skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The End of Creativity
Yes, that is correct. Water can not become environmentally radioactive except as tritiated water which has a short lifetime both radioactively, and biologically.

The longest half life for radioactive oxygen is 2 minutes.

Tritium (from hydrogen) has a half life of 12 years, and is harmless externally. Internally it's dangerous but has a half life of only 1 to 2 weeks, so the danger is very limited.

Mitigating the risk even more, tritium is rarely made by reactors (i.e. made in very small quantities), they prefer to make deuterium, which is not radioactive.
I'm going to go ahead and take that as a compliment.
Google Code has always been exclusively for open source projects. From https://code.google.com/p/support/wiki/FAQ#Hosting_Your_Open...

> Can I use Google Code to host projects that aren't open source?

> Nope. Open source projects only.
>I think we plan on making minimal demands of our users, and none of them involve grooming them for prospective employers.

>most of the people who participate aren't going to be looking for a job when they do.

This is weird, and I'm sensing some miscommunication between you and patio.

I'm only hearing about this as a tool for proving my worth. Your major marketing (as far as I'll likely ever be aware) has CAREER CAREER CAREER stamped all over it.

People won't follow the honor system if the stakes are at the 'career' level. You're losing the 'fun and free' culture of Microcorruption that makes people spend their free time building fun tools.

Your understanding of the incentives differ from the incentives that have been communicated to me about Starfighter.
May be interesting. But the claims made in the announcement are very hard to believe. The admission of not being ready to show that the claims have been achieved aren't helping my scepticism either.

Still... if it works, and is actually better than most other attempts at code-gaming this may be fun. Profitable? They will have to see.
Woah! this is nuts
BloomUnit: Declarative Testing for Distributed Programs [pdf]
Surprising how few calories it burns, seems like a simple 30 minute walk would be better and have less of an impact.
2D interlacing for state in the DOM
I miss progressive loading GIFs. They make me pine for compuserve, but also make be a smart way to render state in the DOM. I've noticed that all of these front end frameworks, while fricken fantastic at managing state at scale, do a terrible job at UX while dom elements are loading. The best sites have animated png/svg spinners that indicate to the user that the page, or better yet, the page's element they don't have yet hasn't loaded. The worst... well you think the site is basically a static header and altogether broken until your poor browser manages to piece together all those diffs and finally renders some content. Hopefully before the user has left.

Can DOM elements get their headers streamed before their content? Can we bring back the progressively loading GIF but with state???

I see that as a big potential win for usability. If I knew I was waiting around for 3 seconds to have somebody's twitter feed load, I would simply move on to the part of the content I needed. I DON'T need to see their press releases in full. Maybe the first one...

If state could have relative weight to the user and could be loaded in a smart sort order, we would be able to browse the web with high fidelity when we want, and speed when we don't.

This seems to fit nicely into a personalized web experience, but could just as easily work well for a standard anon user based on aggregated usage habits.

I'm rather inclined to build something like this because I needs it, but if this exists in any form, please lmk where to find it.

http://blog.codinghorror.com/content/images/uploads/2005/12/6a0120a85dcdae970b0128776fcadb970c-pi.gif
Is this laptop aimed for the high-end Macbook Pro users, or is it poised as the spiritual successor to the Macbook Air?

According to the tech specs, this has the slowest processor (1.1 Ghz Intel Core M) of all of their models and the oldest graphics card (Intel HD Graphics 5300).

Granted -- I know I shouldn't commit the cardinal sin of "The number is lower so it's worse." My words aren't meaningful. I guess I'm just confused about who this product is aimed for.

EDIT: After looking around, this machine seems less powerful than the Air. I'm guessing it's aimed for those who want something more stylish with pizzazz at the expense of higher specs. The target user wants to own a machine that feels futuristic and magical. This machine is just certainly not targeted toward my needs.

In terms of specs, it's This machine < Air < MBP.
In terms of style, it's this machine > Air > MBP (?).
In terms of price, it's Air < this machine < MBP.
Because it's associated with people who have no idea what they're talking about, or are marketing to those who have no idea what they're talking about[0].

Alternatives: Computer? Depends on the circumstance.

[0] http://threatpost.com/csi-cyber-we-watched-so-you-didnt-have...
This may be just speculation, as the memory density in cloud hosts is rarely possible with non-ECC memory. I've found that when purchasing RAM for systems, it's fairly common for server and multi-rank to imply ECC, although I've had to look at product sheets to verify that.

Now, I could be wrong, but it would be quite a surprise to find out that any of the cloud services are not using ECC. I suspect they all are, but they don't advertise it.
I think you should be talking to you current employer about setting aside some of your current work time to training. One or two days a month for you study / explore technologies that will grow your skills and therefore the skills the company can draw on.
I get that this is work sample testing - but it seems to be for an extremely limited work sample.

Most / much of the success of a valuable developer is not in their specific technical talent, but in areas like expounding a vision, documenting, running a team, navigating politics and fund raising. (Bit vague here I admit, personal experience of success is problem for me)

Patio11 made a name for himself saying "tech is a necessary but not sufficient condition for business success - now learn about basic marketing"

Something similar seems to be applied here - how can a CTF program ever handle politics or investor problems or documentation issues.

Getting good technical capable people is important - but not sufficient.

Will be interested in seeing the CTF program however ... Good luck.
I got completely stuck on the first level of Microcorruption. Should I even attempt this new stuff?
This link changed after I voted.
Not really. This processor will be far slower than what they've got in the current-gen MacBook Airs.
Provided that this is a success then (which it will be) it'll make the barrier for success for an ARM MacBook far lower.
I feel your pain because I also have to make presentations—and thus carry display adapters in my bag.

But the vast majority of people never have to make presentations or hook up to legacy projectors and monitors. So bulking up the machine itself to accommodate that does not really make sense.
> but this is not the only visa available for work

Hmm, care to elaborate?

I don't think there's any US work visa that is easier to obtain than the H-1B. As far as I know:

* The L-1 visa is only for intra-company transfers, so unsuitable in most cases.

* The O-1 visa is for proven extraordinary talent, and as such is inaccessible to 99.9% of the population.

* The EB-3 visa has a 4+ year waiting periods, so out of the question.

* The EB-2 visa, if you have a master's degree (related to the job), and were not born in India or China, can be obtained in circa ~1 year. (Labor certification alone could take nine months to a year.)

* The J-1 visa lets your work for a short amount time, but imposes a 2-year ban after the year is over. Anyone even mildly considering moving to the U.S. for longer than a year and half would not use this visa.

* International students in the U.S. can work for a short amount of time after graduation with OPT. But this requires being a international student in the US, of course.

* The EB-1 visa is primarily used by managers transitioning from L-1A visas. The "extraordinary talent" EB-1 oddly has a much higher standard than the O-1. (A good candidate would be a Nobel prize laureate.) For all practical purposes, it is inaccessible to 99.9999% of the world population.

So right now, the "best" alternative to the H-1B is the EB-2. But a company will have to wait for a whole year vs. the 6-7 months for the H-1B. In addition, labor certification is a very expensive process costing around $10k-$20k. It's not guaranteed to return a positive result either. A single minimally qualified U.S. worker could bar the entry of the potential would-be immigrant.

So in your knowledge, is there any visa that's actually easier to obtain than an H-1B and that offers the (AC21) job portability of an H-1B as well?
misleading. Without a Nest account, hardware optional. Nest is Google's brand for home automation, and they are trying to consolidate logins, much like the past 5 years has been across their other vast array of products.
agreed. Excellent movie, won an award at sundance. Trailer here for anyone who is interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CC60HJvZRE

I'm sure 90% of people who frequent hacker news can identify with the characters in this film (ie, young startup guys)
Especially since they are bolted firmly to the ground :/

--
Anyway, important issue. Shouldnt have to wait for test results from europe...
Possibly. I think this is why they switched from the angled magsafe to the straight-on magsafe2. My Air took a flying leap off the kitchen table because the combination of angled magsafe and light weight meant it wouldn't disconnect.

Fortunately, the thing was closed, landed on the lid, bounced off the hardwood floor, did a flip, and was no worse for the wear. If it had been onto concrete or tile, or the lid had been open, it probably would have turned out worse.

My 2012 MBP retina has this infernal magsafe2 connector that disconnects every time I try to use it on my lap, but at least it'll disconnect if you trip on the cord. Or if you try to use one of the 5 magsafe1->magsafe2 adapters I've bought that consistently fail after a few months.
The low battery indicator turns on with 20% battery left, that's a whole day to remember to charge it. And it only takes 2 hours for a full charge.
It's also a great example of a terrible default, and why it's important to think about what the default should be. I'm sure the guys designing it were like "Well, people will want to hear this, so they can tell if something is going wrong." In reality, the modem noise is the opposite of what anyone ever wanted to hear, ever.
tptacek: ever heard of Cicada 3301? It's this mysterious group that has anonymously posted very involved cryptopuzzles. Not clear why, but one theory has been for recruiting people into intelligence agencies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cicada_3301

I love what you're doing but I agree with other commenters that presenting it as a game to programmers but a recruiting channel to companies might not align well. What do you do if a lot of your top players aren't interested in getting a job? There are probably exceptions, but do you think people who are good enough to beat your CTF have that much trouble getting a job?
This was how Thomas announced to me that Starfighter would exist and I would be CEO of it. I was confused as heck until I actually saw the movie.
Wikipedia says Bismuth looks promising for Hall Effect-based thrusters, and VASIMR has been tested using both Xenon and Argon, the latter of which is in abundant supply, at least on Earth. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_thruster#Propellants)
I remember punching in ATM0 to turn off speaker so my parents wouldn't know I was dialing in when I should have been sleeping. =)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayes_command_set#The_basic_Hay...
With Negative Rates, Europe Is Entering a No-Default World
It may not be the purest usage mode but even a permanently inserted YubiKey protects you when your password got sniffed on the network or by a keylogger.

Moreover the YubiKey also acts as a PGP smartcard, giving you a private key (for e.g. SSH) that an attacker can't extract even if they obtain root on your laptop.

As much as I would like a "Retina MBA", the lack of a separate USB port is a dealbreaker for me too.
This detailed diagram of a Formula 1 steering wheel will blow your mind
Hey,

I have a growing interest in distributing systems but I am also very interested in programming language theory. I know that I want to become a software engineer but I also like to dabble with research papers.

This summer I'll join the Infrastructure team of a mid-sized startup in Waterloo, I think that's a good start but I would like to know more about your experience. What do you found the most effective way to turn an "interest" into a subject you are expert in (read able to create new and non-trivial things). I want to get my hands dirty but I am also a bit clueless as to where to start!

I have just started college but I feel that I need to figure out a (even very rough/broad) strategy to structure my learning. Waterloo is a great school but the meaty CS electives are reserved for 3rd/4th year student and I feel that I can work by myself until I reach this academic level.

Distributed systems is a very broad field, do you think that I should start by the fundamentals and then pick-up a niche area to grow in or would you rather have a broad approach, experience different things and specialize after graduation?

It would be really cool if you could shoot me an email: aaron_at_rely_dot_io
Thank you :))
Usually CTFs / wargames / whatever are the only way you ever get to work with stuff like radio or telephony protocols, credit cards, homegrown crypto...

Also you can probably expect things dealing with custom VMs, file formats or networking. Say for instance one of the challenges involves a machine with a broken TCP/IP stack, so you have to write your custom client that can talk to it, how often do you do that in real life? Yet it can translate into useful skills.
I liked hearing the sounds. I could tell just from the connection sounds what speed I connected at. If my modem was falling back below 33k frequently, especially below 28k, then I knew something was wrong.
VMware Update to Mr. Hellwig's Legal Proceedings
I watched this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTos3CsvnLQ
It's still something you have, even if it's glued into your USB port.
How to Embrace Failure as You Transition from Employee to Entrepreneur
This sounds insanely fun & reading this got me really excited, just subscribed a moment ago!
This is especially ridiculous since NVIDIA just updated their SHIELD tablets (a $299 product) to support OpenGL 4.5 (yes, the desktop version).
> This would work if we were only using them for messaging, but the protobuffer objects are also used as the datastructure in which the information they contain is stored. This was done in the name of simplicity, to avoid creating a separate internal datastructure for each kind of message.

Did you consider keeping strings (serialized messages) in your cache rather than message objects? I do this in C++ code simply for memory efficiency. Here it would also allow you to avoid these extra pointers.
I came here to say this as well. There is nothing this software (+ plugins) cannot do.
want to open an avi as a series of frames and extract individual images? Want to open MSIs and extract individual files from the installer? ISOs? Floppy images? DEB files?
Want to copy files from a website in explorer view? An ssh server? Dropbox/GDrive/Onedrive? Ext2/3/4, ReiserFS, HFS/HFS+ partitions?
There are also integrated viewers for everything from DBF files to SWF files, and the ability to add almost any file metadata as a sortable column in the file view. Having regex everywhere is also killer.

I can't overstate how much more productive I am with this tool. I wish the native file managers were anywhere near this good so I could have a high-quality experience on any given machine without having to install additional software.
Hi Holly,

I'm Director of Acid Studios, but, we are a Mexico Mobile/Web App company, can we talk about your project via Hangouts? You can reach me: gustavo.barrientos[at]acidstudios.me.
5 out of 6 laptops they currently offer has a 16:10 ratio.

Only the MacBook Air 11-inch is 16:9
Ok I see what you're saying now.
Grunt doesn't do dirty-file dependency checking. Gulp does, sort of, but it's awkward.

There are many, many build tools in JS-land. Grunt and Gulp happen to be the most popular. (This isn't really due to technical merit. They're popular mostly because they're popular.) My personal favorite is Jake, which is a classic Rake-like (or Make-like) tool.
Yes. And as someone who also was stuck for many moons on later levels of that challenge: keep going. Research. Ask questions -- people will help. Honestly, I had no expectation of getting past the first microcorruption level but goddamn if it doesn't feel good when (not if) it happens.
Great work!

> I suspect the punctured sphere → disk map is conformal/biholomorphic, but I have no sources for this

It doesn't look conformal to me, some right angles become acute...
Another post covered the battery thing. $130 battery replacement on Air and $199 replacement on MBP, in Apple store, while you wait. Granted, who knows how long they'll provide that service.. for a 3 year old laptop? 5? 7?

I've got a 2012 Retina MBP and 2011 Air and battery life is not something I even think about. These things last ages these days.
I had this same reaction. My wife thought I was crazy. This sound was happiness to me, it was going from not being connected to being connected.
Upcoming WatchApps
Such beautiful machines to run iTerm2 and Vim. I almost feel guilty for having the latest 15 MBP Retina and 80% of my time is spent in a terminal coding.
OK, I will take a stab at making it easier to understand:

People don't like this because they want to watch the event, but they do not have an Apple device.
Thank you. Exactly this. Try to make a list of interesting stuff you'd like a chance to play around with, in a highly structured environment that handholds you just long enough, and that eliminates all the nonsense required to get dev environments working, or expensive subscription fees, or bankrolls, or laboratories... those are all places we want to be.

Part of the problem I had earlier today was with the words "fun" and "player". I think the words I was looking for were "participant" and "rewarding".
She did not say that, this is intellectual dishonesty. Obviously they did not weight her essays very heavily and she got in because they saw a bright, dedicated woman who had entrepreneurial aspirations.

Chill out and don't be so quick to judge for god's sake.
Yes, you have to work out the right distribution, and how to sample from it (at all, and perhaps how to sample from it efficiently).
> recently begun spraying

The neonics in question are typically applied as a seed treatment, not sprayed. Unless the bees are burrowing into the ground to reach the treated seed, they theoretically should have no exposure at all. The thought is that particulates may still spread through pneumatic planter dust-off, and here in Canada, at least, rules have been implemented to address that.
A Poker Player and Developer’s Road to Agile Project Management
I'm 25, so there's still plenty of time for them to bump the retirement age before I get there. Thanks for the info, though. I suppose things have been going better than the FUD led me to believe.
Oh yeah, shitphones. My first smartphone was a shitphone, and after three years of living with a device that was constantly unresponsive, hung itself every other time someone called me (no kidding) and that I had to reset by taking out the battery every time I turned on Wi-Fi because syncing would overwhelm the hardware - after those three years of extreme frustration, I decided to never again be cheap on tools. There are things one shouldn't save money on - a mattress, a work chair and - for me - a smartphone. The constant stress and frustration just isn't worth it.
I screamed like a little kid when I read this. I was working on UniPro 6 years ago and thought it was a great idea then. Glad to see it finally coming to market!
Useful tutorials on R
Does the $10,000 watch do something that the $350 watch doesn't do?
Gigaom Closes Down
For what it's worth, I pre-ordered a Samsung Galaxy S2 in 2011, at a time when I decided to join the ranks of the "edgiest" among us (after going through an HTC diamond and a Nokia N900).

Five years later, almost to the day, I'm still sporting my S2; I just haven't had any compelling reason to change it. It does its job now as well as it did back then, and in some cases actually performs better thanks to software updates. The battery outlasts most of my friends' phones even though it was never changed. The phone itself seems to be indestructible: I never protected it (cases, screen protectors, etc.) in 5 years, it has been through just about everything you can imagine and more, yet the only damage is a vague scratch on the screen I can only see in a very awkward angle and a some slightly chipped paint by the ear piece.

I don't know what makes this phone so particular, but for the same reason I wonder more and more what genuinely makes a lot of the new expensive hardware that particular either. In any case, it will be a sad day when I have to part with this phone.
Is there a demonstrable increase in the use of insecticides? Or the increase of a certain type? It seems like they would be accounting for this.
Remembers me of this funny anekdote: there were a whole lot of 56k6 modems out there that had this bug, where they would parse the +++ATH0 (hangup) command, over plain text connections. So when I sent that into a huge IRC channel.. You could see over a hundred connections all being quit; with reason 'EOF from client.'

Many rejoined with stuff like
#Appears as ANNA.
From MS Comic Chat. Good old days!
> How so, other than the fact that it can be difficult for users to install code that they've compiled themselves?

That's the point precisely, it increases the difficulty of anything related with the distribution of a project outside of GPL's grounds. An increased difficulty often translates in extra effort and lost resources (time, developers, money, etc.).

The fact that many software authors are relicensing their work from GPL and similar licenses to MIT is because they're more interested in reducing to their users the hassle that the intricacies of the GPL family of licenses bring to them.
Command-click on the folder icon at the top of the window to see all the parents of the folder.
What I Learned Working in a Chocolate Factory
There is also the 'scripts' section of your package.json, 'npm run', and UNIX pipes:

scripts: {
"do_something": "this | that"
}

$ npm run do_something

See also http://blog.keithcirkel.co.uk/why-we-should-stop-using-grunt...
Because that's not the theory that the data supports? As I understand the current article, the data does not support a single explanation. It's a combination of many things, working in concert.

The issue is not coming up with an explanation that makes sense. The issue is coming up with an explanation that actually explains as much of the data as possible.
I think the appeal of a treadmill desk is mostly avoiding sitting or just-standing at a desk, both of which have been shown to do damage to a body. It seems like the article kind of indicates to me that the ultimately the damage might be neither sitting nor standing nor walking but simply being absorbed in the computer while you let your body deteriorate.