skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
`print` statement is not a big deal for me. But one thing that especially annoys me is the functions in the module `itertools`. In Python 2, I use `itertools.izip` or `itertools.imap` a lot, because I'd like to avoid creating a large list only to iterate over once. When I tried migrating to Python 3, I found out that these functions are gone, and I was supposed to use plain `zip` and `map` instead. I was furious. How easy it is to let `itertools` contain these functions as aliases to the builtin? And I felt that I was punished for writing efficient code, while people who code carelessly get rewarded. I switched back instantly.
If one had complete clairvoyance and absolute understanding of every element in a system then there would be no estimates, no probabilities, merely outcomes foretold in advance.

For an estimate one needs to gather up what evidence and information is available; make a judgment on how well understood the system is, and its components; determine how predictable the behavior of the system has been in the past; figure out how close what is attempting to be done is to any previous testing or operations; and so on. Then take all of that and make an informed estimate of the likelihood of something occurring.

That's what an estimate is, a statement about how well a system seems to be understood and the probability of some event occurring. An estimate can build in uncertainty in the understanding of the system quite easily, by simply making a more cautious or pessimistic assumption.

SpaceX designed and built these rockets. They've flown them numerous times. They've done test flights exploring landing operations. They've done re-entry flights and landing attempts multiple times. All of these things increase confidence in understanding how the rocket operates under different conditions during landing, making it possible to come up with a reasonably informed estimate of the probability of a successful landing over a given number of attempts.

Perhaps they are wrong, perhaps they have made a key error in their modeling, who knows. That's why these are estimates, because there's always the possibility for unknown variables to affect outcomes. But to say that there is no basis for SpaceX's estimates is patently ridiculous.
Don't understand why this bug deserves thread on HN.
When citizens of the world are failing to comprehend the idea of electronic surveillance, electronics and software pioneers and developers should take the lead in pushing those ideas to the cliff.
In case someone hopes to discover some secret magical sauce of success in the article, here comes the TL;DR version:

Essential characteristics: Potentially huge market,Novel product,Ability to create an advantage / difficult to compete against.

Additinally the author lists 10 non-essential
characteristics of the analyzed gruop of companies:

1. Market Dynamics: Attacking a new market (or overlooked market)

2. Market Dynamics: Entering a highly competitive market

3. Enabled by a trend/change

4. Focusing on tech “invention”

5. Obvious value proposition

6. Clear path to market

7. No strong buyer power

8. No strong supplier power

9. Unfair advantage

10. Mixed business models (B2C2B, B2B2C)
Nothing per se. However the situation with two competing python bindings and no official out of the box support or blessing of either makes it non-obvious as to what the 'correct' way to write and ship GUI apps in python is.

If I just want to wrap a simple GUI around some functions then going down the qt route is currently far to 'heavy'.
It's a demonstration of the Rust developers putting their money where their mouth is by taking very seriously the notion of memory safety. The C++ approach would be to conclude that misuse of the API to a degree sufficient to cause memory unsafety is an error on behalf of the programmer, and that one should merely be careful. And it's absolutely true, the steps required to violate memory safety in this example are quite contrived. But Rust makes the claim that memory unsafety can't arise outside of an `unsafe` block, and their dedication to upholding that claim is laudable.
I'm wondering -- would it be possible to have a cycle checker which would be run on function exit on the objects, for which the compiler can't prove, that they don't contain cyclic references?
You perfectly expressed what I feel (and tried to say in my comment below).

To emphasize on "always bet on software": As seen on the landing video of the (marginally failed) attempt today/yesterday, they are having issues with the dampening of their control software during precision landing. While the field of control software is hugely complex, once the parameters are known, it is trivial to set these values and (later) tweak them. You cannot do that with a (largely) mechanical system. Furthermore, it's easier to run simulations with different sets of control parameters than redo all the FEM-et-al. stuff needed for a modified mechanical design.
If ULA wanted to take a slighly different approach than what they proposed here (e.g. when the first tests don't work as expected), they'd basically need to redesign the whole propulsion "stage". SpaceX can alter just their software.

[As always, it's not black-or-white. ULA may also fix (most of) their issues with software updates. SpaceX may need to add more fins or legs, re-distribute weight, or require more fuel for the landing. That does not invalidate the point above, though.]
Do you have a list of dependencies that are causing you the issues? When I did my migration (about 9 months ago) I found that there were a few dependencies that had been superseded by much better libraries. At the time there were a couple where I had to use a py3 branch, but no longer.
Forgot to mention the site BookFlocks [1] which interviews people about books that were proven important to their career and life. Thou it looks like it might be dead on new material.

[1] http://bookflocks.com/
Perhaps to try to make it more popular?
That's why I asked: it's unclear to me if they wrote their own or used something like Duktape.
Essentially this means that Nokia won't get back into consumer hardware for a good while. The mapping division (Here) will probably be sold soon.

The mobile networks business is now the primary driver at the company. They'll have their hands full trying to integrate the Alcatel-Lucent networks business with their existing assets. (Remember that Nokia's networks business today is already the result of a merger with Siemens and a purchase of Motorola's networks division, so they have some experience with that.)

Nokia is now a formidable competitor to Ericsson and Huawei, but it won't be on Samsung's or Apple's radar again.

I know that Nokia does license the Nokia brand to Foxconn for Android tablets sold in the Chinese market... But that's not a sign of life in Nokia's consumer ambitions any more than it is for other brand licensors like Kodak or Polaroid.
Ask HN: Need Mirror for Project Maelstrom
I've been trying to download Project Maelstrom from project-maelstrom.bittorrent.com for a few days.

The download is awfully slow (less than 50KB/s). The problem is not from my end, I'm getting 1.5MB/s on other downloads.

Their server doesn't support resume for a some strange reason. And the download keeps breaking.

So if you have it or succeed in downloading it, please upload it somewhere - Mega or mediafire preferred.

Thanks.
Hopefully he's not just selling artifacts on the black market

I understand your point, but why not?

Isn't the British Museum basically loot from all over the world? Wikipedia claims it has "8 million works". So maybe less than 1% is on display? And Britain isn't about to give any of that stuff back.

So when an empire steals it's OK, but when "the little people" try to make a few bucks to cover costs, that's bad?

Anyway, I'm just saying that it might be "better" in some sense to allow these artifacts out to collectors than to have them stored away in boxes in the locked storage areas of a museum.
Founded X Startup Stats – Find the best country for your startup
>Having a cool product is a necessary but not sufficient condition of having a product that people want.

Make stuff that people need and want to have. It's apparently tough , unless you are not aiming making tons of money.
The concern I have with civil asset forfeiture is that the seized property goes directly to the sheriff. This gives the police a financial incentive to seize assets. Law enforcement is not an activity that should be conducted with a profit motive.

Even with limitations on what can be taken and when, I'd be more comfortable if it went into the state's general fund, or better a fund for recompensating victims of crime or accidents.
By stealing data from competitors?
> I say drop 3.x support in your libraries. The gig is up. If 3 ever takes over

People dropping 3.x support until 3.x becomes the most used version basically guarantees that it won't take over.

Is this a code equivalent to the bystander effect?
So it's Nokia-Siemens-Alcatel-Lucent? A powerhouse!
An SSTO is an ambitious design in general. That, plus a new engine design, was (in retrospect) too much for a startup company to take on. Just the powered landing system would have been ambitious enough.
What do you mean with "In PIP"? Are only 5% of the pip downloads from Python 3? That would make sense seeing as pip is included in Python 3.4, so there no need to download it.

If you mean that only 5% of the packages on pypi.python.org is Python 3, I would say that sound a bit low. Also unimportant for most, if it's just the correct 5%. There's also a ton of old cruft on pypi.python.org that would count against Python 3, but not really be important to anyone.

Quick check, there are 7633 Python 2 in the package index (https://pypi.python.org/pypi?:action=browse&c=527) and 8949 for Python 3 (https://pypi.python.org/pypi?:action=browse&c=533)
Apple rumors are not a typical example. There's a whole industry of idiots "analysts" who do nothing but release click-bait speculation about Apple.
Combining old features is a new feature.
No. They could add pyro separators and moving knives (as the Apollo LAM used). They just need to be able to easily replace the "last few centimeters" of plumbing/cables, but it does not have to be dynamic.

Either way, this (IMHO) adds more complexity to the stage and(!) processing compared to what SpaceX does (where complexity is mostly added in software).
Hard Numbers for the Activity on Google Plus
Who is behind Linux now, and should you be afraid?
the proposed solution sounds like greenwashed cover-fire for the same fertilizer & pesticide folks that got us into this mess in the first place, what with "green revolution"s and such fueling population growth post ww2...
I think it's total poppycock. We should reduce our population over the next century or 2, we should get off the fossil fuel imperative (it's a single-source failure point for our entire infrastructure) and we shouldn't listen to "big industry" and it's so-called solutions that really amount to digging our holes deeper.
Despite the presence of statistics in defining the problem in this article, the proposed solution bears precious little examination.
Locally grown produce simply IS better overall (transport energy, health (honey from same region containing pollen and dead microbes from region, vaccine like effects... freshness, wow i could go on and on. it's science not hype)
etc.
I will contend that the supermarket food system, including it's producers, distributors, etc are the problem, not the solution. I give you "general mills, nestle, coca-cola" as examples of what happens to food when you depend upon suits to feed the planet.

this article stinks, primarily because it doesn't address the proposed solution and analyze pros and cons, but rather it simply defines a problem, and then naively pitches a solution that clearly has certain economic interests at stake. what blatant biased advertising.

the times is getting sad lately... pity
Are you suggesting that every single calculator, file manager, terminal, editor, package manager and music player ship with their own copy of libQt5* (around 78M) or gtk?
At least on Linux, (commercial) people are packaging shared libs with their binary and using LD_PRELOAD wrappers anyway. "Own-it-by-proxy"-except-you're-shipping-it-so-you-kinda-own-it-anyway.

Dynamically linked, dlopen()-or-equivalent plugin designs are an exception. Otherwise, I'd like to see more statically-linked applications.
How would you want people to find YOUR app? You must have thought of some keywords or phrases that when googled, should bring up your app. Try using those and see what occupies the territory as of now.

Another approach is to discuss your idea with as many people as possible. Maybe you haven't heard of such an app but someone else has. This should be most fruitful if you do this with your target audience. Even if there is such an app out there but your target audience hasn't heard of it, then that's a good enough reason to try building it.
It's more true in this case than anything Jon Oliver may have done (who indeed tapped into a wider, already-existing movement to end civil as was mentioned elsewhere on this thread). The Zadroga Act was severely at risk of not getting passed; it was dangerously close to the end of the congressional session and the Republicans had filibustered it.

Following Stewart's focus on the bill several notable republicans came out in harsh criticism of the filibuster. To quote Robert Gibbs after the fact: "[he was] still holding out hope for passage with Stewart's help." Add to that the general acknowledgement that he was instrumental, I don't think it's a stretch. Certainly not an insult, I'm only talking about final passage of the bill, when the Republicans had it hopelessly filibustered at the end of a session.

As for what Stewart would say, I guess he would say that his show follows one about muppets because he wants to make sure people don't mistake his comedy for general political activism. But it's a mistake to conclude from that that he doesn't have significant weight when he chooses to get involved.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/white-house-lauds-jon-stewart-fo...
Aaron.wordpress.com for Sale at USD 80,000 or annual usage fee of USD 3,000
There are certainly downsides, but people can already piss their money away in many, many ways. Gambling, drink, risky stocks, buying junk that they don't need.

I think in this case I'd think it should be up to individuals to determine how they use their money.
Definitely could use a another killer feature or two.
So far SpaceX has used approximately a third of a billion dollars in launch hardware in reusability testing, almost entirely subsidized through commercial launches. It's a very savvy way to do R&D. Note that it takes a lot of foresight to design a rocket which can serve as both a good expendable booster and also be sensibly made reusable, and most of the optimizations for expendability would push the design away from being good for reuse.
How is that backwards, that is essentially what I said :-/ ?
Something I occasionally saw people do in lisp was

(frob foo :quick (not :sneaky) :force)

which could be done with strings in other languages

foo.frob('quick', not 'sneaky', 'force')

It's not ideal, because it makes it look like the arguments mean something. But if someone remembers that frob takes three boolean arguments, but doesn't remember what order they come in, this could be handy.

Another option would be

foo.frob(bool('quick'), not bool('sneaky'), bool('force'))

but that's kind of verbose.

EDIT: And the D approach posted above inspires this idea in python:

class _ConstAttr:
def __init__(self, const):
self.const = const
def __getattr__(self, attr):
return self.const

Yes = _ConstAttr(True)
No = _ConstAttr(False)

foo.frob(Yes.quick, No.sneaky, Yes.force)

(It wouldn't be much use in Python, because of keyword arguments, but there might be languages without keyword arguments that could implement something like this. E.g. C macros YES(x) -> 1, NO(x) -> 0.

It looks like D enforces the attribute name, so you can't get the arguments mixed up when writing and say No.sneaky, Yes.quick. It would be nice to get that as well.)
According to Google in the early days 'paid inclusion' was one of the original sins, and Google would never stoop that low. I personally think that paid inclusion is actually less evil than promoting your own crap products over the legitimate listings.
So you tried to sell a blogging platform to companies? I am curious as to what was your value proposition. What did your product have that was so unique and useful in your product that you felt companies would pay for it?
I consider verbose code to be more readable in general. However one has to take more time when naming their functions and parameters.
My exact thought. Ruby ftw! :D
UI Designer or Visual Designer.
I saw the hashtag #ni-pigeons-ni-espions. What does 'pigeons' mean in English (beyond 'pigeons')?
Fixing a broken spinal chord is probably rather more difficult (based on my extensive and indepth knowledge of the subject [ * ]), as there's likely to be a substantial section of damaged chord --- crushed, for example. A clean cut through an undamaged chord would provide two relatively undamaged surfaces. I have heard of work in regenerating severed spinal chords in rats.

I'd be more inclined to be worried about whether the neurons on one side can usefully bind to the neurons on the other. AFAIK the nerve mapping in the spinal chord is more or less random. The rat experiment wouldn't test this, of course.

[ * ] Disclaimer: while I have in-depth and extensive knowledge of some subjects, this is not one of them.
He is absolutely right.
I think the British Museum's response would be that their objects are on display for the world for free, rather than hidden away in a private collection; and that researchers can also get free access to the works not on display. They'd also say that they are better placed to conserve their collection over the next few centuries than other collectors.
I'm guessing it's more like it died after a short period of time.

If you look at the history of head transplants (yes a gruesome area), they ALL end badly for the subject.
True, I meant this https://pypi.python.org/pypi/pep8
Nokia Networks has been very separate venture from the better known Nokia-mobile. It was previously a joint venture between Nokia and Siemens known as NSN (Nokia Siemens Networks). In 2013 Nokia bought rest of the stock from Siemens and renamed it Nokia Networks.
Not only signed by OVH, but AFHADS, Gandi, IDS, Ikoula, Lomaco and Online.
Microsoft bought Nokia's consumer cell phones division.

Nokia is also a telecommunication equipment designer and manufacturer (since long before cell phones even existed) similar to Ericsson, Huawei or Alcatel-Lucent. They also got into nav/geomapping after buying Navteq (then Ovi, currently HERE) but that's probably getting spun off.
Sucker ? One who is being conned.
Pigeons get plucked. The sentence roughly translates into "Neither fools nor spies.".
It says that he's still in San Francisco in his bio.

Which is good because:

a) he's on the front page of HN

b) he's available for tech legal roles

c) he seems like a pretty capable guy
It means "sucker" or "dupe".
I'd love to be able to pick nice projects on Kickstarter/Indiegogo and really invest in things I find promising. Sure, getting the product eventually is nice but more than once I thought, this will blow-up, if only I could invest some money. I don't have much to spend so the gain will be little but still, I'd give me some "practice" and trust in the method, who knows what I'll do later.
Some of them are certainly odd for native speakers of the borrowed word though: "panini sandwiches" for instance. Sometimes languages "borrow" nonexistant words, like "footing" for jogging in Italian.
Sidenote about tobacco:

Each time I walk out in the city, and somebody is smoking around me and the smoke reaches me, I feel like I need to hold my breath and change course to absolutely avoid breathing that smoke. Feels like poison.

I guess it's psychological, but smoke seems to make me feel sick, even at low doses. Even the smell of smoke from the neighbor's window will upset me.

I guess I either am a victim of anti tobacco ads, or that smokes is a real legal poison that my body can't sustain.
Sucker's better: Neither suckers nor spies.
Siemens is still Siemens, and Nokia bought Siemens's shares in NSN (renaming it Nokia Networks) in 2013.
You got the refresh / circle only if you scroll when you're already at the top of the page though.
In this context it means "a naive person or a dupe willing to accept everything".
Another "used here too" comment, it's common enough in the UK that many bank accounts don't consider you to be actively using your current account (and therefore eligible for add-ons or reduced fees) unless you have two direct debits set up.
> "Design is how it works". Maybe. But engineering and software development is also about "how it works".

Yes, engineering and software development include design. For example the Waterfall process explicitly has a "design phase". That phase is not only about the GUI, but about the internal architecture aka "how it works".
> I mean we have the example of javascript that went from terrible perf to almost native parity.

It didn't have the ecosystem of C extensibility and mature extensions Python has, which drive much of its adoption in e.g. scientific computing (a big factor for Pypy having trouble making inroads).
Don't forget that in 2013 Microsoft bought Nokia's handset division for half of the price Nokia is paying now for Alcatel-Lucent.
One tidbit of Ulysses is a character wonders if it's possible to cross Dublin without passing a pub. Using OpenStreetMap I figured out that it was http://www.kindle-maps.com/blog/how-to-walk-across-dublin-wi...
I don't get why is that so baffling -- the whole premise of VC is to invest in projects that offer a high return in a short period of time, at the cost of the high risk that they will fail. That risk is offset by a large volume of similar investments, meaning that low-cost opportunities are much more interesting.

Hardware and energy intensive technologies -- like rockets, satellites and the like -- definitely fail at both the time and cost criteria (and their risk rate is not quite among the lowest). That means that they'll get invested in only by entities which are capable (and willing) of investing large amounts for long periods of time, while willing to accepts significant risk -- which reduces the group to governments, large companies like Google and determined individuals like Musk and Branson.

So, capital is allocated considering a number of criteria, the perceived risk being among the most important. The key word here is _perceived_, as in the late nineties a lot of investors started believing in the myth of endless growth, which significantly lowered the risk they perceived on sock puppets and the like.
I like D solution very much: http://dlang.org/phobos/std_typecons.html#.Flag which results in calls like:

document.addObserver(observer, "load", Yes.isWeak);

or

xhr.OpenUrl(url, options, No.sync)
What are you talking about? How is using an enum more tightly coupled/less extensible than a function name?
https://caliopen.org
https://blog.caliopen.org
It's pretty similar to all these tiny city jurisdictions which finance significant portions of their revenue via fines, especially those that cover a couple of miles of major roads.
I'd have thought that the easier path would have been to join a law firm in the SF area first. Maybe just for a year or so.

That might give more perspective on the startup scene, and help to establish credentials. A law firm would understand the quality of his education and experience better than some small startup.
So memorable.