skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Here it comes, demonizing Russians at the price of rewriting history.

Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact was similar to pacts that every other European country had - including Poland[1]. Except that Poland had it since 1934 and USSR only since 1939. Stalin made it after realizing that Britain and France were playing him from April to August 1939 [2].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German%E2%80%93Polish_Non-Aggre...

[2] http://spartacus-educational.com/RUSnazipact.htm
Show HN: Chirpy – Realtime data audiolization
> Migrating a relatively complex project from 5 to 6 is extraordinarily hard.

Are you willing to share any details of the project you migrated?
> The worst that can happen to unsuccessful CEOs is being replaced (IF the situation does not improve after the layoffs) while netting a generous severance pay.

And then run for office touting your hugely successful time as CEO, just make sure you have enough money to run enough ads to support this claim rather than the realities that are your failures.
> ...because zebra's are not a universally useful modelling tool to programmers like references are.

References are not the zebras. Nil-references are.

We might as well say that the underlying number that the reference are represented by are useful modelling tools, in some circumstances. That doesn't mean that you want pointer arithmetic for references all the time.
So true! :)
Building an Infinite Procedurally-Generated World
Ubuntu phone that works as a desktop PC coming in 2015
So, taking the precautions is neutral until a student is harmed by them and then it becomes wrong? Seems to me they would have to take precautions for the precautions then. You are also assuming it was known beforehand that the precautions may cause harm to the student in question. Students have been banned from universities before.

I agree banning a student can be heavy-handed unless he was deemed a danger to other students or maybe other things warranted such a response. But I would imagine a university has the right to remove anyone from campus and ask that they not return.

I disagree, there will almost always be someone offering to help, it's human nature. But why is it the university's responsibility to help in a case where they choose not to do so? Just because one group decides to help in certain situations doesn't mean everyone else has to help. If the university decides they don't want to help in these situations then they have that right. Some people may not like that. Some people think it makes for a better world to force others to do things they don't want to do. Force them because it's been predetermined it's for the greater good, but I see that as going too far and a huge potential for abuse.
The story mentioning the woman who did not consider herself a "real programmer" is obviously disturbing. But that is not the consequence of believing in a bi-modal distribution of programming talent. Rather, it is the consequence of believing in a bi-modal distribution AND believing that gender also fits that distribution.

The bi-modal distribution of talent is not a myth nor is it intrinsically harmful. However, it can be extremely harmful when misinterpreted to mean gender, race, etc. The author is subtly conflating the two and in the process doing more harm than good. This does not help women, minorities or other under represented groups.
Those figures are based off of grain fed, mass produced cattle. Assuming that all such grains originate in California, or even that it applies to all meat, is silly. They are not accurate for grass fed beef.

Around Petaluma, for example, the cows graze on grass that is not irrigated. They may be supplemented with grain in the winter months.

A cow itself, not including water used to grow feed, will consume about 30-55 gallons of water to every hanging pound. You can do this calculation yourself: A decent hanging weight of a cow is about 600 pounds. A cow drinks ~25 gallons a day, and goes to slaughter around age 3. (25x365x3)/600.
A weekend project I created to monitor activity of an app we just launched. Chirpy generates audio melody from your realtime analytics data. You an quite literally listen to your users!

Chirpy is still in the early stages (especially the tracking modules) but really interested to see what you guys think!
Everyone is complaining - why don't other people offer free internet? Just do it yourself
>I also was unable to ever learn my multiplication tables.
>I don't have a learning disability

Maybe you don't have a learning disability, but you definitely seem like you have some sort of mental block that is preventing you from being able to learn certain things. Maybe things you consider boring, and you can't focus enough on them to get past them?
EEVblog #127 – PCB Design for Manufacture Tutorial – Part 1 (2010)
15 Free Resources to Help You Become a Smarter WordPress Developer
Ummm, because there is snow there and not in Salinas.
While that's true, JavaScript is still horribly error-prone because of this. The suggestion that JS would be a much better language if the == operator worked more like === in the first place is very reasonable.
Taking Inspiration from Failed Projects
Hey there. You are arguing against a strawman...

---

I'm way over here!

Hi.

You completely missed my point, which was, that the desire to drive an ICE car is generational.
Learning a musical instrument is hard work, but yes anybody can learn to play on an intermediate level. It takes zero talent to do that, but hours and hours of practice with a metronome.

"Able to play the piano" means you can look at a lead sheet with chords on it and play basic accompaniment to a melody. That's not difficult at all once you've learned how to do it.

I would say "able to program" means you can take an arbitrary set of feature requirements and write a program that fulfills those requirements.
The quote reminded me of a study I read about a year ago, in which the problem-solving skills of toddlers and chimps were compared. The toddlers generally did better, except in one regard: when shown how to do something, but with some pretty obviously irrelevant steps included, the chimps were quicker and more likely to drop the pointless steps. At the time, I thought that might be explained by a human predisposition to pay attention to authority, but, in the light of that quote, perhaps it is (also) a predisposition to formal / abstract thinking? Furthermore (to make a wild speculative leap) perhaps it is this predisposition that is actually behind the phenomena that Chomsky thinks are evidence for an innate universal grammar?
I've never seen a municipal/public grass area that isn't over watered in California. Drive down some street that has a grass covered divider or grass lined public areas between the sidewalk and the street. Come by when it's being watered. Watch the water run all over the street instead of in the grass. That of course then makes every car that goes by dirty which then has to be washed (more water)
But the article describes (and my own experience has been similar) patients being ignored because the doctor's made up his mind and it's on to the next patient without any time to stop and look at this particular patient's circumstances.
Good programming is an art. The same can be said for good photos, or good works or fiction, or great compositions.

The reality is that most computer programs don't need to be good. In most cases they don't even need to be efficient. They just need to work. Even then, they usually just need to work for a short time because of the ephemeral world of software development we live in.

There are some really incredible engineers out there. When I look at their code I'm often in awe. "Why didn't I think about that," is what I think to myself. Or someone is using some bizarre function or mathematics that I don't understand to achieve something with an efficiency I couldn't ever come close to in my own code.

Most people who make a living writing code are just writing the same things over and over again for different employers. There's no elegance in what they do. There's no art. I make websites, apps, and simple programs for automation. Sometimes the end result looks pretty, but if I'm being honest with myself the code is very… meh. Anyone could do it.

Living in the Bay Area I can safely say it's mostly a dog and pony show. There are a few people doing something really interesting, actually pushing the limits of technology. Most of us are not those people. Most of us (myself included) are writing garbage for silly products that people use to distract themselves. It's fun, but not really challenging. Most of the people I work with have no idea what hard work actually is.

Working in the Bay Area is the easiest thing I've ever done. Honestly, I didn't realize life could be so easy. Learn how to sell yourself, make something appear on an iPad, and people want to pay you $100k/yr. Sometimes I feel like a thief, but everyone around me is doing the same thing.
Sounds like she's been taking lessons from Uncle Ruckus (no relation)
I agree; that was encouraging.
Last summer I went into a job interview and said "I'm not really a programmer."

The next week I was hired to do Ruby on Rails work for a freelance contract. (I'd been lured to the interview to talk about data analysis with R but they needed a Rails person more.) Clearly the interviewers thought my level of experience was fine.

I've got a PhD in mathematics and am no stranger to technical fields. I can't believe I was "that woman" who said she wasn't a programmer. It really does happen. My G-d, I'm a cliche.
Here's a quick version for my local rates.

An EV will use about 300Wh of electricity per mile. This varies a bit depending on the car (a massive Model S will use more than a Leaf) and how you drive it, but it's a decent approximation. I pay about 13 cents/kWh. That makes my energy cost for driving an EV about 3.9 cents/mile. I believe that's 300Wh out of the battery, so you probably want to add another 10% or so for charging inefficiency, but I'm not sure exactly what the numbers are there so I'll leave them be.

My last car got 40MPG. At current local gas costs of $2.50/gallon, that's 6.25 cents/mile.

And of course, a lot of people think that current gas prices are anomalously low and won't last.
I find the entire development very terrifying.

Even if I don't live in the US and being not particularly interested I've heard about California’s water problem more then 10 ago. That means the problems and dangers are well know a relatively long time ago. There is a ton of publications and research on various levels and domains.

It seems to me that we are completely incapable to handle the challenges that come with (finite) natural resources. Our system works as long as it works and then it halts full stop. Like a massive train, there is no change of course.
I think this is something that's better on paper than in practice. I have apps for controlling almost everything that happens on my TV, and the only time I prefer it is when I need to type in some long string of text. Otherwise I'll pick up the hardware remote every time.
The wget version still needs curl... at least it looks like the comitted data is escaped and a big chunk of /dev/zero does internal server error or a gateway timeout only. Why does "www.gitminer.com" fordward to "http://gitminer/" ?
Did the study account for previous convictions, having a criminal record, being on probation, having other charges present in the case, etc...

Or did it just look at race and a specific charge (ex: 'possession of drug paraphernalia'), and used that to compare white vs black?
Read the fine print at the end.

1. Annual income of 500k in the 80's and 90's using 2012 dollars
2. County kids born from '80 to '86 living in during the 80s and 90s.

Basically, if you don't fit the profile of a family that never moved from the same house in the suburbs, you aren't included. Also, take a look at the national map. It would seem the plains are the best place for upward mobility, but I get the feeling they forgot to control for some confounding variable.

Also, the breakdowns show some Simpsons paradox, where individual counties might be very good for boys or girls, but are on average much worse. I'm sure a racial breakdown would show similar issues.
Private schools are now called "startup" school?
You've said multiple times in these posts that you "can't" do this or that. That is an excuse. Stop it.
Yeah, no, you are 100% wrong.
I suspect those that learn to program before they're expected to have more undirected time to consider alternative formulations of their programs. People who learn later aren't performing the playful exploration that's necessary for independent mastery. They're just treating it like any other subject and completing tasks for the approval of an authority figure. I watched plenty of students learn bad habits from arrogant teachers like it was just "the way" you program. We don't have some master method of programming that can be taught that way. It's not like we're building bridges and already know pretty much exactly what we're doing. The craft is evolving before our eyes. They have to understand the incomplete state of our knowledge to know that they should seek superiority amongst potential selves and not merely acceptance from some external deity.
Actually, it does not have to, it is a more general spec. Technically Docker doesnt need to either.
Insurance costs are pretty comparable, yes, from what I've heard. (I won't try to talk about my personal experience, since a single data point is just about pointless when discussing insurance, but it's comparable for me too.)

The big problem for Model S insurance is that the body is aluminum, which is a lot more expensive to repair, especially since Tesla wants to exercise a great deal of control over the whole process. This seems to be compensated for by the excellent safety, which reduces potential medical costs.
Note that Inline::Python for Perl 6 allows one to do likewise with Python. [1]

"even PyQt's low level mingling finds all the information it needs and we can write programs using PyQt in Perl 6 :)"

[1] https://github.com/niner/Inline-Python/commit/82cab4181d98f0...
Paul Allen's Complaint Against the World, as Text
He is encouraged to use open-source code to achieve results faster, but he's not allowed to give anything back to the community that developed it. His grander ideas are shelved, because the bank just wants quick fixes to its old, messy platform. When someone offers him a better job, free of the legacy system's constraints -- one that pays four times as much, as Aleynikov's new job with Teza Technologies did -- the bank enlists the FBI's help in going after him for saving some code on an outside server.

One reason that this is an outcome of the Aleynikov case is that Michael Lewis made it so, despite the fact that it does not appear to be true: in both the Second Circuit review of original federal case and according to his own lawyer's stipulations in the new state case, the finding of fact is that the majority of the code he took was not, in fact, open source. In fact, his own expert witness in the first case was (according to filings, which may be missing context or additional facts) only able to conclusively identify a few files of open source code.

The idea that Aleynikov was victimized by Goldman's unwillingness to cooperate with open source projects is a hacker-friendly narrative. We should generally be wary of hacker-friendly narratives, like the FBI dragnetting Google searches of pressure cookers; they tend to turn our brains off.

Corrections welcome; I've read some of the filings in this case, but not all of them, and on this issue I am allergic to Lewis' reporting, which I believe to be uncharacteristically and dramatically shoddy.
What security differences do you see now?
It solves one the problems in the most important class of problems in the world: inconveniences facing young wealthy residents of Northern California.
I'm confused why the price per gallon for water isn't skyrocketing in California.

If the state is artificially keeping the price low, of course people aren't going to change their habits and business models. And the end game is running out of water instead of innovating to keep your water bill down.
The root of this is what you point out in paragraph four: fear. My worst math students are just afraid to do anything, as if they'll break the math problem or it will bite them or they'll sustain indefinite psychological damage just by touching it. And that's a four-sentence word problem. It's about mindset rather than ability. Ability helps, no doubt, but you have to start solving the problem for ability to even become relevant.
"You honestly think mega manufacturers like Panasonic don't have the proper scale for lithium-ion?"

What is the proper scale? The scale of this factory is the same size as all the other lithium battery plants in the world combined. And do you think Panasonic would be throwing money at it if it thought the numbers were that wrong? This is constantly being presented by some people as a sort of majestic con being perpetrated by Elon, which is just ridiculous when you consider the other players involved.
> there are strictly more steps involved when you have null pointers.

Well yes, and both Nim and Rust have non-nil pointers.. I suppose I misread your original statement as "Rust is objectively better ..." when you actually just said non-nil vars are an objectively better design pattern in general. My mistake.

Our argument seems to stem around the two assertions (one from you, and one from me), those are: "nil vars are be rare (in optimally written code)", and "Rust's way of working with 'nil' vars is verbose". I suppose I'll concede that non-nil vars is a better default (though I will hold reservation until I see more real statistics, I don't find "no RFC yet!" as hugely convincing), but I also feel Rust could do a better job of giving access to "nilable" vars when they're needed.

> I don't know what this means. Lifetimes rule out dangling pointers...

I mean, Rust prevents you (via compile-time mechanisms) from mutating a variable while it's borrowed by another reference.. If that reference is Option<>, it's only known at runtime weather or not a reference has actually borrowed said varaible. Rust must either treat every Option<> reference as a potential 'loan path', which would significantly diminish their usefulness as a references, encouraging indexing for these scenarios, which leads to almost identical potential for out-of-bounds crashes... or it's relying on some kind of more complex mechanism (lifetime vars maybe?).. or additional runtime overhead.

I really don't know enough about Rust to know how far off-base that is. So any clarity is appreciated.

> In an earlier comment I was able to construct a Nim program that exhibited very different behavior in debug and optimized builds, using nothing but GC'd pointers.

I remember this comment, but I didn't remember it achieving UB in debug code.. I'll look through the history and take another look.
Market to Mondays – Part 8
Samsung and LG smart TVs both come with what's essentially a Wiimote as a remote control. It's a motion sensor that controls a pointer on the screen like a mouse.

http://i.imgur.com/XEn3vBk.jpg

Note the overlay over the TV image, and the salmon colored pointer near the vudu icon. No grid and no directional arrows.
Other nut crops can be grown in other parts of the US that have reliable annual rainfall.

Hybrid hazelnuts could be used in lots of places that almonds are currently. Chestnuts.

And there are hardy varieties of almonds that will grow in the east as well.

Cheap Latino labour, powerful organized industry groups, state subsidies, and an inaccurate pricing for irrigation....
FizzBuzz is a test, not the results. If you can point to a study that has administered it to a well selected group representative of professional software engineers that displays a bi-modal distribution, then I'll accept that as evidence. Until then, it's just anecdotal data about the quality of a self-selected group attempting to get a well paid job.
> it might just bomb and be forgotten within months

That seems unlikely for any project with over a decade of work behind it.

> What makes the situation truly infuriating though, is the snarky and superior attitudes taken by most P6 folk, just like this article exhibits. Even if you begin with an attitude of collaboration, it soon begins to feel like you're talking to King Joffrey, with that ever-condescending smile of his.

Do you have any examples, because I've dropped in their IRC channel occasionally over the years, and it's been nothing but welcoming. The attitude at YAPC (at least in 2013 when I went) was very positive from everyone I heard, from both P5 and P6.
Yup, in our case strict private catholic school is not an option.
> The last thing I'd note is that the focused act of programming is becoming a smaller and smaller part of the gig.

Unfortunately it took over 5 years as an engineer to learn that being able to communicate effectively is the single most important task of any job. If you've ever struggled to explain yourself to people then take some writing or speaking classes from a local college, sign up for a Dale Carnegie course, join Toastmasters for a couple years. Your career will thank you for it.
Original link: http://www.theverge.com/2015/5/4/8540935/apple-labels-spotif...
It isn't bad Internet. It is a proprietary network like AOL and CompuServe, and not the Internet at all. The name is intentionally misleading.

Allowing such proprietary networks to run over public radio spectrum causes harm to the real internet - and not just by slowing it down and making it more expensive.

The main long-term harm is the stifling effect on innovation, especially in businesses that rely on network effects: Even if you are a regular internet user, but some of your friends are on internet.org, you can only use communication, collaboration or social networking apps that are on internet.org. Even in other categories of apps, you might only hear about those that are on internet.org.

This means that we will move from an economy where end users decide which apps get popular, to one where facebook picks the winners.

This is scary.
Webhook – Static HTML content management system
At least in the US, bonuses are taxed the same as salary. It's just the withholding that is higher, but that only makes a difference until you file a tax return.
Did you really make a big cite-free post, and then complain that people are posting disagreements without cites?
by definition, most of us working in this crowded industry are mediocrity. And even if somebody is a very talented programmer (say like me :) the system will make sure that it doesn't matter in the end.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barge_Haulers_on_the_Volga (depicts typical implementation of SCRUM process with 1-day long sprints)

(until of course, one is so "talented" that s/he made onto the barge as a foreman or better - owns the barge, though it usually requires completely different from programming talents)
12 is not 0.
And you don't think I have that experience?
Google+ Collections
Almond growers better be paying a premium then in order to compensate the residents of the state who lost their water to them. If California is conducive to farming other than water then the high price in water should be fine.
I don't know, colluding to keep the wages of your employees down is pretty low.