skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Well, Microsoft only acted after they got a court order.

So, it seems to me that your "real" objection, if I may presume to say, is that the Courts are giving Microsoft a lot of say as to which entities on the internet are bad actors.

But do you really want FBI agents or other federal executive-branch employees to have that say instead? Isn't it better for decisions like that to be made by organizations with greater technical competency than the executive branch of the US government?

Of course, if Microsoft starts using these court orders to hobble their competitors, then that is bad, but no one is asserting that they have started doing that; are they?

Also, if other computer companies, e.g., Google and Apple, started doing what Microsoft is, the Courts would give their expertise approximately the same amount of deference that they currently give Microsoft -- or more precisely, I have seen no signs that that is not the case.

An analogy: would you not prefer for the laws and executive-branch policies related to software patents to be decided by computer companies and software professionals rather than elected officials, their legislative aids and lobbyists? (According to Eben Moglen, current US laws and policy around software patents are largely influenced by lobbyists for the pharmaceutical companies who feel the need to oppose any weakening of patent "rights" in any industry.)

More precisely: if individuals and organizations without deep technical knowledge were prohibited from influencing policy on software patents, would not that be an improvement over the current situation?
I'm currently conducting a survey on the effectiveness of code bootcamps. If you've recently attended one, please share your experiences at: http://www.codejobs.io/surveys/codebootcamp/student
[dotGo] Functional options for friendly APIs
Thank you. I think I see where you're coming from.

That article has some interesting phrasing which I think is causing confusion. (For me at least.) It looks like they're using 'normal' to mean 'average in the range' some of the time and 'mean population visual acuity' other times. Mostly they're using the former. So 'normal vision' or 'average eyesight' refers to the range of 20/20 eyesight and not 'mean eyesight'. That doesn't explain that second sentence, though, which seems to go back to 'mean human visual acuity'.

At the very least, they could stand to revise the writing in that sentence. If they did mean to imply that the average person has 20/20 vision, I think they're going to have to provide a source. I did slightly more digging and I couldn't find any journal publications that list less than 60% of adults as having corrected vision. Either the remaining 40 have strongly superhuman vision or the number is off. I think there is at least one blind person (legally worse than 20/200) for every person with super human (20/10, the physical limit for humans) vision.

A simple numerical test based on that last point seems to illustrate the unlikeliness of a 20/20 average. To state again, 20/10 is the physical limit for human vision. Any higher and it's not physically possible to pack more photoreceptors into the retina or focus the pupil tighter. Bad (legally blind) vision is in the realm of 20/200. The National Federation for the Blind[1] shows there are roughly 6,700,000 blind Americans of all age groups. We will assume that they're exactly at the legal bound for blindness and not worse. To find how many superhumans we need to make the average 20/20, I think we can use (6700000200 + x10)/2 < 20 We need x to be less then -133999996. So it's simply impossible for the average vision to be 20/20.

It's still possible that number is correct and that the average American has 20/20, but at this point the majority of the scientific publications and formal surveys do not support the idea. If you can find additional sources (I'm so sorry to keep asking), please let me know.

[1]https://nfb.org/blindness-statistics
I like his comparison of how the emergence of the auto industry was a way new wealth was created by entrepreneurs and old wealth was destroyed through bad investments. He says he sees a similarity in tech booms. There is a real value in the frothyness of tech bubbles. Capital can't accumulate forever. People need to be convinced to make bad investments. In that sense unsuccessful VCs serve a useful purpose.
I've had some long trips a couple times where I would have loved to pull out my nexus and do some web programming. The natural solution would be to get a Surface 3, but I've had a Nexus 10 for a while and really enjoyed it. Battery life lasts forever as well.
cmd+shift+3 or 4?
Interesting article, but I feel it misses the simple fact that any individual with an IQ of 1000 is likely to be "insane" by any modern measure of the world - they certainly wouldn't have a world-view that has much in common with their "fellow men". As it stands, many of those who have exceptionally high IQs or high "intelligence" struggle to exist in a world that isn't geared for them. These "hyper-intelligent" individuals, should they ever exist, would likely be stoned by their fellow men, or would choose to be the other variety of stoned rather than suffer the stupid of the world.
Did you read the readme?
Windows App Studio Beta adds 9 languages and Windows Phone 8.1 sideloading
> No one is saying (and the article certainly isn't) that you can just jump straight into a job after a few weeks studying an online course

Actually in my experience that's exactly what most of these code camps are saying to students before taking their money. I get empty resume's weekly with links to github accounts full of obvious Ruby on Rails classwork and no mention of the code-camp. All from students who don't even really know what our company does (because someone clearly gave them a spam-list of startups they're suddenly qualified for).

I'm a huge believer that our industry really needs a trade-education alternative to 4 year CS programs, but the problem folks who look like a code camp have is that as far as I can tell most code camps are failing to set or achieve the expectations of their students.

[FWIW the company you're working for might be totally different, and I don't mean it as an attack on you specifically, but since you wrote the article generically I find it fair to comment on how generically disappointed I am in what I've seen happening in the current teach-you-to-code ecosystem]

EDIT: Sorry, more to say.

I think quite frankly if you imagine a venn-diagram with two bubbles: People who want to write software for a living and people who have a natural or learned aptitude for logical abstraction. We want the people in the intersection. It's true that those people are incredibly hard to find, but it's also true that we'd usually rather get by doing less with fewer than hiring first-bubble-only folks.

The problem is that code-camps are out looking for people in the first bubble (Want to work in software cause it pays well? Sweet! Join us!!). That's the wrong idea. There are probably loads of people in the second bubble (folks who have a shot at being great developers) who don't even know they'd enjoy this career. Maybe there's a high intersection of architects or botanists or carpenters in that bubble... Maybe there are entire failing industries full of people who'd have a much better-than-average aptitude for software. No idea.

Regardless, in my mind that's where the best chance at success in converting people into this industry is. Unfortunately it's more profitable for code-camps to attract masses of people and letting the terrible conversion rate end up being someone else's problem.
> I believe from this post of yours that I have misunderstood the announcement,

I'm sorry to hear that, we will work to do better.

> and that windows apps will be able to be made into docker containers that can only run on windows docker engines.

This is correct. There's also a thread on how, to the user of docker who just wants to `docker run` something, the distinction doesn't really matter in the end
Hybrid UI Framework Shootout: Ionic vs. Famo.us vs. F7 vs. OnsenUI
I agree whole heartedly. The Ribbon action interface is goofy as hell.
I did not mean that literally. Of course there are differences between apes and us. It's not a lot thou and the distinction between the species is not so old either.
The phone must be placed face up (camera side down).
Interesting argument, but surely you don't think the world needs less investment? So if you're going to tax away money that would otherwise be invested in creating businesses and jobs, what do you think should be done with it instead? Or do you think the state is a more efficient investor of capital?

I do agree that wealth is a potent weapon, but that's why capitalism works best when markets, and politics are well regulated. The degree and form of regulation is a perennial problem, but it's an unavoidable one.
> "especially when their is such a huge shortage of skills"

This is the piece I take issue with - the reality is that if you're coming from a 0% background, and you go through a few of these courses, you may really only be at 5%. Even with a million people going through these courses, there is still a shortage of skills if there are a million new coders who are only at 5%.

Sure, there are going to be a few great standouts here and their, but I strongly suspect that is the exception rather than the rule - as an example, of my initial class of CS majors, only 10% of the original group graduated at the end of 4 years - because it's just really hard work.

> "No one is saying (and the article certainly isn't) that you can just jump straight into a job after a few weeks studying an online course, but what is true is that by studying online people can acquire skills via a course, then build up their experience over time, build a portfolio and then get a job."

Sure, in standout, exceptional cases. But back to the article - just the title alone - "Learn To Code, Get Hired" - don't you think that could give people just a tad bit of a wrong impression about how difficult it is to get hired?
What is this idea of rich people having money sitting in the bank "doing nothing". Do you suppose that these rich idiots have the money in a checking account?
Very sorry about that, should now be fixed and working.
No, you will not be able to deploy a Linux app onto a Windows container, or vice-versa.

Containers share a kernel, this would make it impossible.
However, with things like boot2docker (25MB Linux distro), this makes it really leight-weight/easy to deploy into a VM and run that way.
I hope this goes better than last time. The stream for the iPhone6 launch was a shambles which kept constantly going down, having Chinese audio over the top and buffering.
>That's one of the core ideologies UNDERLYING the great shift in wealth from poor to rich: that politics should have no say in wealth allocation.

Please provide evidence or reasoning to back up why you think this causes money to flow from the poor to the rich.
Ask HN: How to write a quote for web application?
Are there some model or best practices to follow?
Where can I find examples of quote estimations for the developing of web application/mobile apps?
The entire function of government is to impose moral judgments, otherwise we'd get along fine in anarchy. So you need a nuanced vire of which moral judgments are in scope of government.
If you're looking for a Heroku buildpack to install your dependencies and build your binary I'm not aware of one. But, that would be a useful idea. Even something that could be used for Cloud Foundry as well.

On a build machine you'd do a `glide install` to get the dependencies installed, set the gopath (there are a couple ways to do it), and then go build per usual.

From there you can deploy the binary as needed.
Ok, that's great to hear. From what I understand, we were one of your very first customers (CTIPath). I've only been here for 9 months or so though.
News sport: EXPLOSIVE TRAINING
I know this isn't exactly what you are saying, but just because someone learned to program later in life doesn't mean that they are only in it for the money or that they inherently aren't as competent.

There seems to be this attitude in tech that if you weren't coding in kindergarten then you haven't met the prerequisite for being truly "one of us" in the tech elite, so why bother trying?

But to address your main question, there are many roles that benefit from programming knowledge aside from the 'hard CS' ones you list. For example, in my previous job as a technical writer learning to program was helpful for a) documenting our APIs and writing sample code, b) creating web-based documentation and c) running scripts in Adobe InDesign to generate automated documentation.
It's true: http://venturebeat.com/2014/10/01/after-raising-50m-reddit-f...
Yeah, NSA really needs to inspect the woodgrain on your dresser.
You are simply skeptical for different reasons than I have.

As a software professional, I have been explicitly instructed to alter a program solely for the purpose of making the output more palatable for customers and investors, at the expense of real-world accuracy. And I did it, because as much as I dislike dishonesty, I also hate searching for new jobs and thoroughly enjoy sleeping under a roof and not starving.

Did the simulation that you wrote have a check for conservation of professional ethics?

You have a great advantage in that subatomic particles are unable to lie to you. Software developers have a capacity for deception exceeding even that of accountants, and we are sometimes asked to use it in unethical ways. One might think that there are reasonable limits, but we still have electronic voting machines that are mysteriously unauditable, and software trading agents programmed to automatically front-run institutional investors.

While the 97% figure was simply made up to mirror the ancestor post, it is possible that all those programs that are not accidentally wrong are intentionally wrong. In your case, you can rule out ill intent for the software you wrote yourself, but as there are potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in funding at stake for this fusion "discovery", I would not discount it for any simulation that suggests this device will work.
>I think some of Gates criticisms fall in the arm chair category of criticisms on this, honestly. (And to be fair, I know mine do.) I have no desire to silence any of them, and I am excited about seeing them debated. But, I am fairly skeptical about how good they are.

Mine as well, and neither of us have time to compile the data that Piketty has done. Appreciate your thoughtful criticisms.
I didn't even realize that it didn't have a wired hook up.
This is disappointing. I have a chromcast and it is laggy sometimes, and will simply just stop working. Hopefully the wireless card in the player is better than the chromcast.
Here is an article [1] trying to estimate that kind of numbers (wage, number of active workers, etc.) from various sources and questionning the ethics of using MTurk for science purposes.

The bottom line is: one third of tasks are achieved by people relying on MTurk (as primary or secondary money input) having working conditions that would not be considered acceptable in any first-world country (hourly wages around $2, working long hours with, obviously, no kind of worker advantage or protection).

[1] https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/file/index/docid/569450/fil...
And that's why developers hate recruiters.
IQs over about 115 are plainly maladaptive from an evolutionary standpoint. You get far sub replacement fertility, and this has been noted for ages.
Nice icon!
Does anyone else think that this portion of code needs revising?

The patch adds array_values() which basically just resets the array to a 0..n index instead of whatever alpha/numeric mix it might've been before.

This means an array with a particular key can cause injection. Doesn't that seem a bit of an obscure thing to have to protect? Do people who're new to the project know about that?

Does someone understand something I don't? Even looking at the patch only, from a conceptual perspective, how does the usage of that array and its keys even make sense in a context where a certain key can allow injection?
No, the thing you are missing is that corrective lenses are a thing that exists. We're really quite good at taking someone with 20/100 vision and turning that into 20/20 or better.
> I’m also a big believer in the estate tax

As a third-generation American, I find the estate tax, even in its current form, extremely offensive, because it strives to reset every generation to zero instead of letting families establish themselves over time by building on the sacrifice and efforts of the parents.

The current level of taxation, even though it's been recently, "graciously" increased, greatly extends the runway for families to achieve true financial independence. Currently, $5.3M and above estates fall under the 40% tax. That's far too small of an estate and far too large of a tax.

People will say, "wow five million dollars, that's a lot!" Not really. Three heirs take home a million each - pay off a house and student loan debt for their families - god forbid they don't have something like outstanding medical bills - and sock away a partial retirement fund with the rest. Not enough to quit working and start their own business, or invest in anything riskier than an index fund.

You might say that's not a bad deal. It's certainly better than nothing. But this, "oh, it's just a lottery" attitude is nonsense. If your parents started with nothing and are leaving you $5M, chances are you watched them bust their asses for forty years, and only got to see them a couple hours a day - at times, if at all. That doesn't sound like much of a lottery ticket to me.

To top it all off, it's a double tax. That money has already been taxed, as far as the family as a unit is concerned. And wiping the slates clean every generation greatly reduces the ability of a family to weather multi-decade economic cycles. I hate to have climbed on my soapbox, but a statement like that only makes sense if you consider the family a method of perpetuating a shared set of values over hundreds of years - and if you can't, I find that sad.
I would probably go with something esoteric or something I have been thinking for a while. For e.g. Erlang, Closure, Go, etc. Yes, it definitely possible to learn and implement the very basic end-to-end webapp in any of the above. You may also look at other frameworks which are presently in vogue like rails, cakephp, or angularjs.
> People worried about inequality aren't (just) worried about the morality of consumption -- a fat cat sitting atop a mountain of cash drinking champagne and eating caviar while the peasants starve.

I'd go the other way in fact, if you are interested in redistributing wealth, you should encourage rich people to blow money on labor-intensive consumables. Using legal or social pressure to keep the rich from buying luxuries seems counterproductive to me.
This looks interesting for a learning/classroom setting.

For comparison, check out http://try.jquery.com/ if you haven't seen the wonderful progress lately.

My current recipe for developing on mobile:
iPad/iPhone + "ServerAuditor" app + bluetooth keyboard + vi
Paying someone to do worthless work (lavishing luxury on someone) does not help society much. That's just gaming the numbers, like saying "going to war" helps the economy. Paying someone to alleviate basic needs does. Not all consumption is equal.
Thanks! Photoshop. :)
School's out: Getting started early in eSports
Very interesting points. To be honest I created this board out of similar frustrations (applying for a "remote" job ad only to find out that it meant within the USA only). I like your point about how job listing should work both ways - I think that SomewhereHQ comes close to doing this.

Also, good job on getting RemoteTechJobs.eu up and running. Another reason I built the job board (and built it quickly in 2 weeks) was to force myself to get something done and ship it on time. It's great to see other people doing the same.
A study of code abstraction
Currently, 436 people (Reps, Senators and President) control nearly 4 trillion dollars, the budget for this year.

What should we do about them?
If you are proficient in one mobile technology 12 hours should be enough to build a little app :P

My latest iOS app took me just 20 hours totally. (still waiting for Apple approval)
There are still people named Ford on the board of their company.

I don't know US history well enough to know who else other than Carnegie was in a position to retain wealth generated by technology 150 years ago.
See how you might like this definition: intelligence, including artificial intelligence (which just means intelligence resting on non-organic materials), means general and arbitrary analogical ability. I think this definition fits what people mean when they say "general mental ability", which I think is what people mean to measure when they use IQ.

I think this is a really good definition of intelligence for communicating what we want to talk about here. And personally I think it's fine to accept a useful definition, even if it is not perfect, and even if its proliferation means some people get unjustly damaged, insofar that the pragmatism of the construct is adequately useful. From there, you have a community tool that can undergo refinement or challenge.

It seems very plausible that we could raise whatever people are trying to invoke when people say words like "intelligence", IQ, g, or arbitrary analogical ability. I'm surprised you are extremely skeptical that we could desirably raise intelligence. Even a noisy and brutish eugenic pressure in the environment would push a population towards a direction, and I'm convinced that this will happen with or without explicit policy.
>, I didn't interpret his comment as attacking Shinkei.

I'm not saying he attacked Shinkei. couchand criticized the message and not the messenger which is certainly acceptable. I'm pointing out that he's criticizing a figure-of-speech by stating to us the legal literal definition of "punish". Because couchand didn't parse Shinkei's "punish-as-in-sentiment", he made the mistake of equivocation[1] and talks about punishement-as-in-prison-sentence-from-illegal-tax-evasion.

It's as if someone says "butterflies in my stomach" and a nitpicker adds a ST-MrSpock/ST:TNG-Data type of literal reply. Mr Spock asks, "Why do people use the term 'butterflies'? Caterpillars cannot incubate in the human stomach and metamorphose into a butterflies." Most observers would find that response annoying instead of being relevant to the conversation about nervousness.

Sure, there can be other motives such as helping someone conquer stage fright but hopefully you agree that correcting someone with formal biology definitions of "butterflies" does not achieve that objective at all.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equivocation
I'd also like to see a tile server that serves up (raw) elevation data rather than imagery. The tricky part is that elevation data has a sufficiently large dynamic range that you can't use most common image formats; but even with a custom tile format this would be useful for e.g. stereoscopic display.

I've been considering hosting one myself (based on USGS data), but only if it seems like there are other people who are interested in such a service.
This joke has been going around for a few years: http://jefferly.com/2013/01/04/street-grids-ny-vs-boston/
Show HN: HiveFlux, a real-time task tracking app
We just launched HiveFlux. It's a new web app for teams where you can see what everyone else in your company is working on that very second.

Would love to hear your thoughts.
This is exactly right. In '98-'00 people in this situation were actually getting hired, in droves. I'd venture to guess most of them lost their jobs a couple years later and fell out of software development altogether, though.