skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The scariest thing is how fast sweeping and unanimous these acts of compliance are.

It's like these companies just woke up suddenly, had a conference call and without a hint of discussion, analysis or feedback started enforcing moral revisionism. It reeks of dishonest, cheap PR.

What's next on the agenda?

The saddest part is that this has totally taken over the discussion of shootings in North Carolina. US is unique in that 9 people gunned down in cold blood somehow turns into a discussion about a flag?
The new BattleBots is harder, better, faster, and finally all grown up
I dunno, 85% failure rate seems like they aren't actually capable of detecting at the level you're claiming.

http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/crime-courts/legal-challen...
Showing salaries would seem to be a way of offering transparency. One worry might be people going for a higher paying role with just that intent.

Why do you think companies might not show salaries?
> It's like the author of this article goes out of their ways to avoid saying that some people left the company, period. It also wouldn't surprise me if some of these defections were caused by Wasabi itself. As a software engineer, you quickly start wondering how wise it is to spend years learning a language that will be of no use once you leave your current company (yet another reason why rolling your own language as a critical part of your product is a terrible idea).

I also found that passage oddly worded. We get it, people don't stick around forever, you don't have to try and hide it like it's some dirty little secret. Also as developer I doubt I would have wanted anything to do with a closed-source internal-only poorly-documented language. You may learn some concepts that transfer but by and large you will have to start from scratch when you leave and you won't have skills people are looking for. Also if you do dive headfirst into Wasabi and love it and then leave you probably will be that annoying fuck at your new company that says shit like "Well in Wasabi this was easy...." or "Wasabi makes this problem non-existant because...." Shut up, no one cares. It's crazy to me to think of a company as small as Fog Creek would attempt something like this but to be fair I was born and learned to develop in a different environment than they did so maybe the tools and languages available back then really just couldn't cut it.
The+ICT+Department+|+ILRI/ICRAF+ICT+Portal
TootSpace: Data companies are selling your data, shouldn't you get a percentage?
Er, why can I move right or up but not left or down?
Again, the issue isn't whether games are Art. The issue is that Apple wants a closer association/connection between their brand and the contents of the App Store, and they can get that association with Apps in a way that would be impossible with music or books. People already consumed music and books before the iPhone, but curated Apps were an entirely new thing.

Something like "Want a huge catalog of high-quality Apps curated by a company with good taste? Get an iPhone."

It makes sense because IT WORKED. People DO associate certain high-quality Apps with the iPhone, even when those apps are made available on Android at some point.

Just because you (or I) disagree with it doesn't mean it's not a policy that makes good sense. It gave a huge boost their their product's reputation...
> Looking at Javascript, tools like npm and Bower provide the easy, reliable and powerful package management capabilities which it feels like Python is missing. The key to their success? Both tools download a copy of the right versions of the right libraries, by default placing them in a special folder directly within your project's directory.

Isn't this exactly what virtualenv does anyway? Plus, with virtualenv you don't have to muck around in your $PYTHONPATH and you can still choose which Python version is installed for each virtualenv.

This article doesn't seem to explicitly mention any, but what are the compelling reasons to use pip over pyenv/virtualenv for project isolation?
I guess using 1 tool to install dependencies and isolate your working environment is handy. I'm unsure if the overhead of virtualenv is so high that it offers a compelling reason to switch (at least for me).
A completely emoji-based programming language
Taken to it's logical extreme: k-Ary Search on Modern Processors

https://people.mpi-inf.mpg.de/~rgemulla/publications/schlege...

As SSE/AVX registers get wider and wider you might as well compare an entire cache line (or two) at a time. But the overhead of building the level order k-tree means you need to do a whole lot of lookups for each insert... so it doesn't apply to that many problems. Unless you're building a search engine. Then it applies a lot.
So getting pulled over for using a trusted brand with a reputation at stake instead of the local tourist-preying cabs is supposed to be proof of the value of taxi regulation?
But, as the linked post points out, all those arguments fall by the wayside when the alternative is an in-house language used by no other production project on Earth. Developing your own language is not really "conservative" at all.
A good Aereo substitute is ustvnow.com.
Using a monopoly position in the market to influence what kind of media is available on the market at large, however, can get you in trouble with courts.

Get in trouble for anti-monopoly stuff usually requires two parts: that you be a monopoly and that you somehow use it. Shaping a market to your desires is an example of using your monopoly standing.

Apple won't get in trouble because they're not a monopoly, but that's how a private company can get in trouble for filtering speech in an eco-system they control.
This happens a lot in the US too; it's unfortunately a side effect of the hiring policies at most companies. Many companies would prefer to pay $150,000 per year to a contractor than pay $100,000 per year plus benefits. The contractor route gives you more cost certainty, plus when you lay off a contractor by canceling or refusing to renew the contract, it doesn't count as a layoff. Using contractors this way allows companies to respond more quickly to negative economic conditions, and at a lower cost (you often have to pay severance to employees).
In HN and other forums, I notice a strong correlation between the amount of prejudice in a post, and the amount of anger and ignorance in it.

There is no reason to tie these issues together. There are many problems in our country; to say one shouldn't be fixed because others persist is silly (and what you describe isn't a problem, but a benefit to our country).

It's also very sad that someone would casually and ignorantly insult a religion with over one billion innocent people as members, including many Americans. It's not Muslims or Southern white conservatives that are the problem, it's the bigoted and hateful minorities in all groups -- think what a wonderful world it would be without their anger, discrimination and violence.

> we have had way more deaths related to crazies in that religion than with the Confederate flag.

That's not true:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/25/us/tally-of-attacks-in-us-...
What "legal precedent" are you referring to?
They are. If you don't like this, buy someone else's phone.
Well as we mentioned, it's supposed to solve a situation where you don't want to use all the overhead of virtualenv.

The things you care about may be different from what others care about: I'm guessing don't care about Windows compatibility or you wouldn't talk about shebangs, and others may not find only running the scripts from the project root an issue (I don't for example).

Why is a relative path in the PYTHONPATH necessarily bad practice? It's not a rhetorical question, I am genuinely curious.

If you're happy with virtualenv then continue using it - all we have done is propose an alternative.
Web performance. Part two of two: Optimization
You say you distrust the author's views and opinions because of his politics.

I say: good! You should never take an author's work at face value. Every bit of nonfiction you read should be read critically. Nobody's judgment is infallible – not even Nobel prizewinners.
No, they are not: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9777948
Have you seen how taxi drivers beat up Uber drivers in France?
I oppose any usage of my taxes to compensate the rackeetering taxi drivers. Never ever have I taken a taxi in France (I'm French) that didn't charge an exorbitant price while imposing me to listen to their racist and self-important rants. Their profession should die and make room for something better.
I'm afraid I must apologize for failing to make myself clear: it's that his practices call into question his statements in other areas.

I have to confess that I don't have specific instances at hand, for two reasons. One is that much of his more technical writing on programming is outside my own area of expertise. The other is that, given his tendencies, I largely ignore him.

My point, however, wasn't where he is specifically mistaken, but why the traits he exhibits in his rantings on other topics do have a bearing on his engineering judgement.

I do hope that's clear now.
Ask HN: Why does HN allow downvoting without explanation?
And then they went crazy with it, to the point where you were watching a purported car review that successfully concealed the color of the vehicle by the application of art. It became distracting.

But not as distracting as Top Gear's urge to rotate the camera to emphasize the slope when a car is going up or down hill. Or HGTV's urge to run segments containing fireplaces in reverse.
A company should never build a compiler, database, or operating system if it is not their primary business.
One of the key reasons I use Netflix is the lack of ads.

Coming from the UK where we have historically been lucky enough to access quality content from the BBC, all without ads, the notion that I should pay $100 a month to access half decent programming that is saturated by ads seems bizarre.

I was more than happy to pay the marginal cost of Netflix on top of the TV licence tax to get access to their original content (which is generally very good quality as noted elsewhere).

Some of the 'Netflix original content' is however simply content produced by the BBC, that Netflix have contributed to in some way (They get a credit) - Take Peaky Blinders for instance.

One thing they are missing is a decent local news feed though..
Yep. More people need to know these things. Here is another one:

"Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth."

Confederate Vice President Alexander H. Stephens

Savannah, Georgia

March 21, 1861

http://web.archive.org/web/20130822142313/http://teachingame...
Ask HN: What are some exercises/projects that have made you a better programmer?
Hey HN,

What are some of the exercises/projects you have worked on that have made you a better programmer or helped you gain a better understanding of how things work? Thanks
I still haven't given Atom a go. Is it worth switching from ST3?
Anyone who thinks or acts like they're the most important asset to the organisation.

Applies generally in all walks of life, in most situations. I've seen it in programming, and I've seen the mess that's left when people ignore that problem for too long.
what's up with name reuse these days. atom (the syndication format) may be on the verge of becoming obsolete, but it's also forgotten and irrelevant already to warrant a name reuse?
I'm into CS too, and was all about progress but I've tamed my ideas.

Do you really think that bad Taxis drove customers away or was it the system bottleneck (waiting so long, difficulty in finding a cab when you need one) and seemingly lower prices. Again, Uber give you less, AFAIK you're not insured if something happens, you dont even know if the guy has an insurance for himself, there's no check of any kind (as a CS guy you should be afraid of that), so prices can appear lower.

I don't know, I only took a cab twice in my life.
This is an addon on top of Luxe. So you're paying them $15 (for the parking) and an additional $25 (for the drive home).

In places like SF, you'd be better of Ubering back and forth. Even a cab would probably be cheaper.
>People DO associate certain high-quality Apps with the iPhone

[Citation needed]
2D procedurally generated world building in Unity
We're coming for you next Lynyrd Skynyrd!

https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/legend/id98922
Because the effect achieved is a function of game+hardware. For a total budget of X dollars to achieve the best possible result, the hardware is a much larger component of the budget. Would people spending thousands on hardware also be willing to spend more and wait longer in order to get higher-quality video in games? Is that what the PC version is "supposed" to be about, compared to the standardised console product?

Audio climbed this curve and has topped out. Video games haven't really explored it.

(evidently it's uninteresting enough that someone's downvoted it ..)
Thank you, that's very much in line with what I think the future of computing will look like. I especially like the idea of using a mouse (or other analog input device, probably touch or motion detection in the near future) in place of normal/insertion mode, and then executing text commands like they are a link in a web browser (based on their format).

Once I got past trying to remember the commands, it was uncanny how the actions the narrator executed were extensions of how I work going back and forth from my (sort of rigid IDE) to a regex tool like TextWrangler. I get away with this inefficiency currently because I do very little typing and let commands do the heavy lifting, but getting rid of that last bit of friction would be nice.
Don't people create things like Wasabi all the time?

Aren't tools like RubyMotion, Appcelerator and their ilk kinda similar to Wasabi in terms of what they do?

You might even make the argument that Coffeescript is somewhat similar to Wasabi.
Python only lets you have one line in a lambda - the return line. In languages with nicer anonymous function support I can make an anonymous function span multiple lines and branches eg. in C# you could assign to a delegate something like myObj.stringToHash = (s) => {int x = 0; foreach(var c in s) x += ... ; return x;}

I find python's restriction in this case fairly strange. If I wanted to do that in python I'd have to just declare a function body for what I want to put in the anonymous function elsewhere, which defeats the purpose.
Interesting question for me -- can you/are you expected to play as the Confederates in these games? Because a game where you play as the Union and the Confederates are the "bad guys" is certainly not glorifying the "Lost Cause", no matter how many Confederate flags there are in it.
They did do this (Hulu Plus), and surprise, surprise, the greedy bastards chose to both charge a subscription AND continue to plaster ads everywhere.

It kind of reminds me of Nokia and digital photography. Their inability to abandon their current business model is destroying the massive advantage they have (had?) in terms of access to existing paying customers.
I had initially dismissed the whole thing as folly as JavaScript is really stupid, but I had someone install Atom the other day and came to learn that it is really quite an impressively great editor these days.

The ease of finding and installing themes and plugins is unparalleled.

Considering trying it for a week or two as my daily driver (with vim mode, of course.)
Could be that the installer needs a certain amount of swap space.

Alternatively, it could be "we tested it with this much free and it worked, we don't have time/budget to test again with less space."
2. They lose money and have to wait in long lines to get their money when you use a credit card. Don't blame the worker.

4. Sure, kind of annoying I guess...

I've had far more really enjoyable cab rides with Chicago drivers than I have had ones that are even slightly uncomfortable or rude.
This is a petition to show your support to the action Uber is currently following in France, trying to overpass decades-old regulations which protect the taxi industry [or mafia] in most large cities. People and drivers have been beaten up, cars destroyed, airports are blocked, they have set up road checkpoints.
Any more codes? This looks great!
Galileo. Discourses and Mathematical Demonstrations Relating to Two New Sciences. 1638.

It's known as the square-cube law.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square-cube_law
Yeah, I'd agree with you. The opportunity cost is probably a minimum of ~$50k for a software dev.
'Decent' is brilliant haha! :) Not seen that one yet. Your modus operandi, and note of caution are also spot on IMO.

Transparency (not just on salary, but role/skill expectations too) would appear to build trust. What can firms that can't offer as much do, do you think?
The difference this time is that C# is now open source. Sure, C# is still essentially Microsoft-only, but there are enough users that if Microsoft abandoned it, it's fairly certain that others would be there to pick up the pieces.
i wonder if they will pull all USA vs Germany games... it has the Nazi Flag.
What? You can definitely hail a taxi in France. It can sometimes be very hard to find one that is free, but there's no law that says you have to either call for them or go to a taxi stop.
It doesn't sidestep the laws. Most likely these people are misclassified and the employer is breaking the law.

This is why Microsoft only allows contractors to work at Microsoft for 18 months at a time, with a mandatory 6 months in between contracts. They got busted for misclassifying employees as contractors.
A lot of people criticize Fog Creek for writing their own compiler, but I think it's a good example of working smarter rather than harder to solve a problem they had at the time. I think that companies which apply sheer brute force to rewrite the same app in Objective-C and Java to target the popular mobile platforms could learn from this.

I wonder to what extent the generated C# code depends on C#'s dynamic typing option. I ask because the original VBScript was certainly dynamically typed. So by the end, to what extent was Wasabi statically typed, through explicit type declarations or type inference? And how much did the compiler have to rely on naming conventions such as Hungarian notation?
Okay, fine. The coffee shop is Starbucks.

The simile is only stronger in that case. The local coffee shop might be OK stocking some Marxist rags or hard core Libertarian texts or whatever the owner likes. Meanwhile, Starbucks only stocks the inoffensive books. Thus, the masses go to Starbucks because they want a cup of coffee from a nice normal person, and don't want to have to listen to a bunch of Marxists talk down to them while waiting in line or (perceive that they are being) condescended to by a Barista.

The book case simile is fictional, but Starbucks appropriating only the completely inoffensive parts of the canonical local coffee shop is a perfect parallel example.
I'll use the opportunity to moan about the state of packaging in the Python world. Why, after so many years, there is no way for me to ship software written in python, in deb format?

I end up doing some real crazy stuff:

* build in docker

* using virtualenv /usr/local/mypackage

* then manually copy over the init scripts "cp /usr/local/mypackage/bin/* /usr/local/bin"

* and debianize "/usr/local/mypackage/" and "/usr/local/bin".

Except it doesn't work:

* I need root do create the venv in /usr/local.

* This technique copies garbage like "activate" script to bin.

* virtualenv ships its own python binary. If the python version on host differ, it won't work.

* The workaround is to rewrite the bin scripts.

Total mess. All I need is a deb with some bin scripts, and all dependencies bundled. Is it _that_ hard...
Hehe :)

I'm being honest. I've felt that working in a company hiring people under interim contracts (better paid) making historical employees work twice (your job, teaching others that don't care, correcting their mistake down the pipe just before they leave with a lot of unfinished things) for lower salaries, and it felt wrong. You want equality.

Uber isn't a surprise, it's a known model of disruption, spread faster than the law can react and when you have momentum, newcomer and authorities find a compromise.

They did bring something to the table, a nice kick in the butt, and a newer and far better user interface. That said they (and others) are still operating illegally through the pressure of times (people are busy and low on money, an illegal driver is better than no driver at all)

edit: additions.
I think it's a good analogy to have.

You don't have the same results from bus:human::raindrop:mosquito, but the size comparison is a useful measure. I didn't realize a raindrop was 50x the mass of a mosquito. I thought they were roughly the same size.

Further, it reinforces or introduces the idea (along with the conclusion of the study) that "So small things are inherently stronger with respect to their mass."

Lastly, this is National Geographic. Anecdotes and analogies are useful to communicate to the general public.
Compared with where its mosquito haven like by the Equator?

I suppose raindrop vs hailstone is a reason is one of the reason's the density issues are so different.
If you like it then you shoulda put a rxfxyh on it wnm9mm
That's not how competition works.

Choice is good for consumers. I'm an AAPL shareholder too but that doesn't mean you should be an apologist.

Someone else's phone won't access the huge amounts of data I have in iCloud. Or are you actually advocating for vendor lock-in as a force for good? I don't understand.
I've heard that for more than five years, and I've checked with Comcast, AT&T, and Charter in multiple cities in multiple states and I've never seen this be the case. I wish I could save money by bundling, but bundling for me always makes the Internet cheaper but the total cost is more than Internet without the discount.

-edit: I reread this and it looks like I'm doubting you: I'm not. I just have never seen it personally, and it sounds like a great problem to have, from my standpoint :)
Actually I was being serious. So, 360 degrees is useful for dividing a circle into pieces, because it's divisible in lots of ways (particularly fourths, thirds, and so on). It's small enough to be manageable but large enough to let builders, for example, speak in terms of "one degree". I bet that any intelligent, tool-using life would pick 360 for dividing circles.

If you're doing astronomy, you'll notice that every night the stars "advance". That is, if you do your seeing at midnight every night, the stars will look slightly different each night. In fact, they'll look (roughly) 4 minutes older, corresponding to one degree of rotation. If you do this for a whole year you'll see the same sky at midnight again, a year later.

(Another way to think of this is that there's a line passing through the sun and earth that, at midnight at any point on earth, points in a different direction every evening of the year. There are 365 of these lines, and they are (almost) exactly one degree apart.)

I think that's really a pretty coincidence.

(Now, it's true that it would also be remarkable if our year was 100 or 1000 days. That would be remarkable for a different reason of course.)
There's much more here: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/06/what-thi...
Is it still limited to only editing files < 2 Megabytes? For most people that is not a showstopper, but it may be for some.