skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Some long term plans are crazier than others. I would like to have a machine that runs nock directly on the bare metal, but that doesn't mean it fits into the current architecture.

So far to my knowledge everyone running Urbit is doing so on a Unix system of one flavor or another. The point of "they call us, we don't call them" is not that Urbit never calls into Unix, it's that the set of reasons to reach out to Unix for one of the existing OS facilities is limited, restricted from the list growing any longer than absolutely necessary.

If your persisting disk filesystem evaporates from under you in the middle of operation, maybe Urbit can be prepared to deal with this, but as long as you have it there, might as well use it to allow the user to muck around with your internal representations in a way that is already familiar.

One of the problems Urbit doesn't currently seek to tackle is "a new text editor." Surely this is for the best, not because "a new text editor" is not an interesting problem, but for reasons that I think are already obvious to you.
"of whom perhaps 98% were guys"

In my extensive non-coastal observation of ops centers, mostly at very large companies, the male-female ratio in ops is much more "normal" than the dev group ratio (which is often all male). Then again I've never worked with anyone who would go to a ops-conference (what do you guys talk about?). This may result in some audience bias, if the audience at a con is entirely mid/upper mgmt (probably all male), or marketing people and startup founders trying to sell stuff to ops mgmt. She might be seeing a mgmt glass ceiling and thinking it has something to do with ops at the bottom of the pyramid.

I have observed that the more competently run the ops dept (procedures, decent mgmt, staffing by butts on seats 24x7 instead of on call) the more likely you'll see women working there. I worked at a huge telco that had an all female fiber ops center during 3rd shift some part of the week, for example. Its not too far fetched that a good indication you have professional adults running a place instead of kids, is having female ops team members. Counting them is probably not the dumbest possible metric for a quick eval of a company.
It's kind of a bizarro reddit. I agree. Maybe ill hack up a different design on my commute. Thanks for the feedback!
As a coder of "various ability and background", I found that Hoon source code was a relaxing joy to read and write after a few weeks of dedicated study.

It is, believe it not, designed with readability as a first-class priority. However, a common meme in language design today is that "Code should read like prose." This sounds good, because it means languages are easy to learn. Who wants to learn a bunch of symbols and patterns and junk? I want to code (Python, JavaScript, etc.) now!

But when we program, we aren't dealing with the trivial knowledge English is efficient at exchanging in an email, or the subtly it portrays in a novel. We are talking to a computer. The ideas we explain to a computer are often much more complex than we can explain precisely with English in any reasonable amount of time, so complex we often lose ourselves in them.

Mathematicians and physicists gave up on making human language explain specific technical ideas long ago. Have you ever read a paper on cosmic topology or quantum field theory? There's a comforting padded bumper of English framing the ideas, but the reason the paper is published is in symbols which would appear to the uninitiated as "hundreds of lines of noise." The English is usually just an introduction.

I think Hoon is wonderful [1] because it has both power and predictability. Power lets you express complex ideas concisely and easily, while predictability lets you read and understand someone else's code without frustration. Perl is powerful because it's dense, but it does so at the cost of predictably. Mathematics symbols are terribly powerful, but wildly unpredictable [2]. Python is sort of powerful and sort of predictable. The seductiveness of English simulacra programming languages is that you often don't realize how much power you're giving up because it's just so relaxing to not think about symbols and patterns when your code has the predictability of an email.

Hoon's power is in the zoology of runes (Digraphs) and it's predictability is rooted in its homoiconicity. Every symbol on the keyboard is utilized to build powerful runes, each of which in turn is utilized to append predictable structure onto your AST. When you understand the basic patterns of these constructions and reductions, it's not hard to read someone else's library and understand it in an afternoon. I can't say the same for the Java SDKs I come across. [3]

I'm not saying it isn't inaccessible at first and doesn't take time to learn. I am saying it is worth it.

[1] It's my favorite language - It is just plain fun.

[2] That's why the English frame around a physics paper is there - It tells you what each symbol represents in this paper and what they're trying to do.

[3] The language design also includes several decisions to avoid the pratfalls of other homoiconic languages (Primarily the readability of Lisp), but those are explained in the docs.
Not OP, but the latter. The author talks both about data models (relational, document, graph-based, with some nice historical tidbits about IMS and CODASYL) and storage models (from B-trees to SSTables, passing through bitmap encoding and everything else).

It is an amazing book so far, and I'm pretty excited for the rest of it to be written. It's the best text I've read so far on databases that gives all the references you need if you want to go deeper, but still allows you to get a very good higher-level understanding without it.
I've removed fb auth.

check it out now, just enter your email and you should be good to go. I guess i wouldnt be worried about sessions at this stage.

thanks for reporting that & taking time with the screenshot.

~B
Is there a legal obligation for warzone journalists to disclose such information if they have it? That would seem like a very dangerous provision - for one, it would provide a strong incentive for the opposite party in an armed conflict to actively target them/prevent them from doing their job.

Even if there is, I don't see how the circumstance that no charges were filed and apparently the authorities instead chose to take the route of (retaliatory?) extralegal harassment is compatible with the rule of law.
Managing Product vs. Managing Engineering
There really should be a way to selectively expose anonymized activity data. Is there really a business case for guarding data about your devs?
Service Disabled Veteran Owned Small Business Website Hacked by AnonGhost
Voar
Url changed from http://arstechnica.com/security/2014/11/wtf-russias-domestic..., which points to this.
I've been using a tiling window manager for some while now, and this was definitely a pain point for some while. Subjectively, it has recently got better, though I don't know whether it will be better enough for your needs.

FWIW, I use ratpoison on Ubuntu on my laptop, and used ratpoison on Debian on my work desktop at my last position.
You can't escape the tyranny of the rocket equation. If you need external fuel tanks to launch from the Earth, then you need more external fuel tanks to escape the other planet as well, which in turn requires you to use even more fuel to get to the Earth orbit in the first place...
I guess as a founder without a significant amount of money to invest it's hard to stay in almost any foreign country.
At least the Blue Card makes it at easy as possible for people, who got employed there.
I thought of the "zombies" argument too. But I don't find it satisfying, because why would such zombies exist? It would go against Occam's razor. (Occam's razor does not offer a logical proof, but still has proven useful as a guidance).

No, indeed. I came up with the "experiential" qualifier, because the term "consciousness" is highly overloaded indeed, and I do not know the generally accepted phrase.
The magic shuttle craft sort of moved the movie into space opera territory for me as well. I couldn't stop thinking about how advanced the shuttles must be as that one waterlogged landing craft took off from a 1.3G world orbiting a massive black hole and entered orbit without breaking a sweat.

Unfortunately, realistic Apollo LM ascent stage-style SSTO (as opposed to easy magical SSTO) doesn't seem to be compatible with landing on and exploring the sorts of uninhabited planets which would be of interest for human colonization.
Ask HN: Meaningful discussions, how?
I'm wondering how do you think a discussion system would look that:

- Helps people understand others with other points of view

- Solves problems in society, removes unfairnesses

- Helps you make better decisions and build a better world

- Saves time

I'd like to build that discussion system :-) Actually I've already started but I'm not sure if I'm doing the right things.

For example: What features would it have that aren't already present in other discussion systems? In ten years, what things/features would we then take as obvious, that are missing today?
Some thoughts on how different companies approach 'software development' (as engineering management challenge vs as a product management challenge).

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. "Product" taking a backseat is a huge challenge as companies grow, any insight into how you pulled it off in your companies?
I'm not the OP but I'll try to bolster its HN relevance - it mentions programmers. :-)

At 3:44
"A just machine to make big decisions.
Programmed by fellows with compassion and vision."
This is the IRC channel used by the Debian Technical Committee for meetings. The mappings between IRC nicks and names appear near the top of the log. In particular, "Diziet" is Ian Jackson, who has been the primary instigator of most recent technical committee actions lately, most notably the ongoing init system debacle. (As well as the initiator of the current project-wide General Resolution.)

See the top of https://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2014/10/msg00431.html for what prompted this. The comments in that mail came up in a more recent thread, in which someone suggested to assume good faith (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Assume_good_faith). In response (https://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2014/11/msg00111.html), someone provided this link, saying "I have a hard time assuming good faith from people who are at war."

In particular, see 17:34:28, 17:34:32, 17:35:34, and 17:37:17 for "highlights". Direct link: http://meetbot.debian.net/debian-ctte/2014/debian-ctte.2014-... . (In hindsight, I should have linked to that anchor specifically.)
Speaking as a physician, I can tell you that EMRs range from "mostly not awful" to "warcrime."
I've been wanting to put together a notification daemon that lets me batch notifications based on priority (and also review a history of recent notifications).
I'm reminded of (but don't really agree with) "The Awful German Language by Mark Twain". [EN] http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/awfgrmlg.html [DE link] http://usa.usembassy.de/classroom/Mark%20Twain/Mark%20Twain%...
It's that part at the end there - "write it in AMD format, so that you could load it via require.js" - it just isn't straightforward. Why can I not just use it as is?

I know I'm being a bit silly silly here but it seems awfully difficult to get started. Too difficult if you ask me. Am I missing something fundamental?

I can certainly get there in the end but there are a lot of configuration tasks to get there.
Sixth rule: suggesting bespoke one-off installations of "just this one library" in production results in the "burning lye" scene.

And the on topic first rule, if you've ever read the book, is the first rule of devops guys is don't talk about devops "guys" in the presence of someone of the female persuasion.
Cache:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%...
What is Amazon doing? You wrote a long sensible post, and then threw in an unexplained dig against Amazon.
The keyboard HID drivers are not.

The terminal (dill), HTTP server (eyre), socket UDP layer (ames), and shell (batz) are really expressed using the language in the spec. The filesystem (clay) has a reflection in your unix filesystem, but it's also really clay. In a very real way, even if they are not fully expressed by the Nock spec, they are built using the primitives that are entirely laid out there in Nock 5K. Hoon compiles to nock.

I feel like I'm trying to argue against "no true scotsman" but I don't know how else I'm going to convince you that the code "is really from mars," which seems to be what I want to tell you whether or not it's what you're really asking here.
Not that the WaPo article links directly to a September 2000 article about Amazon doing a random (not demographic) price test, while claiming it happened in 2010. Does WaPo believe in time travel, or just cheap smears against Amazon?
They always complain about lack of optimistic outlook on the future, so I gave it a shot.

Spandex suits for everyone!
Or maybe simplify:

"You do not talk about DevOps guys"?
Enjoying Haskell, I've been tempted to switch to XMonad. I tried once, spent about an hour trying to configure it how I thought I'd want it, realized I was recreating my experience on ratpoison, and shelved it until I found something I wanted that was a pain to create in ratpoison. I expect that will happen eventually, but it hasn't yet.
I'm thinking many comments from girls might actually be from men. What if you made it possible for people to verify their gender via Facebook login, and displayed a 'verified gender' icon next to their comments? Possibly even required this for someone to be allowed to post a comment.

How are you going to make money? Ads, if I may guess?

Edit Being a software dev, I noticed you're not using HTTPS, that makes the site feel a bit less anonymous to me. (I suppose most people won't notice though.)
Yes, I was hoping to use that app- I can see that in the US webstore, but nothing comes up searching for it on my UK phone.

Maybe they're half-way in transitioning from Skobbler to Scout, and they've removed the former without adding the latter. But I'm pretty certain it's been like this for weeks if not months, because I've looked unsuccessfully before.
In my opinion, it really depends on the subject matter at hand. StackOverflow only works because it removes discussion and forces people to write questions with single, factual answers. [1]

What subject matter do you wish to approach?

[1]: http://blog.codinghorror.com/civilized-discourse-constructio... (Find "At Stack Exchange,")
Don't buy one of these unless you manage to speak to somebody at the company first:

http://lists.simtec.co.uk/pipermail/entropykey-users/2013-Ju...

That's the last thing on their mailing list and was posted over a year ago.

I was lucky enough to buy one about 3 years ago back when they were actually fulfilling orders.
Interesting, it certainly gives an explanation to the not very clear "Why do we need this equation to get people off the planet" question, but then why build the ship as a cylinder (which by design takes advantage of centrifugal force) if they're going to use localized gravity to keep things on the ground? I assumed they had taken advantage of gravity manipulation to save on immense fuel costs of getting the giant payload out of Earth's gravity well, and used centrifugal force while en route.
Postgres, and MSSQL if you can afford it, are the Swiss Army Knives of database systems. And I mean that in a good way.
Brilliant article; I've caught myself making the same mistake many times even though I try hard to avoid it. I do think that saying "hey guys" (or similar) is the gateway drug - I find myself making the mistake much less often when I consciously attempt to erase all gender-associated terms. You can say "Hey people" or "Hey team", and get the same effect.
Physicists have been trying, and their attempts have basically failed. One example: http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1799

I don't agree with your claim that a theory of consciousness is fundamental to any theory of physics. In mathematics we have to deal with the possibility that the theorems we're trying to prove are "independent" of the system of proofs we're working in (such statements are known to exist and are neither provable nor disprovable, for example, the existence of certain numbers). As a consequence, any physicist working in a mathematical framework must consider the possibility that a theory of consciousness is independent of any theory of physics consistent with what we observe. In other words, it may be the case that physics, just like mathematics, cannot be both complete and consistent.
Probably some of this is down to certain jobs requiring a lot more time than others. Some jobs may only require 15-20 hours week, but others like mine (building and maintaining a database for an organization), will never run out of work. If someone else were getting paid the same as me for half the amount of work, I would be asking for more pay. If they sit there bored for 20 hours, then I at least don't feel as short changed.
The spirit of your statement is true, but the precise formulation is incorrect. In LISPs, when you pass a function, you pass a list that defines the function. There is no special "turn into AST" step. Executable code is data, and you can create genuinely new executable code out of this data. There's no special "turn code into data" or "find the data corresponding to this code" step. Code just is data.
Who said anything about mandating?

I know I periodically drop

0.0.0.0 news.ycombinator.com
0.0.0.0 reddit.com

in my /etc/hosts file.

I also added a "don't let me switch from this window until I ask to be able to switch from this window" setting in my WM.

It doesn't have to be imposed externally to be helpful.
Automata: Like the Game of Life, but with violence
Note: if you want the mobi/kindle/epub format you can go to: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2680
Might be a variation on https://twitter.com/patio11/status/470805921656893440 although it certainly isn't uniquely my insight.
"if you do what you love, AND What you do is valued by others who give you a decent pay you can live with, then..."
Snowden applied for political asylum in Germany. However, the law says you must be within Germany to do that and Snowden considered that too dangerous. The government can make exceptions to that rule but apparently they considered it too dangerous with respect to the USA relations.
I've always seen MBAs as filling positions that make it possible to grow your organization. A sort of organizational glue. My perspective is by the nature of their roles they aren't meant to play a pivotal role.

So perhaps for the time being fewer MBAs means less growth in the sector. However, I envision a future where the positions MBAs fill will be some of the first ones automated. My perspective is that MBAs are a dying breed, and over time it will only become more evident.
Agreed. I've read a couple and this is my favorite translation.
My impression is that she was upset about her own phone, but not too much about the rest.

Also, as I recall, rumor is that behind the scenes, the German government was already clued in on much of what was going on.

And... various aspects of the German governments (Federal as well as the states, etc.) continue to be pretty aggressive about pushing spyware and otherwise insisting a unilateral "right" to do whatever they damn well please.

However, they are part of the EU. And border control is thereby not so easy to just zip up. Nor, perhaps, would the population stand for something so overt, as opposed to covert.
"Guy" and "dude" are definitely gender-nonspecific these days, and I don't mean just in tech. When those tapes of Tiger Woods were leaked, he called his mistresses "dude". Language has evolved.
The interesting thing about doing spreadsheets or writing code is that, at their fundamental level, they are very similar.
Also - On the negative side, de-compression may be costly on the client. That would be really interesting to see measured as well.
One of the reasons biometric passports spreaded so fast, was because the US required all foreign passport issued after 2006 to be biometric as specified by the International Civil Aviation Organization.

Within the EU (or Schengen Area to be precise) you don't need a passport to travel. An ID which is not biometric in most countries is sufficent.
I'm not sure on the legality since it happened in a war zone. Over here in a non-war zone, I certainly can be held liable for criminal negligence if I've received credible evidence that someone is going to attacked and I do nothing to report it to the authorities. She was hanging around some questionably dangerous folks, so I'm sure if she did know she could have made an argument that the circumstances prevented her from notifying the troops without putting her own life at risk. And, of course, she might not have known about it to begin with and was just randomly filming.

On the other hand, telling the investigators that she wasn't the person filming at the scene of the attack and then later recanting it is certainly enough to raise some eyebrows. Certainly not enough to convict someone of a crime, though, which is likely the reason why she was repeatedly searched and questioned but never arrested or indicted. She might call it harassment, but the authorities call it investigation.
Hmm. But there does exist programmers who you could found a company built around that person. But it would be fair to argue that they are a thinker,
And what do all of those have in common? Strong unions, or legally-sanctioned licensing boards.
We ran a Kickstarter campaign last year and we specifically wanted the All or Nothing model because our campaign made promises - and we only wanted to be held to those promises if we had a certain level of interest.
In ratpoison, I have found the following useful for my work flow (terminal window per context with screen inside) - it probably wouldn't be for everyone:

alias lock definekey top C-f readkey locked
alias unlock definekey top C-f readkey root
bind grave lock
newkmap locked
definekey locked f meta
definekey locked a time
definekey locked grave unlock
definekey locked backslash readkey music
Consciousness is more likely to be an emergent property than a fundamental component of a theory of everything. It is a property of systems of neurons; physical theories operate at a much lower level.
This looks pretty cool as a super easy to configure CI! I'm sure big projects will stick to Travis, but if you haven't got your linter set up yet this looks ideal.

I wonder how hard it would be for the bot to autofix stuff too? Perhaps it could serve a git remote and allow you to pull all the fixes in one go?
It would affect anything that implemented another API. Oracle could sue IBM and Postgresql for implementing Oracle SQLisms in their products. IBM could sue Oracle for appropriating SQL. WINE would exist by the grace of Microsoft. AT&T would have won their lawsuit against Berkely.
I hate databases. People tend to have way too much faith in them (or their surrounding marketing), and thus make poor database choices that don't actually fit the shape of their data. Persistence is fundamentally the programmer's responsibility; a magic box behind a socket can't design it for you.

Most applications I've seen wouldn't even need a database, but apparently a lot of programmers are conditioned into believing that writing anything to disk must involve building a database query string and transmitting it over a socket to another process which parses the string, executes it on an interpreter and stuffs the extracted data into a generic 1970s data model that finally gets written to disk in an opaque format from where it can only be retrieved by sending more strings over sockets. This stuff made sense when 1MB was a huge amount of memory, but today it's just not necessary.