skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> It would be great if somehow we could smush Gradle and sbt together to build a best of all possible worlds build system for Scala

www.gradle.org/overview does say "The Gradle design is well-suited for creating another build script engine in JRuby or Jython. It just doesn't have the highest priority for us at the moment. We happily support any community effort to create additional build script engines."

I have looked at the Gradle source code and Groovy seems to be tightly entangled in it, and it would be difficult to get Gradle to use another DSL language. I'm also doubtful about what they say about happily supporting community effort to create other script engines. Based on my previous experience with the people behind Groovy, not only with regards to the Groovy++ fiasco of mid- to late-2011 but many times before, that line could easily mean "We're happy to hear about any community effort to create additional build script engines so we can scuttle your attempt before it gets very far."

> The simplicity of its syntax vs scala is a great point for Groovy though

Did you say Groovy's syntax is simple? The Gradle DSL is just a tiny subset of Groovy's grammar, see [1]. It's also still stuck on Antlr 2 because no-one wants to try upgrading it to Antlr 4. Scala was designed so its grammar would be light and the functionality residing in the libraries.

[1] http://svn.codehaus.org/groovy/eclipse/trunk/base/org.codeha...
There should be a name for deliberately making a big fuss of following every regulation as expansively as possible to prove a point; inverse civil disobedience, civil obedience maybe?
Most likely because the average person doesn't want to explore violence that way. I love some FPS games, but not because they are violent. I like how fast-paced and strategic they are.

The same goes for movies. Most people will watch movies with some violence, but movies like Saw don't have mainstream appeal.
Er, how Kafkaesque is that? They (or, rather, their coworkders) are the ones who detained her in the first place. "So, we locked you in this cell with these other unsavory people. Notice how now you're in a cell with unsavory people -- very suspicious!"
I think the main difficulty in converting your example to a functional style is how to express the idea of a for loop which builds up a result as it goes along, without using a mutable variable to store this result. Here's an attempt to explain how that the ideas in the parent are helpful in solving that problem.

You can think of the body of a for loop in python as the body of a function. In that case, a for loop is like the built-in map function, which applies that function to every element of the list. So convert your for loop into:

def body(email):
domain = email.split("@")[1]
if domain not in domains:
domains.append(domain)

And instead of a for loop we can use the standard function, 'map'.

domains = []
map(body, emails)

Now, obviously the data here isn't immutable. But what if, instead of changing 'domains' every time the function is called, we passed in the current value of 'domains', and returned a changed value, like so:

def body(domains, email):
domain = email.split("@")[1]
if domain not in domains:
return domains + [domain]
else:
return domains

Then, we could apply this function to each element of the list in turn, passing the current list of domains at each stage to the body. This is the standard function 'reduce' in Python (which the parent calls by its other common name, 'fold'):

domains = reduce(body, emails, [])

You could think of 'reduce' in python being implemented like:

def reduce(func, l, currentResult):
for item in list:
currentResult = func(currentResult, item)
return currentResult

Or, it could also be implemented recursively, which means it wouldn't need to use mutation internally:

def reduce(func, l, currentValue):
if len(l) == 0:
return currentValue
else:
return reduce(func, l[1:], func(currentValue, l[0]))

Many for loops that build up a result can be expressed instead using 'reduce', so reduce is one of the most important building blocks of functional programming.
This is one of the very few contexts where those types of images are completely relevant, but I'm surprised there wasn't a warning in the article.
I think the expression, "a picture is worth a thousand words" applies. Sometimes points merit reinforcing. I'm guessing the author thought that adding the pictures added impact. I'd say it did. Too easy to gloss over phrases like "twitter account littered with misogynist/immature/whatever pictures".

Also, great article, I thought.
Russia to debut first new space rocket design since Soviet era
How is that an Easte...OOOH now I get it! +1
That's where SNS comes in. We publish to SNS which will fan out to multiple SQS queues. When a new service is built, it says to SNS "subscribe my queue to these topics". The publisher of the event doesn't know about the subscribers.
The pictures, from the Instagram account of the men accused of misogyny, are directly pertinent to the purported misogyny of the people in question. Why shouldn't they be included?
Swing does its own font rendering, so the fonts look wrong[0] on every platform.

[0] Where "wrong" means "different from what is expected on the platform" – until we get higher-resolution screens font rendering is a compromise between sharpness and correctness-of-shape; different platforms make different choices; users adjust to the specific choices their platform has made. To observe this in the wild, read any discussion of Safari on Windows.
What's that word for phrases that clear the mind? Things like "If a tree falls in a forest, does anyone hear it".. I think there's like a Buddhist/meditation/mantra type thing to it..
I believe his point is that we have violent games because it's a no-brainer. You don't have to be creative, you don't have to sweat to find an appealing game mechanic, and it sells.

Note the sarcasm here:

> In a sense, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. We know how to make games about the human heart, but struggle to deal with fists, swords, and guns.
Interesting differences in reporting between the two articles. 1) Rad is given more credit in the first with development of Tinder than in the second article where Munoz is now mentioned. 2) Wolfe isn't mentioned at all in the first: Mateen is credited with the idea of seeding the app at sororities and fraternities.
would be interesting to know how it performs compared to the code generated by il2js which is seen here running an xna 3.1 platformer exampler in html5
http://hildr.luminance.org/Platformer/Platformer.html

I know that the asmjs box2d outperforms the hand coded port, wondering if this holds true here
I don't disagree with optimus. It's just about lacking the flag.
The only reason I can do well in one of these interviews is because I recently started writing poor patch code for websites.

In development, who would do design, code and review on only one change in a straight sequence? It is like asking half your brain to shut down and the gods to smite you.
I was taught both. Who is generalising now?
Bug free certification coming to a theater near you
While "innovation" seems to be the keyword in software today, code quality is slipping massively due to uninformed processes, and hurried, inexperienced developers.

As an industry we have sworn off expert systems, because we don't believe in experts anymore. We don't believe that there are people who can (as individuals) build large systems which are virtually if not completely bug free.

I am one of those people. Surrounded by folks who are just trying to pay mortgages and write code fast and create a bug count for every method/function they write, its hard to imagine that the next phase in software wont be interviewing people about coding up algorithms that are well known and constant.

The next phase of credibility is going to be writing bug free software. This will scare many of you, because you don't believe you are capable of it. And you probably aren't.

But it's going to happen. Im going to make it happen. So for all you speed coders, brogrammers, and technical entrepreneurs, know that your day is coming.

You will be put out of business because of your lack of code quality regardless of the "value" of your "service".
Cryptome claims all Snowden files will be published in July to avert a war
Oddly enough, one game that hit me hard with the violence in it was Pikmin. Simple and cute, you can't help but learn to love and nurture your little underlings, but as the game progressed it became tougher to overcome challenges and before long you started having to plan on sacrificing percentages of your Pikmin just so you could achieve your goal. The first Pikmin death (with a beautifully haunting wail) hit me pretty hard. I never fully got comfortable with their sacrifices and felt every death fairly strongly.

This is of course fairly different than something like your average game where death isn't permanent or particularly impactful, especially when killing nameless/faceless opponents.
I assumed they meant that they extracted meta-data about the page (page mentions "Winnie the Pooh" for example, like a book index) and kept that associated with a key (eg URL) but didn't actually store the content per se. I was hoping the answer to my question would include that sort of detail - what's stored and where.
So what?

If the problem is that you have a condition, people should be supportive regardless--that's what we should be fixing.

There are more pressing and more troubling violations of privacy that occur as a matter of habit, so whether or not I've got $TERRIBLE_DISEASE doesn't really matter.
I think by stories the author means real adventures with you and your teammates for that specific match - not some sort of CS lore. Each match brings new humans that will play, react, chat differently then an AI in a single player game.
Two economists judge the relative suitability of a bunch of programming languages.

I have to wonder how it would be received if two computer scientists wrote an article judging the relative merits of a bunch of economic models.
While the allegations are shocking, it was irresponsible for the journalist to add the little bit in the very last paragraph on the third page about one of the founder's former startups having an FBI investigation as a kind of final pot-shot. How was that relevant to the thrust of the rest of the article? What did it add? Was it fair to include it without elaborating?
Haven't been following it too much recently, but just curious, why use it over Sublime?
What about Excel?

I know, I'm also horrified of how economists use excel. But it does tend to be their go-to tool, and they are all comfortable in it. It'd be nice to show them just how poor the performance is in excel, to tempt them into learning scripting languages if they have an excel workbook that will barely refresh.
Immigration system is totally broken from top to bottom, there is probably strong political incentive to keep it that way.

Here are some tips that I got from people before I arrived in US.

- Immigration officers are not the kind of people you are used to in your classroom or work environment.
- They are mostly moderately educated, stuck in a clerical job without any purpose and do not know much about the outside world.
- They might be jealous of people who might be younger and far more successful/high achievers then them.
- Their job is to enforce rules within their powers. They dont give a damn about you and how good your intention is.

Getting past them involves optimizing on the following variables.

- That you have got impeccable paperwork. This needs to be conveyed using important keywords that they are looking for instead of other rubbish. For example for H1B workers if the officer asks, why you were in US on B1 via a year back you should say "For last 4 years I was a student in India doing my 4 year graduation in CS, I had arrived in US on B1 visa to publish my paper at Standford University" compared to "I was in US to publish my paper on Cost Effective Real Time Systems for Greenhouses". The officer might think that you were publishing newspaper or something.

- Other important keywords for H1B immigrants are "specialized engineering", "4 year graduate program", "part of engineering team responsible for highly scalable/ specialized system in Java, Databases systems". "working out of XYZ company".

- One should totally avoid words like "Hacker", "Startup", "small company", "disruptive change", "Venture Capital", "seed funding", "angel investors", "entrepreneurs". I remember when one H1B guy told the officer that he works for a Venture Capital he asked if it is the same company that has Capital One credit cards.

- One should also use influential words that the officer is familiar with. For example "Director of our Company is Mr. X, who was a Vice President of Google Inc.", "Microsoft has invested X in us". "Our Company has turnover of 100M dollars" and so on. Keep the evidence handy.

I think the lady here got into trouble because of she mentioned of Hackathon, Social Entrepreneurship, evolution as an individual etc. etc. If she had said that she works on a program recognized by UN and given the evidence to officer she would have probably got away with this.
at least in the case of wikimedia, software is merely a byproduct of their goal. To quote their main page:

Wikimedia is a global movement whose mission is to bring free educational content to the world.
There's a lot of really weird systems design that goes on in hospitals, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it is wrong.

The main problem I see is that the security is going to focus on things which won't matter, at the cost of creating still more barriers to entry for new techniques (I may or may not be fighting this battle at my current company).
> "My questions was, why didn't the author become a U.S. citizen?"

Her personal motivations and desires really have no bearing on her legal status here. Questions like these imply that the only people the US can accept into its borders are:

1) Citizens

2) Non-citizen short term visitors

3) Non-citizens committed to obtaining citizenship

Yet, historically, many of our most valued and productive members of society have been immigrants who did not obtain citizenship right away (not to mention the labrynthine and expensive process required to get just a green card today [1])

> "A person who has no intent on citizenship is not a immigrant, should their visa expire, they are simply an illegal alien outstaying their welcome"

The issue is not legality, but proportionality. If you forget to renew your drivers license and drive with it expired, you will get a ticket. You then pay your fine, renew your license, and in the few days this process takes, you are inconvenienced by not being able to drive. At no time have you "outstayed your welcome on the road" and no sensible person will accuse you of "thinking it's acceptable to drive without a license". Sensible people recognize an honest mistake in a byzantine system and give people the benefit of the doubt.

On the other hand, if your visa status is in any way imperfect for a single minute you can be deported and barred from ever reentering the country. The OP was "lucky" to be allowed to be able to reenter 18 months later. Welcome to the land of the free.

[1] http://immigrationroad.com/green-card/immigration-flowchart-...
And the two responses to my comment so far perfectly illustrate my confusion, I think:

> I believe his point is that we have violent games because it's a no-brainer. You don't have to be creative, you don't have to sweat to find an appealing game mechanic, and it sells.

AND

> All of the things mentioned in the article have been justifications used to explain why games about social dynamics haven't happened.

Is the author's premise that games focused on social dynamics are just as easy to make as games focused on violence, and that we have to back-fit justifications to fit it? Or is it that games focused on social dynamics really are harder?
Looks like a big effort. It is interesting that they are trying to port by hand instead of using emscripten.

I used emscripten to port the MOAI engine (lua 2.5d engine) to HTML/JS, and it runs pretty smoothly (needs webGL).

you can see an older version of the player working here: http://moaijs.moaiforge.com/progrocket/index.html

I also created a jsfiddle style interface for it so you can play with it in the browser. http://moaifiddle.com
It must be ironic.

Why else would they poke so much fun at other people's design choices and then center every line of text?

centeredtextcriminal.com
A solider once told me that boredom is one of the most mentally challenging aspects of war. Because you can go long stretches without running into anyone, let alone your enemies, the moments when you do clash are especially intense. It's like someone switching the radio dial from a low static sound to hardcore metal.

The games that try to juxtapose conflict with stretches of non-action are usually the most successful at conveying the experience of combat. The new Tomb Raider comes to mind. You can travel awhile without fighting because there's a lot to see and do in the environment. When you do encounter adversaries, they're usually in small numbers. They'll speak to each other and respond to your attacks with unique dialogue.

On the other hand, games like Call of Duty, which overwhelm the player with hundreds of enemies at all times, fail to convey the experience of war. The key is to provide contrast between action and non-action, and to provoke suspense by limiting the scope of the conflicts so they can be felt and comprehended more easily.
Yeah, the most interesting part of this article is that, if true, it seems like Tinder was kind of a pseudo-startup, a subsidiary of an established corporation given a more media-friendly backstory by positioning it as a startup. In retrospect I'm surprised that kind of thing isn't more common. (Or maybe it is?)
True to form for Google -- always protecting the higher-ups...
Yes, speed matters for builds if you need to rebuild and retest after every source edit. And despite Gradle finally upgrading to Groovy 2, it still uses the ancient Antlr 2 based grammar which is even more ancient than Ant.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2819321

Edit: found the original interview:

http://www.npr.org/2003/10/14/167643282/google-founders-larr...

Starting at 13:45, Sergey and Larry try to explain recursion and idempotentence on Fresh Air.
Here's Wikimedia's confirmation of exemption letter.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/9/90/501%2...

To go further, I'd look up exactly what "Public Charity Status 170(b)(1)(A)(vi)" is, and then compare that to how they describe themselves here: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/FAQ/en
Is Rackspace Looking For A Privatization Escape Route?
As per what he said there is no "Story of Counter Strike" and that is what he likes about it. It is a framework for him and his team mates to invent a story of struggle told in near misses and heroic wins.

Why he has trouble inventing the same stories with robotic team mates and opponents I am not sure, but he seems to find value in the shared experience.
haha, I've never thought about it that way when I played it, but it does seem especially heartless since you have no choice but to let some of them die occasionally, after you raised them to help you.
I don't think this is a coincidence, exactly. There was a protester shouting over the recent I/O keynote that Google is "a totalitarian company that builds robots that kill people" in reference to Boston Dynamics. Folks who think that the accusation is overblown have been joking about Google's "killer robot" program, so this easter egg is likely Google poking fun at the allegation.
> Is a newspaper article slandering him

It's not slander if it's true.
> Bitcoin companies may quickly move to focus on properties of the blockchain that are not related (and, perhaps more importantly, more profitable)

What properties?
The United States is a nation of immigrants and as a US citizen I have no problem welcoming more people in. One of my all-time favorite poems is The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus, made famous by its association with the Statue of Liberty, where it is now stamped on the base of the granite pedestal:

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she

With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

At the same time, I work twenty feet from an extremely talented British product manager who wants nothing more than to qualify for a green card and become a US permanent resident. I've watched him jump through hoop after hoop for years, spending thousands of dollars in the process, afraid to travel overseas for a family funeral because of re-entry concerns. Meanwhile he watches hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants cross the border, settle, and start vocally advocating for their rights. My heart breaks sometimes for him and his family. Our system is totally broken and I don't know what the answer is either.
How is that not compelling?

They have three choices. One leads to censorship, the other two lead to bankruptcy. Choose.
Physical security as well. Put on a pair of scrubs and maybe fake a badge (sometimes not required) and you can get pretty far. Usually far enough to get access to at least one machine. Hospitals are big and the uniform grants a lot of trust.
Heh. It's sort of odd to read reactions to this by people who are completely outside the game industry.

This isn't sarcasm. This is a parody.

Every line is one that game designers who advocate for games about social dynamics have heard in response. That modeling a gunshot or a sword stroke is much easier than trying to capture the nuance of a conversation. The "Gorytron" reference refers to "Erasmatron", a computer system that tried to model story more abstractly than interactive fiction games.

It's basically just one long in-joke for those of us who are tired of the sheer quantity of games easily reducible to violent conflict resolutions.
I finally tried Atom and it looks pretty much like SublimeText, which I use quite a bit. Is there a reference somewhere where it says it was inspired by good work of SublimeText editor?

Ah Google always provides:

https://github.com/atom/atom/issues/2038
> hopefully [gradle] helps bring awareness to the under appreciated groovy language

If Groovy's still under-appreciated after 10 years, there's got to be a reason.
I enjoyed tinkering with this and thought it was cool. I've never used a mind mapper before. What sort of customers pay for something like this? Just curious.
I'd have preferred support for Common JS (or closer to it), which doesn't seem to suffer from the namespacing and syntax issues raised by this new spec. Importing to the global namespace by default seems kinda dodgy, and the mechanisms to avoid name collisions are syntactically awkward, imho. I think this proposal might actually have cemented the long-term popularity of browserify for years to come.
They tried to make the actual points. But they got shot down pretty hard. The real issue seems to be that providing the work without illustrating and tracking who uses the software (so that you're being charitable and helping the less fortunate) means you aren't being charitable...

http://blogs.gnome.org/jnelson/2014/06/30/the-new-501c3-and-...

Personally, they're one of the places I interviewed at right out of college (I got wrecked pretty hard as they were my first ever whiteboard test haha). They're driven and they firmly believe in trying to help people with free software. It's a real shame they got denied.
There are legions of reasons to choose Java over C++, or vice-versa, none of which have anything to do with syntax. Is this a strawman on the part of the authors, or are they unaware of the legion of things that make C++ a far more complex and dangerous language than Java? Or are those things irrelevant to the needs of economists?