skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> Decimal can lose accuracy as you move around systems

Could you please provide an example? Given that Decimals are simplistically represented as a tuple (sign, digits, exponent), I don't see how it's less accurate than an int.
For this, you don't need to ask yourself how you solve problems with code, you need to ask yourself how you can solve problems with products.

Coding is not the hard part, it is rather a means to an end. Figuring out for whom you are solving that particular problem and how your product will actually solve that problem is the hard part.

For every problem that there is to be solved, there are 1,000 ways to execute the product that is supposed to solve that problem. However, only 4 or 5 out of these 1,000 ways actually do solve the problem that the product is intented to solve.

So, now you need to

1. Find a problem that is worth solving and that interests you

2. Find out if this is actually a problem. The more people have the problem, the better

3. Figure out how to build a product that is built in such a way that is solves that problem that you are intending to solve

All in all, as you are just starting out, you should probably start writing little scripts that solve your own problem. However, your questions is basically how do I build products that people want to use or how do I start a startup. I would recommend you to start with this essay. http://www.paulgraham.com/start.html.
I absolutely agree with this. Having end clutters up the screen.

Many people dislike python whitespace though but I think brackets are still better than end.
There is evidence that this is fake, so, pending stronger evidence that it isn't, we're killing this post.
How is this not called Railblazer?
"SF Developers are by most definitions filthy rich."

So you're implying that it's unfair for a highly skilled SF developer making 2-3x the median wage across all professions (having dedicated years to decades of their life to attain that level of skill) to make that money in the first place?

Besides the $100-150K such a developer makes is less than half what the bottom of the 1% makes in 2014: $390K, source: http://money.cnn.com/2014/04/04/pf/taxes/top-1-taxes/. You're talking something closer to the top 3-5% here, source: http://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2014/09/what-is-yo...

And even then, most of the people I know who make that kind of money worked their butts off and sacrificed a lot to get to that income level. To be fair, I know some idle trustafarians too, but they are a tiny minority of the group it seems like you're demonizing for their hard work.

My unsolicited advice to people who can't afford to live in SF is DON'T LIVE IN SF! For what it's worth, I don't and for exactly that reason. That and my definition of filthy rich is a lot stricter: the top 0.1% and their $1M+ a year income.
Tourism might work, the area is plenty beautiful. Of course, those jobs aren't really that great. Most cities in mountainous regions are built in valleys for that reason.

But really, mountainous areas just can't support that many people, so they shouldn't be that populated anyways.

> Even worse, arable land is a rarity, it is a mountain area!

In Asia they terrace a lot. Not sure if that is a good idea though, and definitely not necessary in the states where there is plenty of good agriculture land (much of China is mountainous, so it is necessary).
Here's a link to a discussion on the mailing list that touches on why Python-style significant whitespace wasn't used: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/elixir-lang-talk/u6P...
Great question.

Problems are solved by tools. Powerful tools can be built with code.

So try first to think about what kind of tool would be helpful for you. How could a computer help you accomplish something that you couldn't do yourself on pen+paper.

One example I like was I was making designs for various sports teams, and I liked the idea of word clouds, but it seems like too much work. So I built a javascript app that counted words in wikipedia articles and built wordclouds form that.

It's a cool project, but the original seed didn't comde form thinking 'what problem can I solve with code' it came from trying to do something new, then thinking if that specific problem could be done with code.
Its really, really slow, but it may come up.
You don't think making more than 97% of the population qualifies as "rich"?
I found your 2D version much easier and more fun to play. Wasted about an hour outright whereas I was over with 3D City in 5 minutes, approximately.
Simplest one: open up Python, enter:

((.1)*3)/3

It should come up as 0.10000000000000002. I honestly don't understand the reason, though.
Define valuable. I live in Northern Virginia, where a good acre of land can cost a million dollars. Yet, I can drive 3.5 hours and get to land that's worth under $1,000 an acre.
Code School has deals for 6 and 12 month subscriptions.

https://www.codeschool.com/sales/black_friday
Rails 4.2.0 RC1 has been released
I absolutely agree with that. But there can be exceptions. For example the ternary Goldbach conjecture boiled down in the end (after a lot of analytic "pencil sharpening" as the author called it) to an exhaustive computer search up to some limit.

Of course that was an exceptional case. There were some very committed computational people who had been working on related stuff for years prior who just happened to have the code that could just about reach the required limit with sufficient hardware, which we just happened to have sitting around in between working on projects paid for by our grant.

By the time the real theoretical work was done with pencil and paper, the computational task was just completing, meaning the result could be stated unconditionally.

Whether you would say that the computer search allowed us to learn anything mathematically useful, though is a state of mind. Mathematicians care much more about techniques than knowing large lists of otherwise random looking numbers, even if conjectures about such lists do motivate looking for new techniques, and even if there is some prestige in having established a long-lived conjecture.
If you're looking for some insights into why it's like that, you should make some time to read American Nations [0]. It connects a lot of dots. Probably the best book I read/listened to last year.

[0] www.amazon.com/American-Nations-History-Regional-Cultures/dp/0143122029
It's meant for new customers, but send me an email :)
The view rendering doesn't need to be done by Rails. I've been using React and Webpack to build the clientside of my Rails apps and have been very happy with that approach. There is nothing that this architecture does that a clientside framework like React cannot do better.
The computer is an automation tool. When you write code, it is serving the purpose of automating a specified and designed process. The things you write in the program to make the automation happen only have to be as complex as is actually necessary for that task.

First, have a good problem to solve. This is your design - developing your sensibility for it is somewhat independent of your coding skill. For your own project designs you should always prioritize your own motivations first, because there is nobody you are directly obligated to finish for. If you don't do this finishing will become very hard. Find problems people have already solved and reinvent their wheels so that you learn more about the problem domain. (e.g. if you want to learn how Facebook works, clone parts of Facebook - if you want to learn how operating systems work, build a toy OS, etc.) Or, find clients who seem to know what they want(nobody really knows - the design will change) and build things for them, on their terms, in a way which will get you paid so that you have the obligation to finish.

A good problem should be either obvious and a bit boring on the surface(an everyday thing made easier, more available, more accessible), or scary(a technical problem that you are not immediately sure how to solve, or are not sure how long it will take to solve). Usually projects start out looking like the former and then develop parts of the latter as you go along, forcing you to "plateau" on new features as you build out the infrastructure. You can also slice up a project into defined versions with incrementally larger sets of features so that your expectations for "done" are managed - if you don't get to some things, you still have a practically useful program.

Then, start working on it in small steps. Maybe you aren't sure how to envision the whole problem. In that case, you can simplify it by reducing the problem into a bunch of facades that are intentionally incomplete. Maybe you want to render a page that shows tables of data, for example. You can start by building up a facade for the presentation layer and see what kinds of data will have to be passed in to make the presentation work. Then you can mirror this at the other end and only solve the problem of "how to store and process the data." Then you figure out a protocol for making the two parts communicate. If you design each part so that it is simple to rewrite, the code will be maintainable regardless of your techniques or technologies, because then you can rewrite your way out of any corner you get painted into.
Black Beauty: a shiny, scaly-skinned, 4.4B years old rock from Mars
Graphene shows promise for bulletproof armour
Who said it was unfair? He just said they're rich, which they are by most standards. That's not necessarily a bad thing.
> In the world of basketball, there is one story after another like this about legendary games where David used the full-court press to beat Goliath. Yet the puzzle of the press is that it has never become popular. People look at upsets like Fordham over UMass and call them flukes. Basketball sages point out that the press can be beaten by a well-coached team with adept ball handlers and astute passers — and that is true. Ranadivé readily admitted that all an opposing team had to do to beat Redwood City was press back: the girls were not good enough to handle their own medicine.

The full-court press requires every team member to play a specified assembly-line style role where there's no room for any individual showing off and the only competition is the other team. Players in zero-sum sports aren't particular good at that and need to show off on the court or field to impress the scouts, so they're competing not only as a group against the other team but also as individuals against other members of their own team. Coaches tend to cater for this player need with suitable game strategies.

> College coaches of Pitino’s calibre typically have had numerous players who have gone on to be bona-fide all-stars at the professional level. In his many years of coaching, Pitino has had one, Antoine Walker. It doesn’t matter. Every year, he racks up more and more victories.

The only person who really shines in the full court press play is the coach. Ambitious players don't want to be coached by them.
No, I don't.

I think these are the ones that work the hardest* and because of that they'll be the last to sink into the muck created by the top 0.01% and up as they freely fund elections, buy politicians, and write their own laws.

Oh, and they'll also be the scapegoats who take one for team 0.01% when the income gap #$%^ finally hits the inequality fan.

*And if working hard didn't usually lead to them making more, there'd be no incentive for them to do so, no?
How New York City's Women Entrepreneurs Raised $3B in 10 Years
In the article, Chris Richardson of the homeless organization Downtown Streets complains:

> We are trying to get tech billionaires involved in what we’re doing. They donate millions to good causes, but almost nothing to the local community they are helping destroy.

Here's a tip for anyone with a good idea or a worthy cause: If you want to enlist the support of a group of people, making them out to be the villain is unlikely to help you.
I feel like these benchmarks always put rails in a tough spot. Let's choose bare bones frameworks and compare it to a fully loaded framework. Oh wow, the bare bones ones are faster?! I'd be concerned for them if they weren't.
>> "...descended into property..."

Do you mean "into poverty..."? Genuine question, not being snarky.
Can't see why this is getting downvoted. HN is becoming rampant with downvoters who don't even bother to leave a comment :(
Is this really something Amazon wants to do? Yes, it's the natural evolution of Bezos' ambitions, and services are really the only category Amazon hasn't quite touched. But it's a lot harder to control people than it is books. Do they want the people who have come to expect toilet paper delivered in 2 days exactly, without fail, to associated with never-on-time plumbers?
There is, lots of ski resorts, hiking, that sort of thing. The kicker is that those same places will actually hire in lots of Europeans to work the facilities, so not only are the employees not local, they aren't even from the same country!

It's a shame, there's a kernel of some great culture there, a unique dialect, great music, entertaining local history and color, some beautiful folk art.

Local dialect

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03iwAY4KlIU

The traditional music is a descendant of Celtic folk music, but unique enough to be interesting.

Here's a fantastic documentary on the music

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXh8SDp0H-E

All it would really take would be for some kind of Appalachian Music to become wildly popular and I could see the region getting popular music centers people would come to visit. Their main possible export market is all cultural.
Science is not a liberal value.
The question is a bit open ended, so here are a few thoughts. Programming involves learning by doing. Just start on something. Perfection is the enemy of the good. Your first real attempt won't be perfect. In fact it will be downright terrible. Set your expectations accordingly and do not let this prevent you from getting started. It will also never be finished. Do not let the scope of the project prevent you from getting started. In fact you might even be bad at estimating the amount of time it will take. Ignore those fears and confusion and just start. Channel your weekend warrior instinct. Sit down on a Friday and just start typing stuff.

Start with an idea, a problem. It really helps when the problem is personal. What do you hate? What annoys you? The text editor you use? Some little feature of JS that the makers of the language seemed to have forgotten about (how could they!)? Some website that just looks wrong to you? The todo list that doesn't work the way you want? Just think of something that doesn't quite work the way you want, a void, and then try to fill it. Just start and get in over your head. Do some spying on how others solved it (preferably only if you really get stuck, or once you made substantial progress). Maybe you can solve it better? Gotta dog food it. I find dogfooding a solution to a personal annoyance is what keeps you progressing towards a finish line.

If your asking about, say, the idea of website design, and the typical systems that make up sites (the software stack), just start reading about website design. Make a dumb website. Make a blog. Make a family photo album. Basically, start, and then figure out what you don't know, and then figure out what you need to know to proceed. It is an iterative learning process of realizing all the things you do not know and calmly tackling them. For some, this is the best part, the adding of another tool to the toolkit, the unearthing of some common pattern among the tools.
It changes your brain for the better. There is a lot of research into the subject.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-12661646
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2944261/

After 10 days of meditation, the change for me was dramatic. Regular meditation gives more lasting results though.
> Backprop is considered biologically implausible

This is not true. See Neural Back propagation [1]. There are known mechanisms for backwards feedback between neural connections, for example Spike Timing Dependent Plasticity - where neural inputs that are well correlated in time and potential to output firings are strengthened over time. These phenomena are vital to learning and neural development.

[1] http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_backpropagation
Really? Can you give me a few examples of places where people overwhelmingly subscribe to young-earth creationism that are going "quite well"?

(Oh, and BTW, I was born in Germany. I have been to over seventy countries. I grew up in Tennessee, and went to college in rural Virginia, and spent two years hanging out with homeless people in LA. So I'm pretty sure my "narrow mindset" is not due to not having seen enough of the world.)
I suspect you vastly underestimate the number of what you call "overly-sensitive" people – I'd call them the norm. For example, there's only 2-5% women in Debian or Ubuntu. Where did the other 48% disappear to? Certain cultures are severely underrepresented too.

It's open source, meaning mostly volunteers: why would anyone want to put up with "abrasive and insensitive" people for fun?
Evidence of Polyethylene Biodegradation by Plastic-Eating Waxworms
C++ Web Toolkit
Thanks for reading that paper by Wadler. In the past I was very intimidated by papers such as this, but I've found they are one of the best ways to learn.

If you go back far enough to when Haskell (or any language) was created you'll usually encounter simpler and simpler ideas and less abstraction. Kinda-sorta implementing Monads through pattern matching in that paper helped me really get quite a few things.
Only >> ;)
Rust does allow shared memory, either via unsafe code, or using a safe wrapper provided by the standard library (or an external library).

http://doc.rust-lang.org/nightly/std/sync/struct.Arc.html
Looking down on folks who don't think like you apparently is.
All Japanese reactors have their material above ground and are at risk of at least a steam explosion if they are improperly handled. The point is that Fukishima is just as "safe" today as it was for the 20+ years of operation, just instead of producing power all of the processes are around dismantling it. Which is proceeding.

I understand the emotional fear of nuclear power, it is a scary thing for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that you could be dying of radioactive poisoning right now and not know it, and all you need to do to survive is to move over 50 feet but you don't know you have to do that. So you end up dying. That is the giant knot of emotion that wraps up the fear in many cases. I've suggested to folks that have that fear, wear a dosimeter. They are very sensitive, not very expensive, and can completely clear your worry that you have some how stumbled into an unknown radiation hazard. It isn't a stupid or crazy thing to do, it just sets your mind at ease that you are not being dosed with ionizing radiation that you can't see.

Did they dump a lot of 137Cesium into the ocean? Yes they did. Was that more than was dumped by a single nuclear test in the ocean at Bikini Atoll? No it wasn't. There was a paper in Science, not long after the event about tracking the radionuclides [1].

[1] http://www.sciencemag.org/content/336/6085/1115.summary
Uber Takes “Disciplinary Actions” Against Top NY Manager Over Privacy Violations
SURF is a threaded instant messaging application, like Google Wave used to be
The 267 toll-road is the main artery for an absolutely massive defense-tech industry. It's a huge ecosystem with companies from 1 person to 100,000. Even though the mechanisms are largely the same, these small-companies-destined-to-be-bought-out-by-big-companies aren't really called "startups" and aren't thought of in quite the same way. The education level in the county is also obscenely high compared to elsewhere in the U.S.

The Federal government is also an absolutely absurdly large employer and the pay is reasonable.
If you look at the list of services, it's basically a list that does not include any service that requires an appointment. My company does scheduling for small businesses and, in industries like auto, there's just a maximum number of appointments each day that we're allowed to book.

It looks like Amazon punted on the hard part by constraining the availability to only specific services.
I suppose this actor is mostly unknown to americans?

It was huge in latin america.
Maybe "El Chavo Del Ocho" is a bigger thing in Brazil than Mexico.

Everyone my age (30) has good memories of this series and will consider watching it again if its on TV. It was huge like Sesame Street is on the US.

As a kid, I never noticed that the actors were adults playing children.

Some episode with english subtitles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwm3MmWjess

(To brazilians, the version dubbed in portuguese is considered the better version).

I love to hear about the customs of other countries regarding this small, everyday stuff. Like how finns leave their babies in the outdoors: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21537988

I wish this was easier. Mostly I can be exposed to US and UK cultures. The other countries, only stereotypes.
If you've been around that much, you really don't have much of an excuse for such a ridiculous position.

The northern suburbs of Atlanta qualify, for one area. High on the fundamentalist Christian scale, higher on the gun ownership scale, and extremely high on the lower taxes scale. And all doing well on this chart, many in the top 10%.

Large swaths of the west would qualify as well.

I'm really curious to hear how your explanation for how belief in gun ownership causes people to be trapped in poverty.
Rocky Bernstein's GUD rewrite may be of interest: https://github.com/rocky/emacs-dbgr

I don't think it has a watch window yet, or a disassembly or memory view. It has a cleaner architecture than the original GUD though, which might make it more pleasant to do major development on. It supports more backend debuggers, multiple concurrent sessions and attaching to a debugger session in an existing Comint buffer (presumably that means it supports attaching to existing processes as well; don't know if the original GUD gdb mode does that).

It does have the nifty idea of a minor-mode that is activated in source buffers that makes the buffer read-only and maps debugger commands to single keystrokes, eg. n for next, s for step, etc. ('Insert' toggles it off in case you actually want to do some editing).

The gdb support seems currently a bit basic. For example if you highlight an expression and press 'e' it sends "eval <selection>" to gdb when of course it should be "print". (It sounds like the main dev effort has been on the Ruby debugger so far). I get the feeling it might just need a little TLC to make it great.

For now, I agree the speedbar, and the experience of a watch window in it, is awful. Having seen how powerful gdb's print command is (doing very well with aggregate types, and now with the latest gdb you can switch on some Python-based pretty printing for it as well), as a temporary personal init-file hack I brought the single-key mode to the original GUD making sure to include 'p' to 'print' and capital 'P' to 'print*' the currently highlighted text, or the current word if nothing is highlighted. If the gdb buffer isn't visible, it prints to the minibuffer, else if the gdb buffer is visible, it goes there, and then I can move the cursor around and use seperate Emacs folding commands to collapse and expand the braces. It's still a bit raw but I'm so pleased with it that I already don't miss Visual Studio (the supposed gold standard for user-friendly debugging, yet even in the latest version I find it distressingly weak at inspecting common STL types).

I might try and contribute to Rocky's mode myself when I have the time.
DaisyDisk 50% off

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Additive is a better "interruption" in a lot of cases from what I've seen. Destructive was added after the fact for completeness. What do you think?
Nintendo files Patent Application for Hand-Held Video Game Emulation