[sic?] and plates. Half of a leftover chicken? Print a tubberware case the perfect size for it. I'd print perfectly sized cabinet inserts for all of my utensils. Outside of the kitchen, I could make bookshelves and cabinets that are only as big as I need them to be. There are lots of custom organizational things that I could make.

Currently I buy all of these sorts of things from stores, so they are never quite optimal. If I had a shop I'd be making this stuff myself out of wood, but I live in an apartment. Of course I don't have room for a car-sized printer either...
So what? I know several homosexuals who don't believe homosexuals should be allowed to marry -- people who actually believe this is a regression to BS bourgeois values from gay people losing all perspective of 70's struggles (regarding liberation from antiquated values and institutions).

In general, taking a single issue and making it something people can lose their job over it, just because you have the power to push for it in the media, is very wrong.

At worse, what Brendan voted for would merely not let some gay people perform the same BS marital custom that straight people do. Doesn't compare at all to death penalty in my book --which costs hundrends of lives -- including of kids in places like Texas.

So, Should people who are in favor of the death penatly lose their job and have their CEO positions boycotted? Take you for example. What do you think about animal rights? Or the death penatly? Or gun control? Or drugs?
I guess i'll hijack this thread to ask anybody else if they have noticed a slip in quality of front page? I used to check HN first thing and read 50%+ of frontpage stories, now I barely click one or two.

When there is something interesting, I've often read it elsewhere, or its an Ars re-hash of a story from yesterday. When I submit stories I find interesting and HN-worthy, I find them at 3-4 points having been submitted 12 hours ago.

My perception is that the HN frontpage is being gamed more by social marketing teams, journalists who work for re-spamming blogs and growth hackers. The types of stories are more soft news, marketing from co's etc. than much more hard-tech.

As an aside, right now the homepage is unusually good - must be because it's a weekend and the social media hackers are at home.
I have replaced ~3 Mac power adapters for free at Apple stores by taking a computer which has valid warranty coverage in, giving them the serial number and a failed adapter, and saying "purchased at the same time" (when it was an 85W which failed, and an MBA13 which comes with the 45W was my only laptop under applecare, or more recently, t-shaped vs. l-shaped vs. magsafe2 isses with my rMBP15.

They never really complain; I honestly don't keep track of which adapters go with which laptops in general, but they're all obviously made by Apple, and failed due to manufacturer defect (yellowing and cracking of the plastic on the DC feed), so it's in Apple's interest replacing them for ~$25 cost, rather than annoying a $mm lifetime value customer.
It's possible.

An open-house at expression.edu and one minute phone call from Pixar while I was driving to my old job changed mine(long story) ...and no, I didn't get the job. I don't even work in the computer-graphics field. I just took a wild shot in the dark, but it was the small snowball that started rolling down a very tall hill. By the time it reached the bottom, my life reached the top. Inspiration to change your life can come from anywhere; especially unexpected sources. I'd say HN is more expected than my failed phone interview.
Do you support your country conducting their own foreign intelligence?
Apparently a lot of miscellaneous foreign contractors are headquartered in this one suite :-)
The response from Mozillans (?) does make me feel better about the whole situation
Show HN: Uber Spender Chrome Extension – spending data for Uber power-users
This is a book about the tradeoffs (if you're God/Darwin) of death. Really, really interesting book :

http://www.amazon.com/Sex-Origins-Death-William-Clark/dp/019...

He first frames the problem. Firstly pointing out that not all parts of the human body are subject to death. Every cell in your body was alive 180000 years ago when the human race first emerged, and even 3 billion years ago when the first cells really started happening. Every cell in your body and, indeed, you yourself are part of the original cell's lifespan.

Second he goes over a lot of experiments that indeed point out the trade-off that God is making here : either you die, or you become a cancerous blob, over time. Not creating the situation where cancer will eventually win is also a no-go, for other reasons.

Thirdly, he points out, mathematically, what death is and isn't for a human. It isn't nearly as clear-cut as you might think. He also gives the philosophical reasons why death may indeed not be the end of existence (well it isn't, if you have kids, for obvious reasons, but it may also not be the end of your conscious existence for other reasons).

Really, this book will change your thinking on death a lot, and after reading it you will understand that not dieing is something that will come with massive consequences.
I've been using this version on my mobile devices: http://hn.premii.com/ It's very slick and works well 99% of the time.
I don't know anything about budgets, and Kat and Garry (and Sam!) will speak for YC, but here's how I see the HN part of your question.

To me, YC and HN are like the business and editorial sides of a newspaper. They're one company, but optimize for different things. YC optimizes for great startups. HN optimizes for great content, that is, for curiosity. For HN to be "marketing for YC" would be like a newspaper's stories being "marketing for its advertisers". That would be a bad newspaper. Intellectual curiosity, the core value here (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) would wither.

In other words, the way for HN to benefit YC is to just have the highest-quality content it can. That seems so obvious to me that I hope it is to everybody else too.
Show HN: FastWoo (Early Beta) – WebRTC social network based around interests
Just wanted to get some early feedback - this is my university project and is nowhere near finished yet!

Works best in Chrome, FireFox works too but does have a few bugs!

Keen to hear your thoughts!
The Prince of Wales' current marriage is civil.
Mencius Moldbug traces back the lineage modern progressivism to the Puritans, and you can still see the effects of this lineage in its illiberal totalitarian righteousness[1]. They were briefly the supporters of liberal principles like free speech and open debate when the movement was young and had no power. Like all movements which have grown to power, it now seeks to drive all dissent into the shadows by making dissenters bear a heavy price, a scarlet letter, if you will.

[1] http://foseti.wordpress.com/2014/01/06/review-of-unqualified...
Yeah, that's an interesting example. Wikipedia spells out "civility" in great detail - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Civility#Avoiding_in... has friendly human-readable advice to prevent incivility, like "Not sufficiently explaining edits can be perceived as uncivil" and "Other people can misread your passion as aggression". And https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Civility#Identifying... provides a reasonably comprehensive list of types of incivility, to help identify what breaks the guideline. And then there's a stated process for dealing with serious problems.
Though having a community obsessed with speed, optimisation and scale, HN is the slowest site in my bookmarks, by FAR, not to mention the times when it's not working at all, sending people to a twitter page (happens every day).

I hope this issue will get addressed, too.
Most BSDs kernels have an emulator mode when they accept int 0x80 syscalls. Some parameters are different than Linux though.
iPhone 5 user here. What are you smoking, and can I have some? :-)
Man. We haven't yet ramped up on devops blog stuff, but already "bloggable" has become shorthand for "valuable and interesting".
An attacker can show the user a page identical to PayPal's and convincingly ask them for their credentials. The submission would send the credentials to the attacker.
The debate will still be there either way, will it not? It's probably preferable to base such discussion on a correct log of the events, rather than speculation and unsubstantiated allegations.
It'd be interesting to hear what you think about Rich Hickey's work on Clojure. Things that surprised you in a good way, and things that you think it got wrong (i.e. things that won't be on the surviving main branch). I'm sure other lisp programmers would like to know your thoughts on this since Clojure has got itself quite a reputation in the last five years.
This is a very early beta, things are bound to go wrong!

I'm just after some feedback of what the community thinks :)
> Its about whether taking an unpatentable business method (per Bilski) and implementing it on a general purpose computer makes it patentable.

TBH, I'm not terribly familiar with what can and can't be patented as per business methods. But technically all things that can be computed, can be computed by enough people doing the arithmetic. Computers just make this much faster.

So if I have 300 people...I dunno, collating wedding invitations, and come up with a way of doing it in software, that's not patentable?

However, a clever algorithm for computational imaging is arguable patentable, but anybody who knows matrix math can probably do it manually.

So is it really a discussion over the magnitude of the assist to humans doing the grinding computations by hand and where that line is drawn? Or to your example, some software running on a general purpose CPU can often be implemented as DSPs or some other specialized hardware, it's obviously no longer software I suppose once it's a DSP, even if the method for doing the computation is the same.