skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It is really sad that instead of discussing the merit of his argument, we are debating the quality of OP's site.

It is ridiculous that I have to police my site for low quality inbound links or risk getting banned (even more so for mom and pop webmasters who are more susceptible to link penalties). Lastly, if you are penalized, try recovering unless you are big brand like Overstock or JCPenney with millions per year in Adwords spend.
In some regards I agree. The rules are constantly shifting and they are unevenly enforced in a way that favors large, established sites which is frustrating for smaller players. Good examples here:
http://nenadseo.com/big-dogs/
At least the person mentioned in this article received an unnatural link notice. In other cases Google will just sink your site into oblivion overnight with no explanation or recourse.

At the same time, they have to deal with an entire industry that exists to exploit the very metrics they rely on to rank results so I don't blame them for just saying screw it, let's just float up our own content and well-known brands for every search and call it a day.
This has happened to me too. A client who bought ads on my site wanted the links pulled so as not to make Google mad. That Google would think me a spammer is very very broken.
> it's not our perogative to link the way Google us to.

Who said it was? Google didn't ask him to do anything. A random person on the internet did. I frequently get emails from random people on the internet who ask all sorts of insanely idiotic things that have little basis in reality.
Nofollow link to a human user is just as good as a regular, do-follow link. From reader's perspective this changes nothing so who cares? Game the link attributes as best as you think you can and let robots figure it out.

They're only breaking their own ranking algo.
Um yeah, I'm out of the loop. The last video game I owned was Metroid.
If you were selling links Google isn't that far off...
It's a crowded space :) http://john-sheehan.com/blog/a-survey-of-the-localhost-proxy...
He means science is a public good, everybody wins when a scientist discovers some knowledge/cure/whatever.
This is no joke but i just couldn't help laughing! http://i.imgur.com/AoClAei.gif
We have made a video for sites that received a notice for unnatural links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UFHCw4Q_FQ

I thought I'd made at least one video for sites that have been getting link removal requests. I'll check, and if we haven't made one then I'd agree that would be useful. Thanks for the suggestion.
I just don't have time to deal with it. Removing it was the quickest way possible for me to resolve the issue and not have my account closed.
To quote Christine Keeler "well they would say that wouldn't they"

So you believe anything anyone with a vested interest tells you?
James Halliday a while ago wrote a package system for C based on npm - a node package system: https://github.com/substack/dotc#dotc

The machinery behind it is surprisingly simple. You have 2 pre-processor commands: #require and #exports and you use them to build up a hierarchy of dependencies.
I'm not really sure how to answer this. You're kind of asking me to explain the value of safety and noise. I guess most people really put a high price on safety. Accidents do happen on subways:

http://www.newsday.com/news/new-york/f-train-derails-in-nyc-...

Subways, and rail in general, can be quite noisy. Paris uses rubber tires on their subway, for example.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_M%C3%A9tro

In Silicon Valley, one of the reasons people don't want HSR near their homes is because of the noise:

http://www.businessinsider.com/silicon-valley-high-speed-rai...

Ever hear the above ground train pass by in DUMBO in Brooklyn, NY?

Anyway, a super-smooth quite ride at a mile a minute certainly does seem like an appealing way to get around a big city.
Be warned, if you refuse to comply, he might link to you without "nofollow" as punishment!
I honestly find pkg-config to be the most sane "c package manager"

As long as a ./configure && make && make install installs package config files all I need to do is set PACKAGE_CONFIG_PATH and be done with it. I don't think c needs its own package manager, or at least another one.
Right. And what you end up seeing is that all disparate cultures, religions, non-religions, have concluded that they need to control drugs, in order to control the people. When Opium was unleashed China it just allowed the British to control the people.
> The point of the article is that webmasters are going around trying to get links to their sites removed because it might get them penalised by Google.

That's because previously webmasters we going around trying to get links to their sites added because it might get them rewarded by Google.

Google is trying to prevent the aberrant behaviour that the success of Pagerank caused in the structure of the Web, unfortunately there can be some collateral damage.
And that localtunnel.me is a Node.js "port" of the original localtunnel (which has been superceded by ngrok): https://github.com/progrium/localtunnel
> Google here is saying that all links from this site are suspect, even when the link in question is 100% valid, quality and relevant.

I read the article and didn't see any mention of what site the link was on or even what site it was linking to. It's impossible to say if it was legitimately spammy or not, but either way Google never asked him to do anything. Someone who didn't know about the Link Disavow Tool decided on their own to email him about taking the link down.

You would have a good point prior to the Link Disavow Tool, but it has solved this
(very tricky) problem.
learn about poetry,arts,ancient rome and greece, study functional languages and try to discover something.
There is an interesting story with the UK company "Lush". They were an early commercial player in the create your own makeup scene, with a main appeal of creating the cosmetics in-store, to order and while customers watched. Sorta like a gourmet chef. Lush was never able to get FDA or whatever approval for that type of 'unsanitary and unsafe' business model, and their US based counterpart is a sad reseller of bath products in fancy packaging. I expect the larger cosmetics industry keeps a firm hold on any home brewing of makeup with a mixture of regulation, and FUD.
http://john-sheehan.com/blog/a-survey-of-the-localhost-proxy...

I guess I need to update this now.
> Crossfit gyms are about Workouts of the Day. Every gym does them. And they are dangerous as hell.

If you are saying that every CF-affiliated gym takes the WOD from the main site and tells its members to do it as prescribed, you're wrong.

If you are saying that every CF-affiliated gym comes up with its own WOD, and tells all its members to do it with no adjustment in weights or tailoring to the needs and abilities of individual members, you're also wrong.

How can anyone credibly claim "The WODs programmed by CF gyms for their members are always, inherently dangerous," or make this analogy to movie theaters, when there's not even a single, authoritative source of the programming?
I run a decent sized discussion forum. I literally get 3 of these emails a day. I have an auto-reply that goes something along the lines of "Unless you previously have hired shady companies to do shady SEO for you on the forums, these links are organic. Do not contact me again regarding this subject."
You have two options: Change your mindset or continue burying/ignoring your ambitions. Burying your ambitions can make you relatively satisfied in life, but I believe they will always haunt you regardless of how hard you try.

You can change your mindset by developing habits that turns your mind into a force for achieving your ambitions, instead of an obstacle that prevents you from achieving your ambitions (which it appears to be now). Through this you will achieve MUCH more, and I believe be much more satisfied in life.

You're only 30. I would suggest you continue reading, looking inward and learning about yourself, and continue searching for answers concerning why you aren't full of passion and motivation for achieving your ambitions. Everyone's journey is different, however here are a smattering of books/resources that may be insightful and have helped me:

1. Carol Dweck on mindset:

- Mindset: The New Psychology of Success

- Self-theories: Their Role in Motivation, Personality, and Development (Essays in Social Psychology)

2. About the inner journey of high performance, removing mental obstacles, cross-disciplinary learning, and nature vs. nurture:

- The Art of Learning: A Journey in the Pursuit of Excellence - Josh Waitzkin

- Way of the Peaceful Warrior

- The Talent Code - Coyle

- Bounce - Syed

3. Add some insightful structure to your perspective. Do you have a pessimistic and deterministic mindset that is a detriment to your success?

- http://blakemasters.com/post/23435743973/peter-thiels-cs183-...

4. Learn how self-control and willpower works and overcome it:

- The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do to Get More of It - McGonigal

5. Strengthening your mind:

- The Rock Warrior's Way: Mental Training For Climbers

- A Fighter's Heart: One Man's Journey Through the World of Fighting

6. Find famous people in history you admire and feel you can relate with, and read their biographies. A few suggestions:

- The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt

- Titan (about Rockefeller)

- Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War

- Steve Jobs - Isaacson

- River of Doubt (about T. Roosevelt's dangerous journey through the Amazon river)

7. Don't worry about things you can't change and place all your focus in the things you can. Stoicism:

- Seneca

- Meditations

8. On how the people who have become masters in their field became masters in their field:

- Mastery by Robert Greene

9. Very intriguing characters that display incredible strength (mixed with some controversial philosophy):

- Atlas Shrugged - Rand

- The Fountainhead - Rand
I'm a loss for words. That is disturbing. For people who don't workout and don't understand what's wrong with some of these. The form so terrible and dangerous you could easily kill and injure yourself for life. And they're getting none of the benefits of the exercises they're trying to do because they're not doing them correctly. Thank you for posting this.

Crossfit => Death Wish Workouts™
It's interesting -- I would imagine a minority of Americans would support developing killer drones, because it is a terrible slope for the world as a whole to go down, yet our military -- largely because of game theory, will continue to develop them, likely to a poor outcome for the world.

Perhaps our belief in game theory is a pretty miserable self-fulfilling promise
Why do these VC's have shares in drug testing company's I can think of only a handful of job (outside of DV/TS clearance) that should be allowed to test there employees train drivers, airline pilots and so on.

Your MD doesn't have to have drug tests and they have access to the whole damm candy store.
Scott's quip "many PhD programs even see training students for industry as a fundamental part of their mission." Has long been true for chemistry and biology, and that has possibly staved off the phenomenon for a bit longer than it was for physics (original article, 1999), but it is certainly now true in these fields too.

Of course, these are all anecdotes, by which I mean data strongly filtered through confirmation bias. So it's worth thinking about the bias here; we have tons of grad students and postdocs comiserating, and a select few professors. One of which says it's miserable and is trying to warn people in the future, and the other who has had a fabulously successful career saying everything's more or less fine.
Welcome Back, Xbox One
I presume that he means that economic conditions are so bad in India and China that people would go through poverty in American Graduate schools instead of staying back home.

I think there is some truth and some hyperbole to that presumption. Especially in the past five years when both nations have seen strong economic growth. Not all people who come from India are the same. Not all American graduate schools are the same. I did a part of my high school and my undergrad in India and came to America as a part of a EECS PhD program at UT, Austin. All of the people who got accepted in my program from both India and China were either academically incredibly strong (top of their classes at strong undergraduate programs in India/China) or had done relevant research. This was true also for the American undergraduate students in my program. Economically speaking, none of the Indian/Chinese students were going to suffer if they didn't join a PhD program in America. They had very good jobs. (A job at Google India in 2009 was pretty fucking hard to get into what with dozens of interviews and so on.).

Now, this is only part of the story. There were at the same time enough lots of students in India who either found it hard to get a job or wanted to improve on their economic situation who came to (equally shitty) graduate schools in America in order to better their situation. Presumably the same is true for students from China.
Hi Machine learning instructor from Zipfian Academy here.

We teach scikit learn at our bootcamp and people who have some sort of scientific background, have completed Ng's course, or are software engineers typically apply to our program.

What we have found in the class room is that if you understand the fundamentals of machine learning algorithms, you don't have to understand all the minutiae of an algorithm as a user.

The hardest problem to solve is figuring out how to encode data such that the algorithm learns properly as well as all the pre processing steps that typically go in to machine learning.

The only thing that would be worth understanding for an algorithm are the hyperparameters associated with the respective models. An example of this would be learning rate or regularization coefficients.

If you understand what those are useful for, you should be fine.
It's not just Google that recommends to avoid link spamming. For example, at http://www.seroundtable.com/bing-links-knowledge-18535.html you can read where Bing said "You should never know in advance a link is coming, or where it’s coming from. If you do, that’s the wrong path."

When SEOs break the quality guidelines of all major search engines (not just Google), then they might need to do some work to clean things up if they get caught.

One of the reasons that Google is such a popular search engine is that we do take spam seriously and we take action to counter spam.
Uchiwa – a simple dashboard for the Sensu monitoring framework, built with Node.js
Are any of your clients sharing their raw data with the public?

(By 'raw' I mean in a format that is complete and convenient for machine processing)
Pro's/USP

1) Repeatability

2) Ability to communicate to others your work-social/viral

Cons:

1a) Colour gammut problems

2a) None (?)

There is risk of failure but also (potentially large?) upside...seems worth trying out.
As a software engineer, should I join Snapchat, Airbnb, Uber, Square or Dropbox?
There is this omnipotent master somewhere in the cloud. His power is large, but his ways are unknown. To please the Lord of cloud, strict rules have to be followed. Rules, that, when not followed, will cause the cloud Lord to strike you down with vengeance. Unfortunately, the cloud Lord is intentionally vague about these rules.

Some people have taken upon themselves the task to discover the rules that please the cloud Lord. In the process these priests have found a large number of arbitrary rules that have to be followed strictly. Breaking any of these rules is a reason for the cloud Lord to banish you to the dark corners of his empire - or so the priests say. For only a small fee the priests will give you a glimpse of the rule list that might you good standing with the cloud Lord. It may work, or it may not, because the cloud Lord works in mysterious ways.
I don't think it works like that because public grants are not a free-market phenomenon.
It may be optimistic; many optimistic things with only a small chance of working are still worth a try. (Assuming the worst, and designing only for the worst, then ensures the worst.)

That 'spite' you mention isn't a constant across all communities, across all time: it grows with cycles of negative, stinging punishment-feedback. (The study which started this thread was suggestive of that, regardless of its other limitations.)

I strongly suspect each of the following is true:

• threads on certain contentious subjects have lots of competitive and retaliatory downvotes, driven from the impulses "I can't let only these favored comments sink/fade" and "if those partisans are downvoting me, I'll downvote them"

• that habit/mood, once learned, spills over into other threads, to the detriment of discourse and positive/productive feelings

A separate axis for disagreement might catch some of that and express it where it does less spite-generation.
Anybody knows how these stack up against Curve25519 (also by DJB)?
"Spammy links ... are both unnatural linking behaviors that result when sites are more concerned with pleasing search engine algorithms"

ForHackernews, we say in our quality guidelines to "Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines." If the SEO whose email was quoted in the article had followed that advice, they wouldn't be in the position of trying to clean up spammy links after getting caught spamming.
I've always been fascinated by the FSF's interplay with IP law. Mostly because of the 'copyleft' hack, which is the core underpinning of the GPL and, by extension, GNU.

If you didn't have IP law at all, what you'd have is effectively public domain, without even the 'moral right' of attribution of authorship.

The kinds of systems you'd be able to build with that would resemble BSD codes, not GPL codes. This would suffice for open-source software, to be sure, but not for Free software with all the political trappings that it brings [1].

In much the same way as DRM aims to restrict what you can do with the bits and bytes of media and code in favor of the 'IP holders', copyleft aims to restrict what you can do with the bits and bytes of source and even binary codes in favor of the 'IP users'.

While the class of set of people benefiting from IP is different, it all still relies on IP.

[1] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-copyleft.html
I like this! Is it a sort of staging ground for libraries to eventually graduate to various distributions' official repositories, or is it just random bite-sized utilities for quick weekend projects?
You appear to have 10 hours of traffic a month right now, while it's in beta:

https://meetfinch.com/pricing

Once they roll out paid plans, their 20 hour/month plan is $15/month. And (at least based on their pricing page now) you don't get reserved subdomains until the $25/month option, so you end up getting a random URL whenever you set a site up (again).
So you're saying all ads are 'paid links', except I presume Adsense ads. That sounds fair and reasonable.
That's correct, I came here to make that comment, whereas he's implying that Wikipedia did it to preserve their own ranking, which is not true.
Why? Why should anyone remove outbound links simply because the destination _thinks_ they are harmful? And even worse, if the destination is in fear of some other _third_ party which _might_ think they are harmful?

In the bad old days of the Internet, web sites would complain if you linked to them, because they though they had some sort of a right to determine who linked to them. After court cases, etc. the issue was resolved. And now this.

If Google really thinks that a link is illegitimate, then it should just ignore it in its algorithm.

Please don't reply to this if you don't fully agree with my points.
I really like pkg-config but it has some issues with static linking. I had to create a GCC wrapper script to properly build and link the libimobiledevice suite into 100% static executables. pkg-config config files have fields to handle transitive shared linking but not one for static linking.

P.S. Apologies for the accidental downvote. I compensated by up voting another comment.
I had a DMCA takedown notice sent to me on behalf of a website owner who didn't want me linking to their site.

How does that even work? How does the DMCA apply such that I can invoke it to tell you to stop linking to my site?

I'm guessing it doesn't, but if you're at the mercy of a hosting service that doesn't actually understand the DMCA you're in a jam.
There is a huge imbalance in new phd/new tenure-job openings. also, the proportion of faculty jobs with tenure is shrinking. both of these are massive 'caveats' to the use of 'stable'.
It's because we need a user-space package manager.

System package managers require root access to be handled and tend to provide only a single stable version of each package. While they are good to provide the base system, on the application level it's desirable to use specific version of libraries.
Show HN: 2048 – Veep Edition
I'm selling complete ads, that certainly contain links, just like Google does. They are contained in posts clearly marked as sponsored posts. These are not link farms, spam, or payed links. Advertising should not be a crime.
Hurrah! Curves that have a cofactor of 1. (One of the things I didn't like about DJB's speed hacked curve25519…)

Since they share the same field as the NIST curves it also means that software won't need any other code for these.

I do wish they'd strengthened their verifyably random practices beyond the brainpool technique, instead of just complaining about it. :)

For example, they took their non-public nothing up my sleeve choice (C), then hashed it (H(C)) and announced H(C) and this procedure to the world, then put H(C) in a Bitcoin transaction and took M to be the block hash of the block 100 after the block confirming it (because it takes 2^66 sha256 operations to retry a single Bitcoin block if you don't like its outcome, and 100 after ensures that there would be a race with the public network), then picked their random seed as HMAC(M||next-week's NIST random beacon,C) you'd have a random value who's selection someone could only compromise by either inverting H() or controlling the announcing team, and controlling the NIST beacon, and doing 2^66 sha256 * the number of retries on that step (or compromising sha256 to make bitcoin mining trivial).
Author here. I agree with DHH that people have created bad designs in the name of testability. I disagree with his conclusion that TDD should be thrown out, or that slow end-to-end tests are an adequate replacement.

By "stop," I meant, "stop programming for a bit and think about a better way to design," not "stop using TDD."

(I might agree that TDD is a bad choice for typical Rails apps, though. That's a pretty narrow case, and it says more about Rails than TDD.)
Not commenting on CrossFit, but the author makes some simply incorrect assertions (kettlebells aren't beneficial? Empirically untrue. Doesn't mean everyone has to do them, but that doesn't mean there is no benefit).