skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I highly recommend reading Chapter 2 of "The Selfish Gene", titled "The Replicators". It is possibly my favorite book chapter of all time. I'm sorry that I can't link you a copy of the entire chapter due to copyright. Here's a tiny excerpt:

“At some point a particularly remarkable molecule was formed by accident. We will call it the Replicator. It may not necessarily have been the biggest or the most complex molecule around, but it had the extraordinary property of being able to create copies of itself. This may seem a very unlikely sort of accident to happen. So it was. It was exceedingly improbable. In the lifetime of a man, things that are that improbable can be treated for practical purposes as impossible. That is why you will never win a big prize on the football pools. But in our human estimates of what is probable and what is not, we are not used to dealing in hundreds of millions of years. If you filled in pools coupons every week for a hundred million years you would very likely win several jackpots.”

“Actually a molecule that makes copies of itself is not as difficult to imagine as it seems at first, and it only had to arise once. Think of the replicator as a mould or template. Imagine it as a large molecule consisting of a complex chain of various sorts of building block molecules. The small building blocks were abundantly available in the soup surrounding the replicator. Now suppose that each building block has an affinity for its own kind. Then whenever a building block from out in the soup lands up next to a part of the replicator for which it has an affinity, it will tend to stick there. The building blocks that attach themselves in this way will automatically be arranged in a sequence that mimics that of the replicator itself. It is easy then to think of them joining up to form a stable chain just as in the formation of the original replicator. This process could continue as a progressive stacking up, layer upon layer. This is how crystals are formed. On the other hand, the two chains might split apart, in which case we have two replicators, each of which can go on to make further copies.

A more complex possibility is that each building block has affinity not for its own kind, but reciprocally for one particular other kind. Then the replicator would act as a template not for an identical copy, but for a kind of ‘negative’, which would in its turn remake an exact copy of the original positive. For our purposes it does not matter whether the original replication process was positive-negative or positive-positive, though it is worth remarking that the modern equivalents of the first replicator, the DNA molecules, use positive-negative replication. What does matter is that suddenly a new kind of ‘stability’ came into the world.”
Building a Simple App With Node.js, Express, Passport and Stormpath
I think the problem with Lisp is that it grew organically from a large community across multiple languages and 50 years of life. Not that the language was excessively expressive.

Go, on the other hand, was designed and implemented from a single vendor in a handful of years. That makes it far easier to provide a single, coherent platform. Once you provide a coherent, complete platform you don't need your users to solve every edge-case by implementing their own language features.

Any language that doesn't provide some kind of code-that-writes-code workflow will eventually leave its developers dealing with frustrating boilerplate.
Security Dialectic: Kaspersky Industry Analyst Summit
Lack of GPU acceleration of Flash?
Most human drivers tend to over-estimate the consequence of a collision — it’s common that swerving to avoid a wild animal poses a greater danger than hitting, for instance.

However, what a robocar can do that most humans can’t is organise the clean-up, and that’s hundred times more important, because presently, hundreds of cars will pass that debris.

Let’s say you have a radar under the chassis (not unlikely given Telsa’s latest PR issue): the car OS can warn the authorities instantly with an exact location; images from several cars can be compiled to form an exact estimate of what it is. All car with significant connectivity can be informed that this lane is closed a small portion before any physical equivalent (orange cones) has time to be set up, possibly allowing a safer clean-up if the (connected) highway detects that all cars in the next x minutes have been warned, and a brusher drone can be dispatched.
My 2nd Year in the App Store
That's not really a fair statement – plenty of people (me included) find Julia to be a lot of fun. I'd be interested to hear why you think that, though.

If the OP is looking for a C++ alternative and knows Haskell, Rust is also an interesting alternative, although it's at a very early stage of development.
Getting them up there is the risk - a launch failure means raining radioactive death at random.
Haven't the carriers already been selling tickets for years? I would image you won't be the first to sit that seat. But you will still be considered an early adopter of civilian space travel!
Everyone else in the podcasting network I'm on uses G+, but I like Skype because it's easier to record it with one computer.
One of the issues, is the lack of competition. Most small sites doesn't have much real alternatives when it comes to Adsense, and a ban could close you down.

I got banned a some years ago, because my girlfriend thought it would be a good idea to click on the ads on my website. She clicked once or twice a day, and thought she helped me... I have been banned ever since. So I welcome any competition in this space!
There are a lot of really interesting problems and projects in the world that nobody is interested in paying for. If you want to do these interesting things, you have to do it outside of the marketplace.

Alternatively, there is a trade-off in selling your labour in the marketplace: you are no longer in a position to dictate the terms of your labour, and you potentially lose control over the product of your labour.
How do you convince user to store arbitrary data? Usually, when I chose a cloud service, I want data off my computer. And I think, ISPs will not be fond of such a service. They already suffer from existing peer to peer services like Bittorrent.
Ask HN: When should a startup start caring about gender and racial diversity?
Should it be as soon as it launches or after the company has gotten some level of funding and traction?
How-to take down any DigitalOcean-hosted website.
Simply send an abuse complaint. Digital Ocean doesn't even read or verify the complaint. They automatically power down the server (within about 30 mins) whether or not the complaint refers to actual URLs on the server.

This just happened to one of my clients today (hour ago) and Digital Ocean is not responding to support tickets and not responding on Twitter either.
Ask HN: No-drama wireless keyboard with touchpad for hackers
What's the best wireless keyboard with touchpad for hackers / programmers?

Logitech K400 is very popular on Amazon. However if I were to summarize it, I'd call it the "cell phone camera of 2005". The keys aren't too responsive, the layout is compact, the button (shift/enter/backspace etc.) is compromised etc. etc.

I really wish Thinkpad would sell the keyboard right out of it's T-series or Apple made a sub-$100 keyboard+trackpad (their current combo with an accessory to join them is close to $200. That's ridiculous for a keyboard). I'm really surprised with the lack of good options available out there. Correct ergonomics dictate not using the laptop keyboard with it's screen for extended duration.

Please share your setup
I'm not sure this type of testing is necessary, since we (computer scientists) can break down a complete system into is parts and then test them in various manners. Production performance shouldn't deviate from that of test environment much.
Yes. We changed the url from [1]. Wired is one of those sites that produces some solid articles and a lot of spammy fluff. We're not ready to lightweight it [2], but we're close.

1. http://www.wired.com/2014/04/self-washing-car

2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7658520
The defensive style driving of the Google car won't work in San Francisco where you literally have to break the law in order to turn left (by stopping in the intersection and often finishing the turn on a red).
Yeah they're different; the sea-floor one is lots easier. Remote control is in seconds not hours; spare parts are 5 miles away not 300,000,000. You can tether seafloor devices. Etc.
How GoToMyPC Beat pcAnywhere
> Systems C programmers

I don't know many (TBH none) c programmers that likes or actually uses go. The thing is that as for c++ if you are still writing in c is just for few reasons: portability (in terms of embedding your library) and speed. Especially the former seems very important.

EDIT: I know => I know personally or I follow.
The authoring platform doesn't matter as long as the product is cross-platform. Just use Windows to get the best development experience. I mean people use Sublime which is like a notepad on steroids and don't complain.
More and more I'd wish MS provided a extra limited version of IE6+WinXP packaged in a sandboxed VM. Any group seriously needing IE6 would switch to a combination of a modern windows + the sandoxed VM. This could already be done now, but a more compact, efficient and blessed solution from MS could make a difference.

It's horrible to have IE6 or winXP only software, but instead of just throwing it away, putting it in a confined executing environment would help desl with issues pressing right now.
>Ok, it’s only a few characters, big deal. Now what does this do?

>b.Mul(b).Sub(big.NewInt(4).Mul(a).Mul(c))
>Or in Haskell

>b * b - 4 * a * c

umm.. correct me if I'm wrong, since I'm not well versed in either Haskell or Go, but doesnt the Golang version read better in terms of scoping. I mean just by reading the Go version, I know what it will evaluate to, but in the Haskell version I dont know the precedence order just by reading.
Finally!

I've used many video conferencing solutions but I have the impression that Skype is going to be the most convenient (largely because we're already using Skype as a team). Sqwiggle[0] is pretty neat as well (Edit: I had to mention that, AFAIK Sqwiggle doesn't support group video conferencing).

[0] https://www.sqwiggle.com/
> Alternatively for file syncing, peer to peer?

I really just don't...want...to...maintain another server, or even P2P setup. However, things like this ruling are piling up to the point that I may have to take another look at what it would take to get my Synology box to use their "Dropbox" functionality (Synology's dynamic IP->static IP mapping service has proven to be flakey at best, though there are other options). Either that, or that bittorrent P2P thingy.

Another problem is that Dropbox and the like have really gained traction, so that other apps use them as a synchronization store. So there's the problem of keeping, for instance, all of my 1Password stores in sync. I'm sure there's a solution, but I need to overcome inertia and go look for it.
Long-term growth is trending towards levels lower than return on capital; this situation leads to unbounded wealth concentration bounded only by social instability. That's not a good world. These dynamics conflict markedly with the libertarian dogma that's unhealthily popular in the technology community, so it's no wonder you "like" a facile way to avoid the confrontation between immovable facts and the juvenile default tech worldview.
Really good point on Skype being friendly to beginners. I never realized it but my parents get really uncomfortable when I try to walk them over how to set up Google Hangout, and most of the time the conversation just continues on Skype and we drop the experiment. I mean for them its a hassle to install all those plugins and then invite and open emails and confirm and whatnot.
Whole world is infected with JavaScript runtime - a much bigger problem - but it sort of works.
Err, well the article is about using Mono with GTK, which is not native outside of Gnome.
Web SQL Database: In Memoriam
I spoke to Jamis Buck on Twitter. It’s called “Randomized Prim’s” on Wikipedia [1], but of course Wikipedia is not authoritative. It does seem confusing to call it a variant of Prim’s given how different the behavior is.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maze_generation_algorithm#Rando...
What's the best open source alternative to Skype?
The example could have been simplified:

func abs(x Top) Top {
switch v := x.(type) {
case int32:
if v < 0 {
return -v
}
case int64:
if v < 0 {
return -v
}
case float32:
if v < 0 {
return -v
}
case float64:
if v < 0 {
return -v
}
}
return v
}
I'm a little wary of the 'make the world better' cliche, but I see you've used it only on HN. Looks like a nifty little app.
I figured, sure why not, I'll post an ad for free. But when it asked for a required address and phone number, I decided not to.

Too early for that kid of trust.
As someone who was nearly run down by a cyclist running a red while I walked a cross walk this weekend, I agree wholeheartedly. Boston is in a constant battle between cyclists and motorists and neither side is playing by the rules.
I'm glad that this has become obvious. From my own experience, it is a wonderful fit. SupplyFrame doesn't shy away from Hacking (we're taking back that term to have a positive connotation). And they align with Hackaday's values of Open Hardware and Open Source Software.
And if it supported the monitoring services for Cloud providers. Looks like I found a new weekend project!
I suspect if there are large numbers of these vehicles, San Francisco (or more likely California) will have to change the rules its lights follow instead of the other way around.

It's hard to argue with a perfectly reasonable, perfectly safe driver.
How to add eXo Platform widget features to SugarCRM
His most relevant papers (already linked by another commenter) are http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/PikettyZucman2014QJE.pdf and especially http://gabriel-zucman.eu/files/PikettyZucman2014HID.pdf.

More research here: http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/fr/publications

I haven't said anything about clearly and succinctly though; I do not know if that kind of material exist. I believe the book to be a mix of original material, existing research (as linked above), and most of all the fruit of many years of productive research on these topics.

You are of course free to not buy Piketty's thesis based on his book alone; however, to convincingly build your case to convince others, it looks like you may have to absorb a fairly considerable body of knowledge.

On a more personal note -- while I am an economist by training (doctorate obtained in early 2010s in a top 10 uni), my field was quite far from Piketty's, so I am not in a position to know with any confidence whether he's right or wrong. (I would say though that his position certainly has merit and deserves the attention it is getting.) That being said, I maintain that Taleb shows himself as disconcertingly naive and frankly quite condescending to think that he can dismiss years of research in a few witty disparaging paragraphs. (Possibly without reading the book, almost certainly without reading the research, and very definitely without looking at the raw data.)
To the teams currently being rejected by YC
I lost maybe 20 pounds on the diet, but I wasn't religious about following it. I only did it on workdays because it was hard to carry the oil with me, so I just kept the bottle at work.

It did however make me not hungry at all, I would barely eat throughout the day.

It caused social problems though, because at night I still wouldn't be hungry, so I would just sit there at dinner while the family ate, and they would constantly be asking if I was ok.

I stopped losing weight when I hit the set point, and stopped the diet a while after that. Eventually I gained the weight back.

Interestingly, a few years later I started exercising regularly as a way to loose weight, and now I'm once again stuck at the same set point, which is about 15 pounds more than I'd like to be. Still trying to figure out how to lower that set point.
> the tools Golang misses that are common to other languages (particularly, REPLs

A quick search for Go REPLs gave me many results, e.g.
https://github.com/rocky/go-fish
"Yet another Go REPL"
Ask HN: What's on your desk?
Being greeted by a fellow employee about the lack of decoration at my desk, I would like to extend it to the community to describe some of the most useful items on your desk that you could not go a week without.
I suspect it's some magical data compression technique, because my overseas video calls usually suffer from serious stuttering on Skype, but on Facetime it's smooth as silk.

Either that, or better bandwidth because less people use Facetime.
I'd be interested to know what kind of problems Qt has with accessibility, I have personally not used the QAccessible* classes yet and would appreciate any tips from the field.

Some potentially interesting blog posts: http://blog.qt.digia.com/blog/category/accessibility/ I wonder what came out of the major upgrade in Qt 5, from looking around the web it seems to support MSAA fully and also I2A in some form.
Thank you for the correction; I seem to have had Xamarin on Android confused with Xamarin on iOS, which does compile to native code.[1]

1) http://docs.xamarin.com/guides/ios/advanced_topics/limitatio...
Thank you to everyone who made it to The Product Person Spring Inclusion Party
We've been using hangouts more or less exclusively for at least a year. Hangouts are very stable. When doing training we have hangout sessions that last for two days (minus the nights of course).
The problem with hangouts are with access control. Most people are not signed in with an ID that matches their email address and I still don't know how to schedule a hangout that is protected only by it's URL.
What are your thoughts on using a browser client library as a UI framework and write the UI in HTML? Like say use WebKit? I guess I can see how just doing the UI might be very doable but plugging that in with callbacks and the business logic a little tougher.
An extremely short summary of an extremely long post is don't fraternize or fornicate with your direct reports.

If you run into someone who doesn't understand why (perhaps myself when I was younger) then they're stuck reading this for 30 minutes.

Other than that, her boss sounds awesome, which is really too bad.

"He asked what I had done to change things.

I was speechless."
Language was also less ambiguous because they didn't leave out important punctuation or relative pronouns. I expected Tolkien to be a on Hitler's side because I interpreted the title as "Tolkien Snubs a German Publisher, Asking for Proof of His “Aryan Descent", but the author means "Tolkien Snubs a German Publisher Who Asked for Proof of His “Aryan Descent". Writing ain't what it used to be, even if only the clergy and royalty could do it!
Frankly python is good enough for most things. It's not perfect but it's one of these languages you can really use for anything(like java). I'm not fan of the syntax though,I prefer ruby's(ruby is not for "everything" unfortunatly). I've seen insane stuff done in python (3d games,gui apps,complex network tools...) running quite well on my old mac.

Go is relevant where you want pretty good performances and concurrency with low memory footprint(unlike java) ,without using C/C++ and threads. But it's clearly not for everything.
I don't follow Red Hat all that closely anymore, but they have had a long standing policy of back porting changes to kernels. In fact, this is part of why they've been successful in enterprise: RH provides long term support on a stable kernel that receives key fixes from upstream kernel versions.
Bob is a consultant who codes, and coaches those who code, and has a long track record of doing so.

Not only are you making an ad hominem argument, you're completely discounting the experience of one of the giants of our field. Only HN.
An Infographic View of Gowers’s Elsevier Exposé
It's not required :) I should remove them entirely. People might get intimidated by all the input fields.
I was interested until I discovered Julia doesn't have a useful form of OOP inheritance. Ok, you don't always need it, but for some things it's indispensable (e.g. using widget/window systems).
I just finished reading the paper about a model of ant foraging rates.

Observing that ant nest size should be a stochastic exponential process, depending on how many ants bring back food and how many die trying, is this model detailed enough to show that ants are performing portfolio optimization?
What happens to our blogs when we die? I've always thought about this and would like to keep my blog running even in death.
Microsoft begins rolling out free Skype group video calling
I think people gave Go a lot of credit just because it was designed at Google. People have high respect for Google engineers and so they assume what Googlers have designed must be flawless. So they take for granted ideas like lack of exceptions or lack of operators' overloading being a good thing, even though I'm quite sure they would be quick to criticize such BS if that was a feature in a language not coming from Google. But, in the long run, the language must defend itself on its own, without the authority of people/organization behind it.
You should hire the best candidates possible. I would never consider the issue unless my workforce represented a significant portion of the community. In my opinion if a startup has to waste resources thinking about anything but hiring the best it will fail.
Does Ken count as a Systems C programmer?

Most of the systems C programmers I know, who admittedly work on large distributed systems, like Go.
We built Roboartist, a robot that can draw pictures
Skype is a service, not just a desktop client. It's like asking what the best open source alternative to Google search or Google maps might be.
How do you assign colors to the different points in the point cloud? Did you have to register the 3D point cloud with the pano image?
> I don't know many (TBH none) c programmers that likes or actually uses go.

I'll give you two, Rob Pike and Ken Thompson. Ha! :)
Go wasn't designed to replace C++, Go was designed to replace C++ at Google. And it totally succeeded at that, given the list of critical infrastructure at Google where Go is used, and in some cases has replaced existing C++ implementations.
I agree, for certain types of applications. But as a general statement applying to all types of applications, I disagree strongly.
The main reason why I used C over C++ was C's simplicity (actually C++'s complexity).
As someone who thinks that more advanced type systems and proof-carrying-code are some of the biggest advances in theoretical computer science and practical programming in the last few decades, but also is a C# compiler developer, I have also noticed this. Haskell is really interesting, but C# developers get shit done.

I'm not sure what the cause is, but it definitely gnaws at me.
This is the email you get 30 mins before they shut you down:

"Oh no! We've found an issue with your account and issued you a new ticket that needs to be addressed as soon as possible.

Please login to view the ticket:
https://www.digitalocean.com/support

Thanks so much,
DigitalOcean"
Same experience here. Facetime had near-HD quality even when chatting with people overseas on an unstable 1Mbit line. I really want to know what magic Apple used.
I'll give you embedded systems for deployment, but the number of embedded systems programmers is dwarfed by the number of web developers.

The problem with the TIOBE index is that it also seems to factor in courses and services--I wonder if there is a straight-up developer census.

That'd solve the question rather thoroughly. :)