skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Students compete for a chance to have their Raspberry Pi code run in space
I disagree - most of this post I wrote has very little to do with JavaScript itself and everything to do with Angular. Likewise, I don't want to come across as rude, but I also don't want words put in my mouth. The performance issues with Angular are not fiction, they are very real concerns. Hence the sheer number of tutorials popping up lately showing you how to use React in your Angular apps to improved the rendering performance plus a number of other hacks I'd prefer my juniors steer clear of.

It's also got nothing to do with the juniors coming from Python or Ruby, in fact most of mine started on Java and Erlang or are self taught, but I've had very little trouble with bad habits creeping in to projects with those same juniors when using frameworks like backbone, ember and react (so far) - so once again, it has very little to do with pitfalls in JavaScript and more to do with pitfalls in Angular itself - at least, that has been the case IME.
I looked into the clean water vs phones thing a few years ago https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2011/09/access-to-clean-water-vs-ac...

At the time, 93% of South Africans had access to clean water and mobile penetration was at over 100%.

For the whole of Africa, it was ~46% water to 50% phones.

But, as ever, definitions are important. If you have to spend half a day walking to a well for a bucket of water - that counts as access. Similarly, a family who shares a phone each has "access".

It's also a lot easier to build a mobile phone network than a water network. Stick up a tower, power it with a generator / solar power, and point it to a back-haul link. Hey presto, you've got wide area coverage.
Sure, I don't think it is very important where the abstraction occurs for this argument though.
I found the book thought provoking and compelling. I wouldn't take what Dr. Tainter says as fact, like one would for a Math textbook, it's an argument (an opinion) which he defends in his book. His book is mainly about the first half of his presentation, not the second half that relates to the modern world. I would suggest you read the book if you liked the first half of the presentation.
In any case, RMS is absolutely right about people not giving GNU enough credit in naming or in general.
blankslate.io uses an invalid security certificate.

The certificate is not trusted because no issuer chain was provided.

(Error code: sec_error_unknown_issuer)
> You Control Exactly How To Be Perceived

I think that this is exactly what it all boils down to. There are two types of people in the world: victims and doers. Victims see themselves as the object of every sentence: everything happens to them. They tend to see conspiracies as explanations for bad things ('everyone thinks that I'm too young!') in their lives.

Doers see themselves as the subject of every sentence: they do everything. The tend to see themselves as the explanation for the good and bad in their lives.

Incidentally, the above doesn't mean that the victims are wrong and the doers are right: it's entirely possible that one's misfortunes are the result of others' actions, and it's entirely possible that one's belief of empowerment is a delusion.

But here's why it's better to be a doer than a victim, even if you're wrong: because the only person whose actions you can truly control are your own. If you want to be seen as young-and-daring, then be young and daring. If you want to be seen as wise and thoughtful, then be wise and thoughtful. If you want to do something and ought to do it, then do it.

A victim wails on about how others ought to see him one way or another, about how he ought to be allowed or enabled to do something. A doer decides what he wants, and achieves it.

Which would you rather be? Which would you rather work with? Which would you rather the world be full of?
I forgot about that entirely. SpaceX has certainly received lots of contractual funding. Almost $1 billion from NASA for various contractual obligations, but I am not sure if they were up-front payments for future launches or "award money" for meeting certain criteria.

If anyone knows, I would really like to learn how that NASA funding works.
That's pretty much how they become brighter. These kinds of hands-on experience are far more transformative and contribute to higher efficiency than if they were to simply donate more money.
A tool so dangerous and powerful that scientists consider it worthy of banning is a tool that governments will continue to work on regardless of the general scientific community's feelings. So the only question remains is if we want this tool to be understood and used by all or only those in power.
Or make the prizes reasonable. I won an RC helicopter and got a few t-shirts at a hackathon a couple years ago. I wasn't there contingent on the prize, but it was still a nice incentive.
Most of the people you meet are useless to build your business. But even one in a hundred could make the difference and sometimes somebody you met years ago and almost reciprocally forgot can trigger a positive chain of events. If you can afford sending somebody to every event do it. If you can't, select a few of them and get known as the "person who does X". I was in the GPS trackers business 8 years ago and people still asks me about it. I'm doing something else now but a company asked my advice a couple of months ago and I found a consultant for them.
Function of aid is not to cause economic growth. Function of aid is to have a child not die of malaria.
As the maintainer of the library I appreciate any kind of feedback
Can they see my dick pic?
With such a broad definition of a society you would not classify as a collapse what Tainter classifies as a collapse: a fast loss of social complexity. Additionally your definition might be better as a definition of culture rather than society.
Why I Don't Like the C# Language
The market for taxis is a lot larger than the market for space rockets, a situation that will continue for some time yet. I'd also wager that it's a larger market than cloud storage, but that at least has a chance of getting bigger in the short term.
Building Apps That Sync
I've been using Session Buddy [1] to "lasso" a set of my open tabs for later use. A little bit more love to that UX and it'd be bliss. I worry about Tabvention automatically closing my tabs.

[1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/session-buddy/edac...
Something similar happened when restaurants started charging for (previously free) bread. There's a good podcast & article at http://freakonomics.com/2014/06/19/theres-no-such-thing-as-a...
Like everything else, it depends on your goals and your access.

If you are networking at a "How to get rich" motivational seminar you are going to have much less success than if you are networking at an A16Z event. So placement matters.

I know this first hand because years and years ago I would go to the Northern Virginia Technology Counsel mixers and venture forums and MIT entrepreneurship forums around D.C. and it was generally filled with people who wanted you to sign an NDA to talk about their idea or were looking for a tech co-founder - and sometimes the rare angel would show up for dealflow.

Fast forward to last year after some chance introductions, and I started attending the Cooley capital calls and local angel mixers. These events were 10000x more productive in terms of finding partners, access to money, finding mentors etc...

Assuming you can actually squeeze your way into these groups, you still have to have a purpose - for example trying to get funding, or looking for a co-founder or lawyer or whatever. Otherwise you are wasting your and everyone else's time.
Its also right in line with existing web service delays i.e. USA to India. So nothing we haven't been dealing with for a decade now.

I get it; satellites have their challenges. But the delay is probably a small part of the issue.
Banning these methods won't stop the wealthy from using them. You can't put the genie back in the bottle. GATTACA here we come.

edit: grammar
What a dilemma. :)

Figure out if that is sufficient for you to live on. Personally, I would take it, but negotiate the stock or signing bonus up if possible.
How to downloadTaiG v1.2.0 for your iPhone,Pad,Pod
Networking is like VC investing. Most investments don't pay off, some a little, and the rare right-place, right-time one changes your life.
> Stealing does need to be disrupted. For too long "Big Pawn" has given thieves pennies on the dollar for hot goods

I disagree. Current pawnshop technology is lagging behind nearly every field. Why should I have to shlep my legitimately acquired car stereo, or the television without any cables or remote control down to a physical location?

I should be able to log onto paw.nr, snap a photo of the thing I want to pawn with my iPhone 4 that has "Kimberly & John Forever" engraved on the back, and instantly get bitcoins deposited into my wallet.

If I don't pay that money back in time, Pawnr locates a willing buyer, they use Taskrabbit or Fiverr to send someone to my house to collect the merchandise and deliver it to the buyer.

Disruptive as fuck, bro.
Anyone know of a comparable extension for Firefox?
3 x 23" monitors at 1920x1080[0] is working well for me. Distractions galore, but as someone said, when you're in the zone, you're in the zone. That's when having all that real estate really pays off - it's so much more efficient having everything easily accessible.

herbstuftwm on archlinux, with everything opening up in their own designated windows - having taken a lot of time to have it just so - is what gives me joy everyday.

[0] Will upgrade to higher resolutions in the next round, but presently this was much more affordable.
... make fake orders to competitors and try to steal their drivers, etc.
True, the average person found at the networking event will likely be seeking a VC funding followed by an exit.
Who's creating any underclass? There's no reason to expect you won't just take a pill to change our eye color etc. It could be cheap and available. Not yet time to pull the emergency stop cord, because of imagined inequalities in a system that's not even been engineered yet.
Isn't that just their income?
Win the 8 Favorite Books of Millionaires and Billionaires
I think this is a really important concern. Btw, 5% is still quite a bit more than the average, so good work!

We're attempting to overcome this worry through community and behavioural economics hacks. E.g. I take every opportunity that I can (like this one) to say publicly that I'm planning to give away the majority of what I earn, which makes it a helluva lot harder for me to back out. Similarly for Matt - it would be embarrassing for him to renege on his commitments when he's been so open about it. And it feels like a much smaller sacrifice (if it's even a sacrifice at all) when most of your friends are doing the same thing - and some, like Jeff and Julia in Boston (http://www.givinggladly.com/2013/06/whats-it-like-to-give-ha...) are doing much more.
I was thinking about something similar a couple of weeks ago: Wouldn't it be useful to be able to serialise browser state? I.e. saving a full package of html+css+javascript state to a compressed file on a hard disk.

Having that ability would solve a host of problems - e.g. having too many tabs. Older tabs could simply be serialised down to disk to free up ram/processing power, and read back in to exactly the same state when the user wants to interact with them again.

They would also aid in debugging, as users could send a serialised snapshot of a page as part of a bug report to help devs diagnose problems with websites.

Unfortunately however, I know far little about hwo browsers are constructed (and I have far too little time) to implement such a thing, but it's something that I've been wishing for for a while now!
Ten Years of Git: An Interview with Linus Torvalds
The market for putting things into space is pretty small compared to consumer services.
There is, however, a huge difference between money received from NASA as contracts for services and money received from investors to fund the company.
The layout looks pretty identical to draftin.com.
> permanent underclass

Hardly permanent, I'd say; eventually they would be outcompeted to extinction by H. s. mutabamus, in the same way H. s. sapiens (is thought to have) outcompeted neanderthalensis.
NASA isn't investing in SpaceX, though, right? They're just paying SpaceX for services rendered.
HIDRADENITIS SUPPURATIVA TREATMENT – HIDRADENITIS SUPPURATIVA CURE REVIEW
There was a call around here to ban AI research too. Maybe the reason we don't do new things is that we are too afraid. I blame lazy and unimaginative sci-fi plots among other things.

Genetics could improve the inequality situation too, but that would require challenging elements of our economic system which is off the table.
I agree. "Survival of the fittest" does not bode well for that underclass. At best they will naturally go extinct. At worst they will be exterminated or enslaved.
There's even a name for that: voluntourism.

"Voluntourism is ultimately about the fulfillment of the volunteers themselves, not necessarily what they bring to the communities they visit." [1]

“Basically, we failed at the sole purpose of our being there. It would have been more cost effective, stimulative of the local economy, and efficient for the orphanage to take our money and hire locals to do the work, but there we were trying to build straight walls without a level.” [2]

[1] http://www.psmag.com/business-economics/instagrammingafrica-...

[2] http://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/voluntou...
Apparently there's no dip in general bitcoin interest:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/31lmo7/buttercoin_...
I attended the "Startup Weekend" in Chicago last year. Theme was 'Startup for Education'.

I met several mentors who have already traveled the startup path, and they guided us, and gave us their precious advice.
These mentors are people who live, breathe and have experienced what you intend to do for next few years.

Their 5 minutes with you is more worth than hours with your bar buddy or highschool friend as far as startup advice/direction is concerned.

I partnered with a guy in that startup weekend who had this "idea" in his mind since few years. That guy has thought about this idea from every possible direction for months/years. But it was still childish. No where close to what VCs would love to see them pitched. No where close to what enterprise decision makers will buy. No where close to getting the user base for his B2B model.

Then the meeting with Mentors happened. Idea went from primitive to slightly more focused. Another mentor shaped the idea from selling and making money perspective. Third mentor helped prepare the pitch and perspective on what VCs/Judges would question and how to address them.

The idea went from unpolished to very fine sellable/workable idea which would make money in enterprise space if executed successfully.
All that with just 15 minutes of time with each mentor.

Its important to hang out with people who are way smarter than you and in the same space where you want to excel and these events provide you with that opportunity.

As always overdoing anything is not fruitful.
Are you Scrum or are you Agile?
Now that's "Live" Coding!
But then maybe wanting someone else to use their money efficiently is selfish of us when they might rather develop as people by observing and empathizing with the struggles of others.
> We all almost do through taxes. He goes further and donates 50% more from the remaining money.

This is an odd argument. Are you saying that paying taxes is some form of altruism? The story is about a guy who donates money with no tangible benefit to himself. We all get benefits and services from the government. It debatable whether the value we receive is equal to the amount we pay in taxes, but the value is certainly not zero.
HemaVision: Smart thermal imaging with computer vision
Sounds a lot like the plot of Gattaca, and I agree that would be an awful potential effect. I do not think it's insurmountable, however, and I agree that it's unfortunately fairly close to today's current class divide.

However, I don't think such a thing could happen "overnight" as you suggest. In order for those genetic enhancements to become commonplace they will need at least several generations of trials, especially to explore how various genes interact. This long process could well lower the barrier for the less privileged to participate.
What makes you think you're not a "mediocre startup wannabe"? If everyone but you in the room looks mediocre the chances are that you are too, and just deluded about it. Don't worry, everyone else in the room probably is too.

There's a lot to learn when talking to others who are doing something similar to you. You'll hopefully learn from their mistakes and not make the same ones yourself. Also, if you're doing it right, it's fun.

Obviously if you do nothing but go to networking events you'll never get anything done, but there's a balance.
So I agree having good version control tools is always a must but some common sense is always needed too. Although that said, I know code was reinserted on me once (similar to example 2) but there is nothing more frustrating than dealing with idiots.
That Pen that coded itself's sophisticated cousin
I suppose that is fair. But since I don't donate 1/1000th of what these people do even with the trip, I don't really think my grandstanding on how they spend their own money would really be justified.

I will say that I took a holiday last year, and technically that is money I could have used to donate. So in that sense I am just as bad as they are.
Hah, this resonates with me. I was so excited about the PIC32MZ family (MIPS M4K with a decent amount of RAM and some peripherals, cool!) but the errata is just staggering. These chips are "in production" but the errata is long, and it's not just bugs and functions that fail to meet datasheet specs (which is pretty bad by itself)... a lot of functionality is simply listed as "does not function" or "not operational."
Have you observed how the real world works? There are many diseases whose cures/preventions are "cheap and available" yet still continue to kill millions in the "underclasses."
I'd recommend you look at the story of Hacker Newsletter. A lot of the comments in the discussion threads here on HN have been full of good ideas:

https://hn.algolia.com/?query=hacker%20newsletter&sort=byPop...
In JS, @paulirish, @addyosmani, @rmurphey, @pornelski, @pgte, @izs, @leaverou, @brendeneich, @jakearchibald.
Related to this is an issue that exists for a while now on Chrome on Android devices. Apparently, it isn't possible to close all tabs with a simple operation on this version of Chrome. This causes the number of tabs to accumulate endlessly, and it is apparently driving users insane [1]

[1] https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=268157
Easterly's book is about aid mostly from western governments to developing country governments to encourage growth. That I can believe doesn't work very well and can end in rent seeking and corruption.

Giving $3.5k to save a child from dying of malaria is quite a different thing and seems obviously a good thing to do.
+1 - this is an excellent comment.
The right to a fair or speedy trial is not a human right?

I just want to be clear that that's what you're saying.
If you have a dynamic IP, it could be that the previous user of that IP was running an TOR exit/VPN.

If you have a static IP, I strongly recommend researching whether the router you are using has any known security problems. Lately unsecured routers have been abused as a (poor) black hat's proxy a lot.

Source: I run a filesharing service and lately we have seen a lot of abuse from IPs who after an nmap reveal themselves as routers with known security problems like publicly known (default) service control panel passwords.
I think it is too low, for a person of your experience and past salary history and the responsibilities that you will be taking on.
Are you sure you installed the entire certificate bundle, and not just the certificate for your domain? It doesn't appear you need a better certificate, just that you're missing an intermediate certificate.

https://github.com/zakjan/cert-chain-resolver
Ask HN: How to optimize self-learning under time constraints?
I have a job which I grew to dislike. It is mainly about numerical modeling using C++ and this is the only language that I currently know and also the only domain of its application that I am comfortable with. I have recently set on a path to learn web development in a attempt to change my career and, hopefully, become self-employed. I use MOOCs, books, and Treehouse for this. The problem is that I only have about 1-2 hours a day for learning because of family responsibilities.

I was wondering whether HN readers could share some tips for optimizing the self-learning process?
I have it on good authority that the Hurd is being used as the engine in Half-Life 3.
why not? it takes two to tango.
You don't fish from your house, and you don't fish at the clubhouse, you have to go to the pond to catch a fish.

That is to say, if all you do is work on your thing, you're not finding customers, so you need to do something other than working. If you're in a more service-oriented field, networking is one of the easier ways of finding customers (in that, it's probably the only way that reliably works. You'll probably not find many customers just through online means, and they will probably be bad customers at that.)

I understand your frustration with these sorts of networking events, but it's not networking that is the problem, it's the type of event that you're trying to do it at that is wrong. You're not going to find customers among a group of other starving startup founders. They don't have any money and they won't be interested in using your thing anyway.

You have to get out of your comfort zone and go somewhere where there aren't any people like you. That's the entire point. If they were like you, they wouldn't hire you, they'd just do it themselves. If you were like them, they wouldn't hire you, as you wouldn't provide anything different than they already know.

So don't go to startup networking events. Go to other industry's conferences.
Engineers show a simple way to make walking more efficient
All of the best leads I've had as an independent developer have come from folks I met briefly at networking events or on other contracts.

As a rather introverted person, it's hard for me to go to a lot of these, but going to ones where there's interesting things being discussed either in tech or business has been worthwhile. One of the big lessons I've learned is that everyone's startup is mediocre until it turns out not to be. Being polite and helping folks at these things have helped me more than assuming folks are wannabes.
The wheel turns: it used to be programming competitions, now it's hackathons. What will be the next fad offering for glory and jobs that isn't doing the grind work of hitting the books?
Networking is dangerously close to not working. One letter to be exact.
(Number of drivers) * (avg driver weekly earnings) * (20% uber's cut) * (P/E ratio on Wall Street for high growth companies)

With the numbers I would put in those parenthesis, I'd say that uber is probably undervalued...at least relative to how Wall Street would value the company if it were public.
> Genetics could improve the inequality situation too, but that would require challenging elements of our economic system which is off the table.

No it couldn't, and in any case that are infinitely more direct and efficient ways of addressing inequality if that is truly your goal.
Experimenting with HHVM at Etsy