skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Vim has ":set showmode". The you see "-- INSERT --" in the status bar when completing an insert command.

The concept in vi is to make reasonably small edits and
finish them with ESC, not to type "i" followed by a five day long brain dump. Just like you would not leave your GUI editor in "Alt-F" with the file menu popped up, or your Emacs in Ctrl-X mode, expecting another character like Ctrl-S to save, don't leave your vi hanging in the middle of an insert command. When you get distracted by a phone call, lunch or washroom break, finish the partial edit.
Cool. I'm currently working on a VDI solution using the rPI as a thin client for a chain Retailer in the DC area. We plan to use RFID Cards as authentication - a "roaming vdi". VMs are mint Linux and run on top of KVM.
Two scientists suggest ways to help us make the most out of our digital cameras.
Let's suppose that you don't want to use systemd, but you do want to use Debian.

No, let's back up a step. Let's say you don't want to use GNOME3, but you do want to use Debian as a desktop system.

In that case, you would simply install KDE or XFCE or LXDE, or just have a display manager of your choice start the window manager of your choice. There are lots of choices and Debian considers them all first-class citizens. Nobody gets upset when you say "I don't like running KDE, what are the alternatives?" If you say "It looks like xterm has a new dependency on gtklib, what's up with that?" your bug report will be addressed.

But if you say "I don't want to run systemd, it seems to have been installed by mistake" what you get is:

systemd is the future, you should run it.

why are you so rude? systemd is the default init. Get used to it.

it's not that there are lots of people who object to systemd, it's all the same people being loud and repetitive.

and

it's all settled now, so any attempt to object is a flame.

And that's why systemd is causing such a ruckus in the Debian community: they don't play well with others.
Jose Valim is a pretty incredible person. Ships top-tier code at a high level consistently, thinks thoughtfully and strategically, and engages with the world in such a calm and positive way. The BEAM ecosystem is richer for his presence.
Should use ChaCha20-Poly1305 instead of AES-GCM. It's several times faster in software (important for the 98+ percent low-performance non-ARMv8 mobile devices out there).

https://www.imperialviolet.org/2013/10/07/chacha20.html

As for the PFS ciphers, unfortunately they must use the "unsafe" (and slow) P-256 curve, until more browsers adopt Curve25519.
> The public can switch providers at any time, if they feel their current provider is acting against their interest

Most Americans don't have a real choice, and ISPs know that. Don't like Comcast? Go to Verizon! But they're doing the same thing. Don't like Verizon either? Well, give up on accessing the internet. In some areas, you can't even get real broadband service from other ISPs; it's Comcast or bust.

> The public also has the ability to elect decision makers who can assign or fire people from the FCC.

The problem here is lobbyists and the legal system. Most politicians are uninformed on most issues (as are most people); they get a lot of their information from people who have the time and energy to provide that information to them. For example, a Comcast lobbyist goes to a congressman and says 'Hey, my client has this problem, they're providing a service to all these people but Netflix is taking advantage of them, using more than half of my client's capacity, which is drowning out everyone else. If they could charge Netflix for making excessive use of their network, they could reinvest that money into growth…' and so on.

Now there are arguments to go both ways, but the politician has only heard one of them, and it honestly does make sense. 'Why should we have to pay millions more to upgrade our networks for one single company? Should cities have to upgrade their traffic if one shipping company flooded the roads with trucks?' So no one argues the other side.

Thus, lobbyists promote their clients' interests in the US political system, provide campaign contributions to politicians who 'appreciate' their points of view (and denying it to those who don't), and you're left with a system where, no matter who you elect, they're insufficiently informed to make a rational decision.

So now the FCC is involved, but who runs the FCC? Who appoints them? Well, it should be whoever understands the industry best, obviously. And who understands it more than someone who's worked in it and knows what it needs and what challenges it's faced? Like a former cable company executive.

The real problem in the US is that corporations are allowed so much power in government, which results in a political system which (statistically) rarely reflects the values, opinions, or issues facing the people who cast the votes in the first place.

The other problem is that public opinion is fickle. Everyone was up in arms about Ferguson, but now what? How long since you've heard any news? The ice bucket challenge was bigger news, and now the iPhone launch, the Mojang acquisition… no one cares about some stupid town anymore. What was even the problem? Who can remember.

The public might be completely livid about net neutrality, but when the next season of The Bachelor Chef or Celebrity Hobo comes on their interests will wane and the problem will be solved.
Being a good team leader and being a good developer aren't the same thing. You can be an amazing team leader but suck at being a developer. There are a lot of team leads that are team leads just because they got there first. I've seen one who struggled at basic problem solving.

However I get what you mean. The guy does seem to be a bit up himself.
Emacs is not modeless. Firstly, it obviously has numerous modes, which have names like fundamental-mode.

Secondly, its commands are modal. When you begin a command with Meta-X or Ctrl-X, Emacs goes into a different mode: the next character typed will not self-insert.

All command parsing is modal.
https://canary.pw/view/?item=13221ab1721254808546bd068b6cd47...

https://canary.pw/view/?item=1bc5b34811b50f3fbce06cb55088372...

https://canary.pw/view/?item=87ecceaf19b0187e901e15c5bc8f8a9...

Canary is still chewing through the dataset I fed it and figuring out where they all relate (if at all), but so far it seems that some of the data is as old as January 2014. This is likely not from Gmail itself but perhaps a collection of other leaks.
I can't tell you how many posts I saw exactly like yours regarding the Ice Bucket Challenge.

"What good does a glorified wet t-shirt contest do?"

"It's just a bunch of celebrities trying to participate in a pointless meme."

"You're all just a bunch of mindless lemmings. You'll do anything for the attention."

The Ice Bucket Challenge raised $111.1m as of August 19th, according to alsa.org.
You can't even build Xamarin's sample project without demoing a commercial license, because the sample project is falls outside the app size restriction.
The switch to opt-out is quite unconscionable but also expected as the company's main motivation here is gathering data and having as much data as possible, regardless of consequences that they cannot be sued over. I'm sure there'll be similar stories in the future.
He was in the right place at the right time and got lucky. Not through any competence.

Always switching technologies won't get you in depth knowledge, but it will show you different, possibly better approaches. I would say a bit of both experience, as well as learning new ways of doing things helps.

I learned Java at university. Inheritance and Polymorhpism were like black boxes until I learned Perl afterwards, and the mechanisms are there in front of you (OOP in Perl is a bit of a hack, but it makes it transparent how it works). That (and other features of Perl) helped my understanding of Java.
Exactly! Non-technical can also mean no experience with project management. Off shore project management is a whole area of expertise that people take years to learn and perfect. Of course, that can also be outsourced. heh.
Sony MDRV6 (or MDR7506; both have equivalent parts). You can find a pair in nearly every studio.
I had the same reaction. It's mostly good, but there seems to be an unstated assumption that offshore programmers will create more technical debt. Maybe it's even true. I work with what I'm sure is one of the better teams in Bangalore, and while their code is fine in most regards (no more "spaghetti" than I would expect of US programmers working in the same domain), there has been a bit of a learning curve regarding issues like readability and technical debt. I'm sure the situation is worse for other teams. Nonetheless, I wish the author had addressed the issue up front instead of just making assumptions.
Adoption by large enterprise customers follows different patterns than you seem to expect. Right now (7.0) an "early adopter" will be planning certification with a probable production rollout for 7.2. I expect there will be another rise in usage with 7.4.
My trello board for kwollo.com
Agreed, but he isn't good at that either!
When they're laid off without cause, the often get severance, which is the equivalent of 2 weeks notice (actually often more; severance can often last for several months, depending on what you negotiate).

When they're fired for cause, it makes sense that they don't get notice, because typically to get fired for cause in the states, you have to do something that egregiously harms either the company or its customers. Think of the McDonalds employee that masturbated onto a customer's sandwich [1], or the Google employee who was caught perving on acquaintances by reading their GMail [2]. Do you really want them to continue working at their company, where they can do all sorts of mischief, particularly once they know they're about to get fired?

When they're fired for non-performance, it usually involves a whole paper trail of PIPs, documented non-performance, etc. This is your 2 weeks notice that you're about to get fired, and it gives you a chance to shape up and avert the firing.

[1] http://www.atlnightspots.com/woman-develops-herpes-from-mayo...

[2] http://gawker.com/5637234/gcreep-google-engineer-stalked-tee...
Nobody wants to come into a team with five overseas developers, two servers, and no version control, but I’ve been there before.

If the article author has been there before, wouldn't that mean someone does want to come in to a team like that?
> AFAIK, the only thing that is "functional" about Clojure is its immutable data structures (and closures, but even JS has those).

Oh, you sweet summer child. Work with a language without closures and try to do anything functional.
Why Just Work at the Googleplex When You Can Live There?
> The watch-to-watch communication with all the sharing your heart rate and sending little pictures was the most Samsung thing I've ever seen anyone but Samsung do. Seriously, is there a real problem lurking around somewhere for which this is a solution?

I don't know that it felt Samsung. When I heard about the feature I immediately thought of how I might use it with my wife and family. It basically takes the trivial communication you have with people close to you throughout the day and makes it more physical and less complex. I don't think I've gotten that feeling from Samsung features — that said, I don't really have any desire to wear this (or any) watch at all.

> The force sensitive display might be useful, I couldn't really tell from the coverage. At least one person there commented that they were having a hard time seeing the big difference between "force press" and "long press".

Yeah, I'd like to know more about this. It felt like one of the more clever features if it is actually distinct from long press. That is, if it can feel easily distinguishable from a press or swipe while still feeling intuitive, I think they will really have something.

> Is the "Taptic" feedback significantly different that the vibrating motor present on every other watch? I can't really tell, but I think functionally, vibration can already serve the purpose well enough, although the Apple implementation might be a bit more elegant -- I can't find enough information to say for sure.

Well according to the keynote the "Taptic" feedback unit can actually mark out directions on your wrist. That is, telling you to turn left or right when you come to an intersection purely through touch. So unless it's something stupid like "two vibrates for left, one for right" it might actually be something interesting.

> the idea of needing to zoom around to launch apps seems less like a good idea, but overall the novel input method is an innovation I'd say.

It sounds like you can do either. They mention tapping to zoom in on an "app neighbourhood" and tapping once again to launch an app. I also think the digital crown is quite clever — and it will be a very Apple-thing to pull off if they can make it feel truly one-to-one with the UI animations.

> I assume they must have NFC in the watch to handle the payments system.

I've read that the NFC payments through the watch will be tied to skin contact. So they will only work while the device is touching your skin. If you lose skin contact you'll have to re-enter your pin code next time you wear the watch to enable payments. Seems like a well thought out use case.

> Mostly though, I think that the people who complained that Android Wear was just a mini cell phone on your wrist should be disappointed with the Apple Watch as well. I'm not one of them for the record, I'm wearing the Gear Live right now, and I quite like it. But I don't think Apple has revolutionized the smart watch. They've just made what looks to be a solid entry into the market.

I agree. Though I'm a little disappointed that the Apple Watch attempts to be so many things.
yea i think this is the point that shadeless's comment misses. it's not like there is no talent in the world at large, but businesses have a hard enough time deciphering talent when they have 2 in-house developers and can read their entire code portfolio... these rubes are doomed as soon as they descend into no-man's-land.

Personally I'd much rather have 1 ace developer than 10 of questionable value. at the corp I work at they have the luxury of going both ways, just hiring a pool of expensive devs & seeing which ones turn out to be the aces. I understand thats not feasible for startups. & lack of a technical co-founder makes singling out an ace very difficult. I'd try to get a programmer friend to pick out a likely monster programmer & start from there. Having non-technical people hire/negotiate for tech talent is just not feasible IMO. So much money trickles down the drain like that. Corps can survive it, startups can't.
Insert rant about how javascript is a terrible bytecode
So companies[1] that had to previously shut down because of the 30% can return?

[1] - http://www.cnet.com/uk/news/as-iflow-reader-app-closes-harsh...
Automation is whacking all the entry-level IT jobs
I've seen a lot of people bring up that infamous comment, but I don't think it proves much - if we say it applies to everything Apple does then it means that Apple are never wrong. They can be, and inevitably one day they will be.
..they killed the site because of .1 answer per day?
And here I was hoping it would be JS that would become irrelevant.
Why the Apple Watch Disappoints Me
Why is the reddit box so small? I'm pretty disappointed.
Not that I'm aware (though I'm not an expert). It is certainly used for one of the many air traffic control units you can encounter at larger airports (e.g "Contact departure on 123.45").

My understanding is that the word 'take-off' over the radio is (or at least should be) treated like a loaded gun, you only say it when you mean it. Departure is used in place of take-off where appropriate (e.g. "Speedbird 101, holding short of runway 13, ready for departure.")
Have you considered supporting the International Image Interoperability Framework (http://iiif.io/) API?
Size Up Your Investors Before Accepting Their Money
Non-technical founder is a weird catch all. You never really hear about non technical founders in other industries, right? You don't start a construction company and say "Well, I don't know anything about construction but I can draw pictures of buildings, so I'll just hire someone that does (barring for a moment that I lack the knowledge about the profession that would allow me to judge talent in the first place)."

That said, there isn't something magic about geography that makes people suddenly better at programming. Good programmers live all over, you've just got to know enough about your business to be able to judge talent based on more than geography or color.

One rule I've found useful: don't ask people to do things you can't (potentially badly) do yourself.
10 * 1 year people don't specialize in anything. They just repeat the first year experience 10 times.
Windows XP Lives On
Point them at the FTB launcher, go from there?

I would find it difficult to live with just one mod. Half the time it doesn't even make sense; they assume the presence of others.
Dramatic footage of rocks exfoliating in the Sierra Nevada
For non-Mac users, the parent typed "(apple-logo)Watch". The Apple logo is only visible to mac (and iOS?) users because it's in the private use area on fonts on macs.
I wear an automatic watch.

1) I like being able to know time and date at a quick glance -- the ease of this is light years ahead of any smartphone.
2) It never runs out of juice since it doesn't have a battery.
3) It looks good (IMO).
4) I irrationally like the fact that my moving about gives life to a tiny beating mechanism. For that reason my watch has a power reserve meter.

Have zero interest in smartwatches though. I have enough crap to keep charged as is.
What is a sales letter?
udev (a part of the Linux kernel)

I thought one of the advantages of udev (vs devfs) was that it was completely in userspace?
Free Hosting Solutions for Small Apps and Projects
There are a few reasons:

http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-really...

I think it's the relation between upvotes/comments and also maybe many were upvoting from the submission page (which triggers vote ring detection or something, read about that somewhere)
It is known that Hootsuite allows update, schedule and monitor our activities through Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Foursquare from one single platform. With the latest dashboard update of Hootsuite it's easier than ever to create publications for these social networks with the renovated profile selector. Not only is it possible to select which social network we want to send, it can be marked as favorites or set them to appear selected by default each time draft a message. Easy to manage, easy to get reports... easy at all!!!
Wouldn't you want to pay a small price to make your work easier and fast?
Houdini 1. Sezon 1. Bölüm
The fact that it got to a 3rd generation implies it wasn't a "failure"
Considering the minuscule market share that Windows Mobile currently has, C# is close to nonexistent on mobile as of today.
If there is no existing offline OTP authenticator for Windows phone, FreeOTP is open-source. Perhaps someone will port it over: https://fedorahosted.org/freeotp/
Now Arbabian envisions networks of these radio chips deployed every meter or so throughout a house (they would have to be set close to one another because high-frequency signals don't travel far).

The whole concept is a bit creepy, but that particular sentence stood out. It's not hard to envision these tiny devices all having microphones and cameras... the Internet of Things That Watch You seems not far off.
iPhone Barometer, Eat My Weather Dongles
If systemd was just an init system, there wouldn't any problem. It's the fact is now includes about 30 other very non-init features that's the problem. Things like an NTP client, a network config tool, a boot firmware management tool, a login system, and a lot more.
> What format is the filesystem in?

VxFS, which (according to Wikipedia) is claimed to be supported by Linux. The HDD is partitioned into several logical volumes. Interestingly enough the LVM utilities have the same command names as Linux LVM2, but I don't know if it follows the same on-disk structure.

It would be really handy if Linux supported something like a loopback virtual disk drive into which you could bind whole disk images (instead of just loop block devices to which you can bind only partition images). Maybe there's some (3rd party) kernel module I don't know about for this.

> Have you got a write up somewhere?

Right now I'm just looking around, what's in the system. There's an ancient C compiler on the system but it does only K&R syntax. All the system utilities apparently have been compiled on an external build system. There's an ancient version of Samba there. For simple file transfers I made me a netcat binary by pasting source code into the terminal and compiling

cat > nc.c
^D
cc -o nc nc.c

Used that to

cd /
tar cf - | nc ... ...

HP was nice and left behind source code for the really interesting stuff, i.e. the sources for the userlevel programs and kernel drivers of the nonstandard, proprietary devices that make this thing a measurement instrument. This seemed to be completely unintentional, but this is what you get if your build system can not do out-of-tree builds and the developer just slaps the build directory into a installation tarball. I mean: Who except for the maintenance guy, who's updating the box is going to be able to access that directory? m(

Oh, that covers the source code of several revisions of the software, by which I mean the kernel drivers and the user interface.

Thanks HP! :D

This will of course not compile for Linux. But hey, I don't care. The kernel drivers are easy enough to re-write from scratch over the course of a few weekends. The userland stuff takes much more work though.