skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Depends on what you want to do.

I see lots of bioinformaticians writing simple scripts usually just counting stuff up, and doing some stats. It needs to run once, on one machine and often only on one dataset.

That type of programming is easy.

I am working for a sequencing centre, doing the database to run the place. I inherited a self taught bioinformaticians code after she had left. Second worst code I have ever seen (the worst was also a self taught bioinformatician, who didn't even indent stuff). The code was so bad, I had to refactor it just to debug it. The team leader didn't see a problem. It had worked. He didn't see the fact that it would have taken me a day or two to write this from scratch, if I had had an original specification, rather than spending a week to refactor her code until it worked. To this day, I have no idea what parts of the code are doing (I can see it is reading byte 8 of a binary file and doing something. I have no idea what the contents of that file are). At least now I have made the code modular so I can see the output of reading the file into a huge nested dictionary.

Learning to code is easy. Learning to code well is not. Hell we can't even decide what coding "well" means. 100% test coverage? Shit that works? Something that is readable and maintainable? Something that runs faster than all the equivalent software? In the end I think experience will mean a developer can work out which of these is most important. Maybe just getting something that works is what is important, and the example I gave above is perfectly acceptable code.
CDNPAL Media Network 20M Valuation funding round
Fleksy. World record holder for SMS speed. If you haven't tried it, you owe it to yourself. They have a free demo for thirty days too.
The Google Ngrams graph for "hacker" may be of some interest: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=hacker&year_st...
Strangely, Windows is one of the easier platforms to debug. Because mostly there are so many programming for it, thus lots of online experience to mine.

I've tried to write correct CoreAudio software for instance (part of writing audio code for a portable app). It turns out to be pretty much impossible. The libraries are immature; they post events to non-existant code long after the audio device is stopped and closed. Pretty much it only works if you write the same app everybody else is writing (which I am not). SO you add timeouts and use handles instead of pointers everywhere and vet all the callbacks to weed out the stale ones.

And there's nowhere to look to figure these things out, because everything you try in any deep library, you're the 1st one to try it. Because there's 1% the dev going on on that platform.
This is happening now in deep learning. Deep autoencoders[1] are allowing for computer representations of "similar" concepts. I recently gave a talk on this very concept to assist in QA systems.

[1] http://www.slideshare.net/agibsonccc/ir-34811120
wow - I've been using full stack to mean someone who can go from embedded to OS driver to web backend to web front end - add mobile apps too.

i dislike it though, alas ive succumb to the desire to use the hip title in discussion.
Here's one of the main reasons: competition in the field. Just like with normal companies. If you pay a small dev team for a couple of years to create a system that seriously speeds up or improves your experiments, that is worth a lot of money since it will allow you to get more high level papers, hence more grands. If you would just open source it, other labs (i.e., the competition) can use it as well and the grands might go to them.

And another reason: for experiments that matter, you need instant support and bugfixes, cause time is money. For example a couple of hours of using an MRI scanner easily costst thousands of dollars. So if something goes wrong, it needs instant fixing. You cannot rely on an open source ommunity and goodwill for that.

Of course there are other types of experiments/projects for which none of the above really matters; also there are projects like PsychoPy which seem to gain some traction and definitely are open to helping hands.
nginx has approx. 20MB footprint for 4 worker threads, add another 20MB for php... RAM is cheap these days, the cost of "ACME: Routers xxx,yyy,zzz hacked" headlines should be higher than the cost of equipping every router with 128MB of RAM.

Even if you do the actual scripts in CGI, alone using nginx for the HTTP part would kill off many of the security problems arising from buggy HTTP header/auth parsing.
So supposing it happened a billion light-years away, based on our best guess at the relevant physics, how much warning would we have and what would that warning look like? (Not that it would do us any good in any event, of course. I'm just asking out of morbid curiosity.)
That video is just auto-complete after the first letter...
Show HN: Chrome Extension that hides Facebook Newsfeed
> Other well known languages in the ML family include OCaml, F#, and Visual Basic.

Every. Single. Time.
There are so many, many categories of program that its futile to say what it means any more. Expertise in any category doesn't mean squat about anything else.

I've spent a lot of time doing embedded stuff. Totally different world. What matters here is irrelevant elsewhere.

So any time someone says "I can program" you have to ask "Where? With what tools? For what audience?" and so on. Because there are so many niches (and so many being invented every week) its impossible to guess.
I have numerous ones in my profile. My favorite is:

Therein lies the best career advice I could possibly dispense: just DO things. Chase after the things that interest you and make you happy. Stop acting like you have a set path, because you don't. No one does. You shouldn't be trying to check off the boxes of life; they aren't real and they were created by other people, not you. There is no explicit path I'm following, and I'm not walking in anyone else's footsteps. I'm making it up as I go. - Charlie Hoehn
Ask HN: One hour apps ideas?
What functional apps can be built in about an hours time ? Eg. Simple Calculator app.
Well, those are the numerals 0–9. You're missing 10, 100, 1000, 10000, 1000000… Chinese has a lot of number characters.

They use a system where a power-of-10 number is potentially preceded by a smaller count and followed by a smaller number. So, for example, 241 is represented as [2][100][4][10][1].
If we define 'learning' in an appropriate way, then
any good research library already knows "everything
about anything".

Okay, let the thing 'learn' about the Kuhn-Tucker conditions by searching on Google and reading, say, Wikipedia or some books at Google or Amazon. Then have the thing show that for problems in functional form the
Zangwill and Kuhn-Tucker constraint qualifications are independent. Do that and I will start to believe that the
terminology 'deep learning' is appropriate. I'm not holding
my breath.

Yes, it may be that in some rough sense the kind of 'learning' it is doing is roughly like some of the learning of a child of, say, 2 as it is starting to learn about language and things. Yes, it may be that such 'learning' is a significant part of the intelligence of, say, a child of 3-5. Maybe. Big, huge maybe.

When I was working in AI, I noticed the terminology had
been cooked up to imply much more than was being
accomplished. Now, as I understand it, there is a
specific definition for the current AI term 'deep
learning' and has to do with the 'depth' of where
adjust parameters in a neural network, not how 'deep'
the 'learning' is about the subject in question.
Cute terminology.
The tone almost makes it a recruitment speech in disguise.
I'm guessing it's harder to learn to touch type these days for folks who spend huge amounts of time using keyboards. While you're taking the course, you're partially hobbled by only knowing a few letters by memory, and you spend 90% of your day needing to actually type, so practicing your new touch-typing has got to be very hard to do.

I learned to type with two fingers on computers in the 80s and could type pretty fast, but in high school (90s) I took a semester-long typing class, and while it was harder at first, touch-typing soon enough became so much faster it was well worth the effort to overcome my old habits.

You're right that the QWERTY is screwy. It was designed to be. But while I agree alternative keyboards are something that should be researched, I also think learning to touch-type qwerty will be such a benefit to anyone who types much at all that it'll be worth the pain to do so, even though yes, it's probably way harder today than it was in the early 90s.
If you ever care to touch type, look into a Das Keyboard with no markings. Or even better, get a cheapo keyboard and spray paint it. You get the letters committed to muscle memory remarkably quickly when all you have to go on is key position. The numbers are a little rougher, and the symbols toughest of all.

You'll probably spend a few days with a text editor open so you can click over to find { or whatever. You'll probably let more fingers touch the keyboard, just so you can anchor your hands in space, over 2 up 1 for O or whatever.

I'm not a fast typist, but when i moved from typing and looking, to just muscle memory, i got a nice speed boost.
Since LoopBack exposes a REST-like API, you should be able to use Ember modules in your client:

http://emberjs.com/guides/models/the-rest-adapter/
http://emberjs.com/api/data/classes/DS.RESTAdapter.html
This is a horribly naive viewpoint. You've fallen into the trap of making a judgement of someone based on a popular understanding of a particular profession rather than any factual reality.

And here are the facts:

1. There is evil in the world.
2. That evil sometimes hurts innocent people.
3. We need some way of protecting innocent people from evil.

I'm reminded of the current hullabaloo about Boko Haram and the kidnapping of several hundred girls from a school. exactly who do you think is going to do anything about rescuing those girls? Exactly what kind of campaign do you think is needed to meet that challenge?

I see from your profile that you're in the Netherlands. I spent an afternoon at the Anne Frank house several years ago. I'm guessing you feel that she deserved NO protection whatsoever?

I'm always amused at the opinions of those who live in safe countries with comfortable lives and how they have no concern for the people who keep them safe and comfortable.

Maybe you should learn a little more, eh?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korps_Commandotroepen
I've heard this before, but one thing I have always wondered is why the jugs you fill empty space with should be full. The article concedes that chilling the thermal mass of water is initially more energy-intensive, but that you benefit by displacing air that can easily spill out whenever you open the door (being replaced by air that then needs to be cooled). You would get this same benefit and none of the drawback from an empty jug.
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If only nobody anywhere in the world was trained to kill other people, our country (and yours) wouldn't need to ask people to sacrifice that part of their humanity in service to their countrymen.

You might read Marlantes _What It Is Like To Go To War_. You might find that while SEALs are happy to speak proudly what they've learned in basic training, not so many of them speak happily about what war forces them to do during deployment. Those people trained for the most part to kill other people probably agree with much of your sentiment about their job.
Doug Engelbart was right about the future.
The robot army will probably be more predictable. Tease them, lure them into a trap - boom. Watch them for a while and learn their patterns. Same as with non-robot troops.

So, make them unpredictable? Their efficiency drops, they become less useful for ordinary operations. You can't win.

Except by doing what the Army does - they have regular soldiers, and they have Special Forces who's mandate is to do whatever it takes, even the unpredictable. Deployed into situations where the regular kind won't work.

I don't see robot forces ever approaching what we can already do with the right trained team.
> But there are a lot of ass hats who care if you should have built a function rather than copy and pasting the same code with minor variations 20 times.

That larger vocabulary you sneer at is much of what allows developers to be multiplicatively productive, allows them to do much more work and do it in a faster and less error-prone way.

Or, put another way: are they having to maintain your code when you get tired of it and move on or are they having to deal with second-order effects from your code being more brittle, less flexible, and slower to work on? 'Cause if so, they're not the asshat.
The drill instructors are proud to see us growing beyond their control. The Marine Corps does not want robots. The Marine Corps wants killers. The Marine Corps wants to build indestructible men. Men without fear.

-- Full Metal Jacket
I would have liked to see this too. I tried the YouTube on the Google Play store, read enough of the description to understand how it works, then gave up trying it.
Bar Mixvah, the 3d printed robot bartender, makes a drink (MEAN stack + Arduino)
This made me chuckle because I tease the devs I work with about this all the time: I call them artists. It's the BA vs BS. Devs have the freedom to be much more creative than engineers. I think of devs in a similar way to architects - as in a design a building kind. Btw, I am a licensed engineers. =)
I had a feeling someone would key on that "unbundle" phrase!

Two year schools and a few online courses aren't yet respected with regard to training in certain fields. In such fields (including software dev, for the most part), employers are generally looking for a bachelor's and, frequently, one in a related field. So, it's not just the university name, but the actual degree.

>the issue is that people want contradictory things

Not really. College is increasingly almost purely an economic choice, and that's the change that people looking from the outside fail to recognize. There was once a time when a person could obtain a bachelor's degree--in virtually any field--and be employable. Any additional personal growth or well-roundedness gained during their stint was a bonus that came at little-to-no cost. They'd get a job with their Women's Studies degree and thus recoup their investment. Not so much now. The wrong degree hurts and can sideline a prospect indefinitely. Likewise, even with the right degree, paying money for ancillary courses that prolong one's tenure hurts. There is, of course, the opportunity cost of an additional 1.5 years or so studying ancillary topics vs. being employed, as well as the actual cost of spending additonal time at ever more expensive universities. Meantime, employers increasingly just don't care.

So, if there is any contradiction, it's between universities and employers. Universities continue to require significant amounts of irrelevant coursework to obtain the coveted bachelor's degree, over which they have a "cornered market". Meanwhile, employers just want the core skills for which they are hiring. Stuck in the middle are the students, who ultimately need to take their place in the economy, irrespective of whatever other personal growth they may desire.

Edit: It's also possible (likely?) that employers will eventually look to other sources (beyond a bachelor's) at some point. This might include 2-year schools that you mentioned and other innovative (yet to be popularized) models. However, what I am describing above is the current reality.

But, if and when this happens, you can bet your last money that universities will "adapt" fast enough to make your head spin, as they will recognize it as the existential threat to them that it is. Offerings of 2.5 year bachelor's degrees may then become commonplace.
Nice addendum!
I recommend using the excellent Hammer.js[0] library to pick up swipes (since that's the gesture you're looking for). I've put together a small proof-of-concept here[1]. Try it out on your phone.

Alternatively, if you wanted to have some slick dragging action (so that a user could swipe a little, and control the rate at which the menu drawer opens), you could put a smaller (maybe 10-20% width) dragbox along the left-hand-side of the screen, and keep your selectable content to the right of that.

[0] http://eightmedia.github.io/hammer.js/

[1] http://codepen.io/notduncansmith/full/sthyJ/
Smart! Didn't observe that.
Good sentiment, but 'bravery' is not the right word. Those refusing to participate are not really risking much, certainly not their lives (or being captured and tortured for instance). So pretty much different.

But considering the world we live in, I'd much rather have Seals on my side. Properly trained ones.
Fitness Crazed
Nice landing page, I'll give them credit for that. But why would I want to use this instead of Express or Restler?
Wikidata, a free knowledge base that can be read and edited by humans and machines alike: http://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Main_Page
That's almost a month old
I like to look not just at the code itself (simple measures such as nesting level and lemgth of method/function), but also at the frequency and correlation of file changes. Noticing that you often change the same files together is an indication of coupling that might be bad. You can also weight the code metric higher for files that change frequently and recently, because if it's an old file, or one that doesnt change much, the quality is probably good enough,
GA has nothing to do with evolution? Now I am thoroughly confused. GA is inspired by natural selection. If you program your algorithm to mimic natural selection then of course it's related to evolution, and if you don't then it's no longer a GA. Maybe your point is that the GA community has taken their snake oil so far away from this that they're not even using natural selection anymore?

If you want to study GAs, and you want to avoid the snake oil, what would you do? Selling it as studying the mathematics of natural selection seems like a good idea to me. I'm not saying that's Papadimitriou's motivation, but he does mention things like GAs in his talks.

The DBLP page has a handful of papers at the very beginning relating to this new direction. I didn't want to presume to choose one, so I linked there. But for those who don't have the time to read the titles and abstracts, here is one titled "Multiplicative updates in coordination games and the theory of evolution." [1]

Here is an excerpt:

> In this paper we provide such a demonstration; in doing so, we make some totally unexpected connections between Evolution and familiar concepts from Computation and Game Theory.

They go on to show that the natural selection occurring in some well accepted model of natural selection is equivalent to a multiplicative weight update in a coordination game. This would suggest that if we want to come up with provable guarantees for the convergence properties of GAs, we may fare better by relating their dynamics to these well-understood tools.

[1]: http://arxiv.org/abs/1208.3160
Chinese people get FCC exemptions?
The military, no military would function if each member went their own way and did their own thing. It's OK to not serve if you disagree with the leadership, just don't sign up. You can change the world by working to oust corrupt politicians, Republicans and Democrats and Libertarians. Understand though that freedom is not free, there's always someone waiting for the opportunity to take over your country and they don't care at all if you are a conscientious objector.
> So you can't be a patent troll if you weren't one three years ago?

Not sure where you got that. I meant if you don't exist for the sole purpose of asserting a patent, you can't be a troll.

> In much the same way as a toy soldier can "claim to operate independently" after you release it having wound it up and pointed it in the direction you want it to go.

1. Actually, Nortel was already hitting firms up for licensing those patents before they went down. It was already "wound up and pointed in the right direction." Everyone knew what was coming. The companies that bought them did so to manage their own risk. They are now simply going after the rest of the industry that failed to do so.

2. Rockstar is now suing giant corporations like Google and Samsung. You think they wouldn't get the FTC and DoJ involved if they could prove anything?

>Compared to cost of trial and appeals ...

Those are the only concrete costs. Everything else is handwavy (public opinion? Really? Impact on stock? The weather has more impact) or highly unlikely (injunctions). The companies IV goes after can certainly afford to take them on.

> pro-plaintiff Federal Circuit judges

I'd encourage you to lay off Timothy Lee's articles about the Federal Circuit and actually look up statistics about their decisions.

> Of course there isn't. For a startup fighting is equivalent to bankruptcy and the settlement comes with an NDA.

1. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but it's not proof that evidence is being suppressed either. claiming something is a problem without sufficient evidence is not a very strong evidence either.

2. Evidence always leaks out. All those other trolls no doubt have NDAs, yet we hear of them. If so many startups are getting hit, where were the VCs in this whole thing?

Nonetheless, there's something in the works about making these "nastygrams" more trackable. That will give us enough data to see how much of a problem this really is. Until then all we have is a outrage driven by a media hungry for rageviews and informed by PR.
As a conscientious objector I've done plenty of thinking on the subject. My personal stance on this is that I and nobody else determines where and when the line into violence is crossed and that I will not let others determine what my hands are used for when it comes to matters of life and death.

Words like 'sacrifice', 'pride' and so on try to put glory where there is none. Navy seals and their various colleagues from other countries should be a means of last resort (just like armies), unfortunately they find themselves (ab)used as blunt instruments of offence rather than as a way to defend their homelands.

I know a couple of vets, and if there is one thing they collectively agree on then it was that they were used. That's not going to happen to me, I won't let it.
Is there a computer, right now, that can beat any human alive at chess?

I don't know what robotics will do. My point is larger than specifics. And, the point is.... machine like thinking will always be better done by machines. So, developing better machine like thinking in their heads isn't the way forward for humans. It's a futile battle... kind of like John Henry and the steam drill. Sure, being a big strong guy who could hammer railroad stakes all day was a valuable quality.... at one time. Before steam drills. Now, its simply a sideshow in a circus or a personal hobby.
If this is what GAs are doing then it would imply it's not a good technique for single-purpose optimization at all. It could be a good technique, for example, for designing robust agents to interact in some environment, such as robots walking or viruses in an unknown network.
I've seen ton of "expose DB as REST-like API" libraries in various languages, and even tried (unsuccessfully) to write one myself. I'd say just exposing model is trivial, even when coupled with content-type negotiation. Subjectively, the hardest part is permissions (operation, row and field-level ones) and making them play nice with REST and HTTP concepts (like ETags).