skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
People often confuse the mechanical learning of reading and writing, with the more advanced learning of how to write properly and how to analyze texts. Learning to write properly, learning to lay out one's argument, or story, in a solid, comprehensible and fun to read way is difficult. The learning process actually changes the student thought process, making it more structured and forcing a third-person view of the text.

The same actually applies to programming. The mechanical task of programming isn't very difficult, and can be taught in a few dozen hours. The thought process that leads to solid programs, though, is akin to proper writing. It is hard, requires an even more structured approach to defining solutions, and actually changes one's approach to modelling reality in general.

If we believe that a formal view of the world is a necessary skill (which I do), then teaching programming is as useful as teaching good writing. Note that I don't mean the basic skill of writing code, but the skill that is similar to good writing. Distinguishing the two is necessary for discussion. We can call it programming and software engineering, or programming and Programming (with a capital P), or something else. The rote task and the modelling task lead to different discussion paths.
I actually disagree. People have a pretty good grasp of basic logic. The issue is that when we say "computers are logical", what we really mean is that you need to treat computers like someone who is missing important parts of their brain.

People are used to interact with other entities that can perform advanced logical inferences, deductions, etc in an intuitive way. They are at a loss when they're forced to dumb it down to "talk" to someone who needs to be told not to crash into the wall when being told to walk in a certain direction.

Worse still, when people do understand that computers are really dumb, but actually good at following orders when you treat them like a mentally challenged toddler, they get stuck again when even that fails; when they encounter application after application that does not operate in any logical sense, because they aren't programmed by other computers, but by lazy/dumb/stressed/ignorant programmers like me.

The best quote I read on this comes from this essay: http://stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks

"The only reason coders' computers work better than non-coders' computers is coders know computers are schizophrenic little children with auto-immune diseases and we don't beat them when they're bad."
Ah, I watched Aliens for the first time aged about 7, in '90 or so... nightmares, for months, and months, and months.

Definitely not one for the under-tens...
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AVG Announces Invisibility Glasses
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I thought the whole point of Firefox OS was that the hardware layer would be accessed through JS API's like window.ondevicemotion, Canvas, navigator.geolocation, window.DeviceOrientationEvent, navigator.getUserMedia, navigator.vibrate, 'devicelight', navigator.battery.level, SMS, contactList, etc. And that the Firefox team would add even more features that can be accessed from the VM layer. And making the Firefox OS the most secure OS by adding app permissions. And that the VM could not be bypassed unless the computer gets re-flashed.

This might sound funny, but considering Moore's law and where we currently are on that exponential curve, making a fully virtual OS will be the next step in the PC evolution. You shouldn't have to write low level interrupts or accept that apps need full root access anymore.
Mash-Color now available on Mashape
I agree. There are a lot of things we should be learning (understanding of finance would be one thing, optimization maths would be another IMO, and maybe if people well taught to understand the behaviour of exponentially growing systems (like self-replicating ones), we wouldn't have so strong an anti-vaxxer movement now).

My point is, I believe programming has very fundamental insights and new models of thinking that are not really related to the syntax of particular language. Insights that let you think of things in terms of computational processes and use that thinking to make stuff do itself. I definitely don't think everyone should be a developer. Just that everyone could use those insights in the complex world we live in today.
NASA satellite imagery shows that rain forest deforestation is speeding up
I briefly looked at Firefox OS a few months ago and my conclusion was that the primary issue was neither JS nor HTML but rather that there is no canonical UI framework for the OS (please correct me if I'm wrong here). This means that there is no consistent look and feel across apps.
Japanese scientists create the most accurate atomic clock ever
You know, basic alphabetization also does not teach kids to think in any way. And does not even prepare them for a lucrative career either.

If your criticism is that those programs do no go far enough, I can agree with that. But they have to start somewhere, and that somewhere must be easy and basic.
Thanks for escalating. We'll try to trace it down.
For Sale Muscula SaaS App. Log JavaScript Errors. Used on Millions of Page Views
A python terminal viewer for browsing Reddit
I applaud your arguments as you completely destroyed the parent poster.
Not clear from this comment and good to know: there is a free version (that I use) and that works great!
http://vim-adventures.com/
Our Director of Engineering on the WIRED.com Redesign
This is a high risk market beside internal and bank policies, like gambling sites. You should check other companies in this area and look at their payment gateway.
That's very little head. Does anybody have the engineering data on these projects? Have they built a smaller installation to prove the concept?

Head height is a major factor in hydro power installations.
Material design swipe (pull) to refresh, by using CSS3 and JavaScript
Which London Startups are hiring product managers?
What does "Nice scare quotes" mean?

Just realised you think I'm objecting to the term "3rd world countries". The term is outdated and no longer relevant today, but is not the issue. Re-read my comment - I agreed with the point but didn't like the finger pointing at devs in poorer countries. I'm not sure why that seems to have provoked a bunch of downvotes.
Please email jgc @ CloudFlare and we can follow up. Yes we are happy to have interns in London.
But would you seriously have problems with a scene where someone goes to the toilet?

I'm not talking extreme scatological close-ups. It's an analogy for nudity, not hardcore pornography.
Ok, if slumber parties are late night parites then my point need to change a bit:

- Getting 11yo kids to officially stay up as late as possible is a weird idea. They will stay up late anyway but why make it official?

- Many games are suitable for some kids together in the evening. I mean non-video games.

- Watching a movie can be useful to cool down the atmosphere but watching an horror movie just before sleep seems not very advisable. I do not buy the argument that these kids did already see all suitable cartoons and movies. Did they really see all of Miyazaki, Chaplin, Buster Keaton, old Disneys, etc? If so,they clearly watch too much movies.

- I do not think pizza is a good diet for kids (and adults), and it is better, if possible, to not link in their mind fast-food and "having nice time together". I guess it is not convenient to cook a three courses meal with many kids around, but there are other, better possibilities including bbq, picnic, salads, etc. (My reasoning is that having a nice time together is in most culture synonym for having a nice meal together, and so the food can be more important than we think in these occasions.)
Fantastic article. Well worth reading in its entirety.
At this point "a small degree" won't amount to anything. Look at how much money Microsoft have had to burn through to get the few percentage points they've managed to amass. And they still can't get developers onto their ecosystem despite the bribes they've thrown out.

It's go big or go home time and Mozilla simply don't have the resources to do it.
On photos and social: yes and no.

What's most frustrating for me with G+ and multimedia in general is that it keeps getting in my way.

When I'm looking for long-form text, I keep getting images.

When I'm looking for images, I keep getting long-form text.

Then there's video.

If I want to look at images I can go to a site that has images -- say, Imgur -- and browse those mindlessly. Or look at a curated set (say one of the subreddits, or an Imgur category). Imgur's even got a pretty decent image search.

Yes, if I had family and I wanted to specifically share certain images with them and all that, then G+ would be pretty cool. But quite honestly, the thought of using a third-party platform like that weirds me out and bothers me. I never cared for the "share everything personal out in public" mode, or even "on someoone's third-party service".

That said: image sharing is absolutely a killer social app, simply because the tools for users to do this themselves suck so badly (though this is increasingly less the case).

Add to all that: images and G+ are a pain in the ass. I cannot create a post with inline images. Creating an uploading albums is a pain (again, Imgur is hugely better at this). It does have autoawesome, which can create cool effects, but that's not something to pin a total system off of. There's copious free storage, which is cool, yes (and in general the underlying tech of Google / G+ has been both robust and exceptionally reliable).

But ... "fantastic user experience"? Please! From client bloat (even Yonatan complains) to ideosyncratic Markdown (dittos) to lost drafts (dittos) to hard-to-read small and low-contrast fonts and "cards" style presentation of long-form texts, it simply makes no sense. Imgur, reddit, and Ello are kicking ass and taking names in multiple categories regards G+.

Yes, it could have been good. But it isn't.

The good?

Notifications. "Subscribe by default" turns out to be pretty good (though there's a lot of stuff I'd prefer to turn off).

Search. Syntax sucks, but everything is indexed, and it's fast. Client bloat means you can't scroll back more than a few screens, but ...

Data liberation. Also useful.

The rest of it? Quite frankly, I'd scrap most of it and start over.
You have to translate between the English spec and the computer-readable proof, and surely it's relatively easy to mess that up in some way and end up proving the wrong thing.
Would be interesting to have travel buddies too. As in not someone you know but people who are headed to the same destination as you. Meet new people while exploring places. Although it should not turn into a weird hooking up situation.
What is life? Are viruses alive?
Fair enough. My criticism is that they focus on the wrong thing. They turn into vocational training. It's a different goal, even if the beginnings look the same. We don't need everyone to be a developer - but we could use everyone understanding concepts related to computation.
Location: Chicago, IL

Remote: No

Willing to relocate: Yes

Languages: C, Haskell, Python, Java, Awk, Javascript, Bash, Golang, PHP

Technologies: AWS, Apache, Git, Django, MySQL

Website/Portfolio: http://alexcbecker.net/programming.html

Email: acbecker@uchicago.edu

I'm primarily a backend developer specializing in algorithm design and implementation, but I've been working my way steadily towards full-stack.
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Note that it can't be used commercially without a proper license. Also, no 64 bit.
Instagram has sharing, but it's not exactly known for privacy.
Seems to be the premise of http://www.majestic12.co.uk/ - looks like it might be failing.
If you have time, could you take a look at this project I'm working on? https://vimeo.com/107069470

I would relish feedback.
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Great article.

After reading reddit.com/r/news , I found the following:
http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2015/03/01/amateur-videograph...

So, one homeless disposal technique is to house them. Another is to consider them violent criminals and execute them.
Almost simultaneous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9130893 (9 points, 3 hours ago, 2 comments)

The link is: http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-31682529

And chisb put a additional link to: http://www.tidallagoonswanseabay.com/proposal-overview-and-v...

They have a little more information.
You are in a dance with the computer, there is a reliable feedback loop if you want to test or do perf, there is a truth to it. But with writing, you might not get any feedback at all, or very little. Building things is quite different from communicating.
There are some technical details about flow rates and head height in section 4.8 (p. 85/88) of this document:

http://tidallagoon.opendebate.co.uk/files/TidalLagoon/DCO_Ap...

One other thing I noticed upon briefly skimming is they're considering installing turbines which can also be used as pumps. I suppose in principle, at the cycle of the tide when the head is low and the plant isn't producing power, you could use the same facility as pumped storage.

There's also a rather florid promotional video here, if anyone's interested:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXEmHDQtXnw
Can't edit my post, so contact details here :)

LinkedIn: http://uk.linkedin.com/in/peterbowyer

Email: peter+hnmar15 [ at] peterbowyer[dot ]co.uk
Well, my parents did, for example. I was pretty "rational" at an early age and my parents misinterpreted that as maturity, which at some points got me into situations I shouldn't have been expected to be able to handle at that age.

It's not unheard of for parents to want their children to consider them peers rather than parents. The problem is that you can't really be both. The roles and responsibilities of a parent and a peer in a child's life are very different.

Also, if you signal to your child that you would prefer them to act more maturely, that child can become pretty good at faking maturity without the emotional and psychological stability that would come with it if it came naturally. As a parent you have to look past that superficial behaviour.

And for a less personal example, just look at child prodigies, child actors, child pop stars, or for a particularly disturbing example, child beauty pageants. That a child shows a particular trait normally associated with maturity or adulthood doesn't mean the child should be treated as an adult. Yet, this is exactly what happens to many such children who happily play along because their make-believe is positively reinforced by the adults around them.

There are plenty of people willing to believe an eight year old is "very mature for their age" when they should know better. Heck, the entire premise of NAMBLA is a reflection of this (simply taking the illusion to its disgusting logical extreme).
What Startups Need to Know About the Affordable Care Act/Obamacare
How do you figure OOP is falling out of favor? I've seen a few arguments on HN (the old OOP vs FP discussion) but do you actually expect the trend to continue to the point that no one really uses OOP anymore? Highly doubtful. And which specific part of the industry is OOP slipping into obscurity?
10 Notorious Cyber Criminals Brought to Justice – #1
basically, the Ariane rockets partially built there and are controlled from there, and the satellites are built and controlled there.

I guess the meet each other pretty often, and now, the satellite guys are going out with another rocket company.
A compiler can only catch syntax errors (ie grammar). But just as a well-written essay can be based on false-premises, so a syntactically correct program can be full of bugs, particularly if the programmer had a faulty idea of what the problem was to begin with.

Pure logic can only work correctly with reasonable premises. But it can't provide us with those premises. We can only construct, refine, and share those through natural language.

To get back to the point of the OP, I think the underlying assumption that systematic modelling is the new literacy only makes sense if we assume the "old" literacy. In other words, the ability to model the real world only works if we can actually understand and communicate about that real world outside the models. Without the underlying meaning, the model is just a toy.
Two thoughts here:

1. If you use it commercially, you can pay for it.

2. In most cases where it's needed, 64 bit doesn't matter.

(Though I might be wrong on the second one.)
Trading to resume on hacked altcoin exchange BTER
There are superoptimizers that do the first part.

Effectively, build a Markov chain generator from known "fast" executables, then explore that as the input to the superoptimizer.
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• Creating wireframes and prototypes

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Portfolio: https://www.behance.net/kucevalov

Experienced UI designer and Art director. Interested in interactive design of complicated projects, mobile application and responsive design.
+1

This is the reason I came back to comment.
Far from Home Is Where the Heart Is
The Fancy Clone Script – Prystino
A finite domain isn't the same thing as an infinitely big function.

Ever written a function that takes a list? You've got an infinite domain. (Well, generally in most programming languages not actually infinite, but the upper bound is so large that it might as well be.)
> My advice would be to start experimenting with it now. This will give you a headstart over the rest of the field as IPV6 becomes more popular.

I remember specifically a coworker of mine in 1996 saying that I had 4 years to learn about IPng as it would be replacing everything by the Year 2000.

I guess the work we had to do stopping planes falling out of the sky and holding back the Y2K zombie apocalypse delayed that somewhat. :)
If that's true, I'd mark the start date for such a period at the end of the Cultural Revolution.

List of conflicts with over 1 million deaths:

1850-1864 Taiping Rebellion: 20 million deaths.
1914-1918 World War 1: 37 million deaths.
1917-1922 Russian Civil war: 9 million deaths.
1928-1936 Chinese Civil War: 2 million deaths
1937-1945 Second Sino-Japanese War: ~25 million deaths.
1939-1945 World War 2: 60 million deaths.
1945-1949 Chinese Civil War: 6 million deaths.
1950-1953 Korean War: 4 million deaths.
1966-1971 Chinese Cultural Revolution: 30 million deaths.
1955-1975 Vietnam War: 3 million deaths.
1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War: 1 million deaths.
1998-2003 Second Congo War 1-5 million deaths.

Defining a non-violent period as "a period in which there are no conflicts with more than 1 million deaths",

The previous violent period lasted from 1914 to 1971.
The current non-violent period has lasted 54 years since 1971.
The previous non-violent period close to this long lasted from 1864 to 1914, which is 50 years.

Sure, as the world population grew, the size of conflicts haven't been growing to match, but in absolute terms I think there is good chance there will be at least several million+ deaths conflicts upcoming in the current century.
Exactly my thought. I would just go with real date objects instead of a string representation at all.
I think this is entirely correct. In general, the best sort of environment for coding is in a supportive environment where your colleagues are willing to discuss issues with you, give hints or assistance or review your work.

Coding shouldn't be done in a hurry, but with care. That's IMO.