skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
There seems to be some recurring popular methods for habit formation and many diffent apps. Each product has its own branding and different twist but the most common themes seem to be (1)"not breaking the chain" (2) precommitments/accountability/public shaming (3)positive feedback of some sort - positive messages or gamification.

This is not a bad set of methods - there is some (varying) evidence to suggest that each of these is effective in improving habit adherence. However, there are loads more facts about habits that don't necessarily fit into this paradigm so neatly:

- Automaticity does not start to level of for a routine until at least a minimum of 20 days for quite a simple task, and it can be many times longer for more effortful tasks (like doing a daily workout). Average was 60 days but with a very high variance (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ejsp.674/abstract... )

- A single failed repetition "breaking the chain" does not have any effect on the development of automaticity of the behaviour, only repeated failures tend have a negative effect
- It has been suggested that it is much more difficult to try to build multiple habits in parallel rather than serially (although I cannot quite find an authoritative source just now)

- Habits have a structure: Cue -> Routine -> Reward. It is useful to understand the conditions and motivation for a routine before trying to replace it (substitution approach)

- Furthermore, if trying to establish a new habit to reach a goal you might find that there is no intrinsic reward in the routine. It will be very difficult to keep up the routine like that, and it may often be better to look for a different way to achieve the same goal

- Habit formation can in some cases be thought of as a rewiring of the instinctive valuation system. For example a resolution to eat healthily might be helped more by giving yourself more exposure to delicious meals consisting of mainly vegetables, than by a purely willpower-oriented method

For these reasons - I tend now to think "less is more".It should be more about focusing on one or two correct habits and continually reevaluating them than to rely on a plethora of different external motivators to get you to do a dozen different things every day
PHP is a hose No, PHP is a double-clawed hammer [0] :P

[0] http://blog.codinghorror.com/the-php-singularity/
The second one in France is not doing much better. Work in China on similar ones is faster. But it is unclear what's actually going on, due to a lack of transparency.
RAYA – realtime game audio engine in Quake 3
Introducing Jibo
>Fizzbizz? Naah. What you want to do is something more like Minesweep.

The whole idea is that fizzbuzz weeds out tons of people who don't know how to do it, plus it's simple to do in a very short meeting for someone who knows programming it's like 30 seconds tops.

So Minesweeper doesn't make sense in this context. Even trying to convey the exact set of rules it will have to follow for the gameplay takes time (and, no, not everybody has "played it before").
I've interviewed candidates who can talk an amazing game but can't seem to code. Starting a couple of years ago at our organization, it has been required that candidates produce _something_ that can run (or come real close to it).
While it might be possible to print PVC pipes that are waterproof at the same level of reliability as traditionally manufactured ones, this seems rather overly optimistic. Bringing in pre-made pipes will probably be required for quite some time, before the printing technology is reliable enough for that.
A poison dart. Small and effective.
Lurking in IRC is fine, being extroverted is fine. The ability to even remotely understand who HN actually is is weird enough without talking. Otherwise all there is are single line headlines, terse often neckbeardy comments, and no real-time presence -- no "moment" to figure out what even some of these people here really are. So far whether you lurk or talk it's better than just looking at the posts and threads.
The good part of Javascript is far too big. You should turn the sword around. Just stab your opponents with the hilt...
It looks like the source article did not name the professor. I'm unsure how the SCMagazine article author was supposed to contact said professor. Should they have just contact City College for a comment[1]?

[1] the original article said it was an unnamed professor of Computer Science at City College
This was a side project for a few of us at the office. It is for casual users who want 'better than nothing at all' encryption. We are well aware of the limitations of serverside JS encryption, but we aim for usability first which means a sacrifice in security, since that would require a download. Think snapchat.

We mainly think it will be used for things like promo codes and whatnot, but I personally use it to send things around the office I dont want stuck in my IM history.

We have addressed several of the points in this article in the FAQ- thanks for everyones comments.
So far it has gone from about 13-15 people to over 110 people.
> It seems like you're confusing Bayes' Theorem with Bayesian statistics.

Yes, a tempest in a teapot. Anyone caught using Bayes' name without qualifying the use is placed in the same position as someone referring to the Victorian Era without mentioning that Victoria wasn't a Victorian. In most cases, it's not worth the digression.
In the same vein, here's how a Common Lisp programmer view other programmers: http://kvardek-du.kerno.org/2010/01/how-common-lisp-programm...
Really? Or does it just look like one before you turn it on?

http://xkcd.com/1397/

Apparently Randall has spent some time in this area before, Lisp is the lightsaber

http://xkcd.com/297/
A call to arms: Helping Internet services accept anonymous users
There's a few things missing with this app. The data may be encrypted, but its still available to anyone with the URL?

I think https://www.noteshred.com does this better. It requires a password to access and logs access information.

You can also demo and see their client side encryption features working here: https://www.noteshred.com/client-side-encryption
I am not from the NL but I have moved here to attend a MSc program (Computer Science department), I am not pursuing a PhD myself but I know a lot of people that do.
I think that the system has its pros and cons, as always, although I don't agree with the part about not choosing the topic because (as also other people pointed out) policies can often vary from supervisor to supervisor, and in any case a student basically chooses, more or less, the boundaries of his/her topic when he/she decides to which position apply, positions that always have fairly clear project descriptions and include contact details of professors that are generally open about clarifications. Also, even if it is formally difficult to change supervisor, in fact if a student decides to work more with another professor for any reason, the original supervisor does not usually raise any practical problem.

However, a big problem that I have experienced and seen is that PhDs negatively impact the quality of teaching. Master programs in the NL aim at being very high level (often succeeding), offering also courses on specific advanced subjects. Usually, PhDs have no control over what they will teach, they are simply allocated as "resources" by the faculty, even just to cover a minor part of a course or to supervise/correct practical assignments. This leads to ridiculous situations with courses that, for example, teach advanced rendering techniques but for supervising the practical part allocate a PhD candidate that has clearly never ever rendered a triangle on a screen in his/her life, and who had no time to properly prepare beforehand. I think this is a visible "weak point" of the whole system, and it should be addressed, somehow, also because I have noticed it being treated as some kind of "taboo argument" in the past.
Let's not turn this into a reddit-style witch hunt.
Tech Authority as a Blunt Weapon
Hey, I'm one of the editors of Valleywag. I had a question about your post, if you have a few minutes: nitasha@gawker.com
Another thing I find interesting about "PhD-employees" in the US is that we are considered students when it helps the government and employees when it helps the university. My main complaint has to do with the nature of taxing research/teaching/fellowship income as "income", and then turning around and not allowing those students to invest the money in IRA accounts (according to the tax code, any money eligible for IRA contributions must be on a single box on a W-2 form, which many students do not get)

This is deeply troubling to students like myself who would like to invest and save a significant part of our salary for the future, as we would if we were truly employees in industry.
hi-- i'm the director of nonprofits for YC. we're accepting applications from all of the above: social enterprises, b-corps, 501c3 nonprofits and new,unregistered nonprofits.

advice for these groups is essentially the same as for-profit companies: explain your idea or business clearly and succently.

differences between for-profit and nonprofit YC companies: we currently give a $100K donation to nonprofits in our program. but essentially, your participation in the program is exactly the same as the for-profit companies. and all the answers on our FAQ apply to nonprofit companies too.

at this early stage in funding nonprofits, YC is really interested in companies that are working on big global issues that can have a large impact on the world. but we welcome all applications and look forward to seeing what you're working on. if you have other specific questions, please let me know. i'd be happy to answer them.
The Untold Story of the Target Attack, Step by Step
> We also regularly choose it for new projects.

Ok I know this one will be tough to keep rational, but this is an honest question - we've got Python and (especially) Ruby now, whats the Perl USP in your case?
The report (PDF): https://mega.co.nz/#!ew8VjRzA!Am2hiZ_2vxXpxrsqPNLprc1Qho1Ri4...
https://hn.algolia.com/?q=habitrpg#!/story/forever/0/habitrp...
Funny because companies are still doing these things: just been asked to fizz/buzz...code with someone watching my screen, etc (as someone who was told he was inferior to whites by a HS teacher before a test, the anxiety is terrifying). Another (YC) company did the "culture" thing to me - I believe - because they just stopped calling me after telling me I would be moving on the "the lunch with the team" interview. Didn't return my emails either... This might be 2014 but it still strikes me as lacking taste to use the words "culture" and "fit" to a minority [sic] candidate.
Putin Ends the Interregnum
Yeah, but an ivory farm would have a lot more revenue than a zoo, no?
"37 Ways to More Accurately Read the Bones You're Casting to Predict the Harvest"
Suggested alternative for Java, because making fun of NullPointerExceptions is too easy: "Java is a belt fed 240G automatic weapon that tries hard to avoid gun accidents: each round has to be individually authorized by ticking off a detailed questionnaire. By the time you get to actually shoot, someone may have already beaten you to death with a stick."

Scala would certainly have to build on that: "Scala is a variant of the 240G Java that tries to work around the problem by encoding pre-answered questionnaires directly into various types of ammunition. Unfortunately, the gun can detect lies and refuses operation when some of those answers do not match the actual situation."
Python is the best at quite a few things these days, particularly if you need to accommodate projects (or developers) that require top-caliber tools for getting work done in several different problem areas.

The whole 2 vs. 3 is, if anything, an embarrassing interlude in getting to the fact that it's currently both amazing for beginners and one of the most versatile professional languages. Where it's not the best, it's often fighting "mainly good for this one problem area" tools and languages to a draw...while still being great for dozens of other problem areas.

Cracks about "really easy to use orbital death cannons being handed out to anyone who asks" aside - your best comparison is probably a trench knife. Simple, elegant, gets the job done whatever that job happens to be.
I chose my own research questions for my PhD. So did many people I know. And, when supervising my own PhD students, I preferred them to work on their own problems, all other things being equal [1].

The reason is that choosing what problems to work on is a fundamental research skill. Someone who doesn't learn that skill hasn't really learnt to do research.

This isn't to say that a student shouldn't spend time talking with their advisor about choice of problem. Of course they should -- they should talk to as many people as possible! But the responsibility for the choice of problem should be theirs. If that's not the case, then they're missing much of what it is to do research.

To quote a letter of Feynman to a former student of his ( http://genius.cat-v.org/richard-feynman/writtings/letters/pr... )

"I had another Ph.D. Student (Albert Hibbs) [who worked on] how it is that the winds build up waves blowing over water in the sea. I accepted him as a student because he came to me with the problem he wanted to solve. With you I made a mistake, I gave you the problem instead of letting you find your own; and left you with a wrong idea of what is interesting or pleasant or important to work on..."

[1] This is actually pretty complicated. Many students don't have ideas they're confident pursuing. Some don't grow into it, even after gaining some experience solving research problems. That presents challenges. And sometimes students badly misjudge what is important or interesting to work on. Should a supervisor interfere when that's happening? It depends. Making mistakes in choosing which problem to work on is an important part of learning to do research. So some floundering around is fine. But allowing it to go on for years and years is just cruel.
You're right about the release date. Not sure why I thought 2008.

Like XP, Gingerbread has unpatched security vulnerabilities. Having a mobile phone with up-to-date security is well worth spending $99 (for a Moto G, for example).

I get that not everyone can afford something like that, but it's like car insurance. You absolutely can't afford to have your identity stolen.
Agreed, at least in my field it's almost exactly like he describes in the Netherlands - you get funding via professor's grants, and that means you work on a project related to their work. Additionally, my university pays social security, healthcare, dental, etc.

I think that for humanities things tend to work differently (I'm in a STEM) in the States though.
> I think state sanctioned monopolies are _probably_ ok if regulated well. Natural Gas falls in that category here and I think they do a pretty good job.

How would you ever know since they literally have no competition?
True. By "competitive" I didn't mean "same money", but "an equally good choice for enough people to fill the PhD ranks". Bad or non-existent wages are almost never an easy choice, no matter how much one wants to do research or become a professor (unless they already have money and can be self-funded during the PhD). Lack of funding can lead to part-time PhDs or extra day jobs, making it more taxing, lowering the quality of the research, and even leading to failure to complete the degree (in which case, the person just wasted their time).

A PhD student should get a "living wage" as you say -- enough compensation to be able to continue and finish. Industry wages and research wages are different: being paid to work on a product which has a financial plan behind it works differently from trying to improve the state of the art, which can lead to small contributions or even a mathematical proof that it cannot be done :-)
That's a flawed comparison. Firefox takes the Emacs approach. All of Firefox is built of XUL, Javascript, and the gang.

Lots of apps expose a C plugin API, many apps expose some scripting. I don't think the population of apps exposing a comprehensive scripting API that mirrors the internal C structure is that large. Chrome might be better.You can't do whatever you want with Chrome, it has to be published to the scripting interface first. Early versions of Chrome had trouble supporting a lot of common Firefox extensions for this reason.
The very interesting linked article only counts death, not suffering, lost employment or quality of life, as charted factors. Because the ultimate issues are political, a chart that included these factors would be more informative.
The worry there is that such an agency might keep the exploits for itself.
That sounds plausible... do you happen to have any references at hand to confirm it?
As a feedback: the German copy text ... does the job. Someone on the team had German in school? Quick job from fiverr.com?

Graphics and UI look nice and engaging.

Philosophically, I'd consider that our society, our generation is already living way more quantified and optimized than any previous generation: Technology provides the numbers, the internet lets us compare ourselves with the very best at anything.

With this game, you are also holding the carrot on the stick for yourself - Leonardo DaVinci or Elon Musk didn't have to do that - something else made them do what they did.

Without meaning to trash your app entirely, I'd suggest

- focus on that one task that really moves things forward (instead of doing push for secondary points)

- staying alert for the effect of the (self-)optimization - megatrend on employees, children etc.
Show HN: Plot.ly
C is a sniper rifle. But there are two barrels, one of which fires backward, and the triggers are right next to each other.
Totally agree that is a possibility. I assume you make them write something at the interview? Wouldn't it be more efficient to review code they've already written? I always review code prior to an interview.

Writing code is a process, few people can produce production quality code on the first go especially with someone looking over your shoulder.

If they haven't written code that they can share or that is Open Source, doesn't that really settle it?
> Formal countdown begins for Scottish vote that could break up United Kingdom

The title conspicuously omits the word "further", as in "further break up the UK". Remember Ireland, India and a collection of Southeast Asian possessions. Oh, and the U.S., a but farther back in time.
Nice tool.

There's a similar tool that lets calling a virtualenv by name. Handy when you are used to virtualenvwrapper way.

https://pypi.python.org/pypi/vex
I can remember back when there were ships on the Tyne.

Big ships. With funnels and everything.
Go's codename was Errlang, two 'r's.
"I'm tired of blood which won't display text without me having to grant them acres to run coffee on my system."

What? Many autocorrect fails right here...
It has a cool name
MS is playing a game here. There is no sovereignty issue involved at all since the emails in question are readily accessible by MS stateside. The question is one of access. MS is playing the locality card because they want to make the court order apply to a physical data center in Ireland when it does not...unless MS wants it to.

Its fairly common when there are orders for data or code to be turned over for companies to play cat and mouse with access issues.

For example, when being forced to turn over code printing the code out in a tiny illegible font and putting the reams of paper on a truck and delivering it that way. (Its been done many times)

Even if MS prevails this is not good for the internet. If big companies resort to storing data overseas this will be toxic for US based cloud services.
Damn, that´s some really sweet service! Please don´t mind us linking to your site on a regular basis! ;-)

Best regards,
Baard
iOS vs. Android
Yes - the subjects of advanced study should be selected by the government. Individual researchers should operate like an army, going where they are told.

/s
> According to the Guinness Book of World Records, these are the roundest objects ever made.

What a shame they didn't specify that these are the most spherical objects ever made. "Round" can, and usually does, refer to two dimensions, while "spherical" refers to three.
"There are basically two main types of candidates: the candidate who approaches the problem and says "I need to loop over every cell in sequence and assign a mine or not based on a random probability! Wait, what do you mean, I need to get a specific number of mines on the board? I'm not sure I can make that happen" ... and the candidate who's worth hiring."

Since this interviewer seems to have made up their mind already with pre-conceptions of which candidate is worth hiring, what is the "correct" answer to this question? "Pick random co-ordinates, check, and retry?". I'd like to know, so I can give that as my first answer if I come up before such a person in the interview.

This right here is why everyone tries to game the system and come out with the "worth hiring" answer as if they had thought it out themselves. We are not even given an opportunity to ask questions, maybe come up with an answer, say "That's not optimal", and work towards a good answer -- which is the flow you would use for working at your day-to-day job. And, for the record, I started playing Minesweeper last year, and hadn't even touched it back in the day.
California High-Speed Rail No. 9 – the Chairman's Turn Again
Saving your iOS apps from rejection
Thanks! We´ll for sure make apps for both iOS and Android. Hopefully soon! :-)

Best regards,
Baard
Curious which ones -- Amazon?
If you're above whatever threshold, maybe 50%, just reverse it and find N coords for empty squares rather than N coords for mine squares.
Seems like that would prevent small string optimization (a union of a small char array and the heap char pointer.) That lets me store about 85% of the strings in my assembler without any heap allocation, and is a huge win in my book.
I'm trying to write up a blog post about this now. A really good presentation focused on types and programming languages is available in the middle chapters of Practical Foundations for Programming Languages. I originally learned about it from studying Aczel's Antifoundation Axiom from Barwise and Moss' Vicious Circles[0]---in there you can get a much more mathematical foundationalist POV---but Harper's book is more direct.

[0]http://www.amazon.com/Vicious-Circles-Center-Language-Inform...
I'm not the OP, but I'd guess that they might need some starting point, a seed crystal, before they can crystallize them into a conversation.

To the OP, I would suggest using the context of the interview to start (e.g. I am here because....).
Cool, I had a no idea. I was only really getting started in the late 90's and fortunately had family that were big into computers and would give me free parts so don't know much about that scene.
You can use insulated concrete forms[1] blocks. I've helped a friend build a house this way, it's like putting together lego blocks.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insulating_concrete_form
Developing iOS apps with Swift