skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
If Microsoft has the best API, you should develop exclusively or preferentially on Microsoft platforms.

Autodesk's entire product line migrated to a D3D-only rendering pipeline. Why? Because D3D is the superior API.
It still is, if you work with embedded systems and other lower-level stuff.

but it must have been amazing to see first-hand how physical inanimate objects come together to build intelligence.

Many CS curricula still start with building a CPU out of basic logic gates (and for those who haven't done this before, this is certainly a recommended exercise - make a simple CPU in a logic simulator that can run a short program). The first time you see how it all works seems like magic, then you remember that everything just fits together logically, and realise that it isn't magic after all.
Mirror on archive.org: https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_univOfIlliIACILLIACpro... (as the Dropbox link is down)
Google = phone book. Domain = phone number.
I think Quora could add a huge amount of value by solving the talent-discovery problem at scale. It needs some way of knowing whether its internal indicators correlate to success in the real world.
I got practical thinker too, and I'm a Mechatronic Engineer (I like building things)
SaaS Public Companies Valuations for Q2 2014
Great post! I gained useful insights from this. Thanks!
>The creator of DotA (Allstars, the most popular incarnation)[0] works for Riot on League of Legends. The guy at Valve[1] inherited it.

I would argue that Icefrog's version was the most popular incarnation. It may have started off as simply an inheritance of Allstars, but Icefrog is the one that actually balanced it and made it something that was competitive. The popularity skyrocketed after Icefrog took over for Guinsoo.
Can you name one monopoly that exists anywhere that is not the creation of a government in the first place?

Do some digging into the history of antitrust legislation. The Sherman Antitrust legislation was an act of mercantilism designed to protect incompetent businesses who were losing market share to superior competition, most notably Standard Oil, the poster boy monopoly which gained an 85 percent market share through lower prices and economies of scale, delivering a benefit to consumers but harming their comparably inefficient competitors. It was those same competitors who spearheaded the antitrust legislation, not the poor consumers 'suffering' from lower prices and superior service at the hands of the 'monopolistic' Standard Oil.
| What incentive would the author have to talk with the police (let alone invite them into his home) in this instance? I understand that the police in the UK may not be as menacing as they are in the US, but if nothing is in it for him (and as far as I can tell, nothing was), then why would he allow himself to be questioned in such a way?

Incentive boils down to negative externalities:

* In the UK, understanding is attempted by the police; in this case, they probably received a complaint, heard out both sides, and made the judgement call of case having no legal basis. Not hearing the cops out have a potentially significant downside, in them understanding the situation incorrectly.

* In the US, the same level of understanding requires the interplay of a prosecutor, a defense counsel, and a judge (on top of the contestant & defendant), and several man-days of sweat. Talking with the cops can, by law, only weaken your position: anything you say can only be used against you.

The cultural trade-off is a question of variance: the UK system presumes low-variance situations, such that understanding can be built by reasonable individuals; while the US is geared to being tolerant towards people living on the edges, at the cost of longer due process.
Doesn't sound like bothering to me. Gave him a valuable heads up to someone was trying to stir up trouble for him. The police sounded exceptionally polite to me.
Oh look. It's a post about Mozilla, so it's a chance for Pacabel to air out his/her laundry list of complaints about Mozilla yet again.

> I'd be very willing to directly donate money to them, as well.

I don't believe you.
I am a backer but it is pretty much just a multiplayer game and what I loved about RTS games was the single player campaign experience
Anything that helps people relive these amazing PC classics has my support. Same thing with OpenTTD!
I am not the OP but I do experience sleep paralysis. I started experiencing it during my late teens; it was scary at first but I learned to control it and calm down when it happens.

The worst part about sleep paralysis is that things happen to you while you are in bed in your room (or where ever you fell asleep) and things seem too real-- ghosts trying to choke you, a monster slowly crawling towards you, or just some person in the mask breaking into your house and you can't move or scream to ask for help.

Sometimes it happens at night and you can move around (but that's a dream), then you wake up and can't move (and that's either sleep paralysis or yet another dream). Then you wake up for real but you don't know if that's still a dream.

Sometimes it happens during the day when you nap. You can hear people around you talking but no one seems to see/feel that building is about to be destroyed or hear you screaming because you can't move your lips.

Luckily, I learned to control it. All you need to do is calm down and say that it is a dream. Personally, there are clues that give up the fact that I am in sleep paralysis-- I can't see faces clearly, regardless of the thing being alive or inanimate (like stuffed toys). So I just calm down, admit that it is a dream, and fall asleep again.

PS: I also wouldn't call it "suffering sleep paralysis". It happened frequently (several times per month) when I was young but after I turned 22 it might have happened 3 or 4 times only.
I was going to tick "Partially", but I think I am bored-out instead of burnt-out [1].

[1] http://mindfulnext.org/disengaged-burned-out-or-bored-out/
Indeed, but when the whole room is one big logic machine that you can walk around in, it must feel somewhat different than logic simulation software.
Get involved with your community
What incentive? He got a heads up regarding his opponent.
Those cable lines that run down the streets into all the houses. By law nobody can use them but Comcast and by law nobody else can string up another set of lines to run to all the houses. That's the monopoly privilege.
Hmm, not sure I've ever had a computer with 5 audio plugs. Actually, I'm trying to sort through the various audio connectivity standards to find which works best for me. Because I don't need a large screen, and because the screen is the usual bottleneck for desktops/laptops, I use a small but powerful laptop as my main computer (Lenovo Helix for the curious.) Unfortunately, since this is a laptop, audio connectivity is pretty limited, and I'm in the market for a quality USB audio device that'd allow at least 5.1 connectivity.

If you have any headphone/USB interface buyer's advice to offer than I'd be interested. At the moment I'm lacking enough connectors for a 5.1 interface with this setup and certainly lack same for headphones. :)
seriously, why the FUCK would you waste internet bandwidth ?
As if people had less words to curse so you are automated it!
Total waste of time and 'oh look at me , I am so cool' attitude.
> Mantle and D3D12 are going to thoroughly leave GL behind (again!) on the performance and developer "mindshare" axes very soon.

Huh? Performance, maybe, but how is "mindshare" being measured here?

DirectX "beat" OpenGL a long time ago - does the author claim OpenGL beat its way back to the top? If so, I can only assume that was due to GL on mobile platforms. But those mobile platforms - iOS and Android - still use GL, and are growing? How can D3D12 and Mantle beat those when they don't even run on those platforms, while Windows - the platform they do work on - is anyhow already under DirectX control?

Furthermore, GL is seeing another area of growth through WebGL, which now works on even Microsoft's browser.

Am I missing something? That mindshare statement seems completely off base.
Does the iPad 2 offer enough grunt to run this? Or are you looking at the 3rd/4th gen at least to power it smoothly?
FCC Head to Revise Broadband-Rules Plan
All of those devices are linux, and all have init systems. Currently, there are two core systems they use: bsd-like init.rc systems (and busybox variants), and sysv.

Similarly with servers: essentially all the web servers and application servers in the world are linux, and they also don't need the sort of windows-style 'architecture' that systemd brings.

In fact, I would venture to say that boot speed isn't even in the top 50 concerns of a desktop linux user.

So it's not just the tail wagging the dog; it's a nonexistent, badly drawn picture of a tail wagging several billion dogs.
Completely agree. I stopped using contract wireless services since a few years ago and have been able to consistently pay less and get more than before.

Currently using AT&T GoPhone's new $45/30days "Walmart" plan with unlimited talk/text and 1GB of data. Its much less than on contract. Prices are falling, you just have to look beyond a contract.
"Can you name one monopoly that exists anywhere that is not the creation of a government in the first place?"

Microsoft.

I'm a libertarian, but one of the reasons I can't even consider being an anarchist is that I consider anti-trust regulation to be a good and proper function of a government. I'd break up a lot more, personally. It's one thing that I find the otherwise-excitable class warriors to be bizarrely reticent to do.

I'd also observe that antitrust regulations do not forbid monopolies... they forbid the abuse of monopolies, according to a certain definition of abuse. Microsoft was not punished for having a dominant desktop OS, they were punished for using that dominance to engage in shenanigans to try to "abusively" (in accordance with the legal definition) extend that dominance into a another sphere. Of course that is the theory, and what happens in the courtroom in fact may be arbitrarily related to the theory, but that is the theory.
I imagine a lot of people don't bother reporting because nothing happens. Spam filtering won't stop spammers. They need to be hit in the pocket. Here in Australia, I report Australian companies spamming me to the ACMA but can't imagine they ever do anything about it.

I get spam from Chinese businesses posting galleries of their products on Picasa (Google property) and then using share buttons to spam people. I mark it as spam in Gmail (Google property) every time, but still every Picasa email makes it through despite that consistent mix of Picasa template and Chinese characters.
I don't buy that Snowden acted as a spy. Why disclose any of it publicly at all? Public disclosure means that you've burned your methods up. That's why the NSA/CIA/FBI refuse to deny or affirm anything: an opponent can reason about the denial as well as the affirmation.

Spys don't give giant caches of info to journalists, either. The spymasters want to keep secret that the info is stolen in the first place, and secondarily, to keep the victim ignorant of exactly what was stolen.

Epstein's arguments fail on first principles, I think. He's being taken for a ride by some insiders with ulterior motives.
Awesome article. Love the gratitude man. It is one of the finer emotions.

At 43 here is my experience:

-I can't stay awake as long as I used to either. Nor do I want to anymore.

-My body doesn't hurt all the time... I have heard this from others but it hasn't happened to me. Still, I can't do what I used to without it really wiping me out and requiring rest. And, I'm not as fast as I used to be. But, I find I am still as strong as ever... I think even stronger.

-I certainly know more, but feel I don't think as fast as I did 15 years ago. I'm at peace with that. One offsets the other for me.

-I'm more jaded and cynical about life but, paradoxically more patient. What used to be unforgivable sins in others are just not as grating anymore. At the same time I expect the worst from others more than I used to I believe.

-Ditto on appreciation. Didn't used to have it as much as now. Maybe because I expect the worst and am pleasantly surprised when it doesn't show up.

-I don't think I'm wise... not going to claim that, but I do feel I have more control over my life and my reaction to events. I'm certainly less impetus.

I wouldn't think this will be the outcome for everyone. YMMV.
In terms of 3D graphics, gaming, and visualization? Microsoft definitely doesn't have the least vision there.
Cocktailicious: Become Beta Tester, Get 100% Discount.
> It's technically peaceful in the same way that me raising my fist while staring you in the eyes is technically peaceful

No, technically that would count as common assault which could get you arrested and charged or at least cautioned.
Okay. I dont see what's interesting about this.
Ok I guess I might need a concrete example of the end product. Would it be like an automated job interview that evaluates answers on the fly? Maybe as a fist level filter for job applicants?
Like a year ago I wanted to see if there was a way to get an unlocked sim not tied to a carrier and just use data. Reason being, I wanted to see how much I was over paying for voice [I have 1000s of unused minutes]. I wasn't able to find a data only sim option.

But by a base line calculation I'm spending ~$300+/year over the cost of VOIP.
My cloud instances already boot up quickly and safely, thank you. I don't need a mountain of technical debt and poorly designed architecture in order to increase the speed by two seconds.
Seriously ? How taking company from another person , firing him is interesting ? Did you even read the article ?
Typical millionaire/billionaire behavior. Steal the idea or acquire the company -> separate out founder -> fire them ->profit.
If this is interesting I dont know what to say.
It wasn't iteration. They threw away code and started from scratch. Things you should never do [1].

Several months ago Google releases totally new version of Google Maps. Google Maps consistently stays as a poor product since then. I think that even first version of Google maps (introduced in 2005) was better.

[1] http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html

When you throw away code and start from scratch,
you are throwing away all that knowledge.
All those collected bug fixes.
Years of programming work.
No, no such thing for me. I like to be the independent, incorruptible voice. Besides, I would hate dealing with employees. Man's gotta know his limitations. :)
The original company has a known brand (Vinton), and that opens doors.
Try this one

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%...
IBM Poised for Growth, Chief Says
Do you have a real point or are you just being a moron?
They explicitly stated that Dota 2 would be mechanically identical to Dota 1, to the point where some of of the quirks imposed on Dota 1 due to engine limitations were intentionally reproduced in Dota 2.

It's just started to deviate away from that now, but it is kept remarkably similar - bugs and all. For example, using the item that teleports you a set distance forward teleports you only 80% of its max distance if you click beyond its max.

The other one is 'orb effects' - certain enchantments which add some effect on your standard attack. They do not stack with one another - only one works at a time - except for one of them [1] which does stack with only the life-steal ones.

This makes dota have a learning cliff more than a learning curve, but the depth of the gameplay is pretty crazy as a result.

[1]: http://dota2.gamepedia.com/Eye_of_Skadi
> Thank goodness for a little government regulation and that created competition.

Heh. Funny comment, since it's the government who created in the first place the band of 3/4 major actors in very country, by restricting the entrance with a system of auctions to get access to mobile frequencies.

That's precisely because we lack competition that the prices are not coming down, and that's what the government has been preventing for ages in the mobile industry. With 3/4 key actors it's very easy to have everyone meet for dinner and agree on fixed prices that are not going to move.
Given that Unix has been booting successfully, safely, and rapidly for several decades, I would venture to agree that 'the same goals could be achieved with a more modular approach.'

Which raises the question: why systemd? And the answer: desktop linux people, who are already mired in a world of overcomplicated and incomprehensible quarter-engineered freshman-level bullshit like gnome and dbus and pulseaudio and on and on, are sure that their problems are everyone's problems. In some cases it's because they don't know any better, I'm sure. But nevertheless, infecting the rest of Linux with the desktop philosophy is an extinction-class mistake.
The difference between wireless technology and computing technology is that wireless communication is limited by Shannon's Law which basically says that C ~= 1.44 * B(S/IN) where C is the information rate (i.e. bps) B is the spectral width (how much RF spectrum is being used to modulate the signal onto, and S/I*N is the signal to interference and noise ratio. Right now, LTE is very close to the Shannon limit, there is no Moore's law we are all familiar with. Most carriers face a choice of either obtaining more spectrum (which is limited resource and expensive) or increasing the SINR which is very expensive to do since it involves building more cell sites, if the tower is closer to the user the SINR goes up. I think often times the cost of maintaining the infrastructure around supporting tens of thousands of cell sites is under estimated. Yes the wireless companies are profitable, but no where near the kinds of profits the phone manufacturers are reaping where it costs them $50 to make a phone and charge the cell companies $500 for the phone, that huge mark up is passed along to the customer as part of their monthly bill because everyone expects their phone to be "free". It is no free, the cost is embedded in your monthly bill. The best way to drive down wireless costs in my view are to assert competitive pressures on the phone manufacturers.
I'm with you on this, and that it's why this line from the article seemed odd to me "Voss does not foresee a commercial market in lucid-dreaming machines.".

Maybe just people aren't generally aware of lucid dreaming to know what the market size is.
> It's government that is granting Comcast the monopoly privilege to be the only ISP on the market.

Not always. Comcast may have got in early and laid substantial infrastructure (copper/fibre/HFC) - something that can be substantially cheaper if you leverage "new" (cable reserves and/or piggy-back off the utilities when they are expanding their networks.

New players, however, need a substantial amount of capital to get started. Comcast (or anyone like them) can leverage their position in the market to drive up prices or push smaller players out. By using regulation to effectively turn the infrastructure into a public utility, it allows smaller players to compete.

The argument against this regulation (which is in place in the UK and Australia, amongst other countries) is that the monopoly (BT/Telstra) spent money building out their network and therefore should not be forced to share it.

The argument for this regulation is that often the telco built out this infrastructure in a particularly favorable environment that cannot be replicated today due to the huge costs of installing physical cable. As a further example, Telstra in Australia (previously Telecom) was government owned and therefore had a directive to supply the population with telecommunications. Many parts of their copper network (cable, conduit, pits, exchanges) were built during this phase. When they were privatised (sold by the Government) this was no longer their key directive. Any new player attempting to get into the market-even a small part (i.e. inner Sydney)-had a lot of catching up to do. Huge capital costs, a significant amount of regulatory hurdles and cable reserves to negotiate access to, etc.

This is of course a simplification of the issue, and you could argue that in Telstra's case the government did effectively grant them a monopoly on the market by privatising them. But had they started out as a private company originally, I believe we would have still ended up in a similar place - getting in early when rolling out disruptive infrastructure (as trenching cable tends to be!) projects is a huge advantage in and of itself.
Dota has a vertical cliff for a learning curve. It's not surprising you can't follow it. The problem is that whilst that's a barrier to entry for casual watching, it's also what makes the game so popular.

Without that same depth of gameplay, dota would not be nearly as popular. I'm not sure how you go about resolving that - maybe there is some better balance?
Oracle wins against Google in Java copyright case
One of the biggest headaches for me is debugging. As the author says, the facilities for reading state back out are often questionable. Even where they're not, I'd rather not spend all my time rolling my own custom OpenGL debugging tools. I'd love a cross-platform OpenGL debugger--even if it only handled basic stuff.

For example, when nothing renders, I don't want to waste an hour, staring at my code with no direction, until I realize I forgot a call to glEnableVertexAttribArray. Instead, I'd like to boot up my trusty debugger and go through a sane process of narrowing down the problem, like I do for just about every other class of bug.

Also a sane way to debug shaders would be fantastic. The usual advice is to write debug info out as color values. The fact that anyone considers that a healthy debugging strategy just illustrates how far behind graphics programming is in terms of developer friendliness.

I don't know if it's better on other APIs. OpenGL is the only one I use, because I never have occasion to develop Windows-only apps.
Integer Division, Step 0: No Remainder
hi guys, i'm the co-founder. happy to answer any masked cards questions.
Maybe I'm naive, but how else would you prevent interference -- or even a nefarious "competitor" from otherwise "using" the frequencies? I know very little about radio waves/signals, but AFAIK a HTTP-type approach wouldn't work without a lot of up-front collaboration and a free market wouldn't have went that direction either, correct?
When they come round and ask for a chat you can easily decline to let them in. That's just a personal choice. Personally I would prefer to keep them out becuase of my belief (which may be wrong) about warrants to search.

The reason you talk to them is to get information. "We've had this complaint. We're letting you know." In this case I genuinely have no idea why the police felt it was appropriate to get involved and I would send a complaint in, even though they had been very polite. In other cases they may tell you that some person feels harassed by you. Ignoring what the police say could lead to you being arrested for them to question you about the harrassment; or maybe the other person will get a non-molestation order; or etc.

Tl;dr in England we're policed with our consent and most people kind of feel that policing should be collaborative. Most people don't mind polite chats; it's petty little officious police being obnoxious during a traffic stop that is annoying.
> It's really been abandoned by commercial game development studios

Not really. Starcraft 2 comes to mind. And not too long ago Supreme Commander. Wargame: European Escalation... and so on.
Yes! I have an original copy that was given to me in 1978 when I went to work for Bell Labs. A lot of today's technology has it's roots in the early work done at the labs.
And it's an indie game.
Bayesian Bandits – optimizing click throughs with statistics
On the other hand, such price discrimination reminds me of things like this:

http://blogs.computerworld.com/node/3538
The U.S. of Comcast: Follow the $19M in Lobbying [video]