skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Writing too much code can make you a worse programmer.

The real way to get better is to pick an area of study and research the shit out of it, even non-technical aspects if applicable. Go back as far as you can and read every canonical book you can find on the subject. Even if it's outdated information, it will help you see how we arrived where we are now (as long as it's not a purely technical reference).

Read those things until you feel some things click in your head. Then go back and try to write some code.

This might be difficult to do while in school though. I'm sure you're doing a lot of reading already.
What is confusing is that the article introduces both derivatives (of a function and of a number) as D, when both are definitely not the same thing.

EDIT: that is, the fact that they have the same name and the same symbol is what's confusing.
Of course there are already carpools. Those generally imply that driver and passengers were already taking the same route, and they all usually know one another. Ridesharing services extend that to rides the driver would not otherwise be taking. Again, what's being shared is the car itself.
The second sentence is sarcasm.
> Police don't kill people almost all the time. Police generally are a net good.

The first sentence is certainly true, but the second is debatable.
"I propose that we use use existing REST semantics for indicating state"

But there are no REST semantics for indicating state. REST is stateless: http://www.ics.uci.edu/~fielding/pubs/dissertation/rest_arch.... I think maybe he's conflating HTTP with REST.

This problem could be solved in a RESTful way by returning a resource that includes all the needed information. I understand he describes that as not being robust, but that doesn't mean it isn't RESTful. In fact fielding acknowledges this very trade-off:

"Like most architectural choices, the stateless constraint reflects a design trade-off. The disadvantage is that it may decrease network performance by increasing the repetitive data (per-interaction overhead) sent in a series of requests, since that data cannot be left on the server in a shared context."

Also, because REVAT URLs are randomly generated the server needs keep track of the resources being pointed to instead of being able to understand it from the semantics of the request. Which works fine right up until you have to scale your application to more than one server. Now you have to deal with the complexity of keeping a distributed system consistent - otherwise those REVAT URLs might sometimes return a 404 - or you're limited to a single centralized link server. These are both scenarios Fielding was trying to avoid by including statelessness as a constraint.
That was wide open for 3 hours. Well done sir.
Strangely, this reminds me of some sci-fi story, "First Contract".

In a nutshell, aliens buy Jupiter (most of the mass in the solar system) for the space-colonial equivalent of shiny beads, wrecking the world economy with an influx of tech-goods. One down-on-his-luck CEO struggles to get Earth out of "third world" (solar-system?) status by--how else--using cheap labor to export kitschy crap :p
You're talking about continuing to work with them, right?

It is possible that it is just a technicality, I guess. I would probably ask them why they want me to sign their contract over my own before I just bailed on them.

My decision would then be based on both how reasonable their answer was, as well as a close reading of the contract
There's another angle to this too, which is the difference between the service of policing (basically, physical protection and enforcement of many laws), and the institutions that offer it. You seem to be referring to the service itself, which can theoretically be performed by the government but also by individuals, private security guards, the Mafia, etc.
Don't talk to people about your app and downloads and push notifications. They don't understand this language and zoom out while keeping polite conversation with you.

Talk to them in their terms - tell them that you'll help them to sell more and reach more customers. Tell them how much more specifically - even though it's a very rough estimate.

Let them ask "how" and go from there.
> severely deluded, or morally repugnant.

c'mon, man ... capitalism isn't as voluntary as you're suggesting. Are these really the only possibilities?
Show HN: Novel gambling game, MoneyPot.com based on Bitcoin
Hi, I'm the guy behind bitundo (a controversial bitcoin service) — and hoping to show my latest project to a slightly larger audience: https://www.moneypot.com/

Money Pot is a novel gambling concept I created -- the server generates a multiplier, X, in such a way that the probability of X or higher being generated is approximately 1 in X. (e.g. 2x or greater comes up ~50% of the time) The multiplier is hidden, so no player knows what it is -- however they are able to bet an amount of money against it.

When playing the game, you watch the number increase from 1x until it reaches X. If you stop at X or less, you get to multiply what you stopped at by your original bet amount. If you do not stop by the time the number increases past X, you will lose your original bet.

I created a handy odds calculator here: https://www.moneypot.com/calculator

There's no way to know when it'll stop, so the game is almost all luck. However, I skim 1% off every bet to award in bonuses for people to cashing out later -- so in effect, there's a bit of interesting game theory in play, to try be the last person to cash out.

It's based on node.js -- which feels a bit scary dealing with an application where correctness is so important, but I think it has been the right decision due to not having to context-switch between the server and client. I'm using postgres which I've been extremely happy with. And all the deposit addresses are generated with bip32, which is really reassuring as all the money goes direct into offline storage, and I don't need to worry (too much) about the site getting directly hacked.

Would highly appreciate any feedback!
Here's another story you seldom hear about; it's from 1927 and had a worse outcome than recent school shootings.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_School_disaster
Website could use an about page. I have no clue what this is, and I wrote a few hundred lines lines in CUDA this morning.
I tossed out Clojure as a random language -- all my testing was done with the most efficient Java and C# I could write.

The link is fine, but only shows micro-benchmarks. It's much easier to get a 3x difference in execution speed between compiler versions when you have a three-line example -- you're maybe exercising 5% of the optimizer?

The current version of the C++ I was using comes in at around 50kloc. The Java and C# versions were a bit smaller, since once I stopped testing the platforms, all the new code only went into the C++ version, but it's a significant piece of work. I haven't seen any significant real application for which the theoretical benefits of Java (JIT's profile-guided optimizations, etc.) have really come to pass. You can write slow C++ code, but if you know what you're doing and instrument carefully, there's very little or no evidence that Java can be as fast on real programs.
I'm not sure I understand how Women.com "verfies" that you are a woman. It seems a bit presumptuous to ask someone to "verify" their gender.
Ask HN: What's the more secure computing / mobile platform?
Assuming that I want to (try my best to) protect against nationstate attacks, and that my budget is an order of magnitude larger than the average consumer. Processing speed isn't too important (e.g. 1ghz & 1GB of ram is sufficient).

Also, what would be the best linux-like operating system? I'm most familiar with Ubuntu, but anything will do.
It'll be interesting to see how well this turns out; I remember hearing about opengraphics.org a few years ago, which seems to have reached prototype hardware stage and then died. GPUs are still one of the most closed parts of a computer, so this is certainly a step in the right direction. There's also this, which is only VGA-compatible, but similarly hasn't had much success: http://wacco.mveas.com/

...but there's this complete PC-on-an-FPGA, including a VGA-compatible controller: http://zet.aluzina.org/index.php/Zet_processor
Things that are routine are by definition not usually published as news. "Cop drives patrol car all day without incident" is not a useful headline, and not only because it won't generate clicks (unless it's The Onion perhaps).
Tivet Bursaries
I think special situations and value are both enduring strategies that can exhibit high return / low risk potential.
Very true. You have to be careful to distinguish between

1) buying patents harms innovation, vs

2) That patent should not have been granted at all.

In my experience, most people arguing 1) either have a very confused argument, or turn out to actually be concerned with 2).
I'm not arguing otherwise. But as the saying goes, you only get one chance to make a first impression, and D's first impression was of a train wreck.
Can't understand the snarkiness and silly jokes. I mean, I get it, this is Steve Ballmer, the guy everyone loves to hate. But we can be better than that.

Of course the letter was carefully worded to sound like a press release; it is a press release.

But the entire memo strikes me as a thoughtful summary of what Microsoft will face over the next 10 years. The company is transitioning from the cash cow of software business to a much, much more complex environment. One driven by platforms and ecosystems, built on top of open source stacks, where hardware is key to the experience, frequently monetized by ad revenue.

The shareholders - who typically don't read HN - don't fully understand the shift, and won't like the thinner margins. They want results, now. But some of the bets - mobile, cloud, hardware - will take years to pay off, just like the battle for home entertainment took 10+ years, and the judge is still out.

"Making that change while also managing the existing [cash cow] software business..."

This. The next 10 years won't be easy for Microsoft, and that's why Ballmer mentioned - four times - that Nadella should be bold and not fear the shareholders.

Also I don't understand why people are nitpicking with mobile first, cloud first wording. They're not mutually exclusive. It's about empowering companies developing mobile experiences for their workforce, using cloud-based systems. And figuring out how to make money.
His point is that investors won't be panicking after 14 years of stock performance like this. Almost any change will be an improvement.
Well, in the strictest since, I suppose a "value object" is technically one that is immutable by definition. So, to your point, I should clarify that here I'm instead speaking more loosely of an object that is chiefly comprised of data elements vs. behaviors.

So, a common use case might be loading data from a DB, changing several fields, then writing updates back to the DB.
Awesome rundown. Thanks for the update!
Hire a lawyer, file IP for your code and invention, backdate it to the time you started and show the logs of your Git account as evidence.

Write the other company a C&D letter, that references you IP.

You need two things when you first start out a lawyer to file IP and an accountant to figure out your money flow and forms.
I think you make the concept of crisis management sound more complicated than it really is. I suspect there is almost always a calculation of risk versus cost. A certain amount of resources will be spent to prevent disasters of certain magnitudes and certain likelihoods.
The problem is that distinguishing between good patents and bad ones isn't easy and the current statutes don't make it easy. Hence the seeming concensus on HN that patents are more trouble than they're worth. Which is an entirely justifiable viewpoint given the demographic of this site: if you're in the internet sector where capital costs are low and five years might as well be an eternity, then patents are almost certainly more of a hinderence in your industry than a help.

The question is: what about the 90% of the engineering world that's outside that sector? Imagine a hypothetical company trying to do what Google is doing with self-driving cars. Is there a non-IP business model for such a company that doesn't involve "bankroll blue-sky R&D with the massive profits thrown off by your advertising business?"
I remember looking for a good DVD+R brand when I was backing up my CDs to FLAC for years and everyone had settled with Taiyo Yuden by all the various audiophile and archiving obsessed people I could find online. I haven't had a problem with the DVDs I've burned 10+ years ago now (I checked recently, I read 30 without a hitch before I was satisfied), but now I'm wondering if anything has changed since that time.
A few other good resources:

Bit hacks: https://graphics.stanford.edu/~seander/bithacks.html

Algorithm implementations:
http://www.keithschwarz.com/interesting/
There's also the possibility [1] that their lawsuits prevent companies from free-riding off the innovative ideas by using them without licensing them, thereby increasing the return to innovation. Though obviously if the typical such lawsuit is over obvious ideas or ones independently discovered by the defendants, that would not apply.

[1] not claiming this is the actual case with IV, but it's important to be aware of this mechanism
This is pretty cool. I like her learning style. I do the same thing, and I love the process of going from looking up every other word to being able to actually understand independently, even in small chunks.

> She scratched around in Google until she found uploaded PDFs of the articles she wanted. She would read an abstract and Google every word she didn’t understand. When those searches snowballed into even more jargon, she’d Google that, too. The expanding tree of gibberish seemed infinite—apoptosis, phenotypic, desmosome—until, one day, it wasn’t. “You get a feeling for what’s being said,” Kim says. “Pretty soon you start to learn the language.”
It isn't their job to help people. They're bureaucrats, it's their job to show up after and take notes, give interviews and file paperwork. There is no reason to give these people guns, tanks, helicopters, or bombs -- giving them cars is a stretch (we have mass transit, after all).

The US Postal Service has a better justification for being armed and having bombs and guns than the police do -- they at least have a positive mandate to defend the mail in their custody from robbery.
If you're interested, regex matching via derivatives have been done before, see e.g. http://matt.might.net/papers/might2011derivatives.pdf
Don't give up learning.

Learn from your mistakes and failures.

Don't be afraid to make a mistake or fail.

Fixing your mistakes and failures is called debugging, learn how to debug.

Communication is 80% of the job, develop your social and people skills to avoid acting like a jerk, treat others with empathy and compassion.

Learn to work with others on a team, don't be a Lone Ranger, sometimes you get stuck and need another pair of eyes to look things over.

Learn how to manage stress better so you can get a good night's sleep. If you cannot get 8 hours of sleep at night, consider seeking help for that. If your stress levels make it so you cannot even get sleep, something is wrong.
What an excellent reply. All spot on, but worth it just for this bit alone:

> Apparently, more than no sense at all
If the punishment is equal to the crime such as eye for an eye,or apply for an apple, then given the <1 probability of punishment, it is always rational to commit the crime because the expected value is profit. This is true regardless of whether there is police.

When you add police then the utility of everyone goes down, i.e the police may randomly shoot you for doing nothing whatsoever.

In the middle ages ( > 100 years ago) the english tried making the punishments more severe than the crime, e.g hanging or transportation for stealing a loaf, but that didn't result in decrease in crime, even if it made the crimes unprofitable.

If the punishment is random and unfair, as it will be, Then the deterrent effect is negligible because the probability that you will get away with it increases more than the severity of punishment.

Humans mostly avoid crime not because it is unprofitable, but because humans are mostly nice. Adding police to society decreases the probability that they will be nice. SO in most police states police and police penalties on society are heavy yet nobody wants to live in a police state.

tldr: police do not work as a deterrent to crime.
"Assumption: A Kill Switch will render a $500 device worthless, and thus eliminate the incentive for theft."

That is clearly wrong, but it is not the assumption. The "assumption" (and not a very big one) is that a kill switch will substantially reduce the value of the device, which will reduce the incentive for theft. And that's almost certainly the case.

"Following 1991 crime statistics, over 2/3 of those arrested for robbery tested positive for a controlled substance."

What percentage of the population at large would "test positive for a controlled substance"? Particularly in the demographics in question (young and risk-taking)? That's not a terribly meaningful figure. Some portion of these crimes doubtless are drug related, some portion of those crimes would likely still occur. So? If we can get rid of some other crimes that's still a boon (and may, as I've said, nonetheless not be worth the trade-offs).

"Does an addict have Free Will?"

In a meaningful sense, less than the rest of us, but that doesn't mean they're going to react the same regardless of circumstances. If robbery is working less well to get them their fix then it certainly seems like they might be less likely to pick robbery next time. For those that do respond by engaging in more robberies to pay for a fixed cost habit, they are more likely to get caught as they are forced to attempt more difficult opportunities and leave more of a pattern.

Flip it around. Say phones were cheap, and someone was proposing something to artificially make them more valuable to criminals. Would you think that likely to make the number of robberies go down, up, or not move?
Thanks for the detailed response!

If you're talking about an EROEI on wind of 18, and a 20% storage efficiency, that brings down the EROEI to 3.6. Probably more, as not all energy will pass through the storage. Still well below replacement. Or is that already factored into the EROEI? Does that include the unmetered power usage of windmills? If so: how? Does that factor in increased power-line losses, and the cost of building and maintaining those power lines? What are the details of the windmills measured? Is that real-world data, or simulations? If real-world, where?

I agree that current foodstuffs are not suitable for biodiesel. And raises food prices. But two things. One, I was talking about synthetic production. And two, that's assuming current plants. Personally, we shouldn't be looking at land-based solutions anyways. We already have space issues, at least at that scale. Look at sea-based ideas instead. Algae farming on megascales, that sort of thing. Much more efficient, much more land available, and can be situated closer to the equator.

I knew I shouldn't have just said "rare-earths and the like". I am aware that rare earths are a misnomer in general. Although... Neodymium isn't rare, but the bulk of the world's production thereof is in China. Has that energy cost been factored in? Much less the other costs? (Amount of radioactive release, etc.)

> As for synfuels: since you're converting surplus generating capacity, your marginal energy cost is nil.

Wrong. Your marginal energy cost is the cost of building and maintaining the plant and supporting infrastructure. And even just that may be less than unity overall. It may be useful, but I'd want to see the numbers.

As for the trade you mention ("Even assuming you're building capacity specific to the need, what you're trading is a non-storable, non-mobile, non-dispatchable form of energy for one which has all of those properties"), I agree partly, but the question remains: what energy input should we use? Is it worth it to build wind generators or solar power stations? Should we stick to nuclear? Or what?

Fundamentally, we currently have a couple of different energy sources. Geothermal, direct solar, indirect solar (wind, hydro), tidal, "biological solar", nuclear energy, and potentially fusion. Everything else is just energy storage. (Well, to be pedantic, so is fission and fusion, but by the time we're worrying about those running out we'll have worse issues.)

Current biological solar solutions are not exactly efficient. Your figures show direct solar isn't either. Wind is iffy for various reasons - maybe not insurmountable, but still. Geothermal is great, but only in limited areas. Same with hydro and tidal. Nuclear is great, but the political climate is rather iffy to put it mildly.
"Police generally are a net good."

I'm not so sure. The few encounters I've had with the police have made me wonder. I live in a medium crime city and every time I have to call the police for something they never really do anything except write a report and then I never hear from them again.

In one instance when my car was stolen I was victimized more by the police than the car thief. The cops when they found my stolen car towed it to a lot and then told me they had found it via registered mail at which point I had to go pay several hundred dollars to get my car back that was only worth several hundred dollars to begin with. Also couldn't just write it off and leave it because they would still come after me for the towing and storage fee which was $50 per day. On top of that when I went to get the car the employees at the police station were _literally_ illiterate and made so many errors in transcribing my name and VIN number onto the vehicle release form that the towing company questioned whether it was actually my car!

In another instance when my car was the victim of a hit and run it took the police 4+ months to get the police report to the insurance company so that that they would pay for the repairs.

I mean if you can't take reports and return stolen property efficiently what the heck are you there to do?!
When I was in the USCG we would be underway at night off the west coast of the US. It'd be halfway through a midwatch and a huge blob would appear on the radar up off our port bow. That blob would go tearing down our port side with a ridiculous speed - and we weren't contributing much because we were just lagging along at 6 knots. Just an amazing sight after seeing salmon trollers on the radar all day long.
Sure! Thanks!
ah. so its like zipcar but for individual car owners.
Taylor Swift's Shake it Off
If there were no enforcement of laws by police, it would be in everyone's best interest to e.g. steal. Regardless of whether other people steal, you'd be better off doing it.

This makes no sense if you've ever interacted with other humans. There are several logical societal deterrents to stealing beside police. (Ostracism, retribution, foresight, modeling…)
It seems like most of their advertising model is built on restricting others' access to YOU (force others who would normally show up on your feed to pay for promoted-posts if they really wanna show up). So, though an unfiltered feed might be great for the users, it seems like facebook would be generally opposed to it.
Rocket Internet bigger than YC?
> Not only do patents allow innovations to be shared

No one learn from patents anymore. Thats the core argument against patents as a tool for knowledge.

If patents are a tool for knowledge, lets maximize that then. Lets require a working model. Lets require source code.

It used to be that this was how the patent system worked, but then the lobby removed it from the system. Now its just a legal document, written by lawyers for lawyers.