skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I feel bad for the sales team... this seems like a really terrible way to find out and/or broadcast that you're probably fired.
Great post! Great link! What a writer! Some subsequent portions are really good: half a century earlier expression of Unabomber-style anti-technocratic sentiment imbued with the Parisian aesthetic. Dreams. Sunrise. Pre-brutalist architecture. Things society has almost forgotten, or banished to the Disneyland of yore... powered by travel selfies.
In an alternate universe:

I think where Google messed up was letting everyone try it on day one.

Pretty hard to get on board when day one is just laggy and chaotic. Performance--;

It could have been so big and awesome. I'm sure after a while the speed issues would have been ironed out.
> for lots of corporations, spending a fortune on hardware (capex) is easier then spending anything on services (opex)

Really? I have only encountered the opposite. CAPEX is normally okay when it fits within normal budget allocations, but any large CAPEX that requires extra budget is a hard sell. OPEX is much preferred because it makes budgeting much more predictable ("$XXXXX per quarter" vs "We might need to spend $XXXXXX some years from now").

That is part of the reason for the cloud craze.
Peanuts and hot sauce/peppers? I realize that's not all Thai food, but a lot of people start with a dish containing those things. Like when someone says Korean food doesn't agree with them, having only tried the gimchi.
I'm actually beginning a project to launch a vertical social network. Please kindly include me if your product can be leveraged by private networks. I'm looking at both hosted platforms and managed software.

I am at tom [a] thegrif [dot] net. Also @thegrif. Thanks again! :-)
Thanks for telling me about ApplySyntax. So that solves one problem. But that search plugin is not "live". It lets you edit and apply (once, apparently).

I'm not at all new to Python. Forking processes is simple enough, the problem is about how Sublime manages the plugin thread; you have to jump through hoops with sublime.set_timeout() etc. At the time, I was having huge issues waiting for a process and then afterwards interacting with the editor; it seemed buggy. I'm sure it's possible given enough trial and error.
{Nat Turner says}
This finding on the International Space Station makes it clear that the earth is surrounded by an aura of life,
at least in the form of plankton.
Though the particular type of plankton
has not been identified,
it has been established that it is not the type of plankton,
which would have possibly been picked up from the delivery launch area of Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan .
Were the plankton picked up before launch,
doubtless the extreme heat would have destroyed them.
The ISS has been orbiting the earth since 1998 at an
altitude of between 330 km / 205 mi and 435 km /270 mi
It is clear that if they are first lifted from the sea into the atmosphere by rising air currents and winds,
when those winds dissipate that the plankton carries on
at their own steam as though drifting in the seas.
The oceans have been here some 4,400 billion years,
it must be posited that what ever means the plankton
has used to make it into space onto the ISS,
has been going on since that time.
The unthinkable alternative is that the deeps, of space,
is full of this life form,
which of course will give the evolutionists new material,
other than asteroids,
with which to rework their theories
of the seeding of life on earth.
That's incomplete in that it doesn't automatically chdir back. A proper block-scope "with-" macro will wrap the body in something like:

char *olddir = getcwd();
chdir(newdir);
try {
do_stuff();
} finally {
chdir(olddir);
}
Do you think it's a bad idea to put the packages on the website with pricing, rather than explaining the prices and rates every client in first 5 min. free conversation? Is it for consulting company a negative strategy?
Sorry for off-topic. Do you have any opinion on HPCC? It seems to be aiming at the same goals as Hadoop but claims to be able to do more and have better performance. I tried to find more first hand experience reports, but it's rather obscure and not used that widely.
Also, if you see startups you like, apply for jobs there. I know that sounds really basic but I'm surprised how often folks don't apply for jobs they could get (or fear they need a warm intro, etc.). Companies, esp. startups, are so hungry for engineering talent that, IMHO, it's very much a meritocracy, and you don't necessarily need relationships, etc.
Imagine a world without the Drug War.

We could do without that many fewer police, prosecutors, courts, and prisons.
That you actually believe police providing a net-good overall is up for debate.
You are not correct here: There are no fds in the C standard. The only thing defined is fopen/fread/fwrite (which are FILE*). The open/read/write API is only defined by POSIX, where 2 is most definitely stderr.
In any case I guess the revelance of said paragraphs depends on what the Markov chain generator had been fed. Leaves me wondering if we are or can be, at times (and when), Markov chain generators.
Digital Footprints
Is it a fluke that when I clicked the NYT link from HN, I hit the paywall, but when I clicked it from NewsDiffs (http://newsdiffs.org/article-history/www.nytimes.com/2014/08...), the paywall disappeared?

Or has the paywall simply been deactivated?
A modern twist on traditional dance
I'm not sure that delay lines will retain data when the chucks that hold them are unloaded by the server.
I believe you are correct about the 30 (not 100% sure on the number) Mayan languages being ancestor of Proto-Maya. Classical Maya belongs to the Ch'ol branch and is mostly likely a written form of the parent language of Ch'olti' (extinct) and Ch'orti'.

Here are some random facts about the Mayan languages and Maya people:

Yucatec is the most spoken of the Mayan languages, located in the Yucatan peninsula. Interesting story about Korean immigration to Mexico (Spanish only, some early immigrants ended up in Yucatan and one lady mentions that many learned Yucateco before Spanish because the worked with they Mayas): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmDTrvddD_8

Popul Wuj is written in K'iche'. Trippy videos about the Popul Wuj:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTeOYNsBHvM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDt9rQrGp1I

Lacondon people managed to escape Spanish control:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nSb36zgGzo
See Splunk (competing with free software) case studies, http://www.splunk.com/view/customer-profiles/SP-CAAABB2
Unity Cloud Build
Before I laud SAP's efforts to hire those with autism, I'd like to hear what their compensation model is like. I understand that, based on the extent of the disability they are willing to accept, that they will incur increased managerial costs. And possibly decreased output. But I can't help but have this nagging feeling that SAP might be using them as a very cheap labor force for certain tasks that other higher-paid developers don't want to do (eg extensive bug-testing.) It might be too easy to say, "well they wouldn't be working without us, so what's wrong with minimum wage?" Perhaps I'm too cynical.

On the whole, the term "autism" has always bugged me. I know that it's always painted as a spectrum, but said spectrum is so wide as to render the definition alone almost completely meaningless. A person who can't live without constant, 24/7 supervision and is unable to communicate is in an entirely different category than a person who just has trouble maintaining eye contact in a conversation and is maybe a bit too passionate about some niche interest.

Increasingly, I've seen it being used as a pejorative against software developers (as this profession does indeed require extreme dedication), usually by the types of people who have zero ambition of their own. Most likely as self-validation that their apathy is normal, and it's others who have the problem.

I think this really does a disservice to the people who are genuinely suffering from an actual disorder. And it also pushes people toward the lighter end of the spectrum to play up how autism is really just a different mindset and not a disorder at all.

In my personal opinion, (I don't publish any manuals on mental disorders,) if you are living on your own, earn a decent salary, have friends, and otherwise appear completely normal to others in person; then I don't care if you have a bit of trouble with social cues: you're not autistic. And it's insulting if you or others refer to yourself as such. Even worse is when I see them being used as excuses. I had some issues with social graces as a teenager, so I practiced and do pretty well now. It's disgusting for someone to play off issues that they could easily address with some effort on their part. Even if it's legitimately a problem, a disorder is not an excuse to give up on trying, and just expect everyone else to tolerate you. Yes, it sucks that you have to try harder than others. Welcome to life, it's not fair.

I see this same situation with regards to the obsessive-compulsive label. People who simply have a perfectly sane desire to want an organized work desk, or to wash their hands before eating, or to double-check that they locked their door often identify or are identified as having OCD. That's a joke compared to the people who live in a constant state of intense anxiety, who can get stuck for hours turning a light switch on and off hundreds of times until it "feels right", or who end up driving around the neighborhood dozens of times, terrified that they ran someone over and need to go and make sure they didn't.

Let's leave the "disorder" label for people who really are disabled in a significant, life-impairing way.
Since we are teased that the selected option and results would be revealed next week the axe probably fell a few months ago.
1 star (and 5 star) are always going to be the biggest buckets. Even if you try to be very fair and strict, what does a driver that doesn't show up get? 1 star. What about a driver that stabs you? 1 star. Crashes? 1 star. Gets lost and makes you late? 1 star. Smells bad and a bit rude, but gets you there on time? Maybe this is finally 2 stars. These are all bad, but getting stabbed is a lot worse than not showing up or getting lost.

Likewise for 5 stars. Friendly, safe, on time, gives you a cold bottle of water, have a nice conversation. 4 or 5 stars. Chases you down with the bag you forgot in his car? 5 stars. You fall in love and get married? 5 stars.
Windows phone revolution?
I would say that for some of the jobs mentioned, I can perfectly understand that an autistic could function at a high level (developer, tech writer, etc.).

However, for an HR or PR job; I have a hard time believing that proper accommodations could be made that would allow them to function as well as someone with more social skills. When the job basically boils down to dealing with people, the vast majority of who will not be autistic; your ability to make eye contact, or be in social situations, is a defining characteristic of the role.
More about the announcement today at Unite 2014: http://www.develop-online.net/news/unity-details-new-cloud-b...
This seems to be a stepping stone to widespread fully powered exoskeletons. I could imagine the next version of this supporting lifting capability.
Open source Ptex utilities (e.g. texture transfer)
Or a current country like Somalia which has barely any functioning government or law, look how great of a place that is!
You can easily do multi-return in c, return a struct it just doesn't hold your hand.
That is the exact problem with the 4 hour workday and other forms of part-time work. As I've heard many people describe part-time work : 40% of the pay for 80% of the work.

Until that changes, I would not expect part-time work to happen for anyone but really high up managers where such a trade may actually make sense.
"Unix: just enough potholes and bear traps to keep an entire valley going."

If you don't understand how to use sharp tools, you may hurt yourself and others. Documentation for fork() clearly explains why and when fork() returns -1. Those that find the man page lacking or elusive may get more out of an earnest study of W. Richard Stevens' book, Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment. In any case, every system programmer should own a copy and understand its contents.
seeing as how uber makes reviews mandatory, giving everyone five stars is the easiest way to opt out.
Vexed in the city: Tech's fraught transformation of San Francisco 2014
Heroku has a transfer app feature. Just transfer it to them and keep your username / password secure.
The thing that strikes me is that John Allspaw provides literally zero examples of how the constraints of a monolith provide any benefit. He asserts they do and walks away.

It's some weak tea.
Would be very cool to use on a skylight. It would generate electricity and heat your home! Put some blinds on the inside and block the light in the summer time.
Wow great debugging article from the performance guru B.Gregg. I'm also not comfortable tracing kernel functions as of yet and remain in user space so far with Sysdig,strace,ltrace.. but a tool such as perf(1) I definitely need a more practical understanding of.
I was just thinking how similar the anthropic principle is to the general concept behind quantum computing (to the best of my limited knowledge: create a quantum superposition of states and the one which solves the problem is the solution). Uncanny.
By "private network", do you mean inside a corporate firewall or a public vertical network that is using white-labelled technology? If the latter, do you want a service hosted and managed by someone else (like WordPress) or licensed software that you would install on your own cloud servers?
Kill Your Performance Ratings: Neuroscience Shows Why
So I watched the whole thing and only understand parts of it, but is his main theory that the laws of physics which were previously thought to be unchanging may indeed change over time and that itself is the proof that the universe is temporal?
How to Save the Net: A CDC for Cybercrime
every system programmer should own a copy

I'd argue every programmer. It's such a fundamental part of computers & operating systems that key concepts will come up again and again. Just the other day I wanted to learn about Docker/CoreOS/etcd only to realize that I have an embarrassingly lacking understanding of how UNIX works. I immediately went to the library to pick up this book and begin fixing a flaw of mine (even as a web developer).
Attention Startup Founders Kill Procrastination with This New Tool
They are. My guess is that they are images automatically encoded into C++ files so they can compiled and linked with the rest of the software.
Yes. Always chain sequential commands with &&. Always.

This style is pretty prevalent when writing test cases in shell (or just shell scripts in general), e.g. when using something like sharness[1].

[1] https://github.com/mlafeldt/sharness
Umm...glass is a "solid object" the last time I checked. And no, it's electromagnetic radiation, period -- it's a different wavelength (just like blue is a different wavelength than red).

Look for the reply from the physicist for greater detail as to why you're completely confused, though. I opted out of the Backscatter X-Ray machines due to what seemed like poor science; the MM wave devices may violate privacy, but that's their worst offense.
"I just said she had nice tits. How is that sexism?"

I'm sure that's just a "petty slight" and "personal disappointment."

Sexism comes in many flavours, from overt to thousands of little attacks that don't stop coming. Sometimes you just need to put things in perspective: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4UWxlVvT1A
You need to be careful with this line of reasoning if you mean what I think you mean.

I've found that when speaking with laypeople about quantum decoherence, a very common misconception comes from the use of the word 'observer' (see: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0399877/ ). If you say "A quantum system can be in a superposition until its wave function is collapsed when it's observed.", a layperson can easily interpret that to mean that a sentient being needs to look at and take note of the system for it to count as being observed, when in fact all that is required is that an external particle interact with the system and carry away some information (energy).

There's nothing special about humans (and their ability to observe) in this context.
You are probably drastically underestimating the marketability of "can write production-ready JavaScript given sufficient time browsing docs & without copying it directly from StackOverflow."

And I only say "probably" because it sounds like you're looking for a local W-2 gig, and there are some places (e.g. rural Idaho) where there's likely to be a shortage of potential employers.

Elsewhere, consider "any company with senior programmers to report to" as a location which is probably hiring, or at least entertaining applicants - regardless of what any public listings may say about what openings exist, or how much experience or what madcap assortment of skills any job postings say that they'd like (yes, like).
You used the word "annoying" twice. Pricing can be used to segment markets into annoying and less-annoying, for local definitions of annoying :)

In consulting, the goal is always to customize first-principles creative material for the unique needs of each client. Reusable written content is better than verbal content, unless you can remix audio/video snippets for customers. Over time, a growing library of content is a competitive advantage. A subset can be free = marketing.

Based on customer questions, you could ask them to watch a 1 hour training webinar, hand-curated from your library of N webinars, then send written questions, then escalate to live conference. Each tier is more expensive than the previous one.
Wireless!? On traffic lights that presumably have to be connected to a power source anyway? It seems to me that the cost of running an additional network cable to each light (or even just sending the control through powerline networking) would be negligible, and it would prevent much of the attacks described - physical "hacking" would be required, which is more difficult to do and easier to detect. This seems like yet another case of large increases in complexity (and thus attack area) for little to no benefit, as is all too common in systems these days.
> If you don't understand how to use sharp tools, you may hurt yourself and others.

It's still bad API design when naively handling an error case kills everything. Is there an inherent reason that the error value for a pid has to be the same as the "all pids" value? Unless there's a very compelling reason, it seems like very poor design, well documented or not.
I've found that disabling javascript let's you read the article without the paywall
An App That Can Convert Android Device into a Full Linux Desktop Computer
If the prices are appropriate for the market, e.g. customers already pay those prices to your competitors, or have paid those prices to you in the past, there is no harm.

Clear pricing saves everyone time. However, as soon as you post pricing, you need to have good marketing material explaining the value of the service in each price tier. Presumably you are repeating that sales pitch now in the first 5 minutes - better to do it once and deliver online.
I think azinman2 was criticizing kill(), not fork(). It would make more sense to have a separate system call, something like killall().
As a bootstrapper who just launched a product in this space[1], I was VERY strongly advised not to implement any freemium model.

I don't know their history, but from the article, it seems like they started out free to get the massive user base and were hoping to convert free users into paying customers with the sales team they hired. Once people are used to something for free, it's very difficult to get them to pay. If there's more stories like this, I wonder if VC's will start to demand less freemium-type models.

[1] https://touchingbase.io
They aren't a violation when you can ALWAYS "opt out" and get a pat down.

Whether a pat down is a rights violation is another question, but I think that mandatory searches for safety reasons have long passed Supreme Court tests.
That's a bad idea.

If you're not sure whether len() can return -1, and in turn what that value means, then you can't know that your code is any more correct.

In fact, this is going to be worse than a equals comparison because instead of having code that clearly doesn't handle a corner case you have code that lies about what values it can correctly handle. That makes it much harder to debug.
At Burning Man, the Tech Elite One-Up One Another
This is a local services marketplace, not software, but it has good marketing.

http://techcrunch.com/2014/08/20/service-marketplace-thumbta...

http://www.thumbtack.com/
thats a pretty high acquisition cost for those upvotes.
Electricity and oil consumption generally goes down during an economic downturn.

China's renewable energy generation capacity (hydro, solar + wind) is about half of its coal capacity, though, and going up all the time - so I wouldn't say that it's all about the downturn.

Its wind output (90 GW) is actually significantly more impressive than solar (18 GW), which is still higher than its nuclear output (15 GW).

Coal is still a whopping 800GW, but I'm pretty confident that it's peaked and they can drag it down significantly over the next 25 years now that renewable energy is pretty much cost-competitive even without subsidies - we're at the point now where your model for the lifetime cost of any form of power (coal/wind/solar) basically depends upon what kind of assumptions you plug in to your cost models, and sensible assumptions usually put all of those forms of power at roughly the same cost and have done since last year.

China doesn't seem averse to using subsidies to tip the market's cost balance in renewables' favor, either, whereas the US is steadily pushing subsidies and tariffs to tip the balance in favor of the oil/fracking companies. Now renewable energy is cost-competitive, politics is primariliy driving its growth (or lack thereof).
Under the Knife: Why Chinese Patients are turning against their doctors
"He noted that it was not quite clear how these microscopic particles could have appeared on the surface of the space station."

Duh! Dolphins. It's like these people never read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Bigravity theory