skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
By "Purely functional package manager", it's implying "referential transparency" of package definitions/build processes - meaning that given the same inputs to the package definition each time, it should always produce the same result. (OK, in practice this doesn't work exactly as we want it because of various things out of our control, such as timestamps which get inserted into binaries - but there's ongoing work to overcome these deficiencies so we can create binary-exact replicas, reliably[1]). For now, Nix is only referentially transparent at the source level - it requires that packages are built from the same source code that was specified in the original package definition.

The reason we want referential transparency for packages is to make them reliable - so that another person building your package gets the same result you did, and something like an environment variable, missing packages, or different native package on his system doesn't cause the software to break, or simply fail to build. If you've ever tried to build some software and configure or make has returned some cryptic error you end up googling - this is exactly what Nix solves.

On "What about Windows?" It's a serious question, but the serious answer is that nobody is interested - if Windows users really wanted it, they'd build it, and so far, they're two decades behind even the most basic kind of package management offered by Debian. The best Windows has so far is nuget, which is language specific, and also pretty miserable at actually solving the package management problem - it's a convenient hack.

A more interesting project on Windows is CoApp, although I'm not sure if it's still in development. The idea behind CoApp was to create a Visual Studio project file for common open source software and test them - such that Windows users will not be required to install mingw/msys/cygwin to provide some basic functions to their machines.

Nobody is suggesting that Nix should replace all the package managers, but the idea behind it is probably more valuable than others going into the future where complexity will continue to increase, and traditional package managers have stagnated in solving our dependency problems.

The issue of standards and "one to rule them all" isn't really what nix aims for either - it's in fact, completely incompatible with other PMs by nature - because it requires that dependencies are exact, and other PMs simply cannot provide anything of that nature - they only produce "approximate" packages.

[1]:https://wiki.debian.org/ReproducibleBuilds
Computer science is such a huge topic. It will humble the most experienced programmers.

It's possible that you right now today may know somethings that the person who made you feel like your underwater has no idea about.

I always feel like I don't know anything and that's a good thing, it keeps this subject interesting.
Houston, We Have A Public Domain Problem
Looks good. There are two things that will be really important:

- How is data imported? It would be great to be able to set up custom SQL queries, CSV imports, and other service gateways to do analytics on.

- How do I define graphs? I'll want to be able to do time-series, but easily switch between day/week/month/year resolution, and create trailing period averages without having to think about it.

I signed up for the beta. I'd love to play around and do some deep diving on stats we have collected.
This will be a huge help for teams of larger developers who use Github.

It's really easy for a branch to "look okay" at the unit level (generally covered by the commit status API) and then completely fail at the integration level.

Enabling quick reverts of bad code encourages people to make the "right fix" rather than trying to hotfix issues in an integration environment (which blocks the rest of the team and prevents other features from going out).
A few thoughts off the top of my head, and apologies if these are already covered by the majority of survey sites (I'm yet to use one).

Track drop-off rates throughout the survey. Not at the page level, but at the question level. Track how long it took question to be answered. Allow complete export of all the survey data. With any summary chart/table, provide the ability to export the underlying data. Ensure it behaves well on mobiles, most of the ones I've seen as a user do not. Provide webhooks: so if a technically adept client comes along and asks for a survey, and wants to give all users who take it a free month's service, then you call them via a webhook to notify them as such

That said, unless it's something radically different, I think it's a tough market to be in. So many scammers and free options already.
This is an awesome feature - not one you'll use every day, but one that's very convenient when you've made an oops.
That's interesting. Is it well-accepted that an appeal stays the decisions? If not, then this might just be another case of the FAA claiming its desires. And even if the appeal is stayed, what is the default state?
The court raises issues of quality assurance in their discussion of the issues surrounding the case. They noted the issues but made no judgement, but it seems likely to me that the Court wasn't very impressed.
Due process is a guarantee made to citizens. The form it takes or method it is delivered by is not overly specific, and there is nothing about it that mandates it be scoped to one particular branch of government. If it's the executive branch handing down restrictions of liberty, well then I guess it's the executive branch that is responsible for ensuring due process.
Realize that programming is an incredibly broad field, so you're absolutely guaranteed to run into many areas in which you have no experience yet others have achieved expert status. Feeling inadequate is normal. As mindcrime said, don't sweat it. Nobody knows everything about every area of programming.

IMO you should decide what you want to do in more concrete terms. Being a "good" programmer can mean a lot of things. Do you want to become an expert in some specific area of computer science, i.e. machine learning? Do you want to design your own language? Or an OS? Or your own framework? Do you want to be the ideal super-productive jack-of-all-trades startup first-hire/tech founder? Do you want to strive for the broad knowledge, wealth of experience, and leadership + mentorship abilities of an effective CTO? The list goes on.

You can't have it all. Pick one, or pick a few. Then spend years challenging yourself, ideally working on real projects that are meaningful to you, alongside other great programmers who give you something to aspire to.
Any chance you be rolling out support for New Zealand... we sell heaps to China!
PostHang
And a LaTeX package.
You can version manually or automatically in the optimizing compiler inner loops of those builtins depending on the denseness / representation of the array backing store. Something along this lines: http://gist.io/7050013. Trace compiler could actually give such versioning for free automatically.

So I always putting this into not-done-yet category for JS VM related work and it is a very interesting problem to tackle.
Thanks for that. I can tell the young pups to calm down.
No judge would actually argue for a right to travel so broadly defined that it would essentially remove all regulatory power over who can and cannot fly.

Why not?
Twilio Partners with Google And LiveOps To Launch A Call Center In A Box
Since UNCOL people keep on trying, but in the end it always ends up not quite there.
> But who are the weapon makers going to sell to?

They already sold the equipment to the federal government. The federal government is simply getting rid of stuff they don't want. If anything, this practice hurts them by flooding the market with used goods.
Heh, I misread this as: "When all you have is a hummer,"
I agree, I don't think that they are directly comparable - I was merely commenting on the fact that it is easy for us Europeans to make snide comments about the level of armed violence in the US when we actually have occasional outbursts of extreme levels of violence here, even if the overall level is much lower.
I love how you defined "rise of anthropology over algorithm in social mobile apps".
I strongly believe that Yo will help reshape mobile communications; will be kind of a similar impact like what Snapchat brought to instant photo sharing.
The Air Force vets that I know say that civilian aircraft during peace time are maintained better than AF aircraft were during war time.

Also, it's fair to say that the AF doesn't really care about the potential for ground casualties in the event of a mechanical failure.

Let's look at it this way; how many US drones have been captured by enemy forces? Crashing is one thing; falling into the hands of an opponent who can study the device is a mission aspect that the AF and other agencies do care about. More than a handful?
Using Data to Simplify Your Product
Bummer. I still use this to find clothes. Glad to hear they're going to bring back a slightly different version of it.
Agree completely. For onboarding tentative users just interested in trying out a product, front-ends should be using email-only or even URL-only authentication instead.
I think this shows that standards bodies could implement less native language functionality and let community-made libraries/tools compete for those areas. ES6 goes so far as to implement a native module system, seriously calling into question any effort by the community at large to implement a competing system (e.g. browserify, requirejs).
> A confidential informant hours earlier had purchased methamphetamine at the house, the sheriff says. The informant told police that there were men standing guard outside the home, and it was unclear whether they were armed, according to CNN affiliate WGCL.

That makes it even worse: 'confidential informants' (snitches) are notorious for lying and making shit up in order to appear as helpful as possible, and cops of all people should know that. They didn't even bother to check any of the claims? I certainly do hope they're 'devastated' and are learning the right lesson here..
Here they describe it in detail:

http://ertos.nicta.com.au/research/l4.verified/proof.pml

Basically they plugged a lot of the possible holes, but it's not done yet.
Build realtime apps with RethinkDB and Firebase: July 1st in SF at FirebaseHQ
Kind of ironic how Github continues to make it less necessary for developers to actually learn git.
It is pointless to compare raw numbers without also considering cost of living. Rent, travel, food, entertainment, etc are all expensive in London.
http://www.seed-db.com/companies/funding?value=1 plus a little extra meta-data from crunchbase. Seed-DB (so far as I can tell) only tracks startups that went through an accelerator. We've got a larger list that includes everyone, but it made viewing the accelerator info more difficult because there are so many startups that haven't gone through one.

We'll probably create another board with all startups but will probably do it on a company basis instead of a funding round basis. There are a lot of different ways you could want to see this data.

If you sign up for the beta, we'll let you know when you can create your own. We're following the github model - public projects are free, private projects have a modest fee.
I have little to add. This (parent post) more or less covers it.
> I live in the US and have never had to deal with this and live a normal life. I am by no means defending this, in fact I think it's disgusting and awful, but it's not happening on every single street in the county. Yet.

I think that's how they get away with it politically. For the politically powerful and even most of the middle class, it's only something they see on the news occasionally.
> do consider a quality football program through the auspices of the university a benefit they are willing to pay for.

Then it wouldn't be an operational loss, if the attracted number of students paying for the school with a football team offsets the costs of running the team after any direct proceeds.
First define what "good programmer" means to you. Good programmer could mean having the skills to lead and code a functioning start up venture that can scale. For others "good programmer" could mean being an amazing architect - building products that are complex, yet in simple concise code and in a way that is easy to extend down the road. Yet for another person it can mean becoming a great hacker. What does "good programmer" mean to you?
That's a though one. I know I can't think of any that aren't either verbose or nondescript.

But if Coffescript can walk away with its choice then I don't think you'll have anything to worry about.
Your Biggest Hurdle is Yourself: My Story in Coding.
I think it would be neat if GitHub detected and archived branches that are deleted or overwritten with force --push. I don't know how feasible this is but it would make it more true that when code is pushed to GitHub, it's safe.

Edit: what I have in mind is something like a Recycle Bin or Trash for deleted branches where you can restore a branch (with a different name, if needed) or delete it permanently. Not some esoteric git feature. I'd like if it were added to git (as an optional feature enabled in .git/config), but I'd want it to work more like stash than a feature for searching for things that were left behind.
Not in France for example.
I like the fact that the logo is aggressive given the startup scene is very much so. So many startup logos are cutesy and playful.
This ignores the economics. If you look to the FDA as the template, the strict testing regime and the cost of navigating through the process ensures that only patent-protected drugs ever get approved for human medical use.

I extrapolate, perhaps inappropriately, that the combination of an FAA ban on commercial drones and a testing initiative will mean that only proprietary, patent-protected, and closed-source drones--and their software packages--will ever have access to this potentially interesting and useful market.

And that barrier to entry will make everything more expensive, in the same way that a GPS becomes more expensive when installed in an avionics panel than when it is strapped to the pilot's thigh.

Premature optimization is not optimization at all.
Due process encompasses everything involved in the enforcing of the laws and regulations - from how evidence is collected to having your Miranda rights read to receiving notice. And yes, should the police strip you of your due process rights, your only recourse is to go to court (or flee the police, which opens you up to other problems). You'd likely get compensation for it though, and the police would be severely punished as a deterrent to future abuses.

To your last point, this is likely an issue - can a non-judicial, unelected, non-executive branch agency (I'm a little unsure of if there are agencies that aren't technically executive for Constitutional purposes, but I think most would agree that the FAA doesn't seem like an executive agency) add someone to a no-fly list? Is it civil? Criminal? Or simply regulatory (the agency could try and argue that it isn't being punitive, it just set up eligibility criteria that those on the list did not meet - a really tenuous argument, but it would be logically consistent and open up comparisons to things like qualifying for aid and slippery slope arguments about due process invalidating all those eligibility criteria).
I found the following, I think apt, quote from Dan Dennett:

"In a review of Steven Pinker's book, How the Mind Works, in New York Review of Books, the British geneticist Steve Jones had the following comment to make: "To most wearers of white coats, philosophy is to science as pornography is to sex. It is cheaper, easier and some people seem, bafflingly, to prefer it." Now that view is all too common, and I understand it from the depths of my soul. I appreciate why people think this, but I think it is also important to combat this stereotype in a friendly and constructive spirit, and no place better than in a center for research in cognitive science. What philosophers can be good at – there aren't many things we can be good at – is helping people figure out what the right questions are. When people ask me whether there's been any progress in philosophy I say, "Oh yes, mathematics, astronomy, physics, physiology, psychology – these all started out as philosophy, and once we philosophers got them whipped into shape we set them off on their own to be sciences. We figured out how to ask the right the questions, and and then we turned them over to other specialists to answer."
Stuff being either in Cask or Homebrew is just terrible. Homebrew also has a versions tap. Those two projects should combine efforts and remove ambiguity.
That makes sense. Given the fact Checkout simply returns a token, I think it's safe to say that it can still work with existing backend API solutions in conjunction with webhooks.
This is wonderful.

But please please please tell me that png files won't be the only format by which to access the data.
Caveat: if you see numbers in the range of 1,500,000,000 that means your code was thrown away by the optimizing compiler.

Microbenchmarks like that require a lot of care to measure something correctly. Check out my talk from LXJS2013 for more details: slides http://mrale.ph/talks/lxjs2013/ and video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65-RbBwZQdU
Ask HN: How should i think to develop interesting ideas?
i am a java & javascript developer. When i came to home after the work, I want to develop something interesting, because i feel my work is going to routine, all day im working on similar problems, bugs, no new programming skills. But i have no idea/s to focus on something interesting and to improve programming skills. Can you give me some advice or ideas to develop? Thanks.
I will give you slightly different advice than most people here (that advice being "just keep programming, and experience will come on its own). First, figure out what it means to actually be a good programmer. For example, do you want to be a JavaScript ninja? Or do you want to know everything there is to know about how your OS works? Or do you want to be able to put together a mobile app that is cleanly architected and maintainable all by yourself? Or do you want to be a full stack developer, able to develop a backend service and a front-end UI all at the same time? Or do you want to be a good computer scientist and solve theoretical CS problems and reason about complex algorithms?

Once you have picked your definition of "good programmer" (your goal), write out a map of stuff you do and do not know. For example, I am a full stack developer, but I don't yet know CoffeeScript. It would probably be a good addition to my toolset as I do a fair amount of JavaScript programming for the frontend. Having this map will help you fill in the blanks of technologies and concepts you are missing. Take your time and learn these slowly, usually as a part of a project, and not just an exercise. As you learn, adjust your map. You will inevitably come across stuff you did not know existed or was important.

Remember, it's easy to run in many directions at once with this approach. Don't do that. If you already know Ruby, don't go learning Python (and vice versa). They fulfill a very similar role. Instead go learn how HTTP works. Or how to work with a different data store you haven't used before. Or how to use a frontend JavaScript framework. Or go learn C.

Here's my recommendation learning technologies to become a full stack developer (in order, when starting from scratch): HTML/CSS, Python, Django, PostgreSQL, JavaScript + jQuery, AngularJS, HTTP, networks/socket programming, C + data structures and basic algorithms, functioning of operating systems (libraries vs syscalls, toy operating systems), compilers (build a toy one), Lisp, Haskell, Erlang, networking again but this time thinking about distributed systems.

Good luck!
The ANKLE-BREAKER of the Summer
I'm sure if you wrote a technical post about something you have deep experience with in mobile or web dev, many people would probably feel the same way reading your article. There's too much for any one person to know.

Read those articles and take the time to research the parts you don't understand until you really grok it. Read and try to understand good code, take every opportunity to go a little bit deeper into the tools you use (web frameworks, libraries, etc) if they are open-source. Getting better sometimes means knowing more, but mostly it's about not being afraid to dive in.
Austria1 It seems like easy deal because almost everything works the same way as in Germany, tax wise.
How Challenger Exploded, and Other Lessons in Preventable Catastrophes
They're considering a whole family of products to allow you to interact with the virtual world?

Guns, gloves, vests that make you feel like you've been hit, chairs that make you feel like you're accelerating, rotating seats like NASA uses at Space Camp, etc.

EDIT: Walking platforms like the Virtuix Omni, force-feedback devices, scents, and on and on...
I don't count as a user, since I am relatively affluent, tech-savvy, and always pay off my credit card every month.

I'm thinking of the average person who buys with Interac to avoid debt, and feels an impedance to buying online because of credit-card-only. I'd love to have the ability to enable those people's purchases through Stripe.

(I agree that the bank-redirect flow is awkward slash awful. However, you solved exactly that problem with your Alipay integration! :) )
Every company in this dataset went through an accelerator, my guess is that it is due to the explosion in accelerators after YC's success. (Hell, I'm from Iowa and we have one now and two more are opening in the summer).

We've got another dataset that has more companies (ones that didn't go through accelerators). There is more data so we wanted to re-work and re-aggregate some of the data on a company level instead of a round level. We'll probably release it in a couple days.
No, it'll be a dynamic webpages. The png's are just screenshots.
Nice ideas, actually. Yeah, I'd consider that.

You have to be sure that whatever it is doesn't engage any "spacial" thinking, however. I remember reading about studies that demonstrated that giving people visual descriptions or 3d puzzles was more distracting than other kinds of thinking while driving.

While I sometimes just want to relax, there are times when I'm feeling I COULD be productive if there were something I could do that didn't involve my hands or eyes. :) One thing I've done is to talk into a voice recorder. But there is only so long I can talk about an idea in a useful manner.
Chronic release of cortisol is bad for everything in your body :( This research is not surprising to me...
There was no death in this case (yet).

The previous comment was referring to the raids in general (at least how I read it). And those are actually not all that uncommon.
Has anyone figured out how to convert 3.0 configs to work in 4.0? I did a system upgrade and totally broke varnish, forcing me to downgrade and figure out that the new configs are incompatible.

The documentation is pretty light on details about how to switch over.
Why would a company hire an employee rather than contracting them out to do the same work?

Bingo. User Bane understands why:)