skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> Well, part of the motivation for blocks is that you don't need to know any special incantations. Instead of being faced with a blank text editor and a cursor, you're given a toolbox full of toys to explore, which (for me, at least, when I was in the 5th grade) is extremely empowering.

Okay, so why couldn't you do the same thing with text? If you can fit a bunch of blocks on the screen, why can't you fit a bunch of function names and keywords on the screen?

> The thing is, kids using Scratch end up creating amazing stuff: I've seen recursive raytracers, real-time multiplayer-over-the-network FPS games, a chess AI (game tree + alpha/beta pruning), emulators for various video games… I can't really look at that and not describe it as programming.

Okay, that is impressive. But are those same kids also writing C or Python? I've done some cool stuff with Scratch back in the day, but I don't think I could have done it if I hadn't already been pretty well-versed in HyperTalk, BASIC, and C++ (at the time).

> Shape. In Scratch and Snap!, a block that returns a boolean is diamond-shaped, and holes for boolean arguments are diamond-shaped. So you can't accidentally put a number into the condition for IF--the shape literally doesn't fit.

That's certainly easier to understand, but it's also far less capable. How can it handle structs (or classes)?

> The way I see it, once you get them excited about computer science, the things that were too scary aren't scary anymore: they're exciting.

I really hope this is true, I'm just not sure it is.

However, I really hope people keep researching this and prove me wrong.
How US students get a university degree for free in Germany
But the section I quoted said that local metadata queries go to the cache which is only updated "periodically."
Where are you seeing that cluster metadata is immutable? I don't even know how that would work. Surely nodes, databases, shards, users, permissions, etc. all can change?
DevOpsLibrary E14: Vagrant Course Part 3 – Getting Started with Vagrant
that looks amazing! really excited to see where it goes.
What is the difference between this and Cassandra? A more powerful querying language?

Cassandra already has Consistency Levels with Replication Strategies. I feel like the only way to get powerful querying out of a system like this would be to have a map reduce layer on top of your db which is what many do to get powerful querying from cassandra.
Interesting to note the MBA view:

If the one teller is 100% busy serving customers, then that's efficient. The queue is clearly temporary and due to demand spikes

If two tellers are idle 70% of the time, that's inefficient and one of them should be relocated.

I've had similar discussions with non-tech management about server utilisation (why should we buy another server when we're only using 80% capacity of the ones we've got?)
The IdentifyFile directives actually work with ssh-agent - it will try the keys listed there first, using them via the agent if they're loaded. I use the same passphrase on all keys and load them into my agent all at once (when loading, the last passphrase you entered will be tried to decrypt each key).

Normally, the problem with having many keys in the agent is that a server you're logging into will boot you after supplying too many keys it doesn't accept, but this fixes that.
Do you think we have seen any serious fallout from these legal leaks? Perhaps Snowden assumed that American operations would be able to recover fully when ethical. I imagine with technological advancements and the back and forth nature of espionage that many of these leaks were not huge blows. In many cases these are plays from a war that the adversary was well aware of already.

PPD-20 is interesting. Do you think we have the right to be aware of the scope of the "cyber war"? Bruce Schneier's conclusion on PPD-20:

"Yes, our military needs to invest in cyberwar capabilities, but we also need international rules of cyberwar, more transparency from our own government on what we are and are not doing, international cooperation between governments and viable cyberweapons treaties."[1]

Seems reasonable to me to assume Snowden's releasing of PPD-20 was to promote this effort. It's a tricky situation but perhaps his knowledge of America's advantage in that war meant that this was a safe release. I trust his judgement. He clearly has had to weigh the options between acting within a legal system and trying to improve it through illegal political action.

Is there evidence of serious fallout from a Snowden release yet? I'm honestly asking, my knowledge can be hit and miss as I primarily try to stay on top of Canada's involvement.

[1] http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/18/opinion/schneier-cyberwar-poli...
Lost-PLA casting could probably be pretty feasible with the geometry of an AR lower.

Pretty neat stuff.
Thanks for sharing.

I've come across the Matasano one before and felt it might have been a bit outdated in light of recent efforts with WebCrypto. So it was interesting to see an article critiquing WebCrypto for once.

I'm interested in hearing some thoughts on how well WebCrypto would hold up in a local execution environment like Cordova/nw.js/electron rather than in the browser. It seems to me that many of the article's concerns can be addressed by providing the application code in a verifiable package rather than grabbing it over the browser ad-hoc. Am I missing anything?
What cracks me up the most is that OP just glosses over the fact that the US props up these human rights abusers as long as they play our game, and if they dont we send in the economic hitmen and then the jackals, and what follows is death and destruction beyond even the normal abusers. Also the fact that since the UN is basically a US creature, we control and veto any meaningful action anyway. So yeah OP, you tell us how bad They all are, and in the mean time the MICC will happily be sending them arms and surveillance trchnology to enable those abuses!
this is roughly consistent with what I know, that India engineers took nearly half of all H1Bs, while its major peer China is taking less than 10%.

I could never figure out what's going on to make such a big gap, I would think each takes roughly 15~20% makes more sense.

One theory is that India IT giants are applying for lots of H1Bs then filling them when they're approved, they know the system too well. Meanwhile the Chinese IT workers/students don't have those group-effort.

Also India managers like to hire Indians, while Chinese does the opposite, over time that also make a big difference.

No bias, just curious here. Nice work indeed.
The Cliff-Hanging Castle at the Mouth of a Hidden Cave Network
So, in essence, the bureaucracy took so long that at some point during the process, their country ceased to exist. Kafka would be proud :)
Microsoft shows off two tiny Windows 10 PCs including one inside a power adapter
My first job straight out of high school at age 18 was working on the development tools for embedded microprocessors. I was self-taught and already knew C and Assembly. There was some serious doubt from some of them about hiring me but I was able to pass every technical test they threw my way so they eventually hired me.

I did have some resistance in the beginning (that was back in 1998) at other companies as well but now nobody even asks me about my education and I don't have any mention of it on my resume.

I did spent almost 2 years in college but it was mostly taking fun classes like singing, dance, and music. The CS classes seemed pointless to me since I already knew the material. I didn't even get an associate's and decided to drop out.

I decided, why should I pay money for something that I already know and if I don't know it I can buy a book for 1/100th of the price. Now it is even easier with the amount of free CS education available online. The few CS classes I did take were so easy they were a waste of time.

I did miss out on the whole college experience I guess but I more than made up for it when I spent about 5 years when I quit tech and started doing photography. I was basically traveling the world, doing photo shoots with models, and even got a job at a modeling agency in LA. Fun times and a way better experience I'm sure I would have had in college.

With the cost of a CS degree now it doesn't seem like it makes financial sense. You are losing 4 years you can be working in the work place and incurring a huge debt. Compare that to starting working earlier at a slightly lower salary. Within 4 years of experience you will be pretty close to the same salary and you will have no debt and money saved up that you could have invested. That's a HUGE opportunity cost.
I'm guessing he/she meant Chad Fowler. Chad's way of thinking about microservices is more radical, and more likely to cause havok if someone who doesn't know what the tradeoffs are blindly follows everything he says.
One example where tech enables a more engaging (fun) gameplay is Gran Turismo. It simulates real cars on real tracks and the accuracy of driving physics of actual cars is a prime source of pleasure. Driving a different car, or different settings actually makes a difference in the way it feels. I'm still waiting for GT7 to have a reason to get a PS4.
How about Mesa?
The article is pretty light on the "how" part, which is the only real reason to read the article. I did the things the author did, minus paying down the debt because I didn't have any, and I don't have anywhere near $1 million. So what do I need to change?
Can you please be more specific? What is JavaEE and JSF garbage.
Ask HN: What happened with Coding Dojo?
It has been a while since the last time I heard about someone playing with coding dojo (especially here on HN). I remember to see some companies adopting this "methodology" for a while, what happened after that? What about you, do you guys still playing with it nowadays?
I believe the tax burden on Autodesk would be x% of $125 as well instead of x% of $500, actually saving more money for the company.
True, and I wasn't necessarily advocating that point of view, only trying to clarify what the OP might have meant. However, I'd also add that immortality being an option doesn't necessarily mean that the death rate would become zero. Some people may opt to die or be unable to afford whatever the cost may be (not to mention homicide, accidental deaths, etc).
If houses are rapidly increasing in price, interest rates are low, and you have sufficient future income expectations, it makes sense to buy a house as soon as you can.
At some point in the early to mid 2000's, almost everyone I knew, as well as almost every financial writer, was telling me that I was insane for not buying the biggest and most expensive house the bank would let me.
It's been a huge learning process for me around "the engineering side of this is relatively simple, and the non-engineering side of this is relatively simple, so they'd put two and two together themselves...right?"

But the reality is that the above is almost never what happens, even when the task required is limited to strictly marketing / sales / engineering, rather than requiring some combination of the above to be executed simultaneously and well.

If you can walk in, talk to each of the different groups involved, understand their separate needs, design a mutually acceptable solution, and then get the thing to actually be done - that is absurdly valuable, and you should bill accordingly.
So if somebody asks on SE "How many minutes should I microwave my baby to dry them after a bath?", you would not consider "Don't" an acceptable answer?
One can easily use VPN services and Tor to anonymize IP address. And one can easily anonymize Bitcoins using various mixing services via Tor. But in buying gift cards with cash, there is in-store video. There's also cellphone tracking, for those who are careless.
I had my first job at 18 working on the development tools for embedded microprocessors. I was working about 30 hours a week and going to a local community college for about 20 hours a week. It was a good experience. Ultimately I dropped out because it didn't seem like I was learning much (I was already doing C and assembly language programming, and even training other programmers at my job) and it was too expensive (that was back in 2000, it's even worse now). I have no regrets about not getting a degree.
> So what do I need to change

15 years of investment in mutual funds + aggressive real-estate acquisition + a pharmacist and an engineer's salary paying in each month.
> Well then, the only conclusion is that by design you don't have this well-functioning democracy

Yes. I would agree that the US is not a well-functioning democracy.
The last example you cite is called Superhot, fyi
You may want to check KONG as open-source solution to manage microservices so you don't re-build common functionalities across the stack.

Repo: http://github.com/mashape/kong
Perhaps a combination of

- a sense of normality ("everyone else I know does/did it, so will I!")

- a sense of numbness ("I already have 45k in loans, what's another 25k?")

- optimism ("since I went to college, I'll be making more money as I get older and can pay off all of this faster!")

- apathy ("meh, I'll deal with it somehow")
When you say it like that, IIA does sound pretty obvious. But if you change the terms a little bit, you can see why the IIA doesn't match up with how people actually vote:

Say there's an election between a moderate democrat "blueberry pie" and a third party liberal "apple pie". As a liberal, Sidney would rather vote for the third party ("Sidney orders the apple pie"). However, if you introduce a republican candidate "cherry pie", Sidney will probably vote for the democrat (blueberry pie) instead of the third party candidate, because he'd be worried about his vote costing the more moderate candidate the election.

IIA means that you won't vote differently than your preferences—but people do that all the time. And sure, a voting system where that wasn't necessary would be nice, but losing that condition isn't as nonsensical as it seems at first.
The car loan seems like a bad idea.

If the student loan is low-interest, it probably makes sense to invest your extra money and only pay the minimum on the loan. It's cheap money.

The mortgage may be cheap money too, and can pay off depending on how long they stay in one area. You still need to pay for housing no matter what, and the interest is tax deductible. (This is not an excuse for buying the biggest house you can afford; I mean a lateral move from renting to owning.)
I had that experience at large companies but I notice startups nowadays don't seem to care all that much. Maybe it's because I have a lot of experience now though. I don't even list my education on my resume and I haven't been asked the last 3 companies I have worked at.
I have to admit I'm sceptical. An engineer and a pharmacist with a combined income of $85000 in 2006 seems extremely improbable. I know pharmacists that graduated in 1995 and walked into 100K+ jobs immediately. The low paid engineer I get ;). And how'd they pay off the 48K in student debt?
Ah, the story starts at 27 with lots of debt... no wait, it starts with $200k in net assets including $70k already in the market... no wait, it starts at age 16 with a father who knows how to play the markets...
In most cases, the cachier or teller just grabs your money from the tray with their bare hands, and places change on the tray with the same bare hands. In terms of hygiene, it's no different from handling money directly.
the law doesn't work the way you think it works
Top countries expatriates in Tech want to go to
"Illegal" and "wrong" are not in any way related. All spy agencies conduct activities which are clearly illegal under the laws of their target countries. But are these activities always "wrong?" Conversely, spy agencies may conduct activities which are legal under their own laws, but are morally wrong -- harassment of MLK, for example.

And "unambiguously legal" is overselling the point: PPD-20 includes offensive capabilities amounting to acts of war -- which would presumably be illegal absent congressional approval. China surveillance includes illegal surveillance of US nationals and well as mass surveillance, which is arguably inappropriate policy. Tempora is a program conducted by the UK -- arguably illegal as signatory to EU treaty. Spying on Germany is likely to support economic espionage, which would be illegal under WTO treaty, etc. Al Jezeera is a journalist organization, which provides a useful Arab propaganda counterpoint to US propaganda, and is not itself a sponsor or advocate of terrorism. The various spying methods exposed are executive overviews and lack sufficient technical detail for implementation, and are thus appropriate for public policy discussion.

The US state security apparatus is also not elected -- yet it clearly does control policy through overclassification and outright misrepresentation of its activities to congressional oversight.

Were Mr. Snowden's actions illegal? Yes, clearly, but that is a question of no meaningful value in this context, as most NSA activity is illegal somewhere, and some NSA and FBI activity is clearly illegal within the US.

Were these actions wrong? That remains to be seen.

Even if they were wrong, is there a net moral benefit which could excuse the costs? That is a complicated question. Do the fruits of NSA, CIA and FBI espionage achieve their stated goals? Is US foreign policy successful? Does the US reliably achieve its military objectives?

So, rather than yet again repeating the mistakes made over the last 100 years -- with some exceptions, an otherwise disgraceful litany of paranoia and short-sighted pragmatism -- perhaps it is a good time to reexamine politically whether foreign policy as practiced by the US is appropriate and efficacious. The responsibility for this interminable chain of dismal failures must be accepted by the US government and US electorate as a whole. The status quo -- mindless subservience to nationalism, patriotism, and religion along with a generous dose of political amnesia -- is completely unjustified at this point.

This discussion cannot ever fully occur when the mechanisms informing that foreign policy are forever hidden from political debate by a veil of overclassification motivated by criminal activity.

Mr. Snowden has caused that debate to begin -- his stated intent. One could therefore reasonably conclude his actions are moral and justified as well as illegal under US law. US law is therefore the problem, not Mr. Snowden.
> There's a reason jury nullification is a thing, but there's also a reason the defense can't openly argue for it in court.

The reason being that if jurors knew they could just choose not to convict people who broke unjust laws, the conviction rate of the American justice system would be cut in half.
Most of the countries that I listed are not US allies. A minority of them receive US military and other aid because it's deemed a necessary evil. The classic example is Saudi Arabia. We don't like what they do internally and we don't like that they push their puritanical form of Islam around the world, but they're an essential ally in a very unfriendly region; and the collapse of their monarchy would create a very dangerous power vacuum. Pakistan is another example where the US has had to bite the bullet and deal with a very flawed ally, because the alternative is deemed to be worse.

As for the UN being unable to do much without US approval, it's simply not relevant to this discussion. This has nothing to do with the Security Council, which is where the US can exercise its veto.
The pharmacist may not be working full-time.
I have the first edition of Strogatz' book. It's fairly accessible to students who have taken calculus and been exposed to ODEs, and can be worked through in about a semester. Great for a 200 or 300 level course.

Wiggins is a much more advanced, and much more thorough, book. It's appropriate for 400 level at a minimum, and probably more accessible to graduate students. I wouldn't even attempt it without having taken ODEs and Linear Algebra, and probably some real analysis or PDEs or another high level course just for exposure to mathematical rigor (and I might be leaving out other prereqs; I can't presently locate my copy of the book.) It's tremendously well presented for a book at that level, and could be enough material for a three-quarter or two-semester sequence. It's advanced enough that someone working on a related Masters or Doctoral thesis would likely refer to it regularly.
Hi all, we have computed tens of thousands of applications and searches to understand where people in Tech wish to work abroad, and thought we would share the data. Hope you like it! :)
I do Windows development with Visual Studio, but all my Git commands are done through Git Bash, which I love.
> Clearly legal:PPD-20, spying on China, Tempura/Upstream, Embassy spying, spying on Germany, spying on al Jeezera, various spying methods, etc. etc. etc.

Tempora is exactly one of the programs that isn't "clearly legal", and is one of the things that most needed to be exposed.

As for spying on our allies and on foreign embassies: are you really so nationalistic that you aren't aware that this isn't legal? Or do you only care about US laws?

As for spying on the press, this is also very important to have exposed and stopped. Freedom of the press is fundamental to government by informed consent, and a press that is constantly under surveillance is not free.
Attracting developers to your project
One of the first challenges a start-up founder faces is attracting developers to work on their codebase. Students are a great resource for this, since they are also looking for some "cool" project to work on. One way a founder can create a connect with students is to create experimentation tools based around their technology so that students can experiment with it. Students are very familiar with experiments. Couching your technology in that light through open source is one way of creating ways for students interested in your area to find you.
This is a win-win for both the founder and the student. But, as a founder, you have to present your project more in an experimental light and less as a well planned and executed project with it's i's dotted and its t's crossed out.
In all seriousness, if a man puts a GLOCK 21 in his mouth and pulls the trigger, is it GLOCK that "killed him"?

If I take my car and intentionally drive into the ocean, I expect it to continue until the engine dies, and then I do shortly after. Why should machines start prohibiting me from doing stupid things, if I want to do them? I think Isaac Asimov wrote a parable about such a future.
If he does not support discrimination against foreigners, then why does he suggest to use government resource to limit foreigners' ability to do work for US corporations?
Advice about programming and productivity from the Listserv
You know what's weird?

I biked to work for years, and bought a car in cash.

I lived in a cot on a boat for years, and bought a condo in cash.

The most debt I ever had in my life was $6K when I lost my scholarship for a year, and paid it back the following year.

All this for some reason combines to give me a horrible credit rating, to the point that BofA refused to loan me $5K for two weeks in order to finish a prototype run... which is when I ditched them for a credit union.
Good point, however, that should probably be stated in the article if that's the case.
The proprietary linux drivers are not worse than the OSX ones. Only the open source ones (for obvious reasons. They have less insight into how the device hardware is architected).

If OSX let hardware vendors write drivers for OSX, they would be in much better shape. But Apple OS internals are pretty much nonsense as far as I'm concerned.
Isn't it just one big test of success rate ?