skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I studied this idea extensively while getting my master's in Chinese lit. While I think this article is interesting, in my opinion it kind of misses the point about wu-wei.

Many Chinese texts admonish total focus and dedication to a task. The idea is that if you obsess over developing some skill for a long time you will eventually be able to do it without thinking, and when that happens your creative impulses will guide you instead of your thoughts. For example after coding a lot you stop worrying about syntax and can consider design principles instead. It's not that Pao Ding was a master of meditation, it's just that he spent his whole life cutting up oxen.

When that author says "We have been taught to believe that the best way to achieve our goals is to reason about them carefully and strive consciously to reach them. But Butcher Ding’s story—and the science that’s beginning to back it up—shows us that many desirable states are best pursued indirectly." I think he's setting up a false opposition: the road to unconscious mastery is paved with relentless conscious effort and lots of careful reasoning.
Strongly but respectfully disagree, see my comment which is sitting at the bottom because it ruffled some feathers.
Milk production has been outsourced for a very long time [1]. We just now have the technology to move it reliably from supplier to anonymous recipient rather than having to have instantaneous transfer, and social attitudes in the US have swung back in favour of human milk rather than substitutes.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet_nurse
Rainwater Harvesting to Replenish Underground Water in Rajasthan, India
although it would be awesome if this enabled time travel...
You're right, I've never whiteboarded a problem where the other person knows the answer. A thousand times have I sat down in front of a whiteboard with coworkers looking to solve a problem. That's how I interview too.
Cloudup Chrome
The amazing thing (to me) is that as a ClojureScript user I struggled to understand where the performance problems described in this article came from. If you use ClojureScript with React, by default you get no such issues, because of immutable data structures.
An additional question I have, related to these services is, on average how long does it take for clients your doing work for to pay you?
I hate reply spamming here but I keep thinking of new things

Just as a heads up, you can edit your comments within a certain window of time.
YouTuber Aims to Teach Game Dev (incl. Tutoring) for Free
Well it was apple that started it and now everybody is just following suit ...

If people demanded root on the original 2007 iPhone when realized what really were the capabilities of the device the walled garden model would have been DOA.

People are well trained by now with consoles, tablets, phones and thermostats that it is totally ok for someone else to tell you what to do with the hardware you own ... and only a couple of old (30+) farts like us that remember the wild west years of the internet and computing are kicking against the trend.
That's an odd title given how little effort was spent in pursuit of downloads. tl;dr:

1) clone something popular on HN

2) get most of your downloads by chance when switching from paid to free

3) write a story for HN about how you made an app and this is all your marketing ever and it didn't get any downloads

4) optimize for better revenue

5) get featured by apple, which probably accounts for 1/2 the revenue
Dedicated servers are great but having a fixed IP address is not going to help against tracking unfortunately. I can also recommend OVH/Kimsufi and Hetzner.
As a complete beginner? No, I wouldn't call you totally unfit for developing software. I'd call you entry-level, but that's totally okay (as long as your applying for entry-level jobs and have realistic salary expectations). I didn't specify this in my comment above, but I've never really had to interview for entry-level req's. The positions that I described involved candidates with years of experience... so the fact that THEY don't have a clue about the basic design of virtually every web framework for the past two decades (i.e. MVC) is a glaring red flag.

To be honest, I'm not entirely sure that the MVC example would be a good question to ask to a younger candidate. If you had been around during the early days of web development (i.e. CGI scripts based on Perl or raw PHP, or Java where all of your logic is crammed into a JSP page), then you could say all sorts of things about the shift toward MVC being the norm. However, if you came along after that shift, and every web framework you've ever seen has been some variation on MVC principles, then it's a bit like asking a fish to describe water.

Anyway, if you're just getting started in the field, and haven't had much interview experience yet, then try not to let it get to you. Interviewing involves a TON of rejection, and that never really stops. If interviews ever start feeling easy, then it means you're selling yourself short... and you should be interviewing for more senior positions with higher salaries.

To get started though, I would suggest simply doing a Google search on "programmer interview questions", or something more specific to your background (e.g. "java interview questions"). This is exactly what the majority of your lazy interviewers are doing to come up with their questions anyway. As you encounter questions that you can't answer, then look them up and read about it (e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model%E2%80%93view%E2%80%93cont...).
More like Ravenclaw :)

...I've probably been reading hpmor.com too much lately, but thanks HN for turning me on to that.
I know just how he feels.

I'm a fairly typical geek in almost all aspects of my life, but nothing beats the thrill of competing in Kickboxing competition and going one on one with another Martial Artist.

It's not even about winning, or dominating. Even when I get the seven shades of shit knocked out of me, I still feel that rush, and walk away with a smile on my face.
I'm glad someone reads my footnotes :-). About the rentals - most customers rented instead of buying. This had a huge effect on computer companies. Starting a competitor was extremely capital intensive since you had to build the computers up front and then you got revenue monthly, rather than from big sales. Rentals also made IBM conservative since they didn't want to introduce a new machine that would obsolete all the old ones they were still renting out.

As for the design book, I only recommend it about 50% - it has a lot of academic theory that HN readers may find uninteresting. It also goes into great detail of the architecture of IBM buildings. Not to discourage you but just set expectations.
How Random is xkcd?
If the person is adding value while not on maternity (or paternity) leave then it would be worthwhile to pay them while they are gone so they come back and continue working for you. If you don't do it, some other employer probably will, and they may choose to work for the employer with better benefits instead.
If Turing hadn't committed suicide, what would have changed in computer science?
I posted a link to a CBC article in which someone with the Institute of Shamanic Medicine (in BC, Canada) suggested that people contact her group and let them make an intro to a good shaman. I don't entirely trust the institute (they have a six month online course in shamanism), but that could be a good place to start.

http://www.cbc.ca/m/news/canada/jennifer-logan-s-death-in-pe...
linemen literally bash their heads together on every play. it would actually be a huge surprise to me if there was less head trauma at that position.
You are certainly free to continue to do heroin as far as I am concerned. You are not free to rob my house because you destroyed your life, but if you can keep your shit together, do whatever you want.
While I agree that maternity leave laws are quite problematic for many women in the US it should also be mentioned that not every mother is able to breast feed their child.

It's actually not that uncommon and in most cases these women are otherwise perfectly healthy and really want to breast feed.

Many non-physiological factors play a role here. For example how much pressure does the mother feel or put on herself. (typically with the first child because it's a new experience) How much stress does she have and so on.
>If not, What is the correct answer that will prevent me from getting COMPLETELY EXPOSED (in your words) if you ask me this MVC question in an interview?

Every interviewer has their own pet question that the candidate is COMPLETELY UNQUALIFIED if they don't know.

My short answer to "What is MVC?" is that it's a popular web development trend, but without much substance to back it up. Every MVC project that I've been supporting/maintaining was a nightmare, taking 3x-5x longer to get stuff done than what I consider reasonable.

MVC = Model-View-Controller. It's usually for web development. You structure your code in a way that separates the data logic (Model), the user presentation logic (View), and the glue that holds the bits together (Controller).

There are many popular MVC frameworks that let you churn out a lot of mediocre websites quickly (angular.js, Ruby on Rails, Zend, Django(Python), and many others). The MVC framework does a lot of routine coding for you, but it comes at a price. The code can become a nightmare to maintain, especially if you use the MVC framework incorrectly. If you do something outside what the MVC framework provides, it can become a handicap rather than a help. The MVC framework usually demands you write your whole application in its preferred style, such as spreading out your code in various directories with forced naming conventions. MVC frameworks tend to be poorly documented compared to the underlying language (For example, compare the zend documentation to php.net).
Concurrency is very important nowadays, and it's substantially more important in UI code. Javascript has the single worst concurrency "model" of any programming language I've ever worked in.
Well, maybe. I don't understand the argument that you are "doing work" when a light automatically comes on for you in the first place. I can see arguing that opening a refrigerator is work, or that it isn't, but I can't see coming to a different conclusion if a light comes on when you open it. I would have made a crappy rabbi.
Totally agree with you http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11
What's the biggest practical limitation to switching to unmanned drone fighters?
New Macbook power brick
I live in Silicon Valley so I have tons of Software Engineer friends. I also have a friend who's a heart surgery researcher at Stanford. When we talk about our hiring process he just laughs and thinks its impossible to do something remotely close what we do in Software in their field. It seems Software is the only field that people have to do some serious work for the interviews.
No matter where you are, take the local area code and append 867-5309.

Works every time, every store I've been to in any state. ;)
From the above article:

"Why do we keep doing whiteboard interviews, even though they tell us little about how good the applicant is at actual software development?"
A lot like code coverage. A good rate doesn't mean you're doing great, but a poor rate is a good indicator that you have a problem.
Depending on what you are building, yes. This can save a developer a good portion of a day between the code, file storage and CDN.
As an engineer with ten years of software dev experience who interviews quite a lot of candidates for my current team, I'd say don't overthink this.

BigO, data structures and having a good idea how computers work, what matters for performance both from theoretical and practical perspective, matters infinitely more to us that knowing how to play object-oriented BS bingo or subversion usage patterns.

If you know what MVC stands for, you're know enough about OO patterns to me.

Not going to argue that we got it right way(tm), just wanted to give you another perspective.
Missy Elliot encryption algorithm
From the first comment I read which was posted about 30 minutes prior to yours:
>And when people say someone has been transformed for the worse after taking Ayahuasca what does that really mean? Worse for who? What's really good and bad?

Your description of how he changed seems objectively neutral; but disappointing for you because you can no longer identify with him.

>he’s probably happier, but at the cost of transplanting himself to an entirely new friend group and lifestyle
Honestly I don't get how you can perceive that he's happier, but still see him as having changed "for the worse".
The rebuttal wouldn't have had been posted if the original comment not been a histrionic observation.
Depends on the position on the line. The interactive chart here [1] shows that concussions by position for one year. Tackles have a much higher incidence than the center, the guards or the defensive linemen. Wide receivers, running backs, the defensive secondary and linebackers have a lot more though. The guys on the line have so many more reps in games and in practices that the damage is of more of a chronic nature.

[1] http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/concussion-watch/#po...
Boesmansgat
> The A10's minigun is ineffective at killing modern main-battle tanks, so I wouldn't say it's a raging sucess.

I love those improvised battle tanks by the guerrilas that the US has been encountering in their last 30 years of wars.
Why should the company provide maternity benefits and not the state? I don't think it's fair for some three person startup to go bankrupt because employee #1 got pregnant and continues to draw down salary while staying home.
This, by the way, is a huge problem for a German expat in IL (back in DE now) during Passover.

Not only do they hide bread, there's a certain golden drink that is just as off limits in all the 'following' supermarkets and that's quite interesting.

(I kid. Yes, you don't get bread and beer, in theory. Tel Aviv has lots of shops that aren't Jewish or don't care or .. so it's mostly a sight to be seen and a way to explore the city, looking for more accommodating places..)
I'm missing something.

shouldComponentUpdate: function(nextProps) {
return nextProps.tile.active !== this.props.tile.active;
}

"That means that nextProps.tile and this.props.tile are pointing at the exact same object, so they will always be equal."

If this is the case, shouldComponentUpdate would always return false and he should not see any of the components update. But he's seeing ALL of them update.
Offsetting the cost of Internet access is one thing, but I doubt that’s what AT&T is doing. They can’t be getting $29/month from your browsing habits, so it amounts to an artificial penalty reminiscent of non-prorated ETFs.
Everything you need to know to create offline-first web apps
The F35 program has been pretty much a disaster. But, that said, the concept of departing from a model in which every service branch and every allied country to which we sell military hardware has largely unique equipment for every mission isn't inherently a bad one. But we've apparently discovered that, among other problems with the program, it's harder to come up with a viable common design than many apparently thought.
Ok, that's scary, I would accept C for such a job but C++ provides too many opportunities for things to go wrong in strange and difficult to find ways.
BTW, there isn't just one MVC pattern.
Excellent answer Roger. Whiteboard is not a silver bullet. It really depends on what the interview really trying to asses and use a better tool to do that, I would personally prefer to write code in a developer environment (IDE etc) as that is the most natural place for me to write quality code.

White-boarding is good for high level design and architecture but not for actual code.
No, that's not true.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_War_air_campaign
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_bombing_of_Yugoslavia

There are still valid strategic targets that are well outside of the role of close air support, including command centers, AAA/SAM sites, military bases, manufacturing facilities, bridges, roads, and communications facilities.
I think it is more complicated than that, because the impact speed is important too. The linemen come at each other from close distances. So they may not build up as much speed, compared to a situation such as a linebacker with a running start towards a running back.
"cable sold separately", amazing.
Overpopulation?
They make contact with other players with less time for anyone to get to full speed. The guys they're hitting aren't generally going in exactly the opposite direction, the way defenders' targets are.

There's probably some truth in this, but as a guard, he has to pull and lead on outside runs occasionally. Plus there's always a chance of getting kneed in the head in a pileup. The risk is far from zero.

He may also be asked to play on special teams, where the risk is probably the greatest.
Someone did(http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/09/30...). He ended up in jail on trumped up charges.
Show HN: Gigampz, Recycling power supplies for industrial scale Bitcoin mines
The real trouble with the A-10 is that it cannot fit modernized avionics. What needs to happen is a redesign of the A-10 airframe with modern maintenance characteristics.

Instead we got this obsession with multi-role nonsense that led to the F-35 ball of crap over both an A-10 successor and the F-22!
How We Rolled Out Mobile Apps Internationally
Yes, I am thinking of an end-to-end library which you feed input files to and then it handles the distribution to all cluster clients.
If you ever want to listen to a major cities police scanner listen to Philadelphia's. The 22nd district is a good one or any south Philly ones are always intense. The 22nd district is going through some bad crime currently, its the district that Temple University is located, 2 weeks ago they had the police officer who was killed, and just last night there was a armed car robbery for a students car. It's really crazy to listen to what goes on and what situations some cops go into.
My main concern is it will be a pain to actually find out whether or not a machine supports this option. Nobody will actually actively advertise its absence.
Let It Go in JavaScript
The Army wants it, let them have it.

Part of the problem is that, maybe because the acquisition process is so absurdly long, the concepts and ideology guiding policy for this thing is from the 1990s. This plane is designed for what we thought war would be like in 2025 back in 1996 or something. Even beyond the terrible $1.4T cost of this thing, I worried it's designed for the entirely wrong concept of warfare going forward. So yeah, maybe bringing the entire CAS mission into the realm of the Army would be a good idea - but even then, how much of that future demand for CAS can be satisfied by Drones for much lower cost and risk? That's the real issue, I think, because it would precipitate sort of an existential crisis for the Air Force.
Not necessarily a bad thing. The cable (to the macbook) is often the first part to go. Also, it means that you can just get cables instead of a new brick every time they change the bit that connects to the computer.
This looks great; I've just applied for the Web App Performance fellowship project.
Make Windows SecureBoot disabled by default
Agreed. I took his edX functional programming class mostly Haskell) and it was great fun.
The fact that women choose to have children at a later age can probably be traced to maternity leave laws (although it seems to be the trend in any developed career-oriented society, not just US).

Later age is correlated with lower milk production, kicking up the demand http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/07/27/us-milk-production...
But it comes in a box with a macbook. This listing is only for a power brick.
Yeah, I know, angular.js is MVVM and not MVC. It still sucked. The boss chose angular because he wanted to pad his resume with angular.js experience, and not because it was the right tool. That startup is still stumbling along, but wasn't as successful as it should have been.

(In angular, when you edit data in the view, the model is immediately updated, which is why it's MVVM and not MVC.)
I don't know, but my guess is hackability. I think pilots still have a ton of direct information that wouldn't be significantly vulnerable to hacking, and a lot of direct control that wouldn't be available to drone operators.
Yeah, right. Narcotic delirium is the best source of life advices.
Keyboard shortcut is important for sure. BTW, what will you be charging in the future, any estimate?

The thing about using any hosted RSS reader is (which basically means you are getting used to), that you cannot tell if the service will exist tomorrow or not. Feedly is a piece of crap today as it was the same yesterday. They just had a buzz going for them since they provided relatively faster service compared to any other around the time of GReader's demise. Compared to Feedly, Inoreader has lots of bells and whistles ... but ultimately, the notice is on the wall anyway. You are not going to be making a lot of money selling this as a product. There is hardly a chance that any RSS feed reader could become a hot property for any big company to grab. So not sure why my individual OPML be of any value to you.

Hope you follow.
The MVC question is probably for candidates who have some experience in developing software. Not knowing it does not mean you are unfit for developing software. But, even if you have a little experience, you should probably know about MVC, even if you have never used it. This shows that you have familiarity with current technology. Not being familiar with current technology is definitely bad.
If you are applying for a beginner position, not knowing about MVC should not be a big minus. You will only be tested on algorithms and data structures.
If you don't know the answer, it is better to inform the interviewer of that and inform them of the topics you know about.
For anyone wanting to see the background of these "design by committee" government projects, watch The Pentagon Wars [1]. It's a comedic insight as to how groups design a product that's too late, too large, too expensive, too hard to build, and possibly doesn't work. The story is based on the Bradley Fighting Vehicle [2].

[1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0144550/

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_Fighting_Vehicle
Because it's explaining the wrong confusion. People who are confused about pointers and arrays in C don't think that the concept of a pointer is the same as the concept of an array - they think that in C, the two have the same semantics. That explanation and analogy do nothing to explain the semantic difference, and honestly come off as a pretty condescending by essentially saying "Well they're different things, of course they're different!"

The poster probably did not help matters after that by calling the downvoters "clueless n00bs" or making a self-righteous statement about how they won't delete the comment just because of downvotes. That kind of toxic behavior just ensures that you'll get more downvotes.
JOINT STRIKE FIGHTER AIR VEHICLE C++ CODING STANDARDS

http://www.stroustrup.com/JSF-AV-rules.pdf

Those who don't want to use Ada are doomed to reimplement it with coding standards.