skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
+1 for bringing this up. Might have been on HN before, but it cannot be stressed enough what a great mind he was. Especially his striving for 'good' in his writings is leaves a bitter taste in my mouth everytime I read it because I know I'm still far from being good. Well, something that can make you think like that is superb.
"So what I don't understand and hope somebody here could shed some light on it is what's with all the new languages?"

While one can make an argument that these new languages address a particular need better than any extant language, I suspect the real reason is that it's more fun to create tools, including languages, than to solve particular business problems. As evidence, I offer the plethora of frameworks, libraries, and utilities that comprise the ecosystem of Java in particular. In many enterprise systems the business logic is a small fraction of the total running application.

"When I read about Smalltalk or Lisp or Haskell people regard them as the pinnacle of programming language design . . . ."

Lisp wasn't designed, it was discovered. ;-)

Thanks for the interesting questions.
OpenMirage and YunoHost looks to me like they serve two completely different audiences/purposes.

If an average user (non full-time server admin) wants to set up a server that has common apps like Wordpress, Roundcube and Transmission, YunoHost seems like the OS for the job.

How would a user like that go about this with OpenMirage? Is there a similar web interface for setting up mail, web and torrents (for example)? There's a lot of technical documentation, but how would they actually set up these services?

After reading the overview link, I'd wager that most users still don't really know why it's better than YunoHost, or even what OpenMirage actually is.
Is it possible to interact with the other characters or is it just walking around ?
You seem to be using a strange definition of the word "good". Are the ads you see on the internet (based on datamining your personal information) better than the ads you see in magazines and TV (which are based only on very coarse aggregate statistics)? Are today's TV ads significantly better than those of the 1980, when demographic information was far coarser still?

For all the promises of "only seeing ads for things you're interested in", data-mining based advertising has been a colossal flop from my perspective as a consumer. We've surrendered a tremendous amount of personal information and gotten hamfisted targeting attempts and obnoxious "viral" campaigns in exchange. It makes me nostalgic for the stupid but well executed beer commercials of the 1980s. Not giving away all your personal information is not the same as not being good at advertising.
Nah, I'd just like to take a look at it, but you might be able to get someone else to use it on ARM compilers if you release it.
Never bring reason or facts to block a good America bashing/stereotyping. It ruins the game for everyone.
>A Charitable organisation (Stichting) is always 'non commercial' under Dutch law. //

That's really interesting. Perhaps then on can set up a charitable organisation to bankrupt your competition and flip it to be a regular company ... even giving things away can be commercial as that can effectively destroy another companies market.

Just not making a profit doesn't make you a "charity" in UK. You have to have different company structure, different accounting; different terms and operating conditions apply.

>We're allowed to use someones name (Reclame Code Commissie), Dreft is allowed to make ads which say Ajax makes bad dish-soap. //

That's pretty standard it's in UK and USA (15 USC 1115(b)) law too usually it goes along with reporting and parody exclusions and parallels copyright in this respect.

IKEAhackers.net isn't a parody. Parody means comic entertainment. If the hacks comprised throwing away the instructions and having at it with a nail gun then perhaps you'd qualify as a parody site.

>Not sure what would happen if someone would host IKEAhackers.net from The Netherlands. //

I don't think that matters. If you're addressing people in a country (and they're arguably addressing people in all countries that IKEA operate in) then there's likely to be redress against [alleged] IP infringements allowed for in the country where those people reside.
A hypthesis: Languages are no mean in itself. They are used to generate programs for specific purposes on specific plattforms. The availability of the plattforms and the need to create software for them makes the language popular. C for Unix/Linux, JavaScript for the Browser, C++ for Microsoft Windows, Java for Business stuff* and Android, Ruby for Rails, Objective-C for Mac and iOS, C# for .net.

* Sun invested a billion in Java to replace the more costlier Smalltalk. Instead of competing with Sun, IBM ditched Smalltalk and just went with Java, too.
People are often reluctant to execute UI to permanently remember choices because they want to preserve the option to choose in the future.

For example, say I have a workable command of French, but want the ability to translate French in the future in case I don't understand a particular paragraph. So I put up with the annoying dialog over and over because I'm afraid to not have it when I want it.

Always/never UI is almost always a design failure IMO.

Another example is the intent chooser in Android. I put up with the dialog that asks whether I want to use Gallery or G+ photos because I fear not being able to choose in the future when I have some other viewer I want to use, or when there is some particular feature of G+ that I learn about and want to use.

In many cases this isn't rational if you think it through. There is probably some UI to reset the intent option somewhere, and finding it then is probably less time overall than dealing with this dialog over and over. But you don't think that through in the moment, you get slightly frustrated, press "not now" again, and get on with whatever you were trying to do.
Being a Dad and working on a startup.
Trianglify-api for trianglify JavaScript library
(update) Sunday 16:20 UTC: looks like they fixed it. Though it's not entirely clear if the thread got pushed out of the front page and the bug still remains.
> Jobs refused for years to provide commuting shuttles to its employees despite heavy complaints and internal petitions

What could be the reason behind Jobs refusal for this facility?
It seems like a user has to install those apps first.

When you install apps in the admin interface, there's a description of what each app does before you install it.
An Unreasonable Request of Impossible Data
Because I use the translate feature all the time! I don't want it gone!

Here's a simple example for you:

Bob lives in Norway, but doesn't know perfect Norwegian.

He likes that google chrome/translate helps him read Norwegian webpages.

Bob is always losing focus on his cursor because of the translate feature, it's even bothering him on websites in his native language due to all of the region based advertising.

You're telling Bob that he should disable the option to translate Norwegian web pages, even though he reads them daily, and doesn't speak the language.

Now do you see the problem?

To be perfectly clear, this was not a problem when the translate option showed at the top of the page, but is a problem with the new "pop-up" style they are using which steals focus from the user.
Regarding Reviews - you can always smile (giggle? :-) at those responses given that you have (thousands of?) people like me, who has played games on every platform for 15+ years, has a very generous budget and has a pretty good portion of the AAAs by my console, but found ADR (on the web) to be one of my top 10 games in the last couple years, probably behind Jelly Defense and Don't Starve, but definitely ahead of GTA V in terms of sheer visceral pleasure.

The Apple Bar Geniuses at the Store in Palo Alto all loved it as well.

I hope just one of our heartfelt loves can equal at least a thousand haters, who, as we all know, just gotta hate. :-)
Notable FIFA World Cup Own Goals from Beginning until 2014
I'm taking tutorials for game making in SDL2 to expand my knowledge of C++, and because i've had an interest in game design for a while. I'm certainly learning a lot more than I ever did playing around with Game Maker..
> How do languages get popular?

Inclusive community would be my stab at an answer.
How is Go or Rust better than C C++

Use C or C++ and then try out Go or Rust.
Jobs didn't believe in coddling employees. For him, the chance to work on amazing products (or in support of those products) with amazing people was ample enough reward.
My take was "oh, 3-D Escape Velocity."
Coding is not going to save you
Just launched an app to benchmark various free hosting providers. Any feedbacks?
>The US economy became the world's largest one some time in the 1920's

I believe it was 1890 or 1891, when it took over from England.
Streamlining Feature Engineering
Perhaps "IDEAhackers.org"?
> I've learned that there's a strong correlation between knowledge and humility.

It's the Dunning–Kruger effect:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
> I've learned that people are twice as biased as they think they are, which is precisely why biases are dangerous.

This is a bit backwards. It's more like an inverse relationship - if you don't think you have any biases you are likely to be the most biased. It's probably a factor of 2 for those who admit a level of bias, and a much greater factor for those who don't admit bias.
The Chemicals Banned In Europe, Are Safe In The U.S.
what decisions about science would you be referring to?
Yeah, pg wrote an essay about this and it's one of my favorites.

http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html
It's clippy again! Silently stealing the focus, moving things, and being "completely" helpful is so familiar behavior... It's only missing the avatar.

Also, Google keeps translating my queries into my native language. If I search for some English term, odds are I want English pages back. But no, Google disagrees (even when I search for a definition).
I hadn't thought of the slave population initially. Not to bring up a sore topic for no reason but I wonder if these calculations use the Three-Fifths compromise.
"Specialized school administrations are just as shitty as others. It's the student body and teachers that make these places rock."

This times 1000. The administration at Bronx Science was comically inept and somewhat corrupt, at least when I was there. A painted turtle would have gotten the same results, given the student filter they are gifted.
Mob behavior
How do i get more users to http://www.LiveWorldCupChat.com
How can I get more users to my http://www.LiveWorldCupChat.com website?

We've spent about 6 months on and off building functionality and building up twitter/facebook feeds but it seems cant catch "lightning in a bottle".

Apart from pay-to-play on social media am I missing something about whats needed to build a live fan chat application?
Y U NO HOST, self-hosting made easier
Why Is Toilet Paper Always White?
No, I disagree. There's a big difference between humility and lack of self-confidence.
There's a saying in the oilfield (many booms and busts over generations):

'when the barber is getting into the oilfield, it's time to get out'
The schools aren't managed any better, but you do get much smarter and better behaved peers.
Does the 3699DKR price include Denmark's 25% VAT? Prices in the USA are quoted before sales tax. In Europe, advertised consumer prices generally include VAT.

Also, I think you meant 'uninterested' (not interested) rather than 'disinterested' (free of bias).
> When I read about Smalltalk or Lisp or Haskell people regard them as the pinnacle of programming language design and yet their popularity isn't really proportional to those statements.

That's like saying you read about Bob Dylan being the pinnacle of songwriting, but his popularity compared to Beyonce not bearing that out.
Just to point out, the last two sound like it's due to the current implementation (compiler) being new, so it isn't so upsetting at all.

Now, not supporting functors is odd, though.
I've always been a big fan of Motley Fool, particularly their podcasts, and I think it's for the same reason I like this article: their contributors seem to value honesty, to point of self-deprecation, over the desire to appear superior.
Apple pays well.

Shuttles on the other hand, are a controversial elitist perk.
What light is that?
I'm not sure about that law but it is a law that someone must always attack the press if they say something less than flowery about Apple somewhere. I don't think many people inside or outside of Apple are arguing that the 5C was a disappointment sales wise. This though was just one small point in a very lengthy, balanced article.
Thanks for the response. I knew that TCP handles dropped packets. But it seems like using an exceptional case for dealing with errors shouldn't be the norm. Is this also how more traditional traffic shaping works?

I presume that under circumstances such as this you end up generating a lot more network traffic than you need to, because of the overhead in retransmitting failed packets.

I know you couldn't buffer indefinitely because your buffer would overflow, but could you maybe delay the acknowledgements of packets, e.g. To simulate a slower link.

Not saying there's anything wrong with the approach or article, merely curious from the perspective of a non-networks guy.
If you're experiencing depression, consistently lowered mood, heightened anxiety, or other mental health symptoms, especially if you don't have a history of it, be sure to rule out physical causes and simple nutritional deficiencies as well with your doctor, in addition to pursuing psychiatric medications and / or therapy.

Especially if frequent tiredness and exhaustion are strong components, you could be experiencing a change in endocrine function, particularly thyroid, a sleep disorder, or any number of other medical conditions.

Sleep disorders especially are often underdiagnosed, and can go untreated for years in lieu of just treating psychiatric symptoms instead (I know this from personal experience). Conditions such as hypothyroidism are often similarly underdiagnosed. So if you're feeling extraordinarily tired all the time, and anemia and other nutritional and medical causes have been ruled out, get your thyroid levels checked and a sleep study done too, or at least bring it up with your doctor.

But also don't hesitate to seek out treatment for mental health problems even if a known medical cause can't be found or has yet to be identified. It's all physiological causes really, but there's a lot we still don't know about the human brain and body, and treating symptoms, especially if they are having a significant negative impact on your quality of life, is just as important as trying to find a cause.

And last but not least since we are talking about depression and depression-related conditions (such as bipolar, etc.), I just wanted to raise a little awareness for borderline (BPD) too. For those of you that have strong emotions, maybe a little impulsive, and/or a troubled childhood and suicidal tendencies, or have people in your life like that, you should find it really worthwhile to read up a bit on BPD:

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

It's a diagnosis which has gotten a bad but undeserved stigma over the years, that needs better awareness and understanding.

Whether you identify strongly with a BPD profile or not, if you struggle with strong emotions and/or suicidal tendencies in your life, a lot of Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) coping strategies and methods might be particularly helpful to you in dealing with those feelings:

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

Stay healthy and happy hackers, but don't be afraid to ask friends, family, and professionals for help when you need it either!
Yeah, that's why I said the crashes gave me hope. It seems they are trying to support those use cases, but haven't worked out the kinks. I'm totally fine with that.
I find it funnier than sad. But, I agree with you completely.
The infringement, if there is one, is of a quite technical nature.

>(1) Suggesting a multibillion dollar coroporation license its trademark to a stranger on the internet for free. //

Why not? It's not like someone's suggesting to hand over the trademark itself.

IKEAhackers is a fan site that is promoting IKEA - and has been widely, for several years - at no cost and probably countable benefit to IKEA. Why not reward your fans for doing marketing for you?

The equivalent for McDonalds - McDoHackers - would have a series of outstandingly good reviews of McDonalds meals, it would give menu suggestions for meals at McDonalds. The minimal advertising would be for cupholders for your car that only fit McDonalds drinks, or for carry bags that let you buy more McDonalds food, or for companies that will deliver McDo for you so you can eat more McDonalds rather than buy other people's food (or make your own). Terror of terrors ... yes McDo would probably use the extra revenue you brought them to sue you as well, but that doesn't make that the ethical line.
yes exactly, my point is that if you don't fall within the DSM then you should not not think of yourself as "being depressed". Many people like to characterize themselves as depressed or "mildly depressed" even though they come nowhere near the DSM criteria and I think that articles like the one in question promote that kind of thinking.
You could say that about any company or person working in healthcare. This is just a generic attack.
climate change?
One thing you could do is ask for marketing help at various forums. For e.g. you could post it here as another Ask HN - "Ask HN: Help me market xyz.com". Apart from getting plenty of good marketing ideas, you might find your business co-founder.

Other forums I would look at are the ones focused on SEO like inbound.org, growthhackers, trafficplanet, BHW, WF etc

Also, put your email ID and the link to your tool in your HN profile. I'm sure there are plenty of people in SEO here who will be happy to help.
> I love what the compiler crashes let me hope it will do

These rose-colored glasses are getting ridiculous.
In fact Google even fired a recruiter for trying to hire someone from Apple

Get your facts straight: that particular recruiter went to a top VP at Apple, offered them the COO position at Google which didn't exist. Once Google CEO learned of that, yes, they fired that super-pro-active recruiter. This is an instance of a mad recruiter who'll promise the moon to get someone interested in a bogus position. Firing sounds like a reasonable answer to such behavior.

EDIT: I got Apple and eBay confused, as pointed out by comments below. The Apple firing did happen as well, in the now infamous "smiley email".
Sunscam (1998)
I'm using this tool with curl in scripts calling AWS api. Looking for an id of an object (security group, autoscaling group etc.) with its name and referencing it afterward in another command.
> Smil introduces a surprising and counterintuitive idea he calls relative dematerialization. As innovation lets us make a given product more efficiently, with fewer materials or energy, prices go down and consumption goes up.

This is called Jevons Paradox; or at least it used to be. Economists have a good handle on this idea now so we don't call it a paradox anymore.
Paul Graham's answer to why some languages become popular: http://www.paulgraham.com/popular.html
Every one of those observations sounds extremely true to me.

Regarding the first one: "changing your mind is one of the most difficult things we do" -- changing our mind is almost impossible; changing other people's is down right impossible.

BUT

- It's possible to influence people before they have made up their mind.

- It's also possible to reframe / rename / re-position a subject, so that it becomes a new category about which people don't already have an opinion. Politicians do it all the time (most people are opposed to torture, but "enhanced interrogation techniques" sound both useful and reasonable, for example). Marketers also do it, sometimes, but they should do it more.

On this last topic, this book is absolutely fantastic:

http://www.amazon.com/Positioning-The-Battle-Your-Mind/dp/00...

It explains why brand extension is almost always a bad idea ("Google Play", OMG!!!!), and why "7Up: the uncola" is genius.
This is absolutely false.

Because almost all of Google's products are server based, they gather far more information about your behavior than Apple. Where is Apple's equivalent of Google Analytics, Adsense, and Search History, tracking you all over the web?

Also, when it comes to personal data such as email, Google openly reads your data to support selling your attention to the Advertisers who pay the most to influence you.

Apple doesn't examine your data to support the interests of third parties.
Holy square wave harmonics Batman.
It's not about a statement being less than flowery. It's about a statement that is misleading. You say the rest of the article is balanced, but how do you know that?
Gitchain, a hangout with the author
I'd say that YunoHost only makes sense for people who already know what the words nginx, postfix, LDAP, etc. mean -- I don't consider those people 'average users'. As others on this thread have alluded to, running a server using the existing tools and methods and not being a full-time sysadmin is a recipe for getting pwned. The tools we have right now are porous and difficult to maintain and debug when something goes wrong. Taking a clean-slate approach to the problem can yield new insights and solutions.

I don't really mean to suggest that Mirage/Nymote is ready for use by the public right now (I'm supportive of things that give users that option today). However, I do believe it will be better to build self-hosting options using the Mirage stack later, hence the link to the Nymote work.
As someone who started as a game developer and is now mostly in the web world, I totally agree to start with Unity - a side project I have now is using it, and it's an absolute godsend as a small/one man team for making games. You can do almost anything you can do in a AAA studio engine, but with more productivity and a gentler learning curve.

So yeah, to parent poster: Go download Unity and do the tutorials.

It's also worth working through some OpenGL tutorials to get a feel for how the lower level stuff works.
Without commenting on the success rate of bitcoin itself, the money being put in bitcoin is still an order of magnitude smaller than the bubbles mentioned in GP. The USP guy, more likely than not still doesn't know about bitcoin.
Note - you do paragraph breaks on HN by leaving a blank line, not by adding a <p> tag.

The answer is yes, but you'll have to set things up yourself. One way involves two AP's, and a computer with two ethernet cards. You'll need AP's that can log into other wireless networks (note, not all consumer gear can do this) so be selective.

Then you'd wire things like this:

AP to apt <--> computer <-> your local AP.

The local AP should run a different "channel" to reduce interference overlap, and you'll need to setup the computer as a router and let it handle the VPN and routing for you.

You might also look into one of the alternate AP firmwares (Tomato/etc.). They might be able to be setup to work just with a pair of compatible AP's without the computer in between.
I just started playing this for the first time last night. I'm playing the Wii U HD edition. It looks amazing, and one of the first things that stood out to me was the red cloth on the spears.

I spent about 5 minutes in a barrel last night just watching the guards swoosh around their spears. My guess was that was added for the Wii U edition - but apparently I'm way wrong.

Incredible looking game!