skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: How to turn passive english knowledge into active?
Okay, I know, do some conversations and so on. But is there any brain-trick? How to practice effectively besides just having a conversation?
>Then you should just change the activity.

But this presupposes that there must be an extra-curricular activity in the first place and therefore, the activity must be "changed" until the manager finds the right one.

My counterpoint does not depend on the existence of that team outing. Instead, what about the execution of quality work during day-to-day activities to act as the catalyst for team building? Yes, it's possible to build teamwork that way without the weekend firewalking event. In fact, if the team does quality work together, they may even self-organize a beer outing to celebrate a milestone. It happens organically without the pretense of an artificial corporate event.

In other words, the work accomplished during 9am-5pm motivated the extra-curricular celebration.
The opposite strategy is hoping that the extra-curricular "teambuilding" creates better camaraderie during 9am-5pm. The article I previously linked shows that doesn't always work.
Your average node module is 50-300 lines of code. A readme is just fine to document the 2 or 3 functions that are usually exposed. Beyond that, reading the source is not that onerous. Compare that to your typical doxygen-generated mega-doc, and I think it's a feature, not a bug.
This is a dangerously low-quality comment.

For some people knowing that you disappointed people ("a fan" would be right word in case of Stephenson) that believed in you so much could be easily worth of committing seppuku or something.

For all of the threads recently discussing failure and founder depression, you flippantly suggest someone should kill themselves for "disappointing some fans". Have you ever failed as ambitiously and publicly as Neal Stephenson did here? Maybe you read the story and thought he did not sound as apologetic as you'd like, but having read the rest of the backers' notes I'm pretty sure that he and the rest of the team have put their lives into this for years.
Big O is an upper bound, little o is a lower bound. Big theta means both an upper and lower bound.
Ask HN: How to remember what I've read in a book?
I read a lot (non-fiction) but I also forget a lot. So, why I read that lot if I forget the 90%? How can I improve this?
Now only if they could release their libOVR library for talking to the Oculus under a free software compatible license.
People who don't know jack shit about video games shouldn't talk about who or what is ruining them.

Video games have been intensely political for AGES. Crammed full of warmongering nationalism, sexism, racism, moralizing and speculative fiction on various topics, including social issues.

Don't believe me? Off the top of my head, here's a list of recent AAA titles that all have significant political & social themes (usually related to warfare, but not always):

Call of Duty (all of them)
Spec Ops: The Line
Shadow Complex
Battlefield (all of them)
Mass Effect (all of them)
Metal Gear (all of them - hoo boy are all these games crammed with politics and moralizing and social topics)
Splinter Cell (all of them after the original; in particular Blacklist and Double Agent)
Syndicate
Deus Ex (all of them)
Hitman: Absolution and Hitman: Blood Money
Assassin's Creed (all of them)
Max Payne 3
Basically all the GTA games
Remember Me
Red Dead Redemption
Nier

If I expand the filter to indie games there are hundreds more. Most importantly, these games are not a monolith: The worldviews and opinions displayed in them vary wildly, some of them are judgemental and others aren't. Some of them strictly ground their political/social topics inside fantasy worlds, while others ground them in worlds that very closely resemble the real world. Some use broken, flawed characters as a glimpse into real issues while other games position 'just' and noble characters in opposition to the forces of people who are politically or socially Evil.
I don't know whether it was sarcastic or not, but to clarify: false skepticism is when FUD is cast around on the excuse that it is an attack on an institutional status quo. The reason why it is false is because real skepticism has a knack for rigorously questioning specific points in lines of evidence and proposing why established theories are cargo-culting their data.

As you can see here, none of that is taking place. In fact, the entire article is a massive logical fallacy that implicitly tries to frame the IPCC's current policy proposals as some sort of extreme.

If anything, the IPCC's report is extremely conservative, as it does not analyze the Black Swan events which include methan clathrates and the loss of effectiveness of carbon sinks, or the warming of the deep oceans.

Thus, it frames the debate in a fallacious way.

Actual skepticism has been well-served by the internal debates amongst climate scientists, and if you read the stuff by the emintent experts, you will see that they are shitting their pants in fear.

When climate experts are seriously scared of the possibilities of total extinction, we should be listening, and at best, making thoughtful critiques.

This,in contrast, is stinking bullshit.
One thing that bothered me about "Clang" from the start is that I was never really convinced that a Kinect-like system couldn't do it better. Per Clang's FAQ, their position was that the Kinect had too much latency. The first generation Kinect had a latency of 90 ms and the second generation had a latency of 60 ms. A bad, but not atypical display has a lag of 3-4 frames, so the newer Kinect roughly doubles the lag (or more) of a typical gaming system. Not so good! However, for how long will that remain the case?

Arguably, a better approach would be to work on a low-latency form of Kinect. First, this would provide richer input that includes the players body position in addition to his blade, which could make hit detection more realistic. Second, a Kinect system with lower lag would have more general utility than just playing sword games. e.g. Unarmed combat would be an option too. Additionally, authoring sword combat software for Kinect-like systems would allow you to release something imperfect on existing hardware. It's great to shoot for the stars, but picking off some low-hanging fruit first can help you get there!

Clang controllers used a few methods to give users feedback about hits. Obviously, there was no way to make the controller stop in mid air as though you'd hit a concrete pillar with your sword. However, it could use rumble packs in concert with audio cues to simulate glancing contact with an opponents sword or light cuts to his body. There's no reason a Kinect-compatible stick couldn't include the same sort of feedback.

So what's the next realistic step for advancing the state of video game swordplay? If Clang is open-sourced, it might not be an unrealistic task for somebody to hack up an imperfect Kinect version for people to try out. If Clang "wasn't fun" with it's own controller, it's unlikely a Kinect version that's laggier and lacks haptic feedback will be fun either, but at least it will give people a chance to try it out.

Personally, I think VR displays are the key missing ingredient for swordplay games. Seeing your stick in front of you and a sword mirroring its position on the screen is one thing, but seeing just the video game sword as though it were in your own hands is quite another! VR systems are going to have to work out low lag displays and body position data anyways but, once they do, it will pay well to be positioned to take advantage!
We might be getting there, since the Chinese have most of the parts in place for a carbon tax framework. The only question is whether it's too little, too late.
I was referring to the print s*n example (O(n) being exponential wrt the size of the input). You're welcome ;)
Agreed. I'm working on an "advanced" follow-up that digs into log n and a couple other things!
Verizon Will Be Getting iPhone 6-Friendly Wi-Fi Calling in 2015
Yes. They are all introverts. I'm not your typical manager and yes I despise that team building crap too. It was an honest thanks and it was intimate. I invited them into my home and my wife and I cooked for them. The fire and hatchets was just a little goofy fun.

edit: grammar
The top is (basically) flat.

The sides and bottom are curved.
Hehehe. I'm thinking of writing "The non-practicality of J2ME applications" after, since so far it has even been difficult even setting up the development environment.

I've written android applications so it'll be something to compare this experience to.

Yes I am naive in J2ME development X) But everyone's stories have been interesting to read!
Some people want to die - depression, religion, cultism, or just plain ignorance - and some have apparently decided when. I support the individuals right to choose suicide, but I also believe it's our duty to tell them life is worth living.

If Ezekiel had been born 500 years ago, would he be writing this article about dying at 35? How would the brain states of a 35 year old him today or 500 years ago differ? What would a conversation between the two be like? "You should die at 35, that's a full life, living past 35 will be pain and decrepit.."
I've never seen an Android widget that I felt justified its existence, and I'm thinking the same will be true for iOS.
Texas Instruments sold their computer systems division at the start of the 1990s. I've read that that sale did not include the Explorer copyrights.

At the start of 2011 I got in touch with Robby Holland, then the head of TI's patent licensing division. Holland could not find anything about the computer systems division, or anything about the sale, or whether they owned the rights anymore. They did not have any of the project materials on hand. Holland said he would have someone look into the archives. When I tried to get in touch with him a few months later Holland was no longer with Texas Instruments.
See my other comment. It was a thank you. I love how everyone zoomed into discussing introversion and completely missed the bulk of the comment which was around protecting the team and intrinsic motivation. Sigh HN.
Absent any evidence, I could argue that's an absurd position to take, based on a desire for something to be the exact opposite of the truth, just to fill a flawed political bent.
The Tug of War Between Responsive and Native Design/ – App Developer Magazine
Soon KDE software will soon be simple by default, powerful when needed
Exactly. Nailed it. See my other comments.
Is there shittytumblrblogs.tumblr.com yet?
Mike Bostock (the author of D3.js) is a NYT employee. His name is listed in the final credits for this piece, and a lot of other NYT content. I assume he is often called in to sprinkle some D3 magic onto a lot of their interactive articles.
No, this is really not true. It's so odd how tenacious these "facts" are when just putting them in context shows how they couldn't possibly be true (let alone actually trying them out).

Simple syrups have a ratio of sugar to water much higher than a coke, and if you try one directly, you'll find it just tasting sweet. Or just eat some sugar or a sugar cube, which has a totally insane concentration of sugar.

You certainly won't be in any danger of vomiting.
Having worked on Java ME(J2ME) since 2002, When Android first came out I thought Android is Java ME Fixed. One thing missing in your list is distribution. Lack of Single Java ME store made it practically impossible to distribute apps unless you are Google or some other big name company. Every Carrier had different Store with different rev share model, different certification process etc.

BTW Huge fan of your work since BEA Days.
We at day5labs.com are believers of physical kanban board as well so much that we've made product: http://bit.ly/1uPOtlE
That's why J2ME is appealing to me right now. The simplicity is something to die for in other environments.

Hopefully it's as simple as it appears.
It uses libuv which you can use to create sockets. http://nikhilm.github.io/uvbook/networking.html#tcp
AMD processors don't have VT-x, it's an Intel specific feature. AMD has their own equivalent, called AMD-V. You can have a look at one of their top CPUs if you're in doubt: http://www.amd.com/en-us/products/server/opteron/6000/6300

When they say Intel they mean Intel unfortunately.
Your package-sorting and medical-record facility examples strike me as pure gold. I wasn't sold at first, but you seem like a great team leader. As another person wrote, you seem to really understand the essence of effective leadership. This sounds like a really good approach.

One question: have you ever had subordinates/employees for whom your approach didn't work?
Today Calendar widget?
I know I could look it up, that's why I said they were rhetorical questions. The information is appreciated nonetheless.

I'm not saying I'm helpless to learn these things, just reinforcing GP's point that the average first-worlder (or at least programmer) doesn't know the first thing about this kind of stuff. Even when you do know the "first things" from Wikipedia, it's not necessarily going to enable you to just go out and make concrete from scratch in an afternoon on your first try.
I imagine they will so they can dominate the industry as a "standard" leveraging themselves above/against competitors. It would ensure they stay the lead in the emerging VR-industry.
This sounds like the old "Leave a penny in a glass of Coke for 12 hours and it starts to dissolve." saw. Apple juice will do the same.

Not that I'm a fan of Coke, I rarely drink it. Although it IS great for an upset stomach.
So it's no different than Android?! I was about to buy iPhone 6 :(
Lesson learned. Thank you.
I can see how that may be useful, if I'm using shared folders.
Actually, the main reason soft drinks like Coke contain so much sugar is to counteract the carbon dioxide.

Carbonation makes soft drinks taste a lot less sweet; compare a "flat" glass of a soft drink with a carbonated one and the effect will be obvious.

The phosphoric acid (or citric acid in some countries) is what (in addition to caffeine, which is bitter) gives Coke its sour "bite", but it doesn't really change the sweetness that much.
Most team "outings" are organized by influencer/extrovert types and they are downright cringeworthy. I believe in treating people like adults, not children on a field trip.
Or take them on a hike. You don't have to, shouldn't have to, talk on a hike. It is time together outside of work though. I've done strenuous hikes/scrambles with volunteers before, we grew much closer even though we didn't talk much.
Comcast tells us why we “need TV on our terms”
I agree this could be done with a vision system, but I think you're underestimating the challenge of it. You're proposing they build an experimental < 50ms vision based tracker which would need a high FPS camera and a special coupled processor with novel algorithms and PC drivers which were tuned to rapidly ingest that processed signal. Interfacing with a 6-axis sensor over bluetooth seems way more sane for a project of their scale.

I disagree with your second point. The slight fuzziness of kinect and the additional 50ms-80ms of lag is absolutely enough to ruin the game and thus it's not a good test of the other mechanics. To see why, watch this short and enlightening video on why most motion games are not fun: http://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/kinect-disconnect

If anything, they should have prototyped it with PS3 Move or Wii+
Coke only contains phosphoric acid, not citric acid. However, in some countries, Coke is indeed made with citric acid instead of phosphoric.

Coke changes ingredients around to fit local regulations. In Europe, Diet Coke uses acesulfame potassium ("ace-K"), aspartame and sodium cyclamate. Cyclamate's effect is to neutralize some of the bitterness of ace-K and aspartame, but it's banned in the US and some other countries in the 1950s due to research determining it to be harmful. The ban is being upheld despite later research showing that the original science was flawed.
I also agree with the caffeine thing. The reason I stay off it is not so much the immediate effect of caffeine on anxiety (I find none), but because caffeine increases mania. Ultimately mania (dealing with life frantically) causes the nervous system to respond poorly. And anxiety seems to be above all a disproportionate reaction of the sympathetic nervous system. There is also an effect on sleep regulation and a hard edge to withdrawal that can exacerbate anxiety. Incidentally, chocolate contains a related compound, but not caffeine itself. I've experimented with chocolate over what I would consider to be statistically significant periods of time, and I honestly couldn't detect any effect in moderation. Your mileage may vary.
Ah, I think you are right. Wikipedia says, "The law in most jurisdictions also allows the owner of a registered trademark to prevent unauthorized use of the mark in relation to products or services which are identical ... The test is always whether a consumer of the goods or services will be confused as to the identity of the source or origin." I'd say it's reasonable that people aren't going to be confused by the difference between a social media product (or whatever you'd call this) and a biometric device. Then again, both products have a connection to personal identity.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark#Registration
So far the emphasis has been on the wrong end --≥ final emissions.

Don't get me wrong, those have to stop. But all current treaties, carbon taxes and unilateral actions have focussed on emissions from trackable sources.

I think the only reliable way to stop emissions is to stop extraction at the source. So far, our global policy appears to be to extract every fossil fuel we can economically extract.

At the other end, debates go on about whether to tax this emission or ban that emission. But there will always be leaks.

Tax one type of emission, and fossil fuels will flow to other sources that aren't taxed. Markets are very good at this. Make it more expensive for a car to burn gasoline, the price of gas falls, and it becomes economical to use gas in some way that wasn't covered in the regulation.

Shut down the oil field and the refinery, and you have an effective solution. An effective solution we are making no efforts to pursue.

You'll know something has changed when the policy is no longer "extract all that can be extracted".
Hack the North – What's Trending at Canada's Largest Hackathon
Yep, it's great. Better than Coke — you make it fresh, after all, directly from oils. (I suspect Coca-Cola has found, over the years, ways to replace some of the oils with synthetic or otherwise acceptable substitutes.) In our office we used to have it on tap for a while, but the carbonation process is a bit fiddly. So now we have beer instead.
> He changed his mind only after Android shipped with a full SDK

There may have been an Android SDK before there was an iPhone SDK, but iPhone was the first whose apps actually ended up in the hands of the general public. Apple had their App Store up and open to developers and the public by July 2008. The first shipping Android phone was still three months away.
Hey, game author here! All the sprites are from an svg icon font and the rest is all just divs. My understanding is that the blurring has to do with how certain browsers handle 3d transforms by converting vector graphics into textures:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8024061/webkit-blurry-tex...

CSS transforms are awesome, but when you're doing crazy things with them things can get pretty buggy. Thanks for playing!
Rejected by Burger King, Welcomed by the World: Alibaba's Jack Ma
Yeah, college recruiting is great for teams that are built out already and can train the young devs. But not all teams are at that stage. The truth is that the resumes coming in are mixed. Some are very good. The trick is to sort through them.

I don't think there's any shame in looking for a job, if that's what you mean by "playing the recruiting game." It's just a market place, and in market places, buyers and sellers have to communicate.
Am I the only one who doesn't really consider iOS's widgets to be actual widgets? At least on Android I can "do" something with the widget. Example: GMail or email widget....I can read through my inbox; calendar...I can see my next events. The iOS widgets just create a shortcut for me to need to open the full app.
To be fair to Duolingo, if you enable daily goals then your remaining points for the day are shown. Not spectacularly useful perhaps, but not comically useless either.
> String is very much in the "leave data alone" mindset, baring its guts as a [Char]. Now you're stuck: you can't change its representation, you can't easily introduce Unicode, etc.

You're conflating the fact that Haskell had poor modularity when it was first conceived and String first defined, with the claim that only OO can provide the necessary modularity.

Clearly ML modules provide and always provided the necessary modularity to abstract over string representations, but there's no OO in most MLs. And now with support for ML modules as first class values, we don't need objects for modularity at any level of programming.
I backed CLANG and as far as I'm conceded they did fulfill the requirements. Am I disappointed it didn't result in something better, yes. However, I was prepared for that, I saw my money as funding research in how to make a sword based video game.
> Why pay $230k a year for a "scalability/reliability engineer", when I could pay exponentially less to Google or AWS and not have to worry about anything?

I think you're massively undervaluing the complexity of systems at scale. Let me give you a more concrete example. In Facebook and LinkedIn there is a feature that says "You may know this person". It's a small box in the upper right corner and looks like the smallest feature ever. But the underlying complexity of building such a feature is easily millions of dollars worth of man hours. Just that small feature has probably single-handedly grown those companies by > 1x factor. You don't get that simply by "throwing it at AWS".

I appreciate your enthusiasm for this topic, but I think the lens at which you see the startup world is being blurred by media and survivor bias. There is so much under the tip of the iceberg that 99% of the people here will never see.
I did a test one year where for a full 365 days, I completely removed all sodas from my diet and changed nothing else, kept my regular doses of exercise the same. Only drank water or tea/lemonade at meals. Easiest 15 pounds I ever lost
Starting a company is feeling alive on many levels I haven't before. Or at least not in a while.
Sony develops transparent lens eyewear “SmartEyeglass”
iFixit Did It Again with iPhone 6 Plus This Time – Video