skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> I think human intelligence hits an asymptote due to mortality. There's only so deep an individual can go, and a limit on how much you can replace depth with breadth.

I don't know exactly what you mean by "human intelligence", but in general we get deeper not by stretching vertically, but by moving vertically, if you follow the metaphor. Many software engineers today don't even have a passing familiarity with the deeper levels of the stack they're programming on, and that's all new stuff in the last ~50 years.
What Makes an App Idea Great?
Upvoted for calc. I use it for all the small calculation, as it most often behaves slightly better than bc

$ echo "1/2" | bc
0

$ echo "1/2" | bc -l
.50000000000000000000

$ echo "scale=1; 1/2" | bc
.5

$ echo "1/2" | calc -p
0.5

$ echo "+1+1+1+1" | bc -l
(standard_in) 1: syntax error

$ echo "+1+1+1+1" | calc -p
4

$ echo "sqrt(-1)" | bc -l
Runtime error (func=(main), adr=4): Square root of a negative number

$ echo "sqrt(-1)" | calc -p
1i

$ echo "s(pi)" | bc -l
0

$ echo "sin(pi())" | calc -p
0
No, it's useful against terrorists whose trade-craft is less than perfect. That's many of them.
It's interesting that this kind of book is being released now, than, say two years ago.
I've been tempted to set up Eclipse, and just go in there and gut 90% of the menu options. What would remain would probably be a reasonably usable mapping app.
I doubt any remotely rational actor would look at things that way. Nuclear weapons are more potent than they were in WWII and more numerous. And also more deadly, due to increased population density in most urban areas. If the same nuclear bombs were dropped in the same locations today as in WWII nearly ten times as many people would die.

Moreover, the economic loss would be extreme, which serves as a further deterrent.
How to Grow Your Business with Mark Cuban's New Messaging App Cyber Dust
Arduino vs. Raspberry Pi: Which Is the Right DIY Platform for You? (2014)
Obviously a biologist will have lots of knowledge and skills a physicist doesn't have. Mathematical models can be very useful even if they don't model the real world faithfully, as long as they capture part of the behavior to some precision. Physicists spend an extraordinary amount of time studying toy models to build up intuition, which together with an understanding how to proceed in more complicated solutions can be very useful. For example even though most real world EM problems won't have the symmetries required to come up with a closed form solution, the intuition gained from studying toy examples is still invaluable.

In the case of neurons you can model the membrane of the neuron and the interior and exterior to various degrees of accuracy as an EM problem, if you wish you can even add surface defects. Since the temperature is high, all quantum effects are essentially washed out, as are the need to model individual calcium ions etc., at least to first approximation. After the dust settles you can come up with a few effective parameters that model one neuron and an ODE that models its dynamics. As it turns out the ODE indeed exhibits dynamics similar to real world neurons in response to electric stimuli.

If you then couple those ODEs into larger system and try different coupling configurations (the coupling coefficients model the synapses between neurons), you have come up with a simplified model for parts of a brain.
Still it's kind of absurd that we are humans, and not, say, mosquitos, for the a-priori probability of finding yourself in the body of a mosquito is quite a bit higher.
Systemd 219 released
Indeed, your format looks exactly like what Perl's CHANGES spec stipulate: https://metacpan.org/pod/distribution/CPAN-Changes/lib/CPAN/...
> I think of myself as relatively smart but I've struggled with learning how to code.

That just speaks of the (still) poor state of tools and frameworks.

As early as last century driving a vehicle necessitated detailed knowledge of internal combustion engine and car parts. You can imagine someone from that era writing "I think of myself as relatively smart but I've struggled with learning how to drive" after yet another lecture on carburetors, crankshaft, and bearing boxes.
I worked on this problem for a private company. We ended up doing quite a bit to accomplish this: hired a team to edit OSM data, and wrote our own router. What we learned is that OSM data can be quite terrible at times in minute ways that made it look decent but made routing nearly impossible. I believe this effort is still ongoing and in at least the areas where that company has clients the OSM data is now much more pristine.

I sort of wish the router got open sourced, but then again it was not great for long distance routing since we were doing mostly local stuff. For example, routing across the US would have taken pretty close to exponential time.

Interestingly, we could not make Google Maps, or any other maps work for this besides OSM for two reasons: the data wasn't good enough and the roads were not uniquely and stably identified in the routes these API's produced.

Lastly, I will say that the biggest challenge to using OSM at scale, aside from varying quality of data was lack of good servers and documentation. Some of their secondary services run on one-off slowish hardware with pretty strict rate limits. We would run our own, except the documentation (and the packaging) for OSM software was leaving something to be desired. That is to say if you want to help OSM, there are plenty of ways to do so.
I think the point is that you can optimize while writing code, but be leery of optimizing while designing. To a greater or lesser degree depending on the person, task or goal, designing and coding may end up being close to the same thing, which confuses the issue.

In real terms, writing perfomant code is good, but packing data structures in interesting ways and optimizing in other manners when you aren't even sure you know all the data you need to store yet is often counter-productive.
You can even split that into steps and levels. Absurdity progresses from the entire universe right down into details like the existence of coffee or oil. Two black liquids that just happen to exist and fuel the world. Can you imagine modern society without them?

But what bugs me most is that a universe without an entity to perceive and observe it is just such a waste of ... energy? It's almost like the existence of the universe implies the existence of an observer. That the formation of intelligent life is an expected result of the universe existing.
The war against terror is only an excuse for this overwhelming mass cyber-espionage.

Explain me why you spy out german government. Is Merkel a potential terrorist? Yes sure.
I have a MBP, 8GB, 2014 now and I'm happy. I also have a thinkpad t500 but it has a dual core so you can't compare it.

The thinkpad is more of a rough notebook for a FabLab or when you are on the road and it can get dirty.

The MBP is lighter and very powerful considering its size. OS X works like a charm for me and I've been through many different OS'es so far (Win XP/7, Ubuntu, Debian, Manjaro,...). It provides most of the stuff I need for working, photoshop runs out of the box and some of the Mac tools are very handy.

But I wouldn't trust OS X for security means. Therefor I'd use a TP with Linux. I would use this for things like online-banking and private stuff.
Sling TV expands offerings with EPIX movies and VOD
pandering classist twaddle.
Rules are meant to be broken. Once you have sufficiently understand the reasoning behind the rules, feel free to break them when appropriate. People being dogmatic about some rules just see all problems as the same nail that can be hammered by a single hammer. It's intellectually lazy to not analyze the problem within the present context and to see how the rules are applied or not applied.
They could always keep the keys in multiple different companies, across multiple jurisdictions. Imagine all Microsoft cloud data is encrypted under a threshold cryptosystem, requiring the cooperation of 5 parties to authenticate users and jointly generate user keys. Now, each of those parties is a fully independent company, with its own CEO, own board, own employees and own counter-espionage division. In order to decrypt the data of any Microsoft user, anywhere in the world, they will need to simultaneously authenticate with:

* Microsoft Corp, U.S.A.

* Microsoft AG, Germany

* Microsoft, China

* Microsoft, Russia

* Microsoft, India

And have each one of those independently generate key material that, when combined, can be used by the user to generate their decryption/signing keys, which are used to secure their data.

In order to compel this system to give the user's data to a third party, all five governments involved must compel all five entities involved to release the key materials.

Of course, even better than 5 "Microsofts" would be a general distributed protocol in which users trust X companies in Y countries with their data, such that no less than Z < X companies are required to approve any re-construction of the user's key. The protocol can further be designed to make it as hard as possible to re-construct any keys without simultaneously announcing publicly that a key has been re-constructed (e.g. via a block-chain based protocol).

Is this a huge pain to implement? Yes, yes it is. But, is there any viable alternative for a globally trusted internet/cloud in the era of internet militarization?
22% of world GDP, the world's largest & most effective military, the permanent seat on the UN security council, & the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_the_Non-Proliferation...

I agree we shouldn't go barging into other countries unilaterally, but are there really people that want to argue it's wrong for the US to use its power to stop other countries from obtaining nuclear weapons?
I don't think it's possible to figure it out with the knowledge we have today.

Just like 50 years ago no one would've predicted that "social media manager with knowledge of WordPress and Drupal" was a job.

For what it's worth, US labor participation rate is still way above its historic lows http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_Labor_Participation_Rat...
Qalculate has both a GUI and a command-line `qalc` util that does what `calc` seems to do and much more:

http://qalculate.sourceforge.net/
> unlikely to affect a somewhat security-conscious Linux user

Obviously the reported malware is Windows specific, but there's no fundamental roadblock to implement something similar in Linux.

- malware injected in the boot process: Have a patched grub/syslinux/gummiboot that, after loading the Linux kernel, patches in the first stages of a rootkit. Common syscall tables and important system functions (kalloc, ...) are easy to identify, as long as the API doesn't radically change.

- secret, encrypted, storage vault in the registry is surely harder to hide, because there's typically not ONE huge monolithic binary configuration database. So, probably one would have to find a feature of ext4/btrfs/xfs/... to hide things in some internally used filesystem object that's not visible to userspace (you can, after all, patch the fs kernel module if necessary)

- patching the SSD or harddrive is surely doable, just have a look at the hdparm manpage for inspiration. (--fwdownload is the official undocumented API :-)).

[just thinking about the parallels, a sophisticated attacker will surely spend some time tailoring his rootkit/malware better]

But obviously it would be much harder to persist on a machine, given that internal APIs are much more unstable and bootloader frequently overwritten on OS updates (the Win Bootloader/boot partition, afaik, never...). On the other hand, the targeted users (industrial/military corporations) will probably stick with yesteryear's RedHat Enterprise, rather than "bleeding edge" Arch/gentoo.
How to die at Los Alamos
Because 'researchers' and 'russian spy agency' sounds very different. Former are motivated by desire to shed light on questionable behavior, the latter to inflict damage on their adversary (while engaging in worse practices themselves).
I should clarify that I have enjoyed some of their games. Particularly the Half-life and Portal series'.

That said, actually using Steam is an awful experience. Literally 50% of the time, when I launch Steam, it immediately stops and gives me a dialog saying I'm not connected to the Internet, despite that I have other Internet-using apps open and working fine. Quitting and immediately restarting works just fine for no apparent reason. I have several examples of things like this that show a lack of quality in their products. In my opinion, that is usually an indication of poor management as they aren't concerned with the quality of their product.
If you're targeted by a 3-letter agency you can assume you're totally screwed no matter what OS you use.

If they don't have an exploit for your OS yet, they'll write one.

Also, there's an independent OS running inside your Intel CPU (vPro).
Most Americans are apathetic. Of those of us not apathetic, those opposed to the widespread espionage of the three letter agencies are in the minority.

It's been heartbreaking watching the American reputation decline worldwide while also watching the inverse rise of the amoral and unrepentant technocrat here in America. It's a Golden Age for technology and a Dark Age for culture.
This is how i'm doing it and i see it's slowly working out ( creating websites and etc..). Still not expensive, so you can contact me for the next 3 months or so if you need anything ;) - some waiting time depending on your needs / how busy it is for me though.

Stay away from "doing something for big companies"... I have created a HackerNews clone without any success and a time tracking app in AngularJS for 2 big companies... They let me down bigtime and lost a lot of time ( = money) because of that -> they won't help in publicity.

Also created www.ledenboek.be - a member management application, before i found out that sporting clubs don't have money in Belgium... ( it does work great though).

I'd do it all again any time (although you should have some patience though... Not all your friends/acquintances want a website / app right now... ). I'm releasing a website tomorrow, working on one right now and got a new request for a website today. So that's 3 websites in 1.5 weeks without any publicity. Be fair to everyone, be honest also! ( don't try to cover things up, if something is hard / difficult to do. Give them an alternative). They understand if you do something a different way, if it saves a lot of time. When you notice someone isn't "communicating", but just rammeling what they want without any discussion. Stay away from those clients, they think everything is easy peasy.

When someone says they want this or that. Ask them why they want it... Some people don't know IT and give a "bad solution". If you create it, they won't be happy, because they don't realize their solution is bad! Talk to the client and discuss.

PS. And i still haven't asked my brother ( who totally needs a website, because his current one is lame for a clothing store :P ). I'm delivering a website for a collegue of him tomorrow (as mentioned). So he'll hear about it on his own work ( his girlfriend has the clothing store)..

Know how the world works, people talk - i recreated a website for a "student club" in the neighboorhood for a bargain. They'll know me in the future ;)

If you're good / honest / fair, people will come to you. Raise your prices when you have too much work.

Don't be afraid to share knowledge / they'll remember you as the guy who can help them.

If you know someone who has a problem, if one of you're clients has the solution. Redirect them (or introduce them), say something particular so your old client will know you referred him ( like one of my clients is creating an airplane, i always mention that... It is an extreme example though :P - if you don't believe me : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=su1RCCxCMEs , that's the guy)

I wouldn't do odesk / elance / whatever... You have less competition in your neigboorhood and you won't have to drop your prices under the hourly wage. Talk about what you do, there are always opportunities if you LIKE what you do.

And at last, LIKE what you do. If you wouldn't do it for more then a year, then think about something else.
I just saw _Boyhood_ over the weekend (fantastic movie, btw), and there was a scene in there that sums up my approach to socialization. The main character is talking to his dad about how he kinda has a girlfriend but it's awkward because when they're at school they've got a ton to talk about, but when they're on the phone at home they're completely different.

The dad drops this little bit of thought-technology his way (and apologies for the mangling of the quote):

"Here's what you do, alright? First off, you gotta ask her a lot of questions. Then you have to listen to the answers, alright? Actually be INTERESTED in her, alright? If you can do those things, you'll be LIGHT YEARS ahead of those other guys."

Ask a lot of questions and be interested in the answers - that'll go a really long way. Remember, everyone's got a story and I think everyone (in some way, shape or form) wants to tell it.

Also, practice socializing. This stuff comes really naturally to some folks and really NOT naturally to others. If you're in the latter camp, practice like you'd practice anything else you want to get good at. One of the local user groups I frequent has what it calls 'socialization practice' after each meetup. It's just everyone heading to a pub and hanging out, but it's a pretty good way to get to know people and practice some of these softer skills.

Best of luck - you can do it :).
Wake me up when Germany starts closing US military bases on German soil. As long as Europe is in America's pocket the status quo will remain.
No you're not immune.

Linux kernel privilege escalation bugs come out all the time. There is a long documented history of Linux rootkits. And I'm assuming you are accessing HN through a browser: Firefox/Chrome browser exploits with sandbox escapes get reported each year. Also you probably boot using UEFI, and there was presentation last year about UEFI bootkits which can hook into Kernels.

In addition, Ubuntu is one of the most popular Linux distros (if not the most) and doesn't use rolling releases, so it's probably an easier target compared to most distros.

You can't achieve security strictly through technology choices, such as which operating system you choose. Although there is some value in choosing less-popular technology.
If you found a plausible way to kill billions of people over the Internet, you wouldn't post it on public websites, because that would be dumb. Responsible security researchers don't publish 0-days until they've been patched, and this would be a million times worse. When Szilard discovered the nuclear chain reaction, he had the good sense to keep his mouth shut, etc. etc.
There was a similar blog post a while back about the standard deviation in statistics. About how when the SD was discovered, the original paper was full of disclaimers that the SD should only be used by statisticians working with perfect distributions. The squaring would amplify the natural outliers present in real-world data and make the SD too dangerous to trust. And yet we use the SD for everything, even though the original reason for it (a computation shortcut to save hand-labor) is pretty much meaningless.

I have a copy of the original paper but the paper lacks the historical perspective of the post. I've never been able to find that blog post again. Does anyone remember what I'm talking about?
Hunting for Metamorphic [pdf]
If you developed as a mosquito you wouldn't have your mind, you would have the mosquito's mind - you would be the mosquito, not a human as a mosquito. You can't be and cannot have been anything other than what you are, which is a liberating thought. Alternatively, you are everything because if you had developed from the exact same initial conditions as something else you would have developed into that thing as it is exactly.
I certainly wouldn't rely on being "immune", but I'd take some solace in the idea that I'd be unlikely to be swept up in internet-scale exploit-all-the-things kind of programs. (If you're actually an NSA target, I doubt any device with more transistors than a flashlight should be considered "immune".)
Wow, everyone here seems to be really put off by this title. I thought it was clever and funny. Title's are meant to grab attention and drive sales, and secondarily to also inform the potential reader of the topic.

This title caught my attention, so first purpose, check.

I think the book is positioned for beginner to mid-career engineers working with JavaScript that want to do a deeper dive and based on the title is presented in an irreverent and funny tone. If it is those things, it accomplishes #2.

Great title. I haven't read the book, so I don't have any opinion on it beyond that, but can we try and take things a -tad- less personally?
In my experience great developers rarely focus on the tools (except if that's what they're building of course). It's like with great authors; what you have to say is far more important. Most great books were written on a typewriter, some even with pen and paper.
The importance of building (it yourself)
Don't forget about http://cambriangenomics.com/ a YC company.
I'm interested in more courses than I have time for. So, like others who've responded, I often prioritize sections of moocs. Sometimes I quickly go through lectures alone when I want to review something I'd learned but haven't used much recently. And sometimes I won't have time to even start a course during the designated date and deadlines, but I fully intend to take advantage of the content later.

I think the incentives you mentioned are very relevant. College students don't want to waste the high tuition they've paid, nor do they want to lose their academic status they've worked for. But you left out another huge factor. In the current hiring system, too many employers value where a skill was learned more than the level of proficiency.

I believe that, as more companies transition to audition-style interviews and make more accurate assessments of ability, the value placed on educational credentials will diminish. When this happens, there will be hope that educating oneself via moocs will provide a fair chance to be considered for skilled employment. When students believe that most companies genuinely value what you can do more than where you learned how to do it, I think there will be far more incentive to both enroll in and complete moocs.
The metaphor is fine. An aspiring musician could take a photograph of them performing at the local town hall and Photoshop it to make it look like they're playing Carnegie Hall. This sort of image manipulation is still done in Photoshop. It's not possible in Lightroom.

(By the way, the full product name is Photoshop Lightroom. Just sayin'.)
Most Americans probably have no idea what the NSA is, even now. I'm sure most of my college friends who weren't computer science majors couldn't say what it was or what it did.

Soviet citizens probably knew more about what was going on than Americans do now.
Most people take it to mean "Don't optimize if you don't need to", but he actually means it as "Don't optimize until you know which parts are slow". The missing context is where he talks about (or implies, it's been a while since I read it) how you should always optimize your programs when you're done.

IMO these days even the first is bad advice if taken literally. You need to ensure you don't work yourself into a design that cannot be optimized without being rewritten, which is unfortunately a problem I've seen a lot.
Apple TV Dashboard
What if the AI was integral to the design and manufacturing processes of all the airplanes, which is a much more likely path?

Then you can see how it gains 'control', in the senses that control matters anyway, without us necessarily even realizing it, or objecting if we do.