skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: Why people continue working in video game industry?
Its a common knowledge that being a video game developer for AAA titles means put up your soul to see it get done. Browsing for big companies on Glassdoor gives you a clear picture of what everyone goes through - Twelve hours workdays, six days a week with no paid overtime, terrible management, and intense work pressure [1].

If I am not wrong developing 3D games is insanely hard thing to do, for variety of reasons. So why would anyone want to continue working in this industry when he can (hopefully) get better job opportunities by quitting?

[1]: http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Rockstar-Games-Reviews-E20887.htm
Just tried the 2 KB (fast) version as White. Trapped Black's queen on my 7th move.

Mate took 20 moves or so total.
You make a great point. At the same time the US is already kind of there. In Canada most folks just go to their local hospital. Only if that hospital can't provide care do you go somewhere else.

In the US, i've noticed that folks often pursue the best care they can, especially if it's a serious condition. Of course that's if you're insurance covers it.
It makes me think that a few extreme posts (or even one) are weighing the results so heavily that they win in a bunch of categories.
> And it's also made me aware of the privilege that I do enjoy as a college-educated male who's the son of college educated parents.

What's scary about privilege is that it's usually invisible.

I think it's fair to say that the majority of humans experience both prejudice and privelege, albeit of radically different quantities and qualities. But while we can't help but be keenly aware of the former, the latter tends to hide itself in our definitions of "normal".
In terms of the operating system and included apps, it's remarkably similar after over 26 years.

NeXTMail evolved into Apple Mail. Preview and Terminal retained their functions and their names. Digital Librarian (indexing specified files) was succeeded years later by Spotlight. Unfortunately we lost Digital Webster, a nice thing to have before the days of always-on Internet connections, which I think was linked to all apps via the command-equal-sign. Interface Builder survived. WebObjects survived. There was a TextEdit-precursor, but the very nice lightweight word processor WriteNow from a third party did not survive to be included in OS X.

The OS X Finder is recognizably similar to later versions, maybe >2.0?, of NeXT's Workspace Manager, with the primary navigation the same (albeit with the scroll bar on the bottom instead of the top and favorites on the top instead of the left). The original NeXT design was probably cleaner. And I still miss a dock that you can flick up and down.

I have a NeXT cube in my home office closet. I've turned it on in the last few years and it works, but the original 660MB hard drive -- a monstrosity for its time! -- has failed. :(
I remember having indented fingertips.
File sharing was not the first mainstream distributed technology. Packet switched networking, then http, SMTP, etc were all around first.

This blind spot in people's understanding of how the internet worked, works, and should work is why we got stuck accepting centralized services as normal. They are not sustainable though and will be superceded.
I like your hypothesis. Maybe I'll campaign to get BASIC material on Khan Academy ;)

Only semi-kidding.
Don't you lose points for that? The tutorial says when planes pass too close, it hurts your score.
Was your post just an elaborate example of this sort of organic advertising and astroturfing?
There are many other things that can go wrong long before this happens. Think joints, ligaments, tendons...

I say this as someone who once walked 100 km in a bit under 21 hours. I am not an athlete. When I was done my knees had swelled to the size of grapefruits and I could not bend my legs anymore.
Made me wonder if there might be an Irix VM available. I really enjoyed running the old Origin Series Silicon Graphics machines.
Thanks – SNS
There is http://arewemetayet.com/ but it is probably incomplete.
> It annoys me when people try to look intelligent by inserting literary references

Besides the old middlebrow dismissal question you should be asking yourself before posting ("is that the most interesting thing one can say about this article?"[1]), let me ask you this: is the distinction you're making here at all material to the article?

Did you consider the possibility that the author hasn't read Through the Looking-Glass in a while (a "Ph.D. in Cell Biology and Genetics" means you have to put off a good bit of recreational reading for a number of years) and thought that the explanation was close enough as background information about why a 40-year-old, fairly famous evolutionary theory is named the way it was?

And again I'll ask: do either of the author's two mortal sins you've pointed out in any way change the aptness of the metaphor or give the audience an incorrect impression of why it was named the way it was? Because I'm pretty sure they don't.

Sorry if I'm a little heated, but you might say it annoys me when people try to look intelligent by dismissing interesting things by nitpicking irrelevant details. Or maybe we shouldn't assume people's motives ("try to look intelligent"? seriously?), grant a little principle of charity, leave a correction for the author, and then engage in actually interesting conversation.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4693920
I missed my edit window...

I actually take the above back. Scalar multiplication on a point IS constant-time (the two distributions are indistinguishable).

Field exponentiation isn't constant-time and I will work on that.
Stressed vowel breaking is very common in other languages. Swedish and Finnish both rely on it heavily. In Swedish it is generally denoted by a vowel followed by a single consonant. For example, "tak" means "ceiling" and "tack" means "thank you". They are pronounced similarly but the "a" in "tak" is breaking and "a" in "tack" is non-breaking. In Finnish, breaking vowels are just repeated. For example, the name Miikael and Mikael having a slightly different pronunciation due to the breaking and non-breaking "i".
Allowing it to call arbitrary functions using dlopen()/dlsym() would be the idea I have for fixing the first problem - it'd also increase its power substantially since it can then make use of any other library's functions instead of the currently hardcoded list. Supporting function pointers would be a bit harder and involve changing the parser/code generator.
A bank in Germany has just one employee.
http://www.rediff.com/business/slide-show/slide-show-1-a-ban...
CIA agents who tortured are vulnerable to prosecution in any country
Love YouTube but hate the comments/suggestions/ratings so made http://www.kidsfriend.ly/. Unfortunately the ads can't be removed and are annoying. This is not a perfect solution but solves the problem at some extent.
As a counter to the notion that "they're really not as technical as they think," I'd argue that the professional user has to pick and choose his battles. Spending half a day futzing with window manager and X server configurations--whether due to new hardware, an incompatible patch, or something else--really, really hurts when it stands in the way of programming.
from another comment...

"The confusion likely stems from the various limits which existed when running qbasic in real mode on a 486.
Conventional memory was limited to 640kb. Access to higher amounts of memory either required switching to protected mode or using XMS.
Additionally, there was the segmentation limit of 64k for pointers, which may have limited things in qbasic."
I think the assumption is that Chomsky is villifying Einstein for not doing enough, when in fact he's villifying a culture (both in and out of academia) that punishes those who go too far afield with radical ideas.

Hence, why this seems hypocritical: Chomsky made his trade-off, and continues to enjoy a comfortable professor's life. I think it's fair to say that Chomsky has done far more political activism in his life than Einstein, but far less than Russell.
This thread is blowing my mind. Please continue to share.

I really like the idea that models are often formed prematurely and the reference to pokemon cards. One metaphor I use allot is that our values are like a deck of cards, some values are ranked higher then others. The ranking is determined in part by a recursive function (shuffling or playing a game of go fish) but also by functional requirements to justify the current mode of survival. A person tends to perceive their values in a way that justifies their actions (and vice versa). When modelling different Christian denominations you could consider each verse and interpretation as a card. The card game in play ensures that a church group ends up with a large chunks of each hand looking similar. The attraction of individuals to a particular church has allot to due with how well those cards advocate that person's life.
I had a 486 in 1991. If this person had one from 1999 to 2006 I'm amazed it didn't suffer repeated hardware failures. Hard drives die often. I want to believe this isn't true because it's too depressing. I want to believe it's true because people deserve the benefit of the doubt.
Indeed, perhaps I am being fussy about what kind of surface I prefer to use, and how precise I like the tracking to be.

I am inspired by your reply however to try to find another mouse which works well on glass, that would literally be a game changer.
The fact that you attack a strawman, oblivious of all prior discussion on the subject.

The protocol is not set in stone. Scalability is a work in progress.

https://bitcoinfoundation.org/2014/10/a-scalability-roadmap/
Maybe it was because it was easier for the college to lock down the Windows 2000 workstations as opposed to the Windows 98 computers with Novell NetWare. I don't know, though, and I can't speak for the author. The story has more holes than swiss cheese. I honestly don't believe any of the account, but it is useful for bringing up nostalgia.
Not that small. Lawrence is the home of the University of Kansas.

I've lived all over the country, and Lawrence would rank towards the top for me. It's much like Austin, only smaller and less expensive. And probably more relaxed. The only drawback is that it's surrounded by Kansas.
How Surface tablets are changing the way NFL coaches work
This applies just as aptly to peoples perception of government or corporate behavior as it does to anything else. IMO the ability to rationally analyze or predict outcomes basically goes away once people forget that the fundamental unit of cognition and influence on this planet is and remains the human mind, not the corporation, agency or government - things which are emergent phenomenons of many individuals interacting.

I.e. it is a mistake to think that 'intelligence agencies' could not make this same analysis if you can.
It sure looks like it to me. Notice how the flow of his conversation goes from on topic to something completely non-relevant that hits close to home on HN and is quite relevant/important to the members here.

The reply to that comment could be or is an example of how forum-sliding can be obtained with multiple accounts.

How do we know that those up votes are legitimate too?
"If you have more women engineers on a team, they tend to
bring more diverse opinions, but they also tend to build a
collaborative culture. And a result, things get done
faster. They’re more organized. There’s more empathy,
which makes for a better work environment. It’s just
better all around." - Sanghvi

I don't understand why it's okay for a woman to make generalizations like this about the things they think women are better at, but it's totally not okay for a man to openly voice their opinions on what they think men are better at.

If it's not acceptable for men to voice similar opinions, why do we not call out women when they do the same?
The idea for this came to me a couple years ago, but after a quick search I found that YaCy had already attempted it. I've been recently thinking of going for it anyway though. There's enough room for innovation where a really clever design could potentially lead to a useable search engine, and not just a novelty.
Waypoint scripting would be counter to how ATC works. The challenge is remembering your plan for each plane and mentally queuing up the instructions you need to give to pilots.
What surprised me the most was that I tweeted several tweets within that minute (and a minute beyond) and did't get my tweet published.

Would like to see a tally at the bottom of how many tweets were tweeted with that time.
My work desktop is FreeBSD 10.1 running WindowMaker and I personally love the "dated" look. Reminds me of my teenage years, running Redhat 6.x, listening to nu-metal with XMMS and spending way too much time on IRC.
About news, read this article from Aaron Swartz:

http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews
"I think following the news is a waste of time."

Now I get all my news from weekly newsletters in an email inbox I only open on Saturdays. The rest of the week I don't read any news.

I use Nutshellmail.com for getting my twitter feed emailed to me on Saturdays.

Also:

Fighting Information Overload With The Impending Doom Engine

https://medium.com/life-hacks/fighting-information-overload-...
We're developing a BASIC interpreter called retRUNner that's (initially) Applesoft compatible, but will have modern graphics and sound capabilities so users (kids, mostly) will be able to play games like Woz's original Breakout (we have a collection of over 400 listings we'll be shipping with it) and upgrade them to 3D, add art, music, sound effects and so on.

So we're teaching a bit of history along with some coding skills. Down the road we're going to add additional 'dialects' such as Apple LOGO, and Atari, Sinclair and Commodore BASICs, but the Apple II version will be out soon -- I'll be sure to mention it on here when we release it =)
I'm sitting on a sleepy but full Tokyo train and laughed out loud... those glassholes don't have a chance do they.
I doubt he will respond to you. It's a pretty classic tactic to request citation from someone you know isn't prepared to offer it in order to defuse an argument. He doesn't have to offer citation, he only has to stop his opponent from appearing knowledgeable.

he doesn't need to be right, he only needs to make the other guy look wrong.
What is the grey material it's encased in? Really cool idea.
> medicine is over 50% women now.

medicine is over 50% women now (everyone at every level) or doctors are over 50% women now? If it's the former, I'm wondering if it has more to do with the industry becoming more equal or if the demand for nurses has gone up much faster than the demand for doctors.

This is not to say that doctors are more likely to be men than women (I happen to think it's roughly equal based on my own experiences), but that nurses are far more likely to be women because nursing is a profession that has been overwhelmingly female, and one in which men are discouraged from participating.
Ask HN: What are the most exciting, yet practical, areas of CS to get into?
Hi! What do you think will be the most exciting, and the most high-leverage areas of CS to be in, in the next 5-10 years?
Seems neat, but to be honest, I had a really hard time reading the example because of all the encheferizer text. The funky, hard-to-read text is distracting me from understanding and appreciating the overall simplicity and elegance of things (in a kind of ironic way).

But, aside from that, I'm coveting this right now as I hack away with adding new options to my C++ program...
I would like to give my 2 cents to the discussion, as a Medical Doc who was training to become an Orthopedic Surgeon.

One of the problems with Surgical Branches is that beyond a certain point (i.e: Beyond from knowing how to do a procedure) the act of performing a surgery essentially is an art form (Skill). I learned the same from one of the leading Orthopedic Surgeons in India. And that is one of the crucial most factors that differentiates Good surgeon from a Bad One.

Although skill can NOT be quantified but certainly in the case of Surgery we can quantify the results of the skills in terms of complications of surgery, recovery and patient satisfaction.

One solution to the problem would be :

(A) To have a feedback mechanism for doctors. Where they receive a score on their performance and can compare if to other surgeons performing similar procedures.

The surgeon would upload a video of all the types of procedures they do every 3 months. And just like NEJM a committee of people provide inputs and rating on the skills of the surgeon. This score in combination with the complication rate and patient feedback would go into making the overall score of the doctor. The doctor will be able to see where he stand in compare to their colleagues from across the country (possible the world). And also for newer (or BAD) surgeons this system would provide a way to learn from the best in the field and improve their skills.

(B) If you try to make such a score Public initially, it will receive a huge backslash from the doctors and the industry. But having an internal score keeping mechanism is much better than having no score / rating system.

(C) Some hospitals actually do have internal metrics where they track surgeon's performance. In terms of complication rate and other metrics -- but this data is RARELY available to the public.

(D) Unless some kind of law is passed at a Federal level in the US, I am not very optimistic about the situation improving.
iirc, sawfish (http://sawfish.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page) was there a long time ago, but haven't used it in a while...
> There are no studies that contradict it

All sources I could find talk specifically of boiled potatoes, as opposed to e.g. mashed potatoes, and apparently they all go back to one study which was not replicated. You can trust it if you like, but don't pretend that everyone else should. Read Ionnadis ("most published research is false"), and the recent nature cancer reproduction report (48 of 53 highly celebrated results about cancer that were published in Science and Nature were not reproducible).

They have an extremely good match for everything other than potatoes. The right thing to do, practically, is to ignore the outlier for most statistics on one hand, and to try to reproduce the outlier results on others. Theoretically, you would believe nothing and do everything again (and again) until you have perfect correlation between theory and practice.

Either way, every google search I've found says "potatoes are the exception" and they all seem to trace back to one study. Trust it if you like, I don't.
To be fair, Kansas does have a GDP almost on par with New Zealand, with just 2.8 million people. Their output per capita is comparable to Denmark. It might not get much press attention, but that's a serious amount of economic activity.
Different generation, but I used a Pentium 2 Acer laptop, with 76Mb of RAM and a 4Gb of HDD, from 1999 through til 2005, when I'd finally cobbled together enough spare parts from other people for free to build my own AMD-based desktop.

It's what made me learn Linux, as it was so low-spec that Windows XP wouldn't run correctly on it. Slax was an excellent distribution, a Slackware-based Live CD that I forced to boot from the HDD despite it not really supporting it then. Prior to that I ran Damn Small Linux, and Windows 2000. No gaming for me, so I learned to build software instead!
So cool! Happy to give you early feedback if you so wish. Best of luck with the project.
What your doctor won’t disclose
Is there a bug in the game? It keeps saying 'define' isn't a verb it recognizes.
I wish I could upvote this more times. My parents also didn't have a lot and I spent 3-4 years using a 286. I cut my teeth writing code and optimizing like crazy because that's all I had. Couldn't just go get more memory or a better CPU.

20 years later I guarantee you my code reflects the ingrained thinking from those early days.
I bet not. Because America. That is all.
I was thinking the exact same thing. I had to read the text out loud in a European chef accent to understand what it was talking about. It really obfuscated the underlying meaning/simplicity of it for me.
Oh god. What antidepressant?
I'd like this but it needs a good interface and it needs to be super reliable
This was only a slight problem a few years ago. Now the landscape is quickly changing. You'll find a lot of employers specifically seeking "onshore" workers. They usually state it's because of timezone differences, but their off the record comments clearly point at them associating offshore with low quality work from past experiences. The trick to spot them is look for employers that have had many job postings already and whose posts show they care about the technology. If it looks like the product owner themself posting, or they are talking specific modern technologies, or asking for github accounts for reference, then there is a good chance they respect quality. I have had amazing success using this strategy. The first two jobs I took both employers almost forced me into taking a higher pay they were so happy to finally find somebody who can deliver quality and communicate effectively. The market corrects itself, I watched myself as my former employer fired and hired 4-6 cheap workers in a row until he finally became fed-up and reposted the job for triple the starting rate.

So yeah, spot the guys who have done their fair share of hiring, the ones who have been burned already, and hit them with your best quality focused pitch. I take this controlled approach, bid high, and do my research.

I think if these sites need improving at all, it's putting the spotlight more on the employer. These lowballers will become more visible to the seasoned developer who will avoid them, thereby only attracting the lower quality workers who don't even bother to read past the title of the job post. Half the battle is these employers just don't always know better yet, let em loose a few thousand and they'll come around quickly.
"Telling your story to HR or the ERIT will make you feel good, but all you are doing is giving Microsoft Legal a heads-up."

This can't be emphasized enough: In any conflict between employees and management, HR will always be there to cover the company's ass legally, not to help the employee. Don't expect them to be on your side.

I've been reading the book "Corporate Confidential", recommended recently by a HN contributor.[1] Strategies like "managing employees out" seem to be a ubiquitous practice in corporate America, not just limited to Microsoft.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8600716#up_8602172
Also, because racism is illogical. Irrational ideas tend to be replaced by good ones in the "free market" of ideas.

This is a rather optimistic statement. It's actually quite hard to get people thinking critically, and to push rationalist and scientific points of view in the public mind.
Sorry I didn't respond earlier. You can set your rate however you want, however, your toptal guy will have to think it's credible.

I believe it pays way more than elance / odesk (however, I didn't really try hard there because prices are so low it would have barely sustained me) but my rate is still way below a good consultant rate of say 1k$ per day.

But it's good enough to live well even in an expensive city such as Luxembourg.

Just mind it's an investment so you should be good at what you're doing and have a few spare days spread throughout the next weeks in order to jump through all their coding / interview hoops.