skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> Someone really needs to explain to me why PostgreSQL users in particular seem to always want to bash the competition in order to justify their technology choice. It's been going on for years against MySQL/Oracle first, then MongoDB/NoSQL and now SQL Server. It's odd.

I think it's less about PostgreSQL, and more about the particular products:

1. Oracle has always been a piece of crap from a technology standpoint. There are good reasons businesses use it, but they don't have to do with a robust, core product.

2. Early versions of MySQL were a joke. It's pretty good now, but for a long time, it was the butt of many jokes for good reason. It was very easy-to-use, and fast if you didn't need data consistency, but it didn't quite work right.

3. Stonebraker aside, I haven't heard much bashing of NoSQL. It's used in many places where it's the wrong tool for the job (JOINs are useful), but it's great where it is the right fit. It's just that MongoDB, in particular, isn't great if you have data integrity or performance requirements you care about.

4. I don't even know where to start on SQL Server. Seriously. The only reason to use that dog is if you're tied to a Microsoft-only shop.

There are lots of great technologies out there -- Cassendra, Google's Bigtable, memcached, modern versions MySQL, etc. -- which I've never heard people mocking. Conversely, users of most of those tend to make fun of the broken databases just as much as PostgreSQL users do. It's just that you see the PostgreSQL users doing more mocking simply because there are more of them out there.

Footnote: I'm developing on a MySQL+MongoDB stack right now. MySQL is great, but MongoDB is a bad joke.
This seems a bit nonsensical: http://www.doyouneedvisa.com/border/Palestine
I disagree here. For example, relativity and quantum mechanics explain how our world behave but we have no idea why these theories are true or even why can the universe be described with mathematical equations ?
The text in the 'about' section needs indented

edit: and the contact section
So if that's the only advantage, I can ignore all sphincter-related advice, and the polygraph itself as well. I'm happy about that outcome, by the way!
And for the rest of us there is: http://routerboard.com

Which as-far-as-I-know comes with all open source software, it very well supported by a large community.
Orleans vs. Erlang and Riak Core
yeah that's weird..
iOS 8.3 Cydia Download and Jailbreak Now Possible
I deleted the post myself. The owner of the company threatened to make a fool out of me if I went public on it, I can't take the stress of it. I'd rather make something of myself and let karma do its' thing.
Have we learned nothing in the last 10 years? Aside from the siren song of better performance, there are few other reasons to model your domain in the database.

Throwing business logic into stored procedures wily-nilly is a terrible idea for a lot of reasons. First, there is no standard method for testing stored procedures functions; you have to put a lot more effort into devising a test strategy for your database functions than your controller functions. In addition, you've now coupled the business logic with the database, and you cannot move your data around easily. And, lastly, if you have a large database, adding new functions and triggers will involve some downtime, too.

To sum up, don't replace your Rails app with a database unless you really know what you're doing.
Sorry I gave you this impression. I actually give two numbers: the salary that I already have and the salary which, if offered, I'd accept immediately and stop any other job search so I am quite aware of difference between two. I see no harm in disclosing my last salary unless it's against my employment policy. All it does is saving time and effort for myself. The cases when I am not asked for salary were when I am referred internally through friends.
I'm surprised that there is no mention of Tabu Search or other metaheuristics (like simmulated annealing, as pointed out in this thread). In my research, I discovered it to be one of the best algorithms for this class of problems (determinisitic, non-black-boxy, flexible, can incorporate expert knowledge).

Also worth mentioning is that while the TSP is interesting from an algorithms class perspective, a problem that occurs far more often in real-life is the Vehicle Routing Problem.

The Vehicle Routing Problem (with time-windows, types, multiple vehicles, multi-depot, capacities, etc) is a much more complex problem compared to the TSP, and I would argue that pretty much all the algorithms mentioned in the article would fail to transfer.

Here's an open-source library written in Common Lisp that implements the Tabu Search approach [1] -- shameless plug, but we also build an API for it [2]

[1] https://github.com/mck-/Open-VRP

[2] https://www.routific.com/developers
I should say up front that, as others have said, polygraph is all superstition and subjective interpretation when it is being used seriously. Usually, it's just a prop to scare people with in an interrogation. The following comments are what the "true believers" of polygraph usually believe, and is probably a key part in how an examiner judges a polygraph exam, but you can never really rule out the possibility of an exam being a simple scare tactic or cover for subjective opinion. With that risk and the fact that this is all disproved junk science, YMMV.

--

Any question that can be trivially checked such as "Do you live in Chicago?" is not one of the "control questions". Questions like that are part of the theater for the benefit of the person being tested. Like the waving needles, it makes the test look more complicated and "scientific" (really: "it's complicated" and therefor "magic" in the sense of Clarke's 3rd Law).

The article has an actual example of a typical control question: “Have you ever lied to anyone who trusted you?”. Unfortunately, their explanation that "...an innocent person telling the truth will have a stronger reaction to the control questions..." misses the point entirely.

Control questions are always about a "little white lie" that the examiner assumes is something that everybody does. The important thing to understand about the real "control questions" is the assumption that you will lie when you answer those questions. In the question from the article, the assumption is that of course you have lied to someone who trusted you, but you will say "no" out of fear.

The "theory" is then to look for a difference (ANY difference, not just a "stronger reaction") in the polygraph output for that question when compared to most of the rest of the questions. This is then used as a reference to see if something similar happens on a real interrogation question.

Want to mess with the test? Don't lie on the control questions. Admit to the "little white lies" they assume are said by everybody. This will usually do two things: 1) it will invalidate the test, and 2) it will piss off the examiner. Obviously, the utility of forcing these results will depends on why you're taking the test.

If instead you want to do the opposite and "pass" the test without suspicion, remember you're being recorded from the moment the sensors are put on. Make sure their machine records regular (small standard deviation) data except for when you give the expected lie. If they see the expected "change" on the correct "little white lie" (control) questions, and not much anywhere else, that should be seen as a "pass".

Or even better, don't perpetuate this nonsense and refuse to take any polygraph tests.
Ask HN: Great Books/Articles about Leadership
German, 22 years old, ComputerScience Student looking for Advices/Books/Articles about Leadership
I currently use Quiver and save my notes to a google drive account. It gives me a similar workflow to what you're looking for, sans the ability to diff changes (unless I manually commit).
Very addictive. Love the new features. What is the max size? I seem to recall i could not get over 1863 or something like that.
>It should cause a reasonable person to conclude that the tool doesn't work and should not be used.

But it is likely to cause an FBI-drone to conclude that you are attempting to beat the polygraph and therefore untrustworthy.
You commonly encounter "legacy" code that uses this design and often people who have cut their teeth on currently fashionable techniques put it down.

If you want to construct high performance applications, however, moving code close to data solves a lot of problems, particular those involving the reconciliation of durability and scalability. (i.e. transactions work a lot better if you can get all the coordinated parts as close together as possible) This doesn't just go for SQL, but it will go for NoSQL systems that support advanced functionality.

Practically it is not too different from the fashion for developing a REST or otherwise "web service" APIs that are consumed by the rest of the system.

The only trouble with it is that it is "one more thing" which needs to be managed, which you need to train for, etc. I spent one summer doing a major upgrade to a line of business app and we checked in over 200 database migrations to version control. I don't know if anybody is working without version control in 2015, but 7 years ago that was a common practice and could lead to a lot of pain.

Often in the name of encapsulation architects put in a lot of layers, to the effect that if you want to make some small change (say add a second phone number to a user record) you have to make the change in multiple places. I talked with a Rubyist about this and he's like, "it's no problem, just add another phone number" and it's a deep point that systems that are declarative as possible and do code generation are the real way out of the morass.
I used to work next to Times Square and before that in Hoboken. I would never want to live within walking distance of either.
> Just takes planning...

...and significant markup in housing costs, no?
Nice work! I hope it is successful. There are a lot of useful things you can make with that demo board. Not to mention the Diglent PMOD boards which are fun to play with.
I live in LA county (Long Beach) and yes, there are a lot of great little historic tree lined neighborhoods spread all over LA... For example, I work downtown Long Beach, and live in beautiful Cal Heights, a short 3 mile bike ride, drive, or blue line subway ride to my office.

live: http://calheights.org

work: http://www.downtownlongbeach.org
I live in midtown Manhattan. It's not at all a miserable place to live. We can catch most of the subways within a block or two. We are a couple of blocks from Central Park. There are more and more families that have been moving into the area. There's an increasing number of restaurants, cafes etc. There are a lot of tourists coming thru, but we don't mind. It's been fun living here.
There is no documentation yet for calling C libraries or calling Pony from C. Does anyone have resources on how to do this?
You mean like Robert Half Technology? They're a big name, and they've repeatedly wasted my time to the extent that I now refuse to talk with them.
I'm a nerd and I don't want this. I can't imagine anyone who doesn't think fiddling with computers for its own sake is fun wanting this.

Maybe, maybe I might want it if it came in the form of a phone/web/desktop* app that shared my data around. Possibly to an always-on, minimal-configuration-required box that I could plug into a wall socket and forget about.

* phone is a must, plus one of either web or desktop - also you'd need it to be available on iOS and Android, so that's at least three versions

tell it about my wifi network, give it a name and password, and it Just Works
Is anyone working on better tooling for debugging, maintaining, versioning and testing code that lives in the database?
It is pretty common that organization X uses a pastiche of different tools for a complicated set of reasons (the most senior of which is that it has grown through acquisition.)

Often organization X has a large number of small applications and often big applications contain many small applications. Certainly some libraries and tools that work with different databases can make life easier in this case.
Click commercial support. It goes to a parked domain page.
I wish there was a reversible debugger for browsers. Would really love to have something like this ( perhaps something like a time travelling debugger like what elm gives is even better! ). Does anyone know of such a project for the browsers ?
> If so, why can't Erlang GC multiple actors at a time? It does full SMP for actor execution.

It does. The article is incorrect. Erlang has a fully concurrent garbage collector among actors. One actor's GC running on one CPU scheduler will not interfere with execution of actors running in other CPU schedulers.
I couldn't find any information about the authors of this language. It seems like a fairly accomplished yet complex project, so it would be quite good to know who are the people working on it.
Hackaday Platform
All chromium forks seem rather useless IMHO. They don't support chrome extensions AFAICT and at best they are a few hours behind Chrome in shipping updates and at worst days/weeks/months/years. Sounds like I have to trade quite a bit for "reproducible builds" which I'm not saying isn't anything, it is but just not something I'm super interested in giving up so much for. We ALL use code everyday that we can't see the full source for (I seriously don't believe that anyone actually working in tech and staying up-to-date can run an OS + all open source software, I just don't believe it) so adding one more piece doesn't seem like that big of a deal.

Don't get me wrong I think security/privacy is HUGE and I don't want to sound defeatist but come on... I'd love if everything was open source and I could inspect/debug everything I run but that's not the world we live in and you would have to go back to the "dark ages" of computing in order to live by that standard. It's similar to people who have android phones with stock roms who will tell me they prefer android because it's open source. Oh really? Cause all I see is binary blob in your hand just like me. 1-2 of them play with custom roms and this but NONE of them go as to install F-Droid (or whatever to FOSS marketplace is) and ONLY use apps from it.

At some point you have to say "Yes I know I can't know 100% the security of this app/device" and STILL use it. It's that or be a hermit, I don't like it but that's how it is.
The idea was that a converged, single, multi-language runtime and framework was the way to go. This is the way the culture works in Redmond - that's considered "strategic thinking", which is only exists in that bubble. It wasn't that the plan was bad, it's that it was unrealistic to think that the users of a very mature, very scenario-focused product would be happy with a V1 generalized product that was sorta-kinda the same thing. This was obviously false, and I actually fought against the porting tool because I didn't think it would work (it didn't), and just piss people off (it did). To keep VB6 alive until VB.net matured is anthetical to the way the place runs. Newer is _always_ better, even if it's not, and there lacked any incentive in the comp system for people to take care of the existing userbase. So, that's what happened.
Or just run a VM
Is kivy production ready ?
From benchmarks. I see this label: "Erlang OTP 6.1"

Anyone know what version 6.1 is refering to? Latest Erlang OTP version is 17.5. Version 11 was released sometimes 10 years ago.
We're already seeing some large router makers (slowly) adopt OpenWRT/DD-WRT. Maybe there's a chance we can push for a status quo on using open source firmware for routers - perhaps some sort of "Android" for routers, but it needs to be fully GPL so OEMs can't lock down 95% of it like they do with Android.
>Life-coach. Counsellor. Therapist. Call it what you will.

This is not merely a matter of terminology. I don't know how it is in the UK, but here in the US "life coach" requires no sort of training or licensure. In most places in the US, to call yourself a "therapist" requires those kinds of credentials.

So, as usual, words are important.
I notice that all books seem to be exactly 410 pages long.
I don't think I'd ever use that 'mal' phrasing. It would have to be "2 mal ein Helles" [~one light beer, twice] for it not to sound totally off to me. But "1/2/3 Helle[s]/Bier/Halbe[s]" [normal plural] is what I'd say. (I'm from Franconia.)
Indeed, it would be less confusing if the submission title had a "(2006)" suffix.
> Given that Chrome (and Google in general) has possibly the best defensive security team in the world, it's hard for me to take these security-oriented forks too seriously.

I think it depends on who and what you most eager to secure yourself from. If you think hackers are the greatest online threat, perhaps you should go with Chrome (if you chose between these two browsers). If you don't trust Google to stay classy when it comes to privacy and data collection, perhaps you could consider running a one or two versions old Iridium version of Chrome. Personally, I use Firefox. I prefer not to use a browser from a company that lives on data collection.

Chrome might be kosher now (to be honest, I don' know), but a decision at the headquarters can change that at the next automatic update.
The best thing is to give your students the freedom and encouragement to do internships during their PhD/MA/MS. That'll help them find outside mentors, experience, and contacts, as well as in-roads to future employment
Thanks. Will update the sections!
"it would be a miserable place to live"

Different people, vastly different tastes, dude.

Every small town around the world spreads this weird rumor among themselves that cities are so terrible. Apparently caused by the small percentage of people who moved to a city and then later moved back. Great sample to draw on.

What if -- dense cities are extremely packed with millions of people because that's exactly what some people love? Not some convoluted tradeoff that millions of people are being forced to make by living there. What if the answer to why cities are that way is simply because people love it that way?
That's not the important distinction. Religion is also trying to figure out reality. If science thought it could detect fairies, then science would study fairies. The distinction is rather in method; science uses (hopefully) well-designed experiments and peer review; religion uses...other methods.
Dave Goldberg's Lifetime of Advocating for Women
> The prior year his "rack" rate was 20K/week. He didn't say "I put out a ridiculous rate and wouldn't you believe it this one guy bit!", but claimed that it was a ongoing day to day rate that saw continued success.

But how many weeks do you have to work at that rate to constitute "continued success"? He came off a salaryman job, if he kept his expenses in check he would only need a couple of those jobs per year.

> (respected consulting shops -- the sort that you hire because no one ever gets fired for hiring them -- with armies of bodies yield less on their contract)

The type of companies that hire those consultancies are generally big slow and bureaucratic. They have plenty of money, but they don't have the agility to hire a single consultant and effect quick changes that move the needle. A corollary is that they also have
established tech staffs and probably have some reasonable level of optimization.

By contrast there are a lot of mid-tier companies that have revenues in the 6-8 figure range which are generally not operating their tech with an enterprise level of sophistication. They fly under the radar of the tech establishment because they aren't tech-focused and they aren't really attractive to the big consultancies, but they are profitable because of domain knowledge and relationships in small niches. In these companies a hybrid technical/business consultant can move the needle far more than he can in a large company.
So, I've actually been working for the past while on a project to allow building more native apps on Android using Python. It is built on the Kivy tools, but I have had to make some changes to python-for-android specifically because it's not as seperated from Kivy as the developers think. I've also had to make a small change to PyJNIus, as it has a dependency on SDL when on Android.

The reason I chose to work on this is while you can already create an application using Kivy, it sort of exists in its own world compared to standard Android apps. Because you don't have separate activities, you can't really do stuff like have one of them be launched to handle a specific file or URL (disclaimer: what I'm building can't either yet). There's also the same issues you get with mobile apps that are web apps in an APK, where someone has attempted to reimplement native UI widgets and there's certain behaviours that are not quite right or missing, or you can't use them yet because they haven't been replicated in your environment yet.

So basically what I'm doing is the Python equivalent of Xamarin.Android (https://developer.xamarin.com/guides/Android/ ) built on some of the Kivy tools. The idea is that you'd have the bulk of your logic in cross platform Python and a thin UI layer for any platforms you had. And in the future if someone made a similar thing for iOS, you could build a layer overlying the two of them and get actually native behaviour on both.

Overall I've gotten it to the stage where you can create activities, access some standard UI elements and launch third-party apps via Python code, but like I said, it's still at a pretty early stage.

I'd intended to open source it when it got to a more usable state, as it's pretty much in proof of concept state atm. (bugs ahoy, tests and docs are very lacking, feature coverage is low, setup is a PITA, and the API is too close to the Java API to make for nice Python). These are problems I believe are fixable. If you want to see the current state of it though, it's on https://bitbucket.org/tonyfinn/pydroid , but it's a bit off how far I'd like to be before sharing it.
> All chromium forks seem rather useless IMHO. They don't support chrome extensions [...]

The Chrome extensions from https://chrome.google.com/webstore/category/extensions seems to work just perfect in Iridium.
Science describes reliable models of reality. Its language is mathematics.

Religion wonders about the ultimate meaning of such models. Its language is philosophy.

The first religions bundled model and meaning out of necessity. However, post-Roman Christians were keen logicians and experimenters who laid the foundation of the modern sciences. They would be ashamed of creationists' shallowness.
You can use pkgsrc current with any BSD if you like.
Aren't we already gathered at IP?
"Evolution need only take a random walk along a web of neutral (or at least almost neutral) mutations, that, without impairing the fitness of an organism, surrounds it with very different neighbors: innovative solutions to selective pressures that are there for the taking when the circumstances compel it."

Wow, that starts to explain the amazing creativity of rapid evolution (like whale evolution in 10 million years). So how to turn this into software? This seems like it could be a new class of evolutionary algorithm.
I've worked with COM quite a bit. The .NET runtime does makes working with Windows much nicer. However, COM has not been completely been abstracted.

Still waiting for things like Extended MAPI and other parts of the ShellAPI to get "wrapped" up somehow. But I'm moving on from those spaces so it does not matter to me personally too much now.