skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You sound like you want to believe that the emergence of life is difficult (by comparing it to winning in a lottery). Then the N=1 evidence that we actually have says, the emergence of life was easy (or, at least, quick). But you brush this off by saying blah, it's just N=1. But the evidence for your emergence-of-life-is-difficult is N=0.

Granted, N=1 is not much. But it's still more than N=0.
Damn ironic, given that Poettering wants to build a whole OS using cloud containerization and BTRFS. And CoreOS depends heavily on Poettering's systemd (to the point that they have built their own containerization system on top of it).
I knew this was going to be a Borowitz when I read the headline.
Type theory is a framework for doing logic that predates computers as we know them. If you have used first-order predicate logic before (e.g. ∀x∀y(P(f(x))→¬(P(x)→ Q(f(y),x,z)))), it performs a similar role to type theory and is the same sort of mathematical thing, it just has different properties. Logical frameworks are interesting to programmers and computer scientists because logical systems and programming languages/computation are related through the Curry-Howard correspondence. http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/166430/curry-howard-...

This[1] isn't a perfect description of type theory in general because it is aimed at a particular branch of type theory called homotopy type theory, but I feel like it does a pretty good job of explaining the differences between type theory and set theory and what motivated those differences. [1]http://planetmath.org/11typetheoryversussettheory

Category theory is a particularly abstract part of abstract algebra primarily concerned with extremely general mathematical structures. It concerns itself with identifying and understanding the core structures common to a large number of mathematical objects and operations such as the one shared by multiplication, the cartesian product, least common multiple, logical conjunction (&&), and structs (or record types) in programming. This structure is usually referred to as the categorical product.

Category theory is often brought up when discussing type theory because there is a close relationship between these sorts of abstract structures like the one linking structs and conjunction and the structures that are described by type theory. In general, there is a close relationship between type theories and certain types of categories so you can learn interesting things about type theory from studying category theory and vice versa, but category theory contains many things which are not primarily useful for or associated with type theory.
The social sciences have always been politicised for all sides. The trouble with the area isn't that it is liberal or conservative particularly, is that it is just generally full of woolly bias in all directions.
> "Can you tell me the thickness of a U.S. Postage stamp with the glue on it? Answer: We couldn't tell you that answer quickly. Why don't you try the Post Office? Response: This is the Post Office. (1963)"

Haha!

An inexpensive caliper gauge, available in any specialty tool outlet, could yield an instant empirical answer to within about 10 microns.
Scientists have an obligation to understand the legal, ethical, and social context of their work. So if no "traditional" CS course would fit a discussion of software licenses and copyright, a new course is needed. This is even more true for software engineering, but even a scientist who only knows science is in danger of being exploited or of damaging the reputation of his/her community.
I sure appreciate pip being included in Python 3.4. It's nice when writing tutorials not to have to provide instructions for how to install pip, so the user can then install packages.
I would start with implementing some backend in Node and Express, and with LevelUp for the database. Since you're familiar with Rails and backend development, it should be easy to build something quickly. Just make a simple API. That should show you the basics of JS!

After that, you should have enough JS knowledge to start building a client-side app that consumes your API. I honestly prefer AngularJS, but React+Flux seems like a fine choice.
Re-implemented in Haiku:

https://github.com/haiku/haiku/blob/master/src/system/libroo...
http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/001588
Which is exactly the point: the home ownership rate does not, contrary to its name, give a real description of what proportion of people own homes. It describes the proportion of homes that are owner-occupied, which is an entirely different thing.

And if what we're trying to do is figure out what the common man (whatever that is) rents or owns, it's a terrible and misleading measure to use.
Honestly, the better hiring processes I've seen focus on basic algorithms and data structures as the foundation of judging a candidate's technical ability. That is the stuff you learn in CS. That's also the foundational kind of stuff where, if you don't know it, it doesn't really help if you learn a specific tech stack.

I've also seen C++ shops that quiz you on C++ trivia. Either they were doing a poor job or they were very small and worked only in C++ so it was reasonable for them to ask questions that you'd know the answer to if you just read a book before the interview.
Don't forget all of Germany.
"why templeOS is better, but it doesn't matter"
I don't usually blog, but I have been writing micro-blogs, which is somewhere around 350 words or more on Quora, here is what I can tell you:

1- Always having to answer a question is important and here is why:
The fact you answer a question, means that there are more unknown things relying behind this question that your audience don't know.

2- Try being exposing yourself to as much information as you can about! This might sound less intuitive, but it helps alot with building perspectives and being less biased.

3- Have an opinion and don't be afraid to actually back it up. I love it how PG goes badass by stating things that others can't really say outloud, but because he have all those awesomely explained examples he backs his arguments.

4- When you write, be open to critic, but don't change your style, because after you get to have this very different style that is nourished from different inspirations.

5- On that note, don't be afraid to write, I have no issue giving a speech in front of 500 people, but I was scared to post something I thought of. There i a self confidence that you build after a while when you practice writing.

Like I mentioned before, picking inspiration is very important.

My very first inspiration of writing about anything was Joseph Campbell's book: "The Hero with thousand faces"

I still have horrible grammar mistakes, run on and verb tense issues, but it's okay you improve over time.
Perhaps it has to do with the fact that conservatives have very little original thought to contribute to the field these days beyond what's already been long established by old school thinkers. The progress I see happening today is in the way far left: actor network theory (Latour), speculative realism (Harman), McKenzie Wark, and so on
This has been measured by researchers, and cursive provided no speed advantage over printing. That's why it's so easy and common for people who know how to write in cursive to revert to printing all the time even after years of cursive in school.

Cursive as a non-art, general writing system was developed because of the need to keep the pen nib in contact with the paper as much as possible to draw the ink drop forward. Each time the nib was lifted, you risked leaving an ink blob. Kids advancing from pencil to pen needed to also change from printing to cursive.

The shift away from liquid ink pens (quill, steel, fountain, cartridge) to polymerizing ("ball point") pens in the second half of the 20th Century obviated that need.
m.o.n.d. that spells deaf and dumb
This can easily be accommodated in a Software Engineering course. Project (and library) licenses are as important a matter as project lifecycle.
Flirtmoji
>Learning to produce food takes more time and energy than people realize. Every piece of land has a different mix of nutrients in the soil, water, sun, wind, insects, you name it. It takes most new folks a few years of work just to figure out how to use their own soil properly, and you often need to build up the proper nutrients to make it work, via composting, growing some cover crops to replenish nitrogen, or good old animal poo.

>Frankly, I could type a lot of random stuff that needs to be thought about, but the truth is that growing food takes research, learning, and practice. We have spent years learning about gardening and homesteading, finding the right land and home for ourselves, and working it to start producing for our family.

Totally agree.
Cisco products are made in China.
To provide a counterpoint to many of the responses here, I find that the best way to ramp up quickly in a language is to build a few small things using one or two of the main frameworks or libraries, rather than trying to just learn the language or specifically working only with microframeworks.

There are a lot of benefits that come from using mainstream existing frameworks and libraries from the beginning. You learn conventions pretty quickly, and immediately learn to write idiomatic code for that language. When you use a major framework or library there are typically a lot of blog posts and stackoverflow answers, more so than just for a language itself. When you track down errors you'll end up learning about how the frameworks and libraries work, and thereby learning about how to implement things you wouldn't have considered independently.

As a result, what I'd recommend is coming up with two extremely simple ideas for tools that he'd find useful for himself and implement one each with Ember and React.

Personally, I've been following this approach for many years (I'm currently simultaneously working on three new projects in multiple new-to-me languages like this) and it works extremely well in my experience.
Ah! Good suggestion actually! Thanks a bunch.
This is old and also satire, for those that were wondering.

For other interesting satire see http://www.theonion.com.
I would have expected something more creative than a static number.
That patent has actually been abandoned. Can't find any continuations filed on it either. So as far as I can tell, he doesn't have any patents on the algorithm/process
I believe most CS students would benefit greatly from this type of class. The topic may not perfectly fit into pure computer science topics but it's something that anyone who writes code will run into during their career and should have a basic understanding of.

Another (albeit more absurd) example is version control. You can successfully argue that it's not a computer science topic, but anyone graduating with a CS degree will be much better off in the real world having learned about it.
Market Meltdown Board Game – Explore Others' “Reality” Through Gaming
Open Letter from LulzSec's Kayla to Hector “Sabu” Monsegur
BTW, if anyone is interested, I just saw - from the Wikipedia article I linked to above - that the full text of Schumacher's book Small is Beautiful is available here:

http://www.ditext.com/schumacher/small/small.html
I recently installed numpy and scipy in a new virtualenv on my OS X 10.10 machine and was very pleasantly surprised to see them being installed directly from wheels instead of being rebuilt (installation time was a nice 1min compared to 10+ min before). Does anybody know if the wheel format is now supported/standard on PyPi or was this caching of my local pip?
Are you kidding? The notion that people (even talented people) can be swapped in and out every 12 months is a far greater assumption that people are cogs.

From a co-worker perspective, yes, I'd rather work short-term with someone talented. From a managerial perspective, I'd first choose the talented employee who has demonstrated an ability to commit, then I'd choose a less talented (but with potential to improve) employee who I believe has an ability to commit, then it's roughly a tie between someone mediocre and someone talented who will likely abandon their project in the lurch. Those last two are both pretty lame options.
“Warning: Do Not use my mirrors/services until I have reviewed the situation”
Tptacek said it's a bad idea to read Applied Cryptography. "Take that book Applied Cryptography that's on your bookshelf and burn it. Do that as a commitment to really learning crypto. But absolutely don't read it. If you don't read it, you have nothing to unlearn, so you're much better off." Source: http://wiki.securityweekly.com/wiki/index.php/Episode292 time index 22:10, but the whole podcast is good.

Instead, he recommends Cryptography Engineering: http://www.amazon.com/Cryptography-Engineering-Principles-Pr...

Another way to get a primer on crypto is to do the Matasano crypto challenges: http://cryptopals.com/

The solutions aren't (yet?) published, but don't let that stop you. It will be fairly obvious when you've come up with a solution that solves the challenge. It's also an excellent way to get you really thinking about all of the problems with crypto. And it will hopefully scare you from ever implementing your own crypto scheme, which is always a good thing.

Make sure to do all the challenges though. They get exponentially more difficult, but the best ones are near the end.
I wonder if they have any idea why this Viking presence isn't accounted for in stories / oral histories of the indigenous peoples. Did the Vikings just wipe out all that they came in contact with? Did those tribes truly never have contact with other tribes (to the point were a tribe that didn't directly meet with Vikings, could wonder what happened to some other tribe that the Vikings wiped out)?

[A little off-topic, but I wonder if he gets sick of the "The Island of Doctor Moreau" references (or if it actually isn't a common occurance).]
I am genuinely curious. I am not suggesting anyone attack them.
Santa Is a Mushroom
I just listened to a report about this from Friday's (12-19-14) BBC World Business News. It got me to thinking - What if more games were designed to show what may be really happening in different levels of business/politics?

I am presented with news of corruption and business/political practice that I find extremely distasteful, if not outright abhorrent. And yet so many of my fellow country people seem either totally unaware of said practices, or are looking the other way.

Maybe presenting games showcasing some of these practices can bring these subjects out into the room for observation, to see if enough other people agree changes need to be made?
There was a touching scene in this movie inspired by a short story [1] by Roald Dahl, author of wonderful children's books and adult short stories, who also took part in WW2 as a fighter pilot. It was strange coming across the short story having seen Porco Rosso several years earlier and immediately realizing the connection.

[1] http://www.roalddahlfans.com/shortstories/they.php
Runs in CLISP and presumably other modern Common Lisps, using the Lisp source in the parent directory.
Type theory is a sort of axiomatisation of mathematical structures that is similar to (but not identical to: http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=512927.512938) set theory. As chas mentions (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8780786), a lot of the modern mathematical perspective on type theory is via homotopy type theory.

Category theory is another such axiomatisation.

As with any pair of sufficiently powerful axiomatisations, any one of them can be formalised in any other of them, more or less naturally; for example, here's an n-category café hit when I Googled "category theory + type theory": https://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2013/03/category_theory....
I'd say its extremely difficult to give you a good answer without knowing what you are trying to build. Is the goal to be able to add some interactivity to otherwise relatively static or content driven websites? Do you want to long running client side apps? Is using JavaScript on both the client and server a goal? The JS community is pretty diverse, largely because there are a lot of wildly different use cases.
I skimmed through these and they are really fascinating documents with actual useful info for normal tourist and business travelers.

If you know what screeners might be looking for, you can avoid making yourself a target unnecessarily, even when your travel purposes are completely legitimate.
> It concerns itself with identifying and understanding the core structures common to a large number of mathematical objects and operations such as the one shared by multiplication, the cartesian product, least common multiple, logical conjunction (&&), and structs (or record types) in programming. This structure is usually referred to as the categorical product.

This sounds more like universal algebra (http://www.encyclopediaofmath.org/index.php/Universal_algebr...) than category theory, which, almost by definition, is interested in studying structure-preserving morphisms, without too much attention to exactly what structure is being preserved.
I'm going to say it, even though I'll probably get slapped by all of HN- PHP beats the crap out of python for this exact problem. The php package manager Composer (https://getcomposer.org/) is an amazing tool that I wish python would emulate. It uses a very simple json file for metadata, an indexing site to point package names to actual git repositories, and then git tags to handle versioning. The workflow is very simple and tends to meld with actually development nicely. In the end all you have to do to make a new release is tag it.

Okay, commence telling me I'm an idiot for thinking PHP has some ideas worth looking at.
I'm currently using the Seiki 39inch 4k. 30Hz, but great for coding/browsing; probably no good for graphics work (bad color reproduction) or games (30Hz).

It is very inexpensive, so I think of it as a one or two year "rental", until the 4K market matures. I enjoy the huge screen real estate, although I find it best with a tiling window manager.
Nice, I've been doing a bit with packaging python modules and have found the current lay of the land incredibly confusing. This article helps quite a bit and seems to be the most authoritative guide I've seen on the subject.
The concept of applying DnD alignments to the characters is pretty funny, probably should put a comment in the "break up the couples" that having to perform way outside their known personality might be trying on their real life relationship.

Something like this could be highly entertaining at a computer or other con.
I suspect the inter-stamp variability might be a little bigger than that.
Scientists are strange, is enough to find a small viking stone in canada as proof for viking presence but seeing pyramids and megalithic structures all over the world is not enough to convince them that ancient civilizations on different continents including america were communicating.
No. ECB mode is simply how ciphers work. It's the black box that every better mode is built on.
> conservatism means to keep (conserve) the current

literally. What about a Latin dictionary instead of Burke?
Great point. There are people so good you're lucky to work with them for a week. Of course, a lot of times those people don't even have resumes.
Totally agree. I would go so far as to say one shouldn't use (or even pick) a framework, before having the skills to write such a framework. The benefit of a framework should be time savings; it cannot make up for lack of understanding of what the framework is doing and why. Continued use of the framework should always be weighed against the cost (unfriendliness to external software and composability).
This introductory chapter from Small is Beautiful - mentioned above - may interest you:

http://www.ditext.com/schumacher/small/intro.html
Interestingly, the director of End of Evangelion, Hideaki Anno was mentored by Miyazaki and was an animator on Nausicaa. He did the protagonist's voice work for Miyazaki's last film "The Wind Rises" and Miyazaki has said that he would entrust a Nausicaa sequel to Hideaki Anno.

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2013-08-22/hayao-miyaza...
Funny, that's pretty much how i do it online as well. Read article after article until i have a reasonable grasp of the topic i was looking into.
really cool stuff. I was searching around for resources like this about a month ago. I still find it really useful though. Thanks!!!
I'd like to see the unit test for that one.
Imho the best way to learn some crypto is learn the fundamental building blocks and then go and study already broken protocols and implementations. That should be enough to scare you in to the "assume everything I do is wrong and broken until proven otherwise" mindset (which could be a healthy mindset for programming in general imho)

Do not just go and learn the best current practices, because those aren't going to stand the tests of time.
Actually, Chromebooks should be the most secure laptop platform nowadays, since every Chromebook has signed binaries and to enter in developer mode, you need some kind of switch so you can overwrite your bootloader.

Of course, this is assuming Chromebooks' bootloader doesn't have any secured problems.
I don't see how pyramids or other structures could be used for communication.
Probably because it was 30 generations or more later, and there was no writing.
The Seiki has been obsoleted by the Philips 40" that does 60Hz.
Meteor Beats app
> I admit it's hard to balance the approaches behind "He's just a troubled person," "He's a raving nut," "He's a raving nut, but so what?" and so on.

Do you mean Davis or Torvalds?

Frankly, I'd avoid both of them.
I guess it goes well with the old UNIX printer error.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lp0_on_fire
Does Quora generate any revenue at all?
Have you heard of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilgour%E2%80%93Matas_report ? If what you are saying is true then I would urge you to talk to a journalist about it.
true but that was true back in the 50's one nation Tory's and Eisenhower republicans. Its just that the GOP appears to have been take over by entryists from the hard right.

A bit like how the trots tried to take over the labour party from the hard left
"While knowing what these licenses are, how they work, and some pros and cons of each is nice, it's decidedly not computer science."

Reusing other people's work(1) is decidedly computer science.

Without it(access to source code) it would be simply impossible to teach ANY CS course. Good luck teaching compilers without accessing one, or OS without being able to read the internals of one.

(1)Like Linux,network stack, LaTex, gnu tools, llvm, valgrind, qt, kde, WebKit engine, grass, OpenStreetMap, Wikipedia, Arduino, OpenScad, freecad and RepRap...
> I'm not sure I understand the resistance to using the uncovered call terminology as opposed to the highly innaccurate (but more Main Street comprehensible) "debt" analogy.

Specifically, it is because the managers I am attempting to communicate with understand the concept of "debt" and do NOT understand the concept of "uncovered calls". I work at a bank and VERY few of the managers I need to explain things to would really understand uncovered calls. I would guess that people at other kinds of employers may find it even worse.
Forget smartphones – dumbphones are now hip
Right, if you quit the project and leave the sponsors/employers holding the bag.
The quote I'm adding to my Evernote:

"It seems to me that beliefs about the future are so rarely correct that they usually aren't worth the extra rigidity they impose, and that the best strategy is simply to be aggressively open-minded. Instead of trying to point yourself in the right direction, admit you have no idea what the right direction is, and try instead to be super sensitive to the winds of change".