skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> The problem with this is that most programmers don't need statistics on a regular enough basis.

Empirically, many language environments (think, e.g. scripting languages) don't have really easy access to all of these functions, but do have easy access to most of the rest of libm. The author is saying that if these were part of libm, then language implementers would include them in their respective standard libraries, and then people that care about stats (and many of us should care about stats!) could write good stats software in general purpose languages that we might have chosen for some independent reason.

> You really think we need stats functions in libc more than we need, say, properly written accelerated vector and matrix functions?

Can't we have both?
My professor said it this way: Engineering begins when the problem constraints admit of no solution.
You are conflating agency and privilege. In the case of resisting oppression, the available actions are unchanged, but the consequences are different.
Cryptome is Down
Clever as this is, how could it really fool anyone (aware of the existence of bots)?
Sorry, The Hacker News Stability project on the linked demo was not meant to mislead

How could it not mislead? With a obviously fake quote from PG?
Interesting, thanks.

>It's important to keep in mind that FP does not name some formally defined concept like the number 3 or the function cos.

Got it.
Ugh, can we (collectively) stop repeating that lie about how much we pay to the EU please?

As for anti-democratic, just look at who is trying to prevent the nominated candidate from the largest party in the Parliament from being chosen as the President: The UK government. It's the executives of the member states that provide the biggest anti-democratic element of the EU by trying to cling on to their power (under the guide of "sovereignty").
I'm in the midst of a pretty similar house-hunt to this guy here in Denver. I currently live Downtown and love it. I'm not willing to move outside of the city, so we're focusing on a proper house in one of the city-center neighborhoods.

Proximity to a grocery store is absolutely at the top of my list. I like to buy my food as fresh as possible and generally only buy for the meal I'm cooking that night. So having not only a grocery store, but a high-quality one, near me is incredibly important. The difference of even a block or two is huge when it comes to something you want to walk to on a very regular basis.

Sure I pay attention to things like the crime rate, but in most cities it's a nearly meaningless stat. The actual chances of being involved in a crime are very low in any neighborhood in my city (and this is true of almost every city in the U.S.). I think this is true of people predisposed to urban living. We're simply willing to tolerate a bit of crime risk in exchange for everything else that goes along with it.

From a technology point of view, I imagine it makes online real-estate very difficult to optimize for. There are so many different priorities that people have that you have to find ways to build general data-mining tools that are still actually usable by most folks. That's a tough challenge, one I don't think anyone has come close to cracking. For instance walk scores seem to be the closest to what I want and they tell you virtually nothing. Don't get me started on how we "rank" schools too:)
For too long, and on too many websites, you couldn't be sure that the ad wasn't just going to trigger a thousand pop-ups and/or download malware. Or, the ad was for something you just purchased on-line, leading to confusion. People no longer click ads because they've learned to avoid them (and almost every ad I've seen looks super spammy anyway).

It's called training. People can be trained to do/not to do anything. In this case they've been trained to avoid advertising nonsense; look at the annual increase in ad-blocker usage and how younger generations avoid ads the most as cited in this paper.
You mean large media catalogs that don't have flat subscription pricing. Netflix does fine without IAP.

Do you have a counter example?
As much as I like pg's writings (honestly, I (usually) (kinda) like/appreciate his writing style, content, etc.), re: hackers&painters, obligatory link to Maciej's retort/comments "Smushing Paul Graham":

http://idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm

It's a very nice read, actually.

(You might remember Maciej from "The Internet With A Human Face"[1] / as the dude behind pinboard.in / etc.)

[1]: http://idlewords.com/bt14.htm
nothing here for me either
Espruino is a similar device (without the cool plugins though, so expect to use a soldering iron). Much cheaper too.
True. I was more remarking on the fact that the grocery store metric seemed to be the primary one, as opposed to just one of a great many. It's definitely the kind of thing I would consider, but I'd also consider more things like price per square foot, number of bedrooms, neighborhood quality, distance to schools, etc. That's why I said "kinda strange" and not something harsher.
Harness.io - Create Automated Tests For Your Web App In 60 Seconds
Cool. I kinda figured that was the case. :)
> * GO Lang is still pretty obscure for most developers, and an interesting choice given the language's youth and likely-hood to change rapidly as it matures.

The go authors have committed to keeping major versions stable since v1 and are unlikely to massively change anything.

I'm sure much of google's infrastructure is coming to rely on go (and docker!) so they will be as unhappy about such drastic change as others.
My opinion is that they are ripe for extinction.
Javascript: the embedded parts.
Reskinning Apps Is Way Better Way To Make Money Then Making One App
Digital Technologies Enabled Tiananamen Square Pictures to Escape China
Alternatively, advertisers (and publishers) could insist on more and more intrusive or unavoidable advertising. Even now, you could pretty reliably detect ad blocking; many sites don't but some do (eg fark). You could simply block users that don't view ads. Or use interstitials exclusively. And if some users complain, well, who cares? It's not like people who skip ads earn you any money, so in a very real sense, they don't matter at all.

I think this will lead to a web experience that I like less and less. I'm willing to pay money to not have to endure advertising but I'm very much in the minority. As blue_beetle said: "If you are not paying for it, you’re not the customer; you’re the product being sold."
'Factoid' was coined by Norman Mailer to mean something that appears to be true but really isn't. If this really works, then it isn't a factoid.
Looks like a HN clone for API-related things

edit: seems to be made by folks behind http://apis.io
David Marcus Leaves Paypal
Looks like this is meant to be used in tandem with PHP.
What I find annoying is that they did this with no warning. I got an app rejected a few days ago. I have a coin model in my apps. The users can a) Complete actions within the apps to earn coins b) Purchase coins through IAPs c) Watch video ads for coins d) Complete offers for coins. Many users have expressed that they were happy with the system, especially the video ads, with reviews such as "I wish there was more videos to watch for coins". With only around 2% of users spending money on IAPs, offers and videos are a good way to monetize at least a portion of the remaining 98%.
I pause at those commas. And so do most of the people I know. However, I've noticed that it is much easier to notice the pauses if the speaker is from the South and speaks with a drawl. :-)
How you implement that channel operator is really hacky.

I love it.
Is using relx in conjunction with rebar a standard thing to do? Is there an easier/standard way to start the app with rebar or relx in development without building an entire release? Having to manually call ensure_all_started while developing seems a bit strange to me.
Totally agreed. It strikes me as very similar to traditional myths, or stories that purport to explain how things are. The only difference is that instead of using gods and supernatural powers, our new myths take into account scientific information like the theory of evolution.

So our new myths are more plausible, but just as unsubstantiated.
There is nothing about Eugene that is useful to the advancement of actual AI, to our understanding of intelligence. Advanced chatbots are a parlor trick, the same way that rabbit and hat tricks do not help us develop actual teleportation systems, however clever and convincing they might seem to credulous people.

The difference between a trick and a technology, of course, is usefulness. Can your software do something useful, or is it solely aimed at deceiving people into believing it does?

It was interesting to see how large quantities of journalists were simply channeling the ridiculous claims of the original press release, without an ounce of critical thinking --choosing instead to pontificate on the inexorable progress of AI. Yet another Dorian Nakamoto moment for the mainstream media.
For those wondering, it's a Meteor/Telescope (http://telesc.pe/) HN like forum with a focus on APIs.

I'm curious to know where you're hosting it (modulus, heroku, etc), how many servos/dynos you are using, and the # of connections that caused the app to become unresponsive?
Slingshot, Facebook's Snapchat-Like Competitor is Finally Here
Locking GitHub Conversations
Progress Acquires Modulus.io
hello, I will be 78 on 1st July this year. How many days will I have lived?
Well, we all have our priorities. Congrats on achieving yours!
Compare the most popular free games on Steam and consoles with mobile devices. Off the top of my head, Candy Crush Saga and multiple free Angry Birds titles have over 100m downloads on Google Play alone.
Depending on how the calendering system reports busy-ness, there's a nice timing attack on figuring out who people are meeting with. If the calendar shows busy when an invitation has been sent, instead of when someone accepts the invitation, and you take snapshots frequently enough, you can probably group people into meetings based on when the meeting showed up on peers' calendars.
Nope. It will go the other direction. I think we'll see an insurgence of astroturfers and their ilk.

Advertisers will realize that no one clicks in-your-face banner ads, but that people can be manipulated to purchase their items through the subtle use of forums and social media. Then we see more research into the field of planting trained individuals into sites like Reddit and HN, and the effectiveness there, then come the sales.
LocationSmart Supports Wearable World Hackathon
I do, however, like using the Docker OS X client to interface with my staging and production environments.
This isn't really a "we'll see" issue. It is a fact that containers do resource isolation. :P The security issues are orthogonal.
There's a large difference between a theory and a myth, it doesn't seem logical to make this parallel.
It would be interesting if the app store displayed the median total expenditure for any application that includes IAP. How would buying behavior be affected when suddenly that "free" game includes a note like "$59 median total spent"?

[Edit: clarity]
If there were citations, I would not only consider this for our service, but it would indeed allow for further investigation.
Ask HN: Make HN website purely functional?
The HN frontpage is mutable. Why not have the base url forward to the current state so that you can go back to old states? So root (/) would redirect to some url signifying current state. If one would choose a sequence for the state it could just be a number, say "/2345342" or so. This way my mobile browser could refresh without me losing track of articles and the state urls would be sharable.
It is an interesting trick. Will I have to pay the school if I leave it early, and to reimburse any grants that I may have gotten? Do you know anyone who had done that?
I can think of one - ever heard of TouchTunes? They have internet-streaming jukeboxes in many bars and restaurants. You can sign into them with your phone using their app, buy credit with an IAP, and then you spend the credit on the jukebox, selecting songs to play IRL with your phone.

It's technically IAP consumables, but it doesn't seem skeevy like the clash of clans / candy crushes of the world.
I have an Android tablet and the best way to find honest games (in my experience) has been buying Humble Bundles. Most of the games in them are probably on iOS too (I've heard a lot premier for Android there from iOS) so it could be worth checking out their past bundles.

Actually I just googled and found http://honestandroidgames.com/ - same deal, the good ones are probably on iOS too with the same model.
Hostr gets a smart front-end redesign
Popular, smart and simple hosting site, Hostr.co gets a front-end overhaul. Loving the new design!
But that's basically saying "all employers should have exactly the same standards for when to fire someone" which is silly.
Google Will Soon Introduce 'Nearby' To Let Others Know When You're Around
This whole conversation has been immensely helpful to me, certainly the comment:

"respect the scale of what's at stake, have the temerity to express doubt, possess the common sense to consider their observations, and ask questions."

.. pretty much sums it up, though some will try to dismiss it (I can't imagine a valid counter-argument to that). As far as the 'philosophical' aspect behind this debate goes, that may be as clear as I've yet seen it written.

It would be helpful if others passionate about this subject would read this. Perhaps learning to avoid the 'anti-science' mines planted all around this topic that childishly squash any intelligent discourse or debate.
I don't think anyone is questioning whether Apple makes money from consumable IAPs. What we're questioning is whether that factor dominates all others, which it observably does not.

As far as Apple promoting Candy Crush, there's a question about whether this is a cause or effect of its popularity.
I beg to differ. If you manage to break out of a container then all the resources of the machine are at your disposal.

So they're orthogonal only as long as the security assumptions hold.
Your trickery is someone else's fun game, though. It's a larger philosophical question if you have the right to stop someone from "being taken advantage of" if they are a willing, informed, enthusiastic participant in the process.
All It Took to Cure Baldness Was a Laser Beam, a Garage, and an Indiegogo Push
I used Puppet for about 4 years in a critical production environment and let me tell you, Docker is not only hype. The reason why a lot of people(including me) are excited about Docker is because it brings a clean architectural paradigm to the masses, the same one used at Google and Heroku, the same one that many of us struggled to build behind closed doors at various companies.

People that have used configuration management tools at scale in complex environments have seen that managing state using those respective tools can quickly become tedious. Although the recommendations of the author are fair, its takes a lot of effort to manage state drift on a whole platform using a configuration management tool. But if you use Docker, you will already be forced to think and do things in this new paradigm where there is separation between your data, business logic and service state. You can theoretically achieve the same things with CM tools, but its just harder.

While the whole Docker ecosystem is immature, and people dont know how to deal with things once they get past 1 machine, its getting there and there is slowly more knowledge on how to do service discovery, logging, etc. in large environments. Im sure that in a few years we will look the same way at Docker(and other container tech) like we do at "heavy" virtualization now.
I have talked to them and they are mediating a resolution, but if there can be none, I'll burn my team down reputation wise-- I used to work in SEO/Content Marketing and I'll make sure any investor who does due diligence will NEVER invest in them.
In a way this reminds of this SMBC:

http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2138
I wonder how much this is going to be abused. There are a lot of angry BDFLs out there and I can see this being used to silence people.
Honest question, how does a comment like this get you fired? I mean, beyond the person calling for your head.

Since when do personal statements translate into firing offenses at your place of work?

I'm from the "I May Not Agree With What You Say, But I’ll Fight For Your Right to Say It" camp and things like this honestly confuse me.

To clarify, I think what he said was morally wrong.
Finally, no more :+1:s when it's all that is being said by everyone, without much discussions...yay to less noise!
Based on this article, if 33% of the judges were fooled maybe some better judges are in order.

It seems there are two ways to beat the Turing test. Come up with very clever algorithms or (probably easier) get some less discerning judges.

The whole thing reminds me of this: http://www.cleverbot.com/

Not Turing convincing, but I found it fun.
Ron Conway And Chamath Palihapitiya Debate SF Housing And Google
Another relevant article from the same site:

Artists' beards evolved to be "structurally different" http://newstechnica.com/2014/04/17/artists-beards-evolved-to...
I really hope you're wrong...
or both. either way, a web experience I like less and less...
I'm pretty ignorant of both languages (but I have novice experience in both): Moving to Haskell, don't you miss Lisp macros? How do you deal with that?
GoDaddy files for $100M IPO
It's both amazing and horrifying the level of overloads that Swift supports. If the early cases are done well we may avoid the C++ mantra of overloading==evil.
I'm working on something exactly like this at the moment (not US) - it's super exciting to see people make use of the data available to them.

Kudos :)
Backed.

There's some negativity floating around here with regards to the video, but I'm glad I watched it before reading the comments. The video clearly shows what Craig has in mind for this tool, and the music gives some character too. Best of luck with this campaign!
I probably wasn't clear enough. My point is that the von-Neumann model allows us to walk up to a computer and point and say, "Here is the memory and here is the processing unit and here on this test probe of register 47 we see the instruction to move the contents of memory address 42 from memory into register 19." Even my mom can understand a sketch of the von-Neumann model to some degree.

Because functions are not a model of a computer, but a means of computation, there's no obvious picture. Indeed, if I look at the test probe, I don't see a function but an instruction to move the contents of memory address 42 from memory into register 19. I can draw a diagram of a Turing machine in a few minutes, not so with the lambda calculus. The equivalence is only mathematical, and that cuts both ways. There's no way to write a functional version of The Art of Computer Programming because mathematical equations don't have running times.
Is this another case of using the generic term "API" to only refer to APIs related to accessing web data? I do some API-related work, but it has nothing to do with the network. However, I'm always interested in learning more about related APIs and how to write good APIs. This sounds interesting, but it also doesn't load for me.
A newspaper might structure their IAPs so that instead of buying a subscription or a single issue you can buy a "bundle" of issues. I.e. instead of a 1 Week subscription you buy 7 issues and the counter only decrements when you actually download one, whether that takes 7 days or 7 months to happen.

But that's not really the point anyway - there's absolutely no reason they couldn't say consumable IAPs can only be used for media. IIRC they did something similar when they started subscriptions and background content updates.

However, that would just mean that the games with consumable IAPs will switch to subscription IAPs (where the subscription is short - probably a few hours to a few days at most). I'm not sure how much better that is.
3D Augmented Reality Sketchpad
Don't forget the other side of that question, though: how much time/money did it save?

Best practice today is to waste computer time to save programmer time. It's absolutely right, too. In 99% of cases, computer time is plentiful and programmer time is scarce.

But that's the result of decades of hardware advances. Mel's computer had a clock speed measured in kilohertz and a memory access time measured in milliseconds. It might be literally a million times slower than what we're using today. The dirty tricks we shy away from today can be the only way to get some things done on hardware like that.

Finally, we're talking about the 1950s. The profession was pretty much brand new. Where do you think modern best practices came from? They're what came out of people finding out, by experience, what works and what doesn't.
Now you're just being intentionally obtuse.
Equally as ill-conceived and/or misdirected as other "language du jour"-specific chips of times past?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PicoJava

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazelle
>Let's go even further and have them ban consumable IAPs.

No chance whilst Apple gets a 30% cut.
According to the caption, there's a guy from the NSA in the group.
Where do you put all of your data? Edit: specifically, ZNC keeps an archive of some channels for me. If I ran it in a Docker container, would the data be saved somewhere if, say, the power went out?
Chris Nolan’s Interstellar and the irresistible pull of out there
Interesting article! There are some misconceptions I disagree with, but I believe I agree with the spirit.

What Docker does is allows those who are best qualified to make the decisions mentioned (the ops guys!) to have a clear separation of concerns from application developers.

It doesn't magically solve this hard problems in and of itself.
That's impressive.

Honestly modern browsers should just start ignoring off-domain :visted styles.
I agree with your observation. I'm not equating evolution to religion, but it's interesting when you think about it. In the past, if you asked why humans had "x", it was because God designed us that way.

If you ask it now, the answer is "because our environment selected for it."

Neither answer provides a useful explanation.
I also thought of software when reading Antifragile, but my take on it is slightly different.

For one, software per se is extremely fragile. Variability in inputs can easily break it. New browser version, someone presses buttons in a different order, Y2K, and everything comes crashing down.

However, the overall system that includes the software and the team maintaining it can be antifragile, but it's not automatic. The team is like the immune system that fights off bugs; if it doesn't follow good practices, it can lose its ability to do so. For example, a policy of writing automated tests against bugs to make sure that do not reappear is antifragile (like creating antibodies).

Another relevant point: nothing is antifragile without running an energy deficit. It costs money to keep software working, even without adding any features.
I can't think of any counter examples that are available on iOS anyway, because of the sales restrictions: the two I thought of were the Kindle and Nook stores, but you can't buy books in either app because Amazon and Barnes and Noble aren't prepared to give apple a 30% cut of the sale.
Next gen tracking device raises $25,000 in 3 hours
You should happy to note that the name is something we don't bikeshed about within the Bro project. The name is staying. It will far outlast the negativity.
Your type of app is the reason why the App store is full of spammy garbage. Good riddance! I hope Apple actually encourage better apps without these skeevy practices.