skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> None of us have absolute certainty about anything we have to make our best analysis of the facts before us. I analysed the facts heavily and believe that the God of the bible is more plausible than any other explanation of our existence.

I don't agree with this view at all, and I would like to see an example of one such fact that is best "explained" by positing a supernatural agent. Invoking supernatural to explain something is not really explaining anything, and even worse, to rule out any possibility of it ever being explained. Because anything supernatural must by definition be beyond the reach of a natural explanation. It must be beyond the reach of science and the well-established, tried and tested scientific method that has been responsible for the huge advances in knowledge we have enjoyed over the last 400 years or so. To say that something happened supernaturally is not just to say we don’t understand it, but to say we will never understand it so don’t even try.

Science takes exactly the opposite approach. Science thrives on its inability, so far, to explain everything, and uses that as the spur to go on asking questions, creating possible models and testing them, so that we make our way, inch by inch, closer to the truth. If something were to happen that went against our current understanding of reality, we would see that as a challenge to our present model, requiring us to abandon or at least change it. It is through such adjustments and subsequent testing that we approach closer and closer to what is true.

What would you think of a detective who, baffled by a murder, was too lazy even to try to work at the problem and instead wrote the mystery off as supernatural? The whole history of science shows us that things once thought to be the result of the supernatural, caused by gods (both happy and angry), demons, witches, spirits, curses and spells, actually do have natural explanations: explanations that we can understand and test and have confidence in. There is absolutely no reason to believe that those things for which science does not yet have natural explanations will turn out to be of supernatural origin, any more than volcanoes or earthquakes or diseases turn out to be caused by angry deities, as people once believed they were.

Put another way, show me one fact for which scientific explanation no matter how inadequate was once the best explanation but for which relgious/theological explanation is now better one.
Ex-Googler held for planning to join ISIS
As near as I can tell, the body feminist is continually attempting that kind of effort. Unfortunately, the result resembles a bar-brawl-cum-religious-congress more than it does an effective certification body.
Very cool!

>Another interesting feature: You can build apps for the IMUduino using HTML and JavaScript thanks to PhoneGap or Cordova and our sample app!

PhoneGap supports Arduino now?!? Or do you provide a cordova plugin that can communicate with the board via BLE? If so, what platforms do you support?
About 50% of people self-identify as female. Why are there only 26 female CEOs in the 500?
He never said he changed his opinion on same sex marriage even when he was directly asked. Given that it could have saved job, i think you can conclude he doesn't support same sex marriage.
The Joy of the Memorized Poem
"Read books. A lot of books." An invaluable piece of advice from a distinguished philosophy professor of mine.

As a freshmen I'd somehow found my way into his ancient philosophy course–a junior/senior elective typically reserved for PHL majors. While I was able to pass the course, I was always embarrassed by my paper submissions because they'd be returned to me dripping in red ink from his observations. This was a man that had his own translations of Plato's works published in textbooks, and he cared enough to take the time to point out my juvenile grammatical errors on 20 page papers! At the close of the course I wanted to "make amends" for my shortcomings by asking him how I could improve my writing ability. I anticipated he'd recommend some tome on grammar [that I'd never end up reading] but instead he simply said "Read books. A lot of books" and he left it at that.

I've no idea of the count of books I've read since taking his advice to heart, but it's made an enormous difference in the way I structure prose, the vocabulary I use, the tone & voice of my writing, and I could go on... I feel that if you read the works of authors you like on topics that you enjoy, you'll absorb much of what makes their works great. You'll find yourself improving without consciously trying to improve your mechanics–but you need to enjoy what you read for it to work!

And as a check on your own development? Throw in works like "A Clockwork Orange" or "Fight Club" from time to time. These works have intentional errors and nonsense thrown in by their authors to mess with their readers. If your head begins to hurt while reading them then, in terms of your own development of skills, you've done something right!
Where she works is definitely personal information. And I don't think you should post that sort of conjecture. At best, you're revealing something the author didn't want to be revealed and at worst you are fingering the wrong organization.
Maybe, there's also something to be said for being pragmatic. You may not like the way the world is right now, but you still have to live in it, you know?
Disagree. Twitter is immensely valuable for me to quickly communicate with people in my "community" (the Javascript tech world), as well as keep up on news in areas I'm interested in: the Javascript tech world & a few others.
I don't necessarily agree that Twitter users can't build communities. A friend of mine writes for a sports blog specific to an NFL team. His twitter account (and @replies) show that he is a part of a very strong community around the team. The tweets from these super-fans aren't just missives shouted into space, these people use Twitter almost solely as a response tool to each other. Their tweets look very much like something you'd see on IRC or a message board.
Freshcode.club
Isn't that a decision for the author? Clearly she decided differently.
So you don't get it and you think its lame. Why concern yourself with a group of people who couldn't seriously care less about you. They're having a much better time than you are, stewing in the corner.
For specific writing advice, I recommend the new book The Sense of Style[1] by Steven Pinker, which is about not just fussy rules of English but also about THINKING in a way that helps improve writing. I will have to practice with the ideas in that book for a long time.

I'd add Write Right! by Jan Venolia and Writing With Style by John Trimble.

The Sense of Style is wonderful but I worry especially that it might be too advanced for relative beginners, and the chapter about sentence diagramming / sentence grouping may be confusing.
I totally agree with this guy. At least, I mostly do. I'm not sure if I care if it goes away, but I've drastically cut back on my use of it mainly for the reasons he outlines. I think he's onto something.
I guess it depends what the threshold for "genius" is. Obviously Carmack and Gates are very bright people who've accomplished a lot, but let's be honest, they're not exactly at the level of DaVinci or Einstein, or even Feynman.

And I do think it's ego problem if somebody goes around defining themselves as a genius. One of the things I'm always struck by is the fact that many of the smartest people I know are incredibly humble. They're smart enough to realize all the things they don't know.
Nintendo wants to watch you sleep
I'm prepared to get negative points for this, but who really cares if he is gay or straight?
Current… where have you been all my life?
I am not a huge twitter fan. I watched the http://foundation.bz/ interview with Biz Stone, and he seems like he has integrity. I think some of the management of twitter is a bit dubious, but the core function of the application is rather valuable. It is a good way to keep track of people & events. It makes it easy to broadcast things like occupy, arabspring, ebola, charities, entrepreneurs, etc. It is a good way for people to collectively contribute ideas such as news. It isn't really meant to be a social network. What the author purports to be a bug, is actually like the key usecase/feature of twitter. I don't regularly use it, and am pretty ambivalent, but I understand the value.
Alright, so twitter is terrible because its 'broadcast' instead of 'communities', and you don't like 'broadcast' but you like 'communities', so twitter should go away.

a) "I hope Twitter genuinely ceases to be."
b) "I want a product that enables me to build and participate
in communities[...]."

Having a product that enables b) doesn't mean a) must happen. Why come to that conclusion. Because you don't like participating in it, it should cease to be?

I don't get how people come to conclusions like this. It feels very self absorbed to conclude a) from b). Maybe I'm just allergic to opinion pieces with hyperbolic titles.
Arbitrary file existence disclosure in Action Pack (CVE-2014-7818)
Mother • Sen.se
Google sells targeted ads, not usage data.
... But not BB, unless it runs in the Android emulation layer.
This. It took far too long for me to realize that noticing and questioning something that others have either not noticed or not questioned didn't make me any smarter or better than anyone else.

I think that a lot of younger, geeky types are always looking for or being told of reasons why they're better than their more socially-outgoing classmates. It's comforting to sit back and feel like you're winning because you see things that other people don't, but what really puts people ahead in the long run is being willing to confront the things which make them uncomfortable.
Or, IMO more clearly organized and presented information: http://examine.com/supplements/Salvia+sclarea/
Surround yourself with beautiful language. It will find its way into your lexicon and, more importantly, your thoughts.

Write for yourself frequently. Long form, poetry, small notes, one-liners, it doesn't matter—just write.

Eventually you won't feel like an impostor and the voice of your writing is your own. The people whose language you admire have practiced their writing and oration a lot. They started the same way.

Just write.
His blog comments were probably just like Twitter conversations: impossible to follow and appearing in an inconsistent order. Thus they had to go away. Also the jokes. Stop broadcasting jokes!
I'm at my first job out of college and it's like that here (taking off if you're sick = PTO)

Is that not the norm?
An interesting read. Of course, it criticises HN for actively penalising talk on social issues, which might well mean that this story itself will be penalised. And so the great cycle continues.
Completely disagree... what a selfish post.
Magic – Web Data Platform and Free Web Scraping Tool
1. Reimplement in go.
2. Put "go" in the article title.
3. MADNESS ON HACKERNEWS.
How about if you want a safe place you don't go to unsafe places? It's that simple. You can choose what you read.
Why don't you implement them? Come on!
Unfortunately, having this kind of function doesn't fix the real problem, which is those certain kinds of programmers who won't let a single machine cycle be wasted.

Here's just a completely random example from the Linux kernel: https://lkml.org/lkml/2014/8/19/194

> You are implying that such an overflow could arise in this code.
> This is false.
[...]
> bNumEndpoints is an unsigned 8-bit integer.

So instead of changing the code code to be obviously correct (wrt. multiplication overflow), we'll instead keep the old code whose correctness becomes clear only after the programmer has looked up the types of variables involved.

This mindset is exactly why vulnerabilities in C code are still common. It really needs to stop.
If you're a competent JS programmer you don't need source maps in this case. It's hard to tell from the examples, but it looks like generated JS is not particularly hard to read. Source maps are a must for things like FunScript, js_of_ocaml, Whalesong; they are not very useful in langs like Coffee.

Personally I dislike usage of source maps for Coffee. I want to know what code is being generated. It's good for your health to know this. Most serious C programmers know at least the basics of what asm their compiler generates from which C construct. They can read it (compiled asm) too. I see no reason why this shouldn't be true for Coffee and JS, where it's much, much easier to do anyway.

EDIT: also, as noted by my sibling, it's open source and on Github. You can just go and implement source maps support, I think your pull request would be quickly merged...
There is indeed some evidence that very short naps improve memory consolidation, cognitive performance, and mood: http://paleoclaims.com/claims/short-naps-improve-cognitive-p...
and I am still trying to figure the importance of this fact. We are not under a quota are? Or is that yet? Really, whats with the identity politics?

The only reason to put forward such effort to make it important is because the practice of identity politics is too moot any opposition by branding it all within the identity of the being criticized. Hence someone cannot complain about a policy of the current President because the only reason they do so is racism. Hence if you do not support the position of someone who happens to be gay well you are now a homophobe.

Lists solve nothing and reveal little.
Those macros look unhygienic, unfortunately.
I agree with virtually everything you've said, except for the part about limiting consumption. Limit consumption on certain channels (Facebook, Buzzfeed, etc.). Increase consumption on other channels (books, deeply analytical blogs, good magazines, and even fiction). And every so often, lose yourself on Wikipedia for a few hours. Jump down some hyperlinked rabbit holes there. Soak up random knowledge, purely for the sake of intellectual curiosity. Start on The Industrial Revolution and wind up, three or five clicks later, on the use of tunnel irrigation in ancient Mesopotamia.

The best way to become a better writer, a better thinker, or a more informed commenter, is to become a curious and habitual reader. Some of the best topical insights I've ever had have come from seeing analogs in wildly different domains. Some of the best writing techniques I've developed have come from reading wildly different writing styles. Almost none of this has been directed toward a specific outcome or contextual purpose. I read because I like to read. What I read may or may not prove useful later on. But it's almost always later on.
I suspect a) is more a response to his perception that Twitter is unique in the large amount of harassment it hosts.
In fact, it was: https://twitter.com/mjg59/status/527890332206510080
When big startup launches a direct competitor your new product
It looks like Pocket
Really cool! I'd like to see a landing screen with a brief explanation.
I don't want to speak for the author, but an argument could be made that a product that:

1) Is massively popular; and

2) Has design flaws that actively sabotage conversation

... could lead to a situation where "B would be better if A went away," due to network effects. No matter how good an alternative B you build, people will keep on suffering with A despite its limitations, because that's where all the other people are. The existence of A sucks away oxygen that B needs to grow.
Right, because there are no rednecks in the rest of the world, just an atmosphere of openness and a complete lack of xenophobia.

The reality is, tribalism and convenient categorization is everywhere, and the United States is not immune. Just because there might be a legal system in place to address discrimination in its various forms does not mean you won't run into close-minded, hateful individuals as you walk down the street. As Bruce Hornsby sang years ago, "Because the law don't change another's mind
When all it sees at the hiring time
Is the line on the color bar"
> It doesn't seem like there's been much work to alter the language or tools to make it easier for programmers to reason about other sources of unpredictability, so why so much emphasis on SIMD?

But there certainly have been such efforts! Standards bodies have added features like Typed Arrays, Math.fround, etc., and work is ongoing on Classes, Typed Objects, and Modules. All of those things make performance more predictable.

There are also better devtools all the time, which help you understand performance issues better.

And there is also asm.js which aims to make a certain type of JavaScript extremely predictable.

A final point - the unpredictability you mention is exactly why a SIMD API is needed. JavaScript is more unpredictable than C and C#, but even those have added SIMD APIs, because even in their predictable worlds, autovectorization wasn't good enough.
RFC 5321 – Simple Mail Transfer Protocol
Alchemist.el 0.3.0 Release – Elixir Tooling Integration into Emacs
Opauth – Multi-provider authentication framework for PHP
bye bye angular. need new framework due to 2.0
if I have to rewrite then I might as well look at others.
I want a device with the band form factor that actually has real phone calling and receiving functions. There is at least one smart band or smart watch out there that does that. This doesn't.

The smart watches out there are big and flashy, like most watches for men. I am a heterosexual male, but I find the large watch faces to be immodest. I certainly do want to show off with a watch, but in a more subtle way. And I am not a really big person so the large watch faces don't fit my anatomy that well.

So I actually want my smart watch to look like a smart band and act like a real smart phone (to the degree that is possible).
> I mean, how many more reddit posts about the "evil" Federal Reserve or how terrible of a person Thomas Edison was do we need?

Is that rebellion or groupthink? Either way, yes, most of it probably is useless.

But what about the rebelliousness that brought about the hyperlink, the mouse, and the iPhone? Surely those inventions were rooted in questions that sought rebellion against established ways of doing things?

There's a time to rebel and a time to conform. Rebellion without conformity leads to thinkers who have great ideas but no output. Conformity without rebellion leads to complacency and no progress.

As with everything else, one needs balance.
>He claims to want to encourage conversations

He certainly does not want to encourage conversation.

>Twitter has absolutely no way for me to share with others that someone isn't a person I want in my communities;

It seems that what this person wants is that everyone he talks to think like he does. That's not a community, that's an echo chamber with no disagreeing, no joking, no comments.

It's okay if he doesn't like Twitter and doesn't want to use it, but wishing for it to go away makes me uncomfortable. Why should he care if others use Twitter ?
I, for one, am happy with Twitter being alive even though I don't use it.
It is absolute insanity to run your own email unless you have a sysadmin team.
I also like the following quotation of N. Bohr, appearing in an Amazon book review[1] of Dr. Simonton's[2] "Creativity in Science: Chance, Logic, Genius, and Zeitgeist":

"We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question which divides us is whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of being correct. My own feeling is that it is not crazy enough."

[1] http://www.amazon.com/review/RV4Y43WKRK6LO

[2] Dr. Simonton is the UC Davis professor who authored the article.
Please don't respond to me with disrespectful and disruptive snark. Nobody was fired. Nobody went to jail. There was no "stifled discourse". If you'd like to elaborate specifically, then please do.
Man, this dude's crotchety. "Stop liking things I don't like!"
For the coder who looks at XML and says "This isn't quite difficult enough to work with already. There must be another way!"
This entire response essentially says that you disagree with his position on the issue. I also disagree with his position on the issue.

But here's where we differ. I believe in his right to express his opinion without fear of losing his ability to make a living. You, and the rest of the liberal lynch mob that forced him out, are doing nothing more than suppressing his rights. And thus begins the end of democracy.
Except it's not an undisputed fact.
Geoff Hinton's Dark Knowledge
Whether third parties see information about your online behaviour or not. Is that not clear?
It looks like a Flat UI version of the chrome web store to me.
When you actually count the full tax load on American employees (federal, state, and local income taxes; property taxes; sales taxes; medical insurance; disability insurance; and retirement savings), we really aren't a low-tax country. In fact, we do not actually compare favorably to most of Europe when you consider the all-in price of life.

What we really pay for is $1T+/year on our military for bombing brown people and maintaining oil supplies.
> Losing an income is kinda a big issue when you still have to pay cash for the medical insurance. ACA just fixed one issue.

ACA also expanded Medicaid eligibility [1] and includes income-based subsidies for insurance, so it addresses (to a certain extent) the having to pay cash for the insurance.

[1] Though several states successfully sued to create an opt-out for the expansion and have opted out, so in those states, the expansion doesn't exist.
I would agree with this. The only way to become proficient in something is to do it. I've been typing into rectangular <textarea>s since 2002—plenty of time to grow comfortable with the vagaries of textual communication.

How do you become better at communicating your internal ideas externally... without the aid of non-verbal communication? By doing it! Jump into discussions, type, type, type. Read what others are writing, see which communicators you find powerful, observe which ones fall flat in their attempts. Try to imitate the more power communicators. Are they using a certain style of writing that you could leverage?

Learning more certainly helps—"oh, that's an em-dash? What's its function? How can I use it to more accurately translate my thoughts into sentences others read?" Then lock-in that new knowledge nugget by practicing. Work it into your next post/comment/message to a friend.

My key takeaway would be: Just do it. Write like a fiend!
Matasano crypto challenge set 7
DHH Soundboard
I knew because of all of the gay people who participated in a particular active social scene. It was common knowledge in that gay community, and had been since he took over at apple.

I never really questioned it, because... because it was common knowledge. No one ever mentioned that he wasn't out, so I wrongly assumed he was fully out until I heard about that newscaster who messed up.

I figured (wrongly) that the reason it was never mentioned publicly was because no one thought it was comment-worthy. I naively thought "oh good, look how far we've come".
Actually, I believe Hacker News stories are penalty words too. (discourages meta discussion which can be toxic)
Brendan Eich was not fired.
I suspect Mr Gaynor is tapping into a simmering feeling that many have that Twitter is inadequate for most communication needs (at least among technical crowds), and that there are now many, many more interesting alternatives now. He clearly cares a lot about his #Brand and being the among first person to say how uncool Twitter or FB or MySpace is becoming might very well boost his Klout score.

I agree that Twitter is inadequate for serious communications and is the last place I go to read deeply on anything, but that doesn't mean it's not immensely useful and fun to many others outside my communities. I don't usually find myself hoping that things I don't use "cease to be". I think Gaynor must just be addressing his own social circles here and speaking hyperbolically.