skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It because package management in JS is complete garbage. I can't believe people actually like using Bower or Browserify or JSPM or any of it. While NPM for Node has some scaling problems, at least it just works for the simple cases. I've never not had problems with the client-side JS package systems and managers.

So package adoption is hard because of this. If you make it a pain for implementing developers to use your code, they're more likely to just write their own code.

That's why I think the old style ala jQuery or Google Maps API of packaging everything manually as just namespacing-objects still makes the most sense, with the fewest tradeoffs. You give the user a single, minified JS file to either copy or reference on your CDN. It's a least-common-denominator solution and it lets the implementing developer figure out how to fit it into their workflow.
"it's an incredible privilege" -- how do you figure that? It's as accessible as accountancy, and I wouldn't say that's a privilege either, unless you're going to bring in the lack of educational opportunities available to bedouin kids. Maybe it's an accomplishment, it's a job, but how is it a privilege?
You mean other than Pandora, which is a successful, $4 billion company that has seen a massive revenue boom:

2012: $274m

2013: $427m

2014: $920m

Pandora is obviously not a unicorn because it's public, but counting Spotify as a start-up would be equally absurd, they're nine years old.
Sure if you don't have a family and kids, go ahead spend every second keeping on top of things, but not everyone is holed up in a dark corner just programming and researching new frameworks. It's not part of our job description, our job description is to ship, and if you're spending all your time re-building so you can be using the "new" hot gizmo framework, you're not shipping. Sorry you hit a nerve expecting everyone to be on top of everything. I get about an hour a day, if I can convince myself to wake up after putting kids to sleep, so is it better to work on my project and get something done, or just keep researching new frameworks?
Fedora 22 released
Show HN: Tock, a Time Tracking Tool by 18F
If an employer doesn't hire someone because they are open to talking about their wellbeing, and the true capacities of human beings, then it's probably a GREAT thing that you don't work for them.

Dodged a bullet there.
Thanks! Pull request merged.
I can't think of many scenarios in which this would be a win which aren't usually compressed archive downloads of some sort anyway, or might be better presented as a torrent with a tree hash and some multisourcing.

LZ4 might be a better choice. It compresses moderately well, but the packing and depacking speed are much better. Has anyone investigated whether it's viable?

Also don't forget that you need to be careful about compression in a few contexts where attacker-injected data and a secret could share a compression context (the BREACH attack, for example). Compression is usually a good idea, but you should really salt new CSRF tokens every load. HTTP/2's header compression is context-free to mitigate the related CRIME attack.
Amazing article! But in response to "Any comments would be great" I would suggest "Rethink the title!" https://www.google.com/search?q="game+of+clones"
Can someone explain this to me? Why would HT buyout Geeknet? Just seems strange to go against their own culture and model.
> man-up and ask your superiors for more.

Or woman-up, right?
The best part about all of this is if you follow the links to the Coo Space web site and then mouseover the links: their web site is hosted on, of all things, geocities.jp.
> How long until doctors find themselves in a similar position? Medical bills are, after all, the number one cause of bankruptcy in the US, and US doctors are the highest paid on Earth.

Physician salaries are not the reason why average health care costs in the US are higher than the average in other developed countries—physician compensation is a very small part of the total overhead.
Why do you need uber when cars drive themselves?
Right, same here; I've always enjoyed picking up great t-shirts from Think Geek. Now, are we looking forward to geek humor shirts sold in a mall?

/me shrugs
Just use npm dude :p </brogrammer>

Seriously though, it's a non-problem now. There is no way I'd go back to anything else. Webpack and browserify are the only way to go. </religion>

Yes, there is a certain purism to doing your own modules and IIFEs and JS, but it's like claiming that code is only fast when it's asm. </realcoders>

Besides it can all be optimised out if you add the closure compiler plus relevant comments </nobodyactuallydoesthat>
The author is correct that modern web applications are hacks all the way down. It's crazy sometimes. But it fucking works!

Look at Google Docs, which has changed the way teams collaborate. Look at Unity which recently ported their player to the browser. Look at the Autodesk 123D suite.

With technologies like WebGL and Emscripten, we're just starting to see the tip of the "native on web" iceberg. And it's awesome. I know because I'm helping build the iceberg... :)
Why knowing compilers matters
Thanks! It now works on iOS. Still working on Safari...
Come on, I'm a full-stack guy and worked on lots of teams/projects/companies. I have yet to see a need to stay on top of every new development constantly, especially JS frameworks that still need to be proven.

None of the productive developers I know care about all the daily/weekly noise, if something is truly new and good it'll become known on a monthly or quarterly scale.

And about job description - developers are hired to build functionality, not learn new things. It might help further your personal goals and eventually help provide functionality faster/better using new tools but at the end of the day, the business doesn't care and would rather have something that works. Don't get caught up in the hype. It's great that you seem so passionate about it but keep in mind what the work is really about.
It's a net plus for the investors and owners, not necessarily for "the economy". If one believes the health of the economy is measured by the broad-based success of those involved in the economy, then M&A is rarely a net good for the economy, as it generally converts labor and assets into investment and profit. They'll downsize, fire redundant people, sell off redundant assets and be more profitable with a smaller business. Great for investors, not great for the people who lose their jobs and the businesses those displaced workers used to spend at.
> 15 years later

Oh, come on now. Things aren't that bad. If that's a snag, it's probably best to not work there.
There are plenty of other uses for this technology, however I believe it is cost prohibitive at the moment. Satellite imagery is not cheap, and you need multiple images for the entire area you are interested in. Then it takes massive computing power to extract geographically accurate 3d from 2d images.

Google has 3d of some cities, but I believe they are hand modeled, and would take a very long time to do in new areas. It is possible they use LIDAR to do the 3d as well, but that would require flying low over an area to collect the data which can also be cost prohibitive, and dangerous. I have yet to see anything on Google Maps that looks anywhere near the quality of the sample video. Totally possible I have missed it though, do you have a link to somewhere?
Good exception that proves the rule. Startup industry is order or magnitude bigger in US, normalize and then compare.
Yes but it's quite easy to handle to differences using shims / transpilers and feature detection.
Firstly, this is amazing.

Secondly, the music playing in the main splash video is a bit chiptune, and it's pretty awesome. Does anybody know who/what that is?
How apps could adapt their UX to different user needs
I don't.

If Angular has produced a local optima of efficiency in the range of "misguided attempts" then it's effect on the development ecosystem was a net positive.

That said, I am extremely concerned that most popular frameworks/libraries are products of megacorps.
Mount your MongoDb Database as a filesystem
+1 If something is wrong it is better to know, rather than to have it fail silently. Unfortunately weakness/failure still seems to be stigmatized/feared by some people.
I agree, but one minor nit: when major problems crop up "pretty late in the development cycle", this typically means a waterfall development cycle.

Waterfall approaches are really only appropriate when there's nothing particularly risky. I plead with the HN audience: never let a manager choose the waterfall model by default. They often happen because they make contract negotiation easy. But that's only because they save all the trouble for later.
I think it's because it's relatively straightforward to accomplish. These guys can work on creating stuff like this and put on their portfolio they created "Noun.js" and it 'looks good' to those not in the developer world and knowing a new one is out every week.

I consider them somewhat fluffy and learn just to say nice job and move on.
I wish js authors would stop baking functional apis into their libs and let the available contenders (ramda lodash underscore) do it for them.

this reminds of the days when everyone published their own psuedo oo js lib. yuck.
Critiques have substance. Destructive criticism is just negativity for the sake of negativity. I do agree though, the bigger figures get their share of undeserved hate around here.
That usually happens because someone has decided they need some special javascript "gallery" for the user.
Twitter's default user timeline is the worst example of this that I know.
I filled out my explanation further.
Hot Topic has had a long, slow decline.

They used to be a store for the goth subculture. They carried not only goth fashions but also goth music. They built a good reputation and had a distinct market niche because they were the only place in the mall you could get actual goth stuff. They actually made the subculture accessible to people.

And, then, at some point, they stopped caring. They stopped carrying goth music and switched their fashions over to generic "edgy" stuff. They stopped carrying anything belonging to a subculture or anything, and they became just another Spencer's knockoff for kids to buy stuff their parents won't approve of.

I shudder to think what will happen if Hot Topic applies this model to ThinkGeek. ThinkGeek has done a good job of, well, doing what Hot Topic used to do: sell products associated with a subculture and make that subculture accessible to people. I'd hate to see it diluted like Hot Topic has been...
It was more faculty politicking than anything else. I'm not too familiar with all the details, but basically - the course was initially proposed as an introduction to "computational thinking" primarily aimed at non-CS majors. Some of the faculty though seemed to want to transform it into the mainline introduction to programming course and potentially replace our existing intro to programming course (which is taught in Haskell).

The current intro to programming lecturer is pretty firmly of the belief that GUI-based languages like Snap which are in many ways quite restrictive just aren't appropriate for teaching CS majors who'll be progressing to C and other languages in their 2nd year. Looks like he's winning the debate at the moment and there aren't any current plans to change his course at least for the next couple of years.
To give him credit, the thing that is appealing about it is that there is very little to it that's not javascript. So you can very easily expect to figure out everything you need to know about it in a day or two, vs however long it take to familiarize yourself with one of these massive new frameworks.
I haven't seen anyone use Boost, GTK+ or Qt cross mobile / desktop.
> The quran is a sorted list of things most of said soldiers agreed upon. The hadith is most of the things they didn't quite agree upon.

Again, false information. The Quran was written down during the time of the Prophet Peace be upon him, as was the Hadith. Both were both transmitted orally and through scribes. We have early scribes that were written during the time of the Prophet Peace be upon him, and later on narrations that were documented decades after him, and they match perfectly.
That is a really funny idea! The execution looks good too. Great thing to have on ones resume/portfolio!
Untapped Growth Potential: How Companies Can Get 59% More Growth in Revenue
How can something that doesn't really exist such as space and time possibly be warped? Physicists need to get a grip and understand that their model of the universe is completely wrong. There is no space or time and the universe has no shape.
Instead you are employing classic and cowardly character assassination techniques.

This is the "untouchable" argument that attempts to short circuit any critical discussion. If skepticism is a character assassination, then hopefully we're all assassins.

There is literally nothing Patrick or his defenders can do to refute your claim (mostly because you refuse to make one).

Nor is there any specific thing I can do to disprove their claims. A bit of a catch-22, isn't it? As incredibly uncommon as their claims of success in the consulting world may be -- and I'm not saying this out of the blue -- it is possible that somehow they lucked into a series of incredibly generous clients who saw BCC as such a success that they gave a blank check. I have never seen an individual consultant without an incredible reputation (and being famous on HN != being famous) make anything near what they claimed, but it remains possible.

Pretty much anything is possible. If someone claimed to have achieved alchemy (theoretically possible via fusion), I similarly couldn't possibly say "no, they're lying!".

It's possible. I think it's incredibly improbable, but it is simply impossible for me to say that it's a lie.

So perhaps lighten up on the double standard.
This may limit the bearing's lifetime.

If everything else is done right (bearing mounted correctly, lubricated, no dirt, correct loading, etc.), bearings ultimately fail due to high cycle fatigue at the rolling element tracks on the races. Repeated flexing caused by high Hertzian (contact) stress between ball and race makes tiny divots fracture out of the race surface. Particle count goes up, more divots break out...bearing fails.

The grooves they put in the races of these bearings will act as stress concentrators and accelerate fatigue failure compared to ungrooved bearings. Still, if low friction is more important in the application than long life, this may be a useful new twist on rolling element bearings.
Funny. But the "will fix everything" mentality is ironically why most frameworks are hard to evaluate and learn.

For learning, what you really want is a small set of new concepts to learn that easily map to things you are already familiar with, good documentation to refer to, and a active community that can answer your questions within a couple of minutes. That's why I mentioned Mithril.
My primary objection to most people calling themselves "software engineers" is that professional engineers are personally and professionally liable for their mistakes. It feels like software engineers want to shirk professional responsibility and ethics, yet gain some sort of ego boost by calling themselves an engineer.
English is not my first language either, I'm European myself. Those look more like inattentive errors rather than lack of language proficiency. I didn't mean to upset anyone, just a tip for someone who aspires to be an author.
I remember when thinkgeek had a wide variety of genuinely interesting stuff and not just the latest pop culture 'geek' merchandise (sure, they've always had some of that, but years back it wasn't the overriding theme like it is today). This is a sad moment, but probably to have been expected.
Ha, fantastic stuff! I've always wanted to do this in my code editor, with the platforms being the various levels of code indentation.
The movie is very hollywood, however the book is both detailed and interesting. I would recommend giving it a read.
Investors are people, too.
That's not necessarily true if the parties involved incorrectly estimate the consequences. Since humans are far from omniscient, there's no particular reason to assume their ideas of how the outcome will unfold are accurate.
I am actually considering removing the functional API. I agree lodash is better. It just doesn't make sense to use something that is not proven.
First off, I mostly agree with your sentiments. This comment is not in opposition but made to extend the discussion even beyond just money.

In order for a universal basic income system to work, we'll probably need to ditch democracy or put into writing some difficult to change protections. Seeing that the Constitution is being treated as either a) a living breathing document whose meaning changes with time or b) just a piece of inconvenient paper, I don't see a feasible way of making a universal basic income system work (edit: along side a democracy).

What's basic and what are people minimally entitled to? I believe everyone should be provided a place to sleep. But I think that should consist of a cot in a cement dorm like room with shared bathrooms. Other's will want, or with time demand or think that they should be provided a house, with cable TV, a cell phone, etc... With democracy in place it only will take until 51% of people don't want to work until the system completely breaks and falls into havoc (at which point a tyrannic dictator often takes over).

"Democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where 51% of the people may take away the rights of the other 49%."

which will lead to:

"Democracy with a universal basic income will lead to 51% of the people voting to take away the wealth and productivity of the other 49%."
It sounds bad but firing unnecessary workers means that those workers will eventually be used for something more productive. A net gain.
All I read was the headline and I feel like we need to go over some things you may have missed in school...
Tastes differ. I don't have any problem with erring on the side of overprotectiveness when it comes to multithreaded programming.
I don't see that happening. The airport can only sustain so much road traffic before congestion becomes an issue and the ridesharing companies have the added issue in Australia of minimum wage requirements. That adds a whole lot of cost to the fares and really balances it back up (though still definitely cheaper than taxis).

The airport is such that the $15 ticket is really not going to be equalled by any sort of road-based transport, because the distance from the CBD is simply too great.

edit: I'm in this case referring to Brisbane airport, though I imagine that maps to many others given their generally remote proximity from CBDs.
It is not austerity, it increased taxes without a say in teh matter.

Author is trying to say it is American to live beyond our means, when from 1779 to 1930 it was the opposite. Sad.
Yes, I'm certain I've worked for more than one employer who felt that way. And I've considered contract employees that way. It's what inspired me to write my comment.

Of course, since I am again a contractor, I'm getting some perspective about my feelings while at my previous employer.
> FACT: Patrick's posts about consulting -- which sort of came out of nowhere,

Not a fact. You can go back and read about Patricks consulting efforts at least to 2010. At the time he claimed (and I have no reason to doub) to be billing out around ~5k a week (for his first few engagements).

You can also read through his posts as he mentions walking up his rate.

Again, its possible he was making all this up in a multi-year scheme to make elaborate claims. Personally, I'll take the evidence to read him as being truthful. Especially as it jives with what I've seen paid for consulting on the consumer side.
"We’ve intentionally and unintentionally punched clients in the gut"

Oh come now, you can't drop that in a blog post without elaboration. :) Share your pain!
And if you ever start to think Doctor Who is a wishy-washy-weeny, someone once pissed him off and he did this to them. Moral of the story: don't fuck with time lords.
> Sure if you don't have a family and kids

Family and kids are, by any measure, a huge time and energy sink. But that too is also important work that must be done, even if it has professional costs.

The guys writing these new things, more often than not, don't have a family and kids and do have all that extra time. If you have committed to a family and kids, then join a shop where family people work and be content to use yesterday's stuff to get work done, it will still work fine for the most part. You don't have to keep up with everything, perhaps just general trends. Just watch out for that gentle slide into irrelevancy. ;)
Sounds like every post-war "democracy" the world over...
So you don't have to own the car or worry about what to do with it when you aren't using it. Car sharing is the perfect use for self driving cars, because it increases utility. Idle private cars need expensive parking spaces, and are useless while sitting still.
No, it doesn't have to be a net plus, it just has to be thought to be a net plus for the trade to happen. The Time Warner/AOL merger was thought to be a good idea but it was not actually a good idea!
Easier, than a french press certainly. In the office, I have to take the whole setup to the kitchen to rinse and wash it it off, and dry it before the next use. With the Keurig, and the setup mentioned above, I just drop the filter in the trash, as there are no stray grounds. It's not as good as the aeropress, but it's way better than having a classic drip coffee machine. It's all about what compromises are more important.
Snelson's Atoms: “It Must Give Off and Receive Light Like a Tiny Space Station”
This is also my experience. As long as the contrast is within the acceptable WCAG ratios for accessibility, I don't really see any problem.
How do you define when Humans started to live, though ? Evolution is not a black and white process, we did not suddenly become humans and stopped being apes. It was probably very progressive and gradual.
I "failed" a job interview recently to the reason that they didn't have faith in my jQuery (any by extension Javascript) skills.

I managed to write a multi-page response explaining how the modern frameworks were moving away from jquery in favour of data bindings, virtual dom, etc... while I acknowledge that there is still a place for jQuery, it has a very much diminished role in modern web development.

In the end, I never sent the email in response. While it was cathartic to write, I really didn't want to come across as "sour grapes". (and truth be told, I respected their decision... I'd feel a better fit in a more technology forward environment, their reliance on "old faithful" technologies can still make money)

I feel like even angular has come-and-gone as a framework the 1.x just isn't performant on busy pages. Anything with a log of ng-repeats gets out of hand. Though I suppose that could also mean that I'm writing bad pages too.

My most recent favorite is Leo Horie's https://lhorie.github.io/mithril/ We've got some of that running in production and it really is beautiful to work with.

I'd like to try REACT, but haven't found the right project for it yet.

I've sortof started rambling here... my point was I share your experience with employers looking for "old" tech.
First up, good job writing up your idea in hindsight. I think it differs slightly from mesh networking on mobiles with high latency transfer expectations / custom apps fairly significantly. You were trying to provide the internet as a service for free in real time, I think the killer app is actually embracing store and forward again.

For problem #1, if it works at the consumer level then I think people don't really care about how it works.

For #2, I think the current model of 'use free wifi from coffee shops, hotels, bars, restaurants' that seems globally dominant would work fine.