skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Interesting that you perceive this as "gratuitous negativity" as that was not my intention. answers to your questions:

1) pointing out that you shouldn't always believe those in positions of power, especially when they are attempting to control the narrative. you may not know this, but dang works for HN and his job is literally to censor comments and articles to ensure they follow the guidelines.

2) by reminding everyone who reads it that they should think critically, not only about the words being said, but also the context in which they are said and who is saying the words.

3) there probably aren't many as it isnt meant to be responded to, so much as to be a reminder to consider who is speaking, and to take all things with a grain of salt. although your response certainly engendered me to reply. but just because it is difficult to respond doesn't mean it isn't a useful contribution.
The open-sourcing of Java could be considered to be a counterexample to the picture you're painting. In spite of being opened up years ago, Java has not been meaningfully fragmented as a software platform/development target.

Of course, there are differences, such as Java being a language, library, and tooling, whereas Windows is an OS in addition to APIs and tooling. I'm sure you're right that there would be costs as well as benefits to open-sourcing of Windows.
I haven't looked in a really long time but wasn't Azul's focus running the JVM directly on the hypervisor? That seemed like an interesting approach vs using custom hardware.
If we knew how, we could stimulate the brain in such a way that you would think you were eating a banana. That is not evidence either for or against the actual existence of bananas.
Stock markets aren't zero-sum. You can successfully do long-term investments without having to "trade against them".
CISC vs RISC is a little blurred. Most/all x86 instruction sets from SSE and onward are very RISC-like (and theses provide most of the chip's power). If we move back from these problem types to look at something like coremark, then MIPS has the highest coremark/MHz score.

A more interesting question is that of the resources required to compete. In 2013, Intel spent 10 Billion in R&D while it's closest competitor (Qualcomm) spent 3 Billion (in fact, Intel spent more than the next four companies put together -- lest you argue about fabs, TSMC spent only 1.6 Billion). When companies using RISC are getting similar results for a fraction of the R&D, is x86 winning or just showing that with enough money, even a bad design can be made to work?

ARM's A9 has similar performance to a Core2 T7200 (Tegra3 -- even when you account for the compiler the A9 is faster per clock at several things). A15 is around 60% faster than A9, ARM claims A72 is supposed to be 3.5x faster than A15 in 2016. ARM's 2014 R&D budget was around 400 Million (25x less than Intel). ARM is getting very close very fast on what is a shoestring budget in comparison.

http://www.icinsights.com/news/bulletins/Top-10-Semiconducto...
‘Verify Your Email Account’, the Latest Phishing Scam to Emerge Online
Reminds me of this shirt[1] from Casanovas in Makawao, HI:

Heaven is where the police are British, the chefs are Italian, the Mechanics German, the lovers French and it is all organized by the Swiss.

Hell is where the police are German, the chefs British, the mechanics French, the lovers Swiss and it is all organized by the Italians.

[1] http://www.happyhotelier.com/2008/06/01/quote-of-the-day-no-...
Great point!! -- \o read this everyone o/ --

Please please dont use hashpipe thinking you'll be super safe about everything. It only raises the bar a bit! It solves my biggest gripe with most `curl <url> | sh` things, which is that any MITM can own my machines without compromising the origin http servers.

(of course, if the HTTP server + page you got the checksum from is owned too-- good luck!).
I don't see an existing problem that this would in any way make better.
1. Disable wireless security on the router (just for now)
2. Install and run Wireshark on the MBP
3. Run tinder and open a profile
4. Share pcap file from Wireshark.
(5. Reenable wireless security on the router.)
Since the main use case for this utility is verifying network shell scripts, it would be interesting to see a query param convention, so we could use a tool such as:

> hashcurl http://load.this/script?hash= QmUJPTFZnR2CPGAzmfdYPghgrFtYFB6pf1BqMvqfiPDam8 | sh
Perhaps it's common knowledge, but it may be worth noting that (at least in the US) a merchant who accepts a counterfeit $100 bill, later notices that it is counterfeit, and does the "right thing" by reporting it simply eats the loss. The Secret Service thanks you, confiscates the bill, and leaves a receipt, but you lose the item you sold and the change you gave.

By contrast, a merchant who accepts a $100 counterfeit bill, does not notice it is counterfeit, and uses it to purchase something else keeps the profit and loses nothing. As a result, it is not in the self-interest of the merchant to look closely at any bills that have already been accepted.

If the goal is to catch counterfeiters, it would seem like there would be a better way to align the self-interest of the person who innocently accepts the counterfeit bill and the goals of the law enforcement agency.
I really could not have said it better. Programmers seem much more likely to feel the need to prove they are smarter than their peers than the average population and functional languages seem to be a very popular I'm-smarter-than-you badge to bandy about.

I think the penetration of functional programming speaks for itself. If a tool is clearly superior, you'd expect it to do great things, and to do it often. I hear tons of excuses but not one that has made any sense.

To be clear, I'm not say functional languages are worthless, I am succinctly saying that they are not measurably more productive than the usual suspects and I say this after having a rather pleasant experience with erlang working on a rather huge ejabberd plugin.
Thousands of Spaniards Leave Twitter for GNU Social
It isn't so much the negative comments that bug me as much as the downvoting with no explanation.
Emuception
That's a bigger problem, because we essentially need full PKI. My preferred solution is via http://ipfs.io -- but i may be a bit biased :)

I think we can get halfway there with a "signed hash" construction, but yeah-- PKI...
I'm sure I'm not the first (or the hundredth) to say this, but `unwrap` has always struck me as a horribly innocuous spelling of "yes, feel free to crash here".

I presume there is (or could be) a standard lint to prevent this getting into production code, but it still feels kind of icky.
Compare this list to Java/C#/C++ used in the industry. Or even to Scala/Clojure/Erlang used in industry. There will be several orders of magnitude difference.
Will be back at 11 pm UTC. Edit: Sorry about that, misunderstood. The schedule is here http://2015.revision-party.net/events/timetable
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qguED5Aouv4

UPDATED: whoops wrong link. I meant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9BGLtqqkVI

(the first one's better though...)
I have noticed this too and have a humble suggestion: down-votes should require a comment from the down-voter. This would have the following advantages:

- The extra effort will slow down causal unthoughtful down-votes.

- If there is no justification, the down-voter can be down-voted in turn presumably by a greater degree.

- Any pattern of abuse can easily be seen in user profiles.
Wow. There are a lot of "Facebook trojans" on this list.
"Promoting less than maximally accurate beliefs is an act of sabotage. Don’t do it to anyone unless you’d also slash their tires." - Steven Kaas
No, the reason why is because the F-35 is a multi-service and multi-national project. Couple that with large production numbers trying to leverage the advantages from economies of scale, you have a very heavy program.
It's strange how many people hold the F-35 as solely the Air Force's fault when considering the branches and countries involved and especially considering how much the STOVL requirement on the part of the Marines compromised the design for all other variants.

The whole F-35 vs A-10 satisfies a lot of tropes; government bureaucracy gone wild, old vs new, Air Force doesn't care about CAS, etc..

The fact is, guided munitions have changed the nature of close air support to the point that most CAS missions have been performed by other aircraft for a number of years now. The A-10 operates well in such asymmetrical environments as seen in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the Air Force concern is towards less permissive environments and having an inventory of planes that can multitask vs single-task. The A-10 has always been known to operate only in permissive environments and MANPADS are an emerging threat (Su-25 in Ukraine, for example). Yes, the A-10 is highly survivable, but there is case to be made in not being hit in the first place.

I would prefer if they kept the A-10 (and to be honest, prefer if they start fielding A-29 or some other LAS/LAAR craft in such permissive environments), but their argument against the A-10 (essentially, "we prefer to keep it, but other aircraft can do a pretty good role and it's cheaper to abandon it") isn't without merit.
I probably shouldn't be shocked by how long these lists are.
Years ago a friend got a fake $20 from an ATM and reported it to the Secret Service. I don't remember the details, but he told me the Secret Service really hassled him for a while. So it's probably best just to throw the fake bill in the garbage (or burn it to be sure).
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Our background:

- We have a few clients now

- Platform built and running on AWS -- need sales person to help us scale

- Won TechCrunch London Meetup 2014 & launched at TechCrunch Disrupt Europe

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Want someone who is passionate about intrusive ads in games -- and wants to fix it.

More detailed info about this role: https://angel.co/giftgaming/jobs/60023-publisher-sales-direc...

Note: We're in the process of setting up options scheme.

Contact nick@giftgaming.com - NO RECRUITERS. NO 'GROWTH HACKERS'.
Negative comments based on reason are the reason why I keep checking HN comments. Those comments are valuable because trade offs are rarely shown than benefits. However those interesting comments are often downvoted with spinal reflex.
This is precisely the kind of self-reflection that, in my experience, helps one resist the temptation to negativity that Sam wrote about in his post. It isn't easy and one invariably lapses, but it's profoundly worth doing. Thanks for giving us an admirable example.
> This is the worst idea ever.

I can think of several ideas actually implemented in human history that were much worse.

> And who or what decides what is "gratuitous".

FTFA: "How are we going to enforce this? By asking the community to do so. Gentle reminders by peers are the best way we know to make the culture better."

> This is a recipe for despotism and censorship.

I don't see how that is any more true of the HN guidelines with this addition than it was of the HN guidelines without it. Could you, perhaps, flesh out the basis for this conclusion?
And then you should get over it and learn something to correct it.
"Does that make me closed minded? So. Fucking. Be it, I'm closed minded. I learned that from experience."

I can't remember where I read it, but someone I believe was wise once said 'Our first approximation of other people is ourselves'. If I considered myself to be closed minded, it seems to be a burden. Sure, it would make some things simpler, but it's also quite isolating. Furthermore, it's too simplistic, no one is wise or a fool all the time, do you see the space in yourself for both?
I don't like this. This is akin to censorship.
Can you people not google? I just typed "twitter scala" and got the following results on the first page:

https://www.redfin.com/devblog/2010/05/how_and_why_twitter_u...

http://readwrite.com/2011/07/06/twitter-java-scala

http://www.slideshare.net/al3x/the-how-and-why-of-scala-at-t...

https://github.com/twitter/effectivescala
Socializing in high school != socializing in an industry.

I think you'd learn more about how to socialize with adults in an industry by hanging out with them... at work. And these are the people you want to get along with anyways.
I experienced something like this during a brief period in my teens when I experimented with lucid dreaming techniques. I would lie completely still on my bed in the evening, meditating until I started to drift off. First I'd feel my body go numb. Then I'd hear either a round of explosions or a roaring rush of wind. If I managed not to get too excited, I'd cross over into dream, fully cognizant of what had happened. I had one experience with sleep paralysis under similar circumstances: during one of these sessions, I was sure I had pulled myself out of the dream, but I couldn't open my eyes or move my legs. This lasted for about thirty seconds before control abruptly snapped back. I'm still not entirely sure whether this happened mid- or post-dream, but it certainly felt real in a way dreams never did for me.

All in all, it was fun to experiment with for a while. I'd done a fair bit of reading on lucid dreaming, so the loud noises and sleep paralysis were expected and not concerning. Very interesting sensory experiences, among the few you can reach without recreational chemicals.
That's a very good point. I'd be much happier if they said the new guidelines is no personal attacks. That's very clear and easy to check.

Instead we end up with this slippery slope of certain types of negativity vs. others and all it really means is the mods have a blank check to remove anything they don't like that isn't meaningless happy fun compliments.
It's almost certainly optimal, but proving that is likely an open problem.
Google may be the largest individual contributor within the list you cite -- and not by much -- but it is still greatly exceeded by the combined contribution of the military contractors. And Google being a top contributor may not be such a bad thing; who else on that list is going to lobby for patent reform?
I love this idea, as it has bothered me for a while now that homebrew initial install just points to a script on github.

That said, now we just need someone to hack gobuilder.me and replace the binary distribution of hashpipe with something that always returns the input.
lulz. moralfags.
It's an excellent list. A little amusing as Dennett's own debating style is a touch more robust than this might suggest. Though in all fairness, if it's him vs. another philosopher of similar standing, both with subtle and complex positions built up over 40+ year careers, working through steps 1 - 3 might lengthen the discussion somewhat.
Good thought! That's quite possible, and he may not have shown up in my "These people viewed your profile" list for various reasons.
This was the most interesting bit (imo):

The intriguing thing about both neodymium and cerium is that while they’re
called rare earth minerals, they're actually fairly common. Neodymium is no
rarer than copper or nickel and quite evenly distributed throughout the
world’s crust. While China produces 90% of the global market’s neodymium,
only 30% of the world’s deposits are located there. Arguably, what makes it,
and cerium, scarce enough to be profitable are the hugely hazardous and
toxic process needed to extract them from ore and to refine them into usable
products. For example, cerium is extracted by crushing mineral mixtures and
dissolving them in sulphuric and nitric acid, and this has to be done on a
huge industrial scale, resulting in a vast amount of poisonous waste as a
byproduct. It could be argued that China’s dominance of the rare earth
market is less about geology and far more about the country’s willingness to
take an environmental hit that other nations shy away from.

ie the rare earths minerals aren't rare, just very toxic to extract
I browse with showdead on as well. A lot of the time it does hit the target. Other times someone appears to be shadowbanned from only a couple of snarky comments a while back but before and after were polite. Occasionally it hits people that have only ever been polite, and I'm left scratching my head.
Interesting, informative article. But suggesting people should eat insects was an awful idea by the writer.
People saying it is useless are useful, however, because you can see why it is useless to them and either accept it isn't part of your target market or change the product to include them. People just saying great things when they aren't allowed to be negative is kind of meaningless and unhelpful.
Gmail? I'd pay for. Netflix? I already pay for. Online content? Sure, I'll pay a few bucks a month for the Economist or the NY Times. I already pay for Evernote, Flickr, etc.

What free services am I going to miss?
Or, you know, do two passes.
As an extension to this question, are there any UK demo parties?
But now Bitcoin haters will have nothing to say!
We almost changed it to `assert` but that made some people _really_ upset.
How a Warren Buffett empire preys on the poor
I don't mind the negativity on HN and sometimes it's even helpful if I can avoid getting upset, but the negative comments on Amazon really make it hard to decide what to buy.
I made a voxel engine without using Three.js a few years ago[1] (well, the engine is rendering-agnostic, so I actually used Three.js, but only the really basic primitives, such as BufferGeometry).

The issue wasn't so much WebGL performances (especially since WebGL is actually hardware accelerated), but rather the CPU cost required to rasterize a real-time voxel world into a polygonal geometry. I wasn't able to generate geometry chunks fast enough to match the player speed (so the player was always able to catch up with the rendering). Even using workers wasn't improving the perfs so much (but I think could have improved that by changing the update heuristic a bit).

But it was pretty fun nevertheless! I'm proud to be one of the few JS voxel engine using marching cubes, which look much better than usual cubes :)

[1] http://arcanis.github.io/voxplode/ (may take a while to load, may be a bit buggy, especially if you move before the chunk underneath has been loaded)
Deployment one-liners with hashpipe will only work if hashpipe is installed, which would be equally difficult for users to install properly than the software itself. Then you'd need something like this:

> Simply install using `curl hashpi.pe | bash`
Python is an ugly language for scientific work; any of R, matlab, or julia are far preferable for not massively obscuring the intent of your code with the programmatic hoops you have to jump through. People who are programmers I think tend to wildly underestimate the effort needed to learn and read python.

Further, the vast majority of R modules are at least partially implemented in R and tend to be very readable.
Amazing... and tragic to see such a brilliant mind wasted. I can't think of anything redeeming that comes from his work, other than a heads-up to the Treasury Department to add more copy-protection to bills.
Thank you! We've been working on sharing and discovery of science knowledge for 3 years. But our developers aren't molecular biologists and working on abstract science problems is hard. So Wayzaway is an extension of "share & discover" idea to everyday activity - our 10% side project.
Hopefully people will only ever pipe from a HTTPS (PLEASE!), but this is still a great idea and a big step forward!
> People saying it is useless are useful, however, because you can see why it is useless to them

No, people saying why it is useless (which is grounded, not gratuitous, negativity at worst) are useful for that reason. People merely saying that it is useless are not useful.

> People just saying great things when they aren't allowed to be negative is kind of meaningless and unhelpful.

A community guideline against gratuitous negativity cannot reasonably be expected to result in "people saying great things when they aren't allowed to be negative" because people are still allowed to be negative, and, in any case, people saying positive things with explanations are just as useful as people saying negative things with explanations.
This reminds me of Surfraw http://surfraw.alioth.debian.org/ by Julian Assange. Surfraw searches Google, Altavista, Babelfish, Dejanews, Freshmeat, Research Index, Slashdot and many others on the command line.
Can we not put the apple symbol in the name of the watch, or at the very least not in article titles? It's really lame marketing and breaks on a lot of non-Apple devices.
>But you make an interesting point in a way. One can ask, ok here are two non-strictly functional languages that seem to be fairly practical. Used for large distributed mission critical systems.

I think there're at least these problems with Haskell:

* The language is badly designed. See the number of extensions which aren't standardized but widely used. See also obvious problems such as requirement to use renames when importing code, and problem with record names conflicts which isn't solved for years.

* The focus of the language isn't correct. Lazy evaluations creates a lot of problems both in program performance and complexity of the compiler. The most important parts are pureness and side effect control.

* The language is already obsolete. Many its constructions and related complexities are redundant if we unify type and expression level, and get as a result dependently typed system.

I hope some language in the future will implement these ideas, and we will have a widely used pure functional dependently typed language with explicit control of effects.

I see two candidates for such a language:

* Pure script - it's Haskell done right, compiledd to JS. Unfortunately, it doesn't support dependent types.

* Idris - it's the language which I describe, but I fear that it's impossible to create a widely used commercial language without major industry players' support.
I work for a stealth mode startup that writes DSLs in Haskell and Scheme for the O&G industry. We aren't the only outfits doing this https://angel.co/tachyus/jobs/26411-junior-software-engineer
Good point - of course, this would mean that the additional code was vetted (or at least consciously included!) by someone who cared enough to use hashpipe in the first place.
very few arguments last more than a few hours here.

Very few posts last more than a few hours here :)

There have been times where I've gone to bed, then checked HN in the morning, and some huge issue or release has happened, there's a quality thread with hundreds of comments, and it's largely inactive because everyone's had their say already, so they're not checking for new stuff.

I'm not supporting reply alerts as I also think they'll do more harm than good, just noting that posts come and go pretty quickly.
Let's assume for the sake of simplicity that the debate concerns a non-subjective question, so it has a right answer, only it is unknown which it is.

The best outcome for HN is if we as a community converge on the right answer.

Now if someone brings argues poorly, but for the right answer, and then someone comes along and crushes the poor argument. Then the counter-arguer "wins" and succeeds in humiliating the "opponent". But the the wrong answer wins, and that is bad for the community

If on the other hand, someone comes along, reinforces the poor argument, and then brings a weak counterargument, then that gives the right answer a better chance of winning.