skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I agree with what you say. Certainly would have had a bit more value if the article had elaborated on whether they used anything else. I feel the interviewer should have asked about that. Even a "no, we didn't" would have been valuable. Now we know nothing.

That said, it DOES mean that they have been happy with Java EE and have been so happy that they choose it again for their latest startup.

Contrast this with a typical startup where engineers always seem to hate whatever they used before and are like children in a candy shop for having the opportunity to use whatever we think is cool here.
Only it's not a surprise that this 'flavor' in personal attraction correlates to a group of people who are the most powerful and dominant and wealthy in the world: white males.

If you consider the possibility that these may very well be related (and there is AMPLE evidence to show attraction to wealth, power and status exists), then yes it does become quite sad. Because now we see people's personalities and status be judged on the basis of skin color as a proxy of status/wealth/power, rather than merit. And that's a step even worse than judging someone on the basis of their wealth instead of merit.

Of course there will be people genuinely attracted to e.g. wasps, just as there are people genuinely attracted to asians. That's completely fine and a personal preference as you say. But I've met Chinese people who aren't like that and who indeed will say Chinese people are 'all ugly', and any white person is a model. From that and other things they'll say and how they'll behave it's apparent that it's not about a personal preference, it's usually driven by racial (I dare so racist) notions about the world.

It's particularly apparent when these 'preferences' extend beyond beauty, i.e. when white people are considered more intelligent or more capable, especially in a context where the opposite view exists about blacks. South Korea for example is notorious for such racism and the weak legal system which has very very few legal frameworks against racial discrimination.

Definitely quite sad in my opinion.
Having a UPS for your home which you can charge with Solar or Wind will be the future for many houses, but I don't see this working for most people till the prices per k/w drops bellow the cost for the electricity.
Sites like this are a good reason to not require https everywhere. If this guy had to take the extra time to learn how to do https, it would slow down his creative innovation.
I am fine with the market mechanism to establish prices and production volumes, it is a pretty efficient mechanism for this. But I also see no fundamental difference to say a planned economy. Whenever the Soviet Union created their five-year plan they still tried - at least to some extend - to align demand and production, but this is of course hugely inefficient compared to a market because of the long planning interval and because it is impossible to capture the demand in detail or predict what it will be in five years.

There are also some advantages in a planned economy, you can for example penalize environmentally unfriendly products directly in the plan while controlling a market is only possible indirectly via laws and regulations and their enforcement which might be less efficient. But all in all market and price mechanism with some added planning, i.e. regulations where market forces are not aligned with goals agreed on by the society, seems at the very least a reasonable choice for an economy.

I take issues with capitalism in other places, for example with the ownership of the means of production. Let's again take an example. You found a company, your workers produce goods or services sold for 10 millions per year. You pay 8 millions for consumed raw materials and in salaries and invest 2 millions into the growth of the company, say a new offices, a new production floors or new machines. For the moment this is all good and even necessary for the growth of the company. But when you decide to sell your company you alone get all the money your workers worked for. This is of course unfair and leads to inequality because one or a few owners are able to capture a share of the value created by a lot of workers.
For many professional programmers, the rigorous stage of their education never got to the techniques for proving the correctness of programs, or even a realization that such techniques exist. We see this in the discussion of design issues, where informal arguments based on rules-of-thumb, reasonableness, best practices and aphorisms (e.g. "code smells") predominate. There is a tendency for dogmatism to arise in this environment ("thou shalt never write the same expression more than once - always factor it into a function.") (dogmatic thinking is probably confined to a small minority, but because they are vocal, they tend to dominate the discussion.)

I am not one of those who think a transition to formal methods is feasible, let alone that it would solve software's problems. I am also aware that many programmers are effective in putting their general critical thinking and reasoning skills to work in writing correct code (this is one of the reasons why some people without any formal CS education can become excellent programmers.) Nevertheless, and speaking only from my own experience, I think some exposure to more rigorous approaches would help programmers tackle tricky problems, such as those that arise in matters of concurrency or security.
It's not a form of obfuscation if there is clear and simple context. Catch(ex) is perfectly fine, and adding 7 letters does nothing but add noise. Similarly "var us = getUsers()" is clear - it's not one u, it's multiple, and makes sense to have a loop like "for u in us".

A better alternative if you find the code is still confusing is to add context by cutting a function up into inner functions. This is why I really hate working in languages that make it difficult to define little closures. In F#, I'll often end up with a couple of 1 or 2 line inner functions and it makes things much easier to read. This simply isn't practical in e.g. C#.

In exported function names and certain class names or modules, sure, a bit of verbosity might help. But inside a function it just make it visually harder to understand and I've rarely found it to be beneficial. There's going to be enough context to load into my brain inside a function accurate, and unfortunately I still subvocalize when reading code and all those extra syllables add up.

Additionally, removing letters means you need to split lines less based on length and focus more on when it makes sense.
Just as an FYI with regards to Ireland - GDP is not actually an appropriate measure in the presence of large multinationals and their tax-avoidance schemes. The money flows through the country, but doesn't actually have much impact on the economy. In general, GNP is better for countries such as Ireland and Luxembourg.
I maintain a map of official launch countries for Firefox OS, with launch dates. [0][1]

[0] http://nickdesaulniers.github.io/where-is-firefox-os/

[1] https://github.com/nickdesaulniers/where-is-firefox-os
I'm a neuroradiologist, so I mostly interpret images (MR, CT and PET mostly).

I'm involved in various research studies where I am involved in study design, sequence selection, image interpretation, clinical correlation etc.

Most of the techie stuff gets done by physicists and some of my collaborators in other areas of neuroscience but I do enjoy doing some of my own (rather rudimentary) pre- and post-processing of MRI data.

What sort of image processing do you program for? VBM?
I can echolocate. I didn't realize that at first, but it's what enables me to get around just fine in pitch darkness.

Try this yourself, either blindfolded or in a darkened room. Start with one that has nothing in it, so you don't trip over the furniture.

At first hold your hand out in front of you so you don't slam into the wall. Eventually you will grow confident enough that you don't need to anymore.

There is a distinctly different sensation in my ears when I am near a wall, than when I am away from the walls. It's not something I hear exactly, but a sense of pressure coming from the nearby wall.

I'm pretty sure that I am feeling the pressure of subsonic acoustic standing waves.

I have no fear whatsoever of the dark, even to the point that I enjoy solo scuba diving, at night, without a flashlight. That's profoundly dangerous: kids, don't try it at home.
I've ordered a Raspberry Pi A+ [1] the other day and then read the make magazine article a couple of days later. The first thing I noticed is that the $9 computer needs adapters for all kinds of things (for example HDMI), which raise the price point to the level of the Raspberry Pi. The Pi has either more or less RAM (depending on which model you buy), but it's CPU is significantly better in both cases.

From Wikipedia [2]:

> Apart from the single-core A1x (A10/A13/A10s/A12),
> two new more powerful Cortex-A7 Allwinner SoCs
> have been released by Allwinner,
> the A10-pin-compatible dual-core Allwinner A20,
> and the quad-core Allwinner A31.

The CHIP has the single-core Allwinner A13, both new PIs have a quad-core ARM Cortex-A7. To be fair: the Raspberry Pi has no WiFi/Bluetooth and no storage (that one can be a feature though). No idea how the form factors compare.

[1]: https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/model-a-plus/
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allwinner_A1X#Allwinner_A-Seri...
I'd be happy enough if my company didn't hire a travel agency to book our flights. A $60 surcharge so they can ignore my directions and call instead of email me, to offer me a flight that goes against everything I wrote down on their form, so I can look up a better and cheaper flight on Hipmunk for them.

At least they seem to have gotten me the right hotel this time, unlike a few of my coworkers.
>But suggested for a new project ?

I'm seeing this a lot. If you browse the site the article's on you'll find some more examples.

The moral of the story is that "we" all think Java EE is very enterprisey and that it's anti the popular trend (which is AngularJS, Node.js, or were those popular yesterday?), and meanwhile a couple of startups are being very productive and able to start quickly with modern Java EE because "nobody" has realy noticed that Java EE slimmed down so much and got so much more productive.
We're (re)developing almost all our infrastructure in modern Java EE (as layers of microservices). We're seeing less than 2mS response time for most services and can afford to stack quite a few to build our customer facing applications.

Ignoring the business logic, a RESTful API can be built to run on a Java EE application server in about 10 lines of code. And it will run on any Java EE 6-7 compliant server implementation (as a single JAX-RS application ... you'll need Java EE 7 for multiple JAX-RS applications per context).

EDIT:

I also should have pointed out that the "XML Hell" that was required to configure applications and almost every managed object in J2EE <= 4 has been eliminated. When the default behavior isn't quite what you want, meta-programming can be accomplished with an annotation in the code. The few remaining XML files can often be left empty - they're simply markers that activate features of the server (CDI bean scanning, Java Server Faces, etc).
As a child, watching the Tonight show I really liked the episodes when Orson Welles was on!

In a Film Appreciation course in college--the only movie I really liked was Citizen Kane. The camera work was brilliant.

I actually liked all his movies, and they didn't become dated with age. I would like to see The Stranger Remastered, but that's another topic.

As to embellishment--he knew Hollwood, why not play with them? Hollywood is magic, and escapism; why not quild the lilly? It's not like he didn't know the real problems of his generation--people dying in wars, the depression, being accused by Mccarthy.

(I have an off topic question about remastering old film/video. This is really off topic, but here goes. As a child I really liked a The Boy in the Plastic Bubble. It was a made for t.v movie and shot on video tape(I believe). For years the only copies of the film were severely degraded. So degraded, I was told it was beyond remastering. I noticed Starz had it in their line up. I watched the movie and someone did a great job remastering the old video tape. Does anyone know who did the work? I couldn't find anything.)
New PersonaCrypt Utility allows moving all of users $HOME directory to an encrypted USB Drive.

This is really a terrific idea with large/fast USB 3.0 drives becoming the norm.
The fact that people that have used Java do not realize that EJB3 is pretty good, when it's pretty old! I switched to EJB3 in 2006, and I really couldn't see why people would choose Spring anything instead. The switch to Soap, and then to Rest, was changing a couple of annotations. Not bad for a 9 year old framework.

Now, my biggest problem with the stack, and the reason I do not use it anymore, is Java itself. A switch to Scala makes a lot of the Java boilerplate go away, and even Java 8 doesn't get close. Now, I find all the major Scala web libraries to be lacking, in one form or another. Play's second compilation feels clumsy. Spray's freedom of routing leads to very ugly code: Just look at their own large examples. So what I am currently doing is using a homebrew routing on top of Spray, which also gives me some documentation for free: Pretty useful when you have hundreds of services in hundreds of servers.

It's a pity that Java itself moves so slowly, and is so reluctant from adding key features, like pattern matching, because the rest of the tooling is pretty good.
Oh, come on, the creator of this site has a whole essay about languages (or platforms) which has been made to solve actual problems faced by its creators or to solve other people's problems (to be sold to greater fools). There is no better example of second approach than J2EE.

To Google J2EE sucks is not that difficult. My favourite quote from Bell Labs folks - "whole encyclopedia could be written about what is wrong with J2EE". Rebranding doesn't matter - it is the same crappy mess of piles of unnecessary layes of ugly, redundant abstractions.

Don't be hypocrites. It sucks.
I'm guilty of getting stuck up on trivial formatting issues. When someone pushes a commit that has random whitespace (trailing or arbitrary newlines all over, or just inconsistent spacing), it feels sloppy. Same for many other simple things. If the code is unnecessarily superficially ugly, it sets up a block in my mind that makes it harder to focus on the real issues.

Is it wrong to kick this stuff back and tell devs to make it pretty first?
This is the first time I saw Basscss, so take all this with a grain of salt. It seems well written, but I would put it in the same/similar category as for example Bootstrap. Basscss seems to be more modular - you can build your own "version" of Bootstrap - but Basscss gives you npm modules, so you could do something like/equivalent of require(basscss-grid). So, there are some differences that can be interpreted as a advantage of Bootstrap/Basscss, but react tries to solve the bigger problem IMO. Did you see that we're adding more and more "logic" into CSS (like animations calculations, :first, :even etc)? Where is the line? Does CSS is still "only" description of the presentation or something more? To be honest, I don't know where we are now, all those things start to merge/mix. I'd say that we're still on a quest to find the best paradigms for the web. "Regular" HTML, CSS and JS were working fine, but we're moving forward and new problems arise (how to handle different screen sizes, how can 1000 people work on the same code base, ...), so we're trying new solutions (like react and flux).

So, to answer your question: Basscss could help with some of the problems with CSS but I think that react solves problem on a higher level and does it better than any other solution we have now.
Beyond the PDP-11: Processor support for a memory-safe C abstract machine [pdf]
FWD.us to Lay Off Southern California Edison Workers
I would link to it, but I just relocated every URL on my website to http://www.warplife.com/ethics/reputation.html

I am self-employed. You'd think that would enable me to take all kinds of time off, but it's quite common for the self-employed to work far more than those who hold regular jobs.

I have a whole bunch of different projects going on. Admittedly I would work less if I focussed on just one, but it has always been my nature to pursue many goals at once.

Of most use to you is that I am building a list of every computer employer in the world. This is going very slowly so far, but I am building tools to automate it. I plan to fund it through KickStarter but am still working on the text of my written pitch, and have yet to shoot the video.

When my regular site comes back, have a look at http://www.warplife.com/jobs/computer/

It is really easy to get overly obsessed with largely unproductively activities, such as analyzing my web server logs every single day. There are times when there is some point to that, but not commonly.
(I'm the guy who wrote Arq) If you have any questions or run into issues, please let me know, either here or via email: support at arqbackup.com
I just realized that it was the Mac OS X Maps application, not google maps.
You, too, can be an overachiever, so long as you have someone to run personal errands and do your chores, you're rich enough to have quick "outs" for personal emergencies, and you also fall into the small subset of people who function perfectly with 4 hours of sleep, and etc. God help you if you have kids.
To be honest on desktop hardware... or laptop to be more precise you might or might not be lucky. A lot of stuff changed in that area for FreeBSD (and the other BSDs too actually, despite them all having their own kernels).

So if you end up not being lucky just know that a lot of things already have been working nicely in FreeBSD 11 for a while, which isn't released yet. It will still take a while until it is released, but if you just want to play with it it actually is a viable option and there are people running the -CURRENT branch on their main desktops.

It's probably not too fun though if you don't know the system yet.

FreeBSD 11 schedule can be found here btw:

https://www.freebsd.org/releases/11.0R/schedule.html

And one more side note: A FreeBSD 10.x Release might actually bring a lot of new hardware support much earlier. It is also way more stable. It's called 10-STABLE branch for a reason. :)

https://www.freebsd.org/releases/10.2R/schedule.html
We came up with a way of reifying specifications of web APIs at the type level, and built a web framework around it. The basic idea was, I believe, first developed by Ralf Lämmel and Klaus Ostermann [0], as a Haskell solution to the expression problem, but I think it's the first large-scale application of these ideas.

Checking for correctness and deriving functionality from that comes pretty naturally after that, so it's easy to reduce boilerplate (e.g., generate client libraries and documentation automatically) and make static guarantees (e.g., that a link exists within an API, and won't 404).

[0] http://www.informatik.uni-marburg.de/~kos/papers/gpce06.pdf
Quite a fun webapp. I've also made my thing http://typedrummer.com/7bss99
See Multiclock Esterel: http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F3-540-44798-9_10
I hate to tell you all since none will thank me, but the horse has left the barn - we now have 'thick client' where the app is client side in .js.

Also consider APIs/Baas: Backendless.com, Kinvery, App42, etc. http://baas.apievangelist.com.
DIY REST is purely optional, for companies w/ poor CTO/CFO.
PHP, JSP, ASP, Rails, Django is in same boat, server side rendering of UI is past prime, we now need stunning UI, ex: datatables.net, Admin LTE, etc.

Framework today is UI Kit, BootStrap, Foundation, etc. That is a framework.
Alternative to that is PhoneGap, Swift - and for Java, there is hope, in Android.
You can get a reverse-osmosis water filter. Mine fits under my kitchen sink. I love it.
Also, thoughtful design pushes things toward simplicity, not complexity.
Thank you for this. Really interesting blog, hadn't seen it before.

I can vouch for the fact that at least two other majors continue to invest heavily in AD diagnostics and/or therapeutics. You're right though that all have thrown a ton of money at this without much ROI yet (apart from those producing diagnostic radio-pharmaceuticals).
Would be interesting to see a vim plugin that played these sounds for each key you pressed in Normal mode.
I'm impressed how you imposed your political agenda on this innocent post.

By the way, it usually takes me less than 15 minutes to set up SSL and that includes obtaining the certificate. "Let's encrypt" will make this even more of a non-issue in the future.
In the short term yes, in the long term no.

I bought an ebook from O'Reilly for about $10, complained about it on their website, and heard from a customer service rep that offered me a refund. I was told if I wasn't happy with a book they would refund it no questions asked.

Consider now that GEICO spends $3 per capita per year to persuade people in the US to change their car insurance, they've spent something like $30 on me on the last decade without me defecting from my insurance agent. It is very cheap marketing for O'Reilly to let go of $10 on a book because it cements the idea that O'Reilly is a class act.

Brands that have built up equity over a long time often go downhill when they stop "doing the right thing". Kraft Mac and Cheese advertises more than ever, particularly with the message that it is a comfort food from your childhood, but it is not the same product. Kraft MC switched to milk protein concentrate sourced from China about ten years ago -- a product originally intended to make glue, not for human consumption. It increased their profits in the short term, but it makes the product disgusting so no wonder why sales are in the toilet despite a huge spend on ads.
> That said, it DOES mean that they have been happy with Java EE

Sure. I'm also happy for them, and I acknowledge JEE's massive installed-base and performance.

Just the "startup secret weapon" claim/title I thought was unfounded.
Try taking power away from the reviewer to disarm the defense reaction. In Ed Catmul's Creativity, Inc.

(http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0812993012/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=...)

he describes the Pixar "brain trust" which reviews early progress on movies with the director. They found directors would get defensive if they felt someone more powerful was telling them to make specific changes. Once they set some rules like "the director decides what, if anything gets changed" and "talk about what's not working but don't solve the problem for the director" things improved. Now instead of film veterans telling you your movie (code) stinks it becomes about opportunities to make things awesome.
Yeah, EJB 3 is itself really not that new, but it took some time for implementations to come out. JBoss AS 5 took ages and EAP even longer. Then people had to upgrade from their older versions and then had to discover how much the new APIs had improved.

I don't have hard numbers, but judging from popular comments online I'm carefully guessing that it wasn't until ~2011 until people really started to see how simple EJB had become.

The old stigma still clings to it, much undeserved.
Oh I get what you mean.