skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Lots of newer suburbs are being designed with high walkability in mind.

My newish suburb is walkable to a movie theater, bike store, huge gym, swimming pools, Tae Kwon Do school, a couple hair salons and a barber, a full grocery, a couple clothing stores, about a dozen restaurants from fast food to high-end dining, a UPS store, an optometrist, a toy store, a ballet school, two coffee shops, a dry cleaners, a bank, a liquor store, weekly farmer's market about 3 or 4 miles of landscaped parks, about 20 miles of trail and just on the edge of walkability is a full 18 hole pro-level golf course.

They're planning on adding more stuff to it as well including a full county library and some other odds and ends.

There's a nicer development similar to mine about a 15 minute drive that offers a similar environment.

My friends live in an older neighborhood that's also just a 5 minute walk from a lively older "main street" style commercial area and likewise get all their shopping and such done that way. They live in a brand new house, but the town is a couple hundred years old and historic.

You have to hunt around for them a little, but they're definitely out there.
I finally worked my way out of this recently. It comes and goes, often when I am very productive.
Combinations of constant negative criticism, vague+ambiguous requirements, and argumentative coworkers (seriously, they would argue about the order of words, or who was actually AGREEING with whom). I went from sleeping 8 hours every night to getting 2 hours most nights, then 10.
It's tangentially related, but my grandfather used to tell me stories about growing up in Florida in the 30s. He and his brothers used to homebrew beer, and in order to keep it cool while it fermented (and hide it from their parents), they'd burry the barrel in the side of a ditch.
I don't think autodidactism can be taught. You either have it or you don't. I like to think I have it, I taught myself software development and now have a career in it despite dropping of college after a year. I'm constantly reading books and improving the quality of my thought. College was interminably boring to me, I did not consider anything I did there to be learning. That's why I dropped out.

I don't know very many people who can do this. Most people I know, once they're out of school, learning stops. It's not that they can't learn anymore, it's that the impetus to do so ceases once they're outside an environment designed to facilitate it. I, and I suspect most autodidacts, have to leave said environment before I can really get engaged.
Conjecture: the point of Thiel Fellowships isn't to bribe everyone to stop attending universities, it is to combat elitism and education-based stratification of society.

Thiel specifically picked "safe bets" from elite universities (most of which are extremely flexible when it comes to students returning to finish their degrees after the fellowship) to demonstrate that elite university graduates' success is not due to the fact that they've graduated from said universities, but due to other factors
(intelligence, grit, curiosity, etc..)

That in turn will make traditional employers think twice before turning someone away because at 17 years of age an admission officer (who, of course, knows nothing about the employer's industry or the position the candidate is applying for) looked at myriads of factors on their application (most of them irrelevant to the employer's industry) and decided -- with a very different acceptable margin of error and optimizing for very different goals -- that they should attend their state's flag-ship public university as opposed to Stanford. Most startups and younger established technology firms already know this: while they may only send recruiters to specific campuses, as well as form partnership with only a handful programs (like the Waterloo co-op program, for example), once one has been in the industry for a few years, all else being equal, the university they've attended matters very little. The _quality_ of education they've received matters -- but how they've received it doesn't; this may be obvious to many of us, yet if you speak to someone in another field or industry and a different picture emerges.

I see messaging as fairly clear in that Thiel isn't telling a 20 year old me (a first generation immigrant working on BS degree in CS/Math without taking any loans) or a 23 year old me (having an employer pay part of my tuition for an MS degree in CSE, again, without any loans on my part) to drop out: I was seeking a degree for the purpose of (wait for it...!) education and not signalling, I chose a field of study I both love and that had great career prospects, and I did not go into debt. On the other hand, he is telling society that "attending an elite school for the purpose of signalling" should not be considered an investment that can never lose its value.
I understood he took the job to get the funding he needs for his startup. This is not a purposeless clock-punching job, the man has a plan, stick to it or change it.
Google has understood pages that have had only client-side rendered content for years. I worked mostly on JavaScript execution in the indexing system from 2006 until 2010, as well as other "rich content" indexing.

Certainly somewhere in the 2008 to 2009 timeframe we saw that the Chinese language version of the Wall Street Journal had a lot of pages in their archive where all of the non-boilerplate content was rendered via JavaScript. Since they didn't do this with their English content, it didn't seem to be an attempt to hide content from search engines, but much more likely a workaround for an older browser that wouldn't properly render Unicode, but with a JavaScript engine that would properly render Unicode. Sometime in the 2008 to 2009 timeframe, Google's indexing system started understanding text that was written into documents from JavaScript body onload handlers, and the Chinese Wall Street Journal archive content was exhibit A in my argument that my changes should be turned on in production.

I'm sure they've increased the accuracy of the analysis since, but they've certainly been able to index content written by JavaScript for something like 5 years now.

Edit: without giving away any Google secrets, here's a pretty good analysis of my work from 2008: http://moz.com/ugc/new-reality-google-follows-links-in-javas...

Edit 2: Since the 2008-2009 timeframe, Google also notices when you use JavaScript to change a page's title. I caused a crash in Google's indexing system when I made a bad assumption about Google's HTML parser's handling of XHTML-style empty title tags <title/> and tried to construct negative-length std::strings from them. When your code runs on every single webpage that Google can find, you're certain to hit corner cases you didn't anticipate. I did test for empty <title></title>, but not <title/>, and made incorrect assumptions about the two pointers I'd get to the beginning and end of the title.
True, but (assuming prices are comparably "up" or "down" in both places and that you're moving into something of similar size or larger) it's better to move when prices are low (since a lot of the costs are pegged to the price of the house).
Here's a 50 gigapixel image of Vienna:

http://photoartkalmar.com/Photoart%20Kalmar%20high%20res/Gig...
Im sure cost is also a big factor.
Endgame is a small VERY CHEAP design that can be integrated with CMOS camera silicon.

Just like FLIR. They started with big expensive uncooled bolometers that required analog amplification (+1 chip), digitization (+1 chip) and processing (+1 more chip), and ended up producing all in one Lepton chip that interfaces using MIPI like every cellphone camera. They went from sensor + 2 analog chips + fpga to one small piece of silicon.

After all Google wants every android phone of the future to be able to do this. This means making every manufacturer buy additional hardware. It needs to be cheap and easy to use.

In the end Tango will probably be a licensed core that camera manufacturers can integrate into their own designs. One camera that does vision _and_ maps environment on the side.
It is sad when people latch on to a narrative and then try to visualize themselves as part of it without asking the really difficult questions.

College is a great tool. You get to mix with other really smart people in a much higher density than you were exposed to in high school. If you visited a number of colleges you may have been recruited by a college that seeks your particular flavor of intelligence and in that you might find many more people like "you" there.

Mostly though college is a great place where you can do something (get a degree) without really anyone except your own desire to finish forcing you through it, and in the presence of numerous temptations to not finish it. Its like the final walk over coals at a volunteer self awareness session.

"Can you do what you set out to do, in the face of other people trying to tell you it isn't important or dangling other more tempting activities in front of you?"

A college degree is a reasonably objective and authenticated 'yes you can' to that question. And anyone who can answer that question in the affirmative will be better off than someone who cannot.

It isn't college that makes you employable, its knowing you can finish what you start does. If you already are doing that for large things you will be successful with our without a degree.
Recap: Top 8 Insights From Digital Summit
In physics it's generally safe to assume that all the different air resistances and drags and so on cancel out. You just draw a force diagram and everything always cancels, otherwise the hedgehog would have constant acceleration which we know isn't true.
hahaha no worries. Duly noted
A) this is really cool and B) your Antu the Hedgehog has shamed me into running again.
In Piketty's credit, he did make this easy.

Providing data for reproducibility and replicability is relatively new in economics.

There are, however, two kinds of claims here. One is that mistakes were made, which is grounds for schadenfreude for those (like me!) who don't like the slight jumps in reasoning from "inequality is rising" to "something must be done about inequality" to "this is what must be done". For all I know, the key injustice in modern economies is topocracy:

https://encrypted.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source...

But secondly, it is claimed that he cherry-picks. Economists (we) do that. A lot. And it has to be called out.
Meteor is still way too magic for me. Seems great for rapid prototyping of real-time applications, and perhaps things like games... But I don't think I would feel comfortable building a large application on it.

The problem space that it solves is not that hard, it just provides an extremely magical way to go about it. I imagine this makes things a lot harder to change, debug and maintain.

But then I'm the type of person who prefers boring and predictable, with a very big separation between front and back-end concerns.

I've been leaning towards the opposite architecture of what Meteor does, creating 3 entirely different layers for 1) core business logic, 2) web backend, 3) web frontend, whereas Meteor seems to want to blur the lines where things are happening.
That list of three things resonates well with the one I have. I'd also add job security along side #3 for me. Always wonder if I have the power to change when everything seems and is so fickle.
Here is a browserify/watchify-based script I use for building a browser extension's JS bundles: https://github.com/ghostwords/chameleon/blob/master/tools/bu...

The script

- Creates multiple bundles, with Underscore template precompilation and source code minification (for some bundles).

- Converts every vendor library into shared modules (you don't want Underscore included in every bundle that needs it, but you want to be able to require() it in those bundles).

- Monitors your files for changes and recompiles bundles as needed when run with --watch.

I found working with Browserify a pleasant experience after RequireJS and r.js (its build tool).
Overclock My Satellite
I can't say how much this post speaks to me. I've felt similarly for the last month or so, or ever since I was assigned my current project. I don't have any actionable advice, so I'll just share my current situation.

Without going into details, in my case the task is implementing a terrible, hacky solution for a total edge case problem. It's something I will probably never do again in my entire career.

It's draining. It claws at my self esteem, as I sit in the office wasting literal hours during a day not doing anything. The output of the 4-5 hours of actual work I put in over the course of a week appear satisfactory to the stakeholders, which is mind blowing.

I know that the sooner I get this done, the sooner I can move onto something more interesting. However, just working on this particular task has sapped my will like nothing I've experienced before in my career as a developer.
Alan Kay's research lab with Bret Victor, Vi Hart [pdf]
"Kay is currently involved in developing a research lab for an unnamed corporation of significant stature. Following in the footsteps of Licklider and Taylor, Kay, having been handed $8M for each of two years, began by developing a list of the top young researchers he would most like to bring together to fulfill his vision of tackling the big problems in communications ... Kay mentions two by name: interface designer Bret Victor and self-described recreational mathemusician Vi Hart, who, in more conventional terms, is working in the field of computational geometry. Of course, Kay chose Vi not for anything conventional about her. "She is the most creative person I have met in 25 years," says Kay. To lure Victor, Hart, and the others on his list (some teenagers, but mostly 20- and 30-somethings), Kay had to secure for them an open-IP agreement from the sponsoring corporation."
What non-profit idea are you working on?
yes, the premise here is that the Keybase server can be caught lying. If you want twitter user X's public key, Keybase can tell you the key and which tweet to look at to verify it. Then you can check it yourself. OAuth doesn't allow this.
Gabe has written some very complimentary things about the Surface in the past, it's no wonder they're eager to hear his opinions and tell him what he wants to hear. "Yes Mr Gabe, we really like artists, like a whole bunch. Please write some more nice things!"

I feel a little cynical by saying this, but does Microsoft really care about artists as much as they care about the audience they're reaching via Penny Arcade?
“Kay is currently involved in developing a research lab for an unnamed corporation of significant stature. Following in the footsteps of Licklider and Taylor, Kay, having been handed $8M for each of two years, began by developing a list of the top young researchers he would most like to bring together to fulfill his vision of tackling the big problems in communications … Kay mentions two by name: interface designer Bret Victor and self-described recreational mathemusician Vi Hart, who, in more conventional terms, is working in the field of computational geometry. Of course, Kay chose Vi not for anything conventional about her. “She is the most creative person I have met in 25 years,” says Kay. To lure Victor, Hart, and the others on his list (some teenagers, but mostly 20- and 30-somethings), Kay had to secure for them an open-IP agreement from the sponsoring corporation.”
Browserify is awesome, and I look forward to reading this guide in detail, but I must say I'm disappointed about the "avoiding ../../../.." section. I've never seen a solution to this problem that wasn't a hack. The doc is correct that using NODE_PATH makes your app "tightly coupled to a runtime environment configuration", but what it fails to note is that the other two solutions offered are just as ugly. Checking code into a directory managed by npm is simply asinine, and putting symlinks in there is just as "coupled to the runtime environment configuration" as the NODE_PATH solution. What is really needed is a reasonable (and supported) method of programmatically managing the node search path.

Why the node community is so stubborn about this point is a mystery to me and it makes me wary of node in general, because who wants to be locked into an environment where such an obvious pain point is ignored due to stubbornness?
The Right Way and the Wrong Way to Privatize Science
One extreme is ARM cores: incredibly popular, there are several in your laptop and probably half a dozen in your smartphone, ... ARM holdings is an IP & design company, they design & license cores.

But regarding those old cores I mentioned ... lots of use because it's legacy with lots of developers that know the architecture.
Another thing that seems to be the case is that new members are unable to become assimilated into existing culture because the entrenched users quickly become the minority and are unable to enforce cultural norms. The culture is co-opted by the newcomers.
I am thinking of the ocean in Lems Solaris, who might have built something similar.
Regex Golf – bonus levels
Unit testing Sails JS: How to mock SailsJS Services in Controllers
There are a lot of problems, they have been pointed by economists on every side of the spectrum right now, few months after the book has been published. More errors will be pointed during the years, but all the criticisms will be ignored, Piketty will be remembered as a genius for the time being and his ideas will be teached in schools and universities as if they were the God's words.

Just like happened with Keynes.
Out of curiosity, what form of "spying" do you think is enabled by Javascript that would not be possible without Javascript?

Edit: And since I replied to a small part of your comment, I should say that I disagree completely with your "few people truly care about their craft" statement. At least, I think that writing code that handles a lack of Javascript is only valuable if you have enough users to justify it. i.e. if you spend 20% of your time working on features for 0.1% of users, then you are doing a disservice to the rest of your users. Even more so if you have to compromise the experience for everyone else such that degrading is an option.

In some cases, you go out of your way to accommodate small fractions of your audience. ARIA and catering to those with disabilities is a good example. But turning off JS is a choice; one I respect, but feel no obligation to cater to. I think pages should show a noscript warning, but other than that, its a matter of engineering tradeoffs.
Jeff Bezos: I dreamed we might one day get a forklift
You don't have to blur the lines if you don't want to, don't use globals if you want purity.
Only if you ignore whole market segments, like Automotive, or 'cheap chinese shit'.
Gulp.js + Highland.js =??
This whole conversation is so stupid. Dropping out isn't the same thing for everyone. You really can't talk about dropping out without looking at context and consequences, namely why and how they dropped out and the options that are available to them afterward.

I mean, say you're a kid from an upper middle-class family who's parents are paying for your education at some top-tier college, and you drop out because you have a startup that's growing and making money or got funded by some deep-pocketed investors. Or you're a genius who's been recognized as such by one of the world's most famous and well-connected venture capitalists and given a grant to go off and do something entrepreneurial.

Then you REALLY CAN'T FAIL. Say your company goes belly-up. Who cares? The school doesn't care, you just go back to class and your parents start paying tuition again. You graduate with your degree, except now you have valuable experience and connections that help you get internships and jobs and maybe funding for your next startup.

You dropped out because you had a plan and a social and financial safety net that meant you had meaningful choices about your future. Dropping out was taking a shortcut, the life equivalent of jumping over the edge on Rainbow Road in Mario Kart 64. If you make it, you're hugely ahead! And if you don't, well you get picked up and put back on your original path and maybe you're a little behind but really it's no big deal.

Now think about an alternative scenario. You're a low income kid who was the first in your family to go to college. You're working 20 hours a week because your student loans cover tuition but nothing else at the giant-ass state school you go to. Your parents (you're one of the lucky ones whose family stayed together) are cheering for you but they're also laid-off and unemployment is running out and they're not sure how they're going to pay for dad's pills and anyway they're not sure you're cut out to be in college and they're worried you'll fail. So you drop out because you're struggling in some of your classes, and the shift manager at work offered you more hours and you say why the fuck not because the extra cash can't hurt.

What do you think your options are when that company cuts back and lets you go in a year or two? Think you've saved enough after paying down the interest on your loans that you can go back to school and not work? Think that 2 years of credits and work experience at a dead end job is going to translate into a high-paying position at some solid company?

The point is, if you have a specific plan in which dropping out will advance your career and life interests and also have enough of a backup that you can recover from failure, then you should totally take a break and go do something exciting.

If you don't, if a college degree is your lifeline to a better life than your parents' and you're skating on a razor's edge to be there in the first place, then just Stay In School, kid.

And now the rest of you stop debating the value of finishing college as if it meant the same thing to everyone and get off my lawn. Go back to work.
It seems like if they can make things generic enough for a non technical person to do the job, they can just place a computer at the seat instead. You're probably get faster reactions, and better decisions.
Virgin America New Website
Having recently migrated from Resque to Sidekiq, I can attest that this solves a problem, albeit not terribly a big one. As with any abstraction, implementation-specific features make leaks. So far, the README doesn't say how I will control features like retries and queue weights, but maybe that's coming soon.
If they could capture the teen angst journal/poetry crowd, they might have a gilded pathway into the future.
Very well written review. I myself was worried about the switch to N-trig (having dealt with a few products in the past), but I glad to hear it is a non-issue. To me, the additional size is great. While I like the portability of a tablet, having the extra screen real-estate makes me more productive and thus worth the trade off of a larger physical size device. I think MS's third attempt at a tablet is finally the tablet/laptop/combo that I have been waiting for.
So we must hamstring all advertising and personalizing because somewhere a government might abuse their power and get into the data.

That's absurd. Why should we change our behavior because bad actors exist instead of dealing with the bad actors? The whole argument implies that somehow blocking ads will keep $someScaryTLA from screwing with you, which is silly on its face.

And on top of that, ad tracking data is all about aggregates. Ads are targeted to "groups of people who like X", not "pyrocat, 123 foobar st, san francisco".

I really don't get this fear. I'd rather see ads for things that are relevant to me.
Nice! I never quite finished my identical project 3 years back: see https://github.com/anthonydanza/whatsuphedgehog
I'm not too sure about that drafting board profile. Having not seen the device in person, at that angle it looks like it might break. Is there some form of support running along that line?
Get more out of your service with machine-readable API specs