skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I interviewed/phone screened Xah Lee about 2 years ago.

I'd never heard of him, so I skimmed over his resume and checked out his site an hour or two before the call. I remember when I was looking at his site I was seeing various articles around math and programming, and then articles about things like "2 girls 1 cup". The breadth of articles completely threw me off. He seemed to have this unfocused interest in EVERYTHING. After looking over everything I could I had no idea how we'd be able to use him, but I was really interested in talking with him.

I went into the call expecting a lot of tangents about various topics he was passionate about and thinking I'd constantly have to refocus the conversation. Instead the conversation was pretty boring and not really going anywhere. He had breadth, but the depth was not there. At least not for the things I brought up. I couldn't understand how someone who seemed to be interested in everything could have no real interest in anything.

For the last couple of minutes we talked about his site, and how he maintains/updates it. He finally seemed to light up, and we hit on something he was really interested in talking about. The basics of the site looked like it was just a couple of scripts, a lot of static text files and some emacs. The setup might have been impressive in the mid-to-early 90's, but it wasn't relevant to anything we would have wanted/needed.

The call lasted maybe 20 minutes, and then we wrapped it up. Every topic, other than talking about his site, was a dead-end. My internal feedback at the end was: "No! Maybe... if we were trying to hire encyclopedia writers".

I think his main problem with interviews is that his real-life personality doesn't even come close to his online personality. If I would have gone in expecting the standard slightly-awkward developer interview, things might have gone better. I still would have said no, but it would have been a weaker no.
Joe also made a funny comment on that if you listen to his talk. He said how "People say ASCII is good because you can see what's on the wire. Well can they see electrons bouncing up and down the wire? They see what a program chooses to let them see"
I second that - worthwhile read.
Hah, indeed. I actually brought a copy of OCaml for Scientists and I was surprised when I received basically what looks like a a hand-bound copy. But the book is actually good, and I could recommend it.
I owned a BeBox and used it as my desktop for several years, til it stopped posting. The use of its relational-database-like filesystem, for email and organizing my music, was such a joy.

I once wrote a _MacOS_ shareware review site for a friend, as a single, small perl script that looked through a tree in the filesystem of a BeOS box (on mac-clone hardware), and spit out html. The descriptions and reviews were just metadata columns I added to the relevant mime-types.
Writing is thinking and one person's philosophical pondering can be another's trolling, e.g. this post.

Sure trolling is sometimes just being an asshat. But it's also a way of creating diversity. An attempt to deprogram members of a cargo cult. It can be fighting group think and ideological tribalism. I've come to think about trolling as often being an expression of a desire to write - it's very essence is writing something that didn't need to be written and doing so in a way that's tailored to one's audience. Just as sarcasm can be a low form of wit, trolling can be a low form of literature.

If everyone who trolled the Usenet or a mailing list or an online forum was condemned for it, who would be left and would anyone want to read what they had to say.

Xah Lee is a person whose particular genius doesn't fit well into a prefabricated category. But his website expresses a genuine desire to help others by sharing what he knows - and what he knows, he knows really well. There but for the grace of god, go I.
And a third browser vendor (Apple) is also a DRM vendor.
edit: Right, why am I getting downvoted for this??

What's your response to the Economist article that was posted here [1]? To quote:

"One reason why the inquiries into the riots were inconclusive is that a great deal of evidence was lost or wilfully destroyed. And if the facts in 2002 are murky, so are Mr Modi’s views now. He could put the pogroms behind him by explaining what happened and apologising. Yet he refuses to answer questions about them. In a rare comment last year he said he regretted Muslims’ suffering as he would that of a puppy run over by a car. Amid the uproar, he said he meant only that Hindus care about all life. Muslims—and chauvinist Hindus—heard a different message. Unlike other BJP leaders, Mr Modi has refused to wear a Muslim skullcap and failed to condemn riots in Uttar Pradesh in 2013 when most of the victims were Muslim."

[1] http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21600106-he-will-proba...
Online privacy: Should we have control over our Google search results?
What in the f*.

I've been following this guy since a bit before Orkut/Tribe days when he had full hair (~2003?). He's been very inspirational. At first I thought he was a bit of a jerk and a troll (not the right place or time to elaborate on this, but well this was long ago so it doesn't matter) but when I saw him take on his education in his 30s I was quite impressed with what he achieved.

I think this guy is top drawer and seems hard working. I have no idea what happened to him, although I do guess his peculiar character has a lot to do with it.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homoiconic

"In a homoiconic language the primary representation of programs is also a data structure in a primitive type of the language itself. This makes metaprogramming easier..."

For lisp, that means programs are are also lists, so can be manipulated with macros easily (because lisp macros are also lisp, which is good at working with lists).

For a relational language, that would mean the programs are also relations, which would be a little weird because relations are unordered.
He was unemployed by choice, not incompatibility. I know he has written quite a bit of good emacs documentation and elisp code, and just that is worth donating for to me.
>The banks care less about their qualifications than their work ethic. Being a Rhodes Scholar doesn't make much of a difference when you're a young banker. More of it is being willing to stay at the office for 120 hours a week.

This is very, very true. In my experience, investment banking is by no means a particularly difficult thing to do, given enough capital to play around with. Quants aside, the concepts that are used (take, for example, "mezzanine capital") are mostly buzzwords used to give a professional air to really very simple processes/ideas. It is a far cry from the serious, dedicated abstract thought demanded by fields such as software engineering/machine learning/data science etc.

However, what large financial institutions need are people who are extremely assiduous to small details, have a work ethic in which 7am-11pm hours creating powerpoints are no big deal (and have good sounding qualifications to impress investors).
My intention wasn't to label anyone. Xah has been a disruptive and counterproductive presence in the emacs community, but I think it's because he needs help he's not getting. He spent his time in poverty fighting flame wars on usenet -- he needs to get his priorities straight. I buy he's a smart guy who can get a lot done, but he's not employable in his current state, and I don't think the right solution is to give him money so he can continue to live like he does.
Russian translation is mine. I hear "серебряная пуля" (silver bullet) many times on Russian, so I don't think it makes zero sense. Many people have read Mythical Man-Month or at least knows what this idiom means.
I don't know about that.

And anyway, I've had 2 expensive pieces of software meant for professional production, that just stopped working over the years for various reasons. "Old" versions of Vegas Video don't work in anything past Windows XP. Same goes for "old" versions of Pro Tools. Also, with the old Pro Tools, make sure you don't have a dual core processor, because that breaks it too.

My point is, there are many factors which can suddenly render software obsolete. I wouldn't expect CS6 to run on anything but really old unsupported hardware in 5 - 10 years.

One of the best things you can do for your career is to remain flexible about the tools you use. Always be on the lookout for alternatives.
I don't get all the Buzzfeed hate. I've loved it from the first minute and it's constantly getting better. And I'm in my late forties having grown up on and still pay for quality journalism.
Anyone have thoughts on this gem?

> I talked to one guy who's a former Goldman Sachs guy who left to go to the tech industry who said the adage in the tech world now is "be wary when the pretty people show up."
> Citizens who are concerned about browser standards? I'm having a hard time picturing this. It's hard enough getting developers to care about official standards.

Are not the hundreds of people who responded to this thread citizens of somewhere or other?

Are they not concerned?
Perhaps look at it a different way. We all know people who are not good at math. Sure they could spend days, even years, trying to improve their math skills. But even with such a huge time investment, they might be only, say, 10% better at math than when they started.

Was it worth all this effort? Maybe. However most people will think that they should probably have spent their time on something else.

It's pretty much the same situation for socially unfit types - why spend so much time on something they'll never be good at no matter how hard they try. In the end they would just end up being both socially and technically mediocre.
I think the problem with Modi, like extreme politicians (e.g. Le Pen in France or the Tea Party) in other democracies is that some of his utterances are contradictory to Enlightenment humanist ideals. It remains to be seen if the subset of his views that can be considered to be extreme are just rhetoric or if he intends to act on them. Historically, such politicians resemble the nationalistic polities of pre-1945 Europe and post-colonial South America.

The bright side about India is that its sheer diversity and the existence of regional leaders (who do not belong to Modi's party) serve as checks and balances. As an example, regional parties organized on linguistic and non-traditional ideologies (communists, anarchists, etc.) basis have captured close to 140 seats in the parliament, including clean-sweeps in several States such as Tamil Nadu (population ~70 million), Odisha (population ~40 million), Seemandhra/Telangana (population ~85 million), and West Bengal (population ~90 million).
Whenever I see GEB, I always chuckle thinking how Steve Martin turned me on to Hofstadter. https://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/hofstadter/images/s...
PURE COMEDY: FUNNIEST solange/jayz parody song video MUST WATCH
Agreed! I've recently made the decision to try and move beyond my comfortable freelance existence, and instead try and enable 1) those who have trouble functioning in a 'normal' work environment, and 2) those who are starting with no portfolio or degree.

It would make me happier (because what's fun about just living comfortably!), and it might help others. Win-win.

But doing this from within an existing company is perhaps even better
Separatist Took Control Police Department in Donetsk
Separatist Took Control Police Department in Donetsk, Ukraine
Doesn't the phrase "in existence" by definition disqualify institutions which are eradicated and thus don't exist?
You mean go to a Modi controlled court and ask milord Modi "where should I seek justice against the crimes you have been doing?"

I am sure you are smarter than this.
Why Your “Team” Page Should Actually Be About Your Team
One reason you might donate would be if you have compassion. Compassion doesn't need to be deserved in a Puritanical sense.
Genetic tracking identifies cancer stem cells in human patients
Non-trivially noisy, perhaps.
> In previous lives, I've worked as a tennis-camp counselor, a juice bar barista, and a Biblical slave for a bestselling author. (Long story.) I've also written for magazines like GQ, Esquire, ESPN: The Magazine, and SPIN. I live in Berkeley, California.

Interesting the author has no finance experience ever, which makes me question his motives.
And he has now updated the post to clarify about paypal.
After you have a few batches, you could self-fund the initiative by offering the same services to for-profit companies and use the profits from those projects to cover the non-profit projects. Almost like a Tom's style model, "for every hour you buy we are able to provide X hours to a paid intern. By choosing us for your next project you are supporting education and non-profit organizations across the country."
From Contractor to CTO
Long-term corporate employment is more valuable if you're seeking corporate employment. Only a few corporations (relatively speaking) place any value on open-source project association.
It can definitely change the way you think about consciousness (and about software). Anyone who doesn't have their mind significantly altered by it is either a genius, extraordinarily well educated going in, or just doesn't get it.
How many Iraq civilians were killed in Gulf war compared to 2000 in Gujrat riots.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/15/iraq-death-toll_n_4...
There have been many communal riots in India since 2002 but Gujrat has been peaceful place since 2002.
Thanks for reminding me. I just went and found my first edition to re-read. It's been more than a few years, I will enjoy this.
If you are outsider please don't form opinions what is stated in media. Indian media is by large same as US media. Outsiders only see what is stated by shills and may not be true.
If you think it is over-simplification then what you call US/UK ? Tyranny ? Politics is extremely complex in India than any other country in the world. I guarantee you US and UK will now be in queue to get appointment with him.
Also, after all comments posted here I get sense that how narrow people from US / UK are. You may not like him but victory is in your face. So chill and enjoy.
I would say the opposite. From experience, a 'social services' office will not help, but will make his life more difficult. On the other hand, genuine kindness at least has a chance.
Even if that DRM-specific API offers sandboxing of the plugin in ways that a general-purpose API could never hope to do?
Definitely, even without proper multiplexing, if the connections are not blocking, it is possible to just lower the latency to MAX(latencies) sending the commands in a loop to all the instances, and later reading them.

Redis clients should be capable to do that, by allowing to separate (on demand) the command delivering from the reply reading moments.
I've thought of the projection (bi-direction mapping) in terms of bijective functions that might be used in a data binding language.

So, consider a textbox on screen and an integer attribute on a model.

A bijective function might be a pair of (intToString, stringToInt) functions; one is the getter that projects out of the model, the other is the setter that takes from the view and pokes into the model.

Next, start think about how to compose bijective functions. How might they be packaged into bundles that represent a sub-component view of an individual model amongst many. And what might the mapping from a collection model look like; consider detail views (as in master-details), with a source of "currency" you can map from collection to "current item", and so on.
> Quants aside, the concepts that are used (take, for example, "mezzanine capital") are mostly buzzwords used to give a professional air to really very simple processes/ideas.

This is incredibly accurate. Aside from the guys who come out of MIT and Caltech to do quantitative analysis, almost everything on Wall Street is smoke and mirrors hiding what are incredibly simple ideas. Even a lot of the ostensibly esoteric and complex products (that a lot of the Wall Street guys don't understand!) hide a really simple core concept once you peel back the layers of jargon.
Yes and no; while the banks have avoided widespread compromise they often have weird password requirements or ham-fisted attempts to secure user's PCs with crapware like Trusteer Rapport: http://www.pcpro.co.uk/realworld/359617/is-hsbcs-security-so...

For a while Santander's login system redirected my wife's account to a page with an expired HTTPS certificate.

Then there's fun things like playing tetris or MITM attacks on the Chip and Pin terminals: http://www.saardrimer.com/sd410/pres/showandtell08.pdf

(Obviously mtgox is worse, but my point is that banks tend to a proceduralist cargo-culty approach to security).
Teamwork arguably trumps all skills. Many of the greatest things are accomplished by great teams (look no further than YCombinator demanding multiple founders). Social skills are a critical part of good teamwork skills and good teamwork skills will advance your career in just about any profession.
Thank you so much for writing this.
you know, I'd be proud if someone called me a social justice keyboard warrior. There's zero wrong with giving a fuck.
>if they're so smart, why not learn some social skills?

If I learned social skills with the same abilities that made me smart, I wouldn't use that knowledge to interview, I would use it to build an AI.

The comparison is invalid because so far no one has learned social skills that way.

If we understand others by imagining how we ourselves would react, then the things that make it hard to learn social skills will be things that make you different, even if they also help you with something else.
"Diagnosing" people when you're not a doctor and when your only contact with that person is written stuff on the Internet is stigmatising.

It keeps people with mental illness out of work (because employers illegally consider that person to be a riskier hire) and it does little to help the person being discussed who might just be an asshole rather than being someone with a diagnosable MH illness.
What are you doing to help him?
By US standard, Iraq was not war. It was okay for them to encroach other countries just like that in name of freedom.
Using In-App Support To Learn About The Real Customer Experience
I wonder if they will go the other way and use the detailed maps and data to work on systems that use only the real time sensor data.

Who knows though, I was reading about a transmission that used mapping data to anticipate shifts. I guess it was in the new Rolls Royce Wraith.
If you like maps like this, you will also like the globe produced by Martin Behaim in 1491, which (obviously) doesn't show the americas: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erdapfel
The 30x500 philosophy the article mentions takes that to the extreme.

The workflow is basically:

1. Find an audience ("wordpress consultants")
2. Stalk their forums & chat rooms. Listen to complaints and problems.
3. "Flip their pain" - figure out how you could trivially fix their problem. Nothing more. Don't jump straight to "web app" or even "softwarE" at this point. People in my class were working on shipping well built excel sheets, or books, or trainings.
4. Build that thing in #3, and sell. Normal email / blog marketing techniques apply here. Get paying customers right away.
"Progress comes from monopoly, not competition."

Seems rich coming from the guy who founded Paypal, which was widely loathed and seen as pretty stagnant in the payments space after it achieved dominance over that market.
Oh :( I didn't think it was that ill-considered. Since the rest of the platform was designed to be very developer-friendly, it was nice to have a few pieces that were friendly to players.
How To Marry The Right Girl: A Mathematical Solution
Indians don't have to live with standards set by US/UK. So India has its own thing. Take it or leave it.
I guess this is a cautionary tale then about not burning bridges? Seems like the guy is pretty bright, but for all the years he was trolling people, those are the people he needs now more than ever to help him out.

Sad, really sad.
I think a lot of people miss a key point of MVC in that it is extremely popular, taught in schools and advocated for in a lot of circles.

This doesn't mean that it is inherently good at what it says it will accomplish for every project that it's used on. However, it does mean that on-boarding devs is considerably easier if you're using an architecture/framework that they'll likely be at least passably familiar with.

I'm all in favour of moving on, adapting and playing around with all of the hot new toys/frameworks but the broad "we" here at HN are in a bubble if we believe that the majority of our ilk has any interest in these types of discussions.

MVC isn't being used because it is the best at what it does, or that it is appropriate for all situations. It is being used because it is familiar to the vast majority of developers.
Atomic Brawl, an indie CCG that deserves more attention
I've been wondering this as well. I maintain a large enterprise app and some former dev's used `ThisThat.js` and `SomethingNewThisWeek.js` to accomplish a few hacks, but low and behold a few years later and they are all EOL and breaking, not to mention many cannot be upgraded because they are so amateur they don't use namespaces and conflict.

The many sites are going to be bit in a few years when the recent JS Explosion of new libraries wanes and we've got 1000 unsupported JS libraries out there and you're having to tell the department head the whole app UI has to be written, again, to keep up with that zag no one saw coming with the web.

For this reason I love Google Web Toolkit(I've done the ExtJs/Bootstrap/YUI/JQueryUI thing too) as it's totally open source, community driven, Google backed, and still going strong with releases and community support 8 years later. The beauty is with Maven, I just increment the framework version number and I get all those new compiler optimizations, IE versionX++ and Blink support for free.

As long as JS remains a shell of a language, I think compiling down to JS is the most sensible approach (i.e. Typescript/Dart/ASM.js/GWT) rather than having to fight the vagaries of torturing another trick from JS. Use a framework in a high level language that makes your life easier and future proof. Of course, one day ECMAScript might really become a serious language, but then I'll just update my GWT compiler and take advantage of that with a recompile.
On Owning a Blog
I bet you are just a shill playing minority card again.
Practically speaking, yes, having corporate experience is much better.

After leaving the school (I didn't graduate), I spent 2 years doing self-directed learning about computing. I have commit access to PyPy and LLVM, am credited in release notes of Mono and IronPython, and hundreds of open source commits to show off. I still had a lot of trouble landing a job. I got lucky in the end, but it was rough.

You seem to overestimate how open source contributions are judged in job search. Corporate experience is not hearsay; it is concrete. Open source contributions are not concrete, because most employers do not know how to evaluate them.
I actually use VS and TFS with Azure when I'm working on my .Net projects and it works great.

I've been looking for something like this when I'm not working in VS and doing non .Net work. Thanks for posting this.
> The Supreme Court of India has declared Narendra Modi as legally not guilty of any crimes.

This is not true. SC has said in 'absence of sufficient proof' and such. Please do your homework.
Where's Rackspace, dammit?
That's a bit patronizing ... disclaimer - the book is sitting on my shelf, but I haven't got round to reading it.
Show HN: My team’s entry to the Chosx Labs Competition