skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It's sort of amazing that the diatribe here is against Oracle for wanting to remove an undocumented internal API because of typesafety, and not against the open source projects that use a specifically unsafe, undocumented internal API. I mean, nothing against these projects -- I understand that type safety can carry a performance penalty -- but the anger of this article is amazing.
Test driven development is a nice try at a solution to confirmation bias.
You start off by being wrong about your code and then you work on fixing that and get all the tests to pass.
But that too is prone to confirmation bias on a larger scale.

Sometimes you get into a 'test-driven dictatorship', where the amount of broken tests dictate what changes are ok and which would just be too time consuming to introduce.

That's how you start gluing pieces together which have nothing in common, just so that you don't break too many tests in the process.

So , no silver bullet, but still a step in the right direction I guess.

Confirmation bias is also at play especially when we have an overly complicate architecture. Because it's so complicated, it must be smart so any requirement can be made to fit into the architecture.

I've learned over the years to consider myself guilty without trial for the confirmation bias sin and the solution is to always keep architecture primitive and simple. Minimal dependencies. Minimal voodoo. Simple, boring code.

When I feel that I've done something 'smart', I know I'm building sand castles and am trying to prove something that I shouldn't.
This is begging for an API or open source firmware. Impressive technology applied to something with limited practical usefulness.

For starters, I'd like to decouple the tracking system from the tags.
The quote stops short, and for someone like me who doesn't follow Java very much, it feels like it's misquoting via omission:

"Let me be blunt -- sun.misc.Unsafe must die in a fire. It is -- wait for it -- Unsafe. It must go. Ignore any kind of theoretical rope and start the path to righteousness _/now/_. It is still years until the end of public updates to JDK 8, so we have /years /to work this out properly. But sticking our heads in the collective sands and hoping for trivial work arounds to Unsafe is not going to work. If you're using Unsafe, this is the year to explain where the API is broken and get it straight....

"Please help us kill Unsafe, kill Unsafe dead, kill Unsafe right, and do so as quickly as possible to the ultimate benefit of everyone."

The quoted engineer understands that people use it, claims that there's no immediate risk (since Java 8 will stay around), and very very strongly implies that there is a plan to move from Unsafe to something better than Unsafe providing equivalent functionality in a stable way, and asks for help with that. Is this correct?
The point is if you have to pass a flag to allow the use of Unsafe, you're breaking "works-out-of-the-box" backwards compatibility.
This is good. I use a cloth from the eyeglass store. They gave them to me for free.
I would call that a profound lack of knowledge (or concious ignorance thereof?) in combination with the fact that it's always better to claim the impossible (because you can polarise the masses more easily and scale down your claim later on once the main challenge - getting things things passed - is done with).
Because, having used both, there's nothing "premium" about the iPhone experience except the perception in iPhone users' heads.
> Oracle plans to remove sun.misc.Unsafe in Java 9. This is an absolute disaster in the making and has the potential to completely destroy the entire ecosystem around Java.

You know your language has a problem if the entire ecosystem threatens to fall apart as soon as you actually try to enforce the language's conceptual model and try to make use of the guarantees it provides.
That's the license of the API integrated in Firefox. What I quoted is Pocket's Terms of Service[1], as explicitly stated in the article. And that's what I take issue with: It's a proprietary service the users didn't ask for in a browser that is supposed to champion openness.

In other words, my decision isn't based on whether the API is open source. Mozilla chose a proprietary platform instead of an open platform; whether out of laziness or due to a kickback from Pocket, I simply don't like it. I like choice, and I choose to stop using Firefox.

[1] https://getpocket.com/tos#restrictions
How to filter bots traffic in Google Analytics
I'd cheerfully pay sticker price for just the tracking system, no tripod required (assuming I hadn't overspent on media gadgetry already this quarter, anyway).
Spotlight on Daniele Grassi and Timeneye
I don't work for and do not have any affiliation with Leadpages, but I have had customers use Leadpages in the past, and have never had a problem with them at all. In fact, I have found their service very helpful and the overall product very nicely designed. There are three issues I see with your complaint.

First, if you had already subscribed a year ago, and didn't like the service, why would you sign up for a 2 year package again? At least if you believed they had improved their service test it for a few months before going all in with a long-term agreement.

Second, not sure which plan you signed up for, but I know with their advanced plans you can upload your own templates to use.

Third, while I will somewhat agree with you that this could probably be handled differently from their side, limiting you to one refund seems somewhat fair to me. Look at it from a service provider perspective. What if every customer signed up for a long-term contract to get the discounted pricing, used the service for 30-days, generated the leads they wanted, and canceled with a refund. Then a few months later signed up again, generated some more leads over 30 days, and canceled again with a refund. The company would never make any money. Unfortunately there is an opportunity to game the system, so limiting the total number of refunds is an appropriate measure for them and I can understand why they do it.
I seem to get tons of lint particles on the screen no matter what kind of cloth I use (I tried microfiber, tissue paper, paper towels, etc). Lately I've been using a clean white sock (with no liquid) and it works alright. I just buff out the smudges rather than trying to clean them off with a liquid.

Cleaning it in daylight helps a lot as well, much easier to tell what you're doing.
Did this only once to a dozen people and it was BRUTAL - both for them and for me. So let's not pretend it is simple or painless. Here's what worked for me:

* Put paperwork in place - termination, contracts, final settlement, dues etc etc - get those facts together in writing.

* Have a schedule for each affected employee's "exit" interview. No "send so-and-so in". That can be very stressful for the employee. Instead, set up a calendar invite and talk.

* If any employees are remote, have a video-conference so they can SEE your face.

* Go through the process as quickly as possible - ideally, all announcements within the same day.

* Have a "script" for the interview. This should include the announcement, the reason and the next steps (HR, benefits, payroll, equipment). Don't be needlessly cryptic/dishonest about the reasons behind the firings. Layoffs occur for ONE reason only: finance. So tell your employees the basic facts, but you are not obligated to share ALL the gory details. Simply saying "Our financials are the reason why we are doing this and I am sorry this will impact you and many others" is good enough.

* Be patient during the interviews. Don't rush it. Every laid-off employee thinks this has to do with them personally, when it's not. So take your time to explain, sympathize, offer help and guidance.

* Don't forget to reach out to the non-affected employees after the process. They too are running scared and deserve compassion.

I also personally reached out to all affected employees a few weeks after the layoffs to see how they were doing. Nearly ALL of them had jobs, which was awesome. This may or may not work in every scenario, so YMMV.
It will never be like the US because Europe countries don't share a single language / culture, nor a common history.

The engineer in me really feels safer having many small independant systems than a single mega unified thing that is too big to fail - but it's another story.
But it is a non-negotiable with me and should be for everyone.
C-states and P-states with Ubuntu 14.04 on Amazon EC2
I wish to God that Oracle would simply deprecate and discontinue browser-side Java applet support.

Oracle's flagship ERP product is Applet-based, so I doubt that's going to happen anytime soon.
They say they have facilities to clean 480Gbps of data, and 5Tbps of mostly spare inbound bandwidth, so their DDoS mitigation capacity is somewhere in that range (http://www.ovh.com/ca/en/a1171.protection-anti-ddos-service-...).
I agree. It's very neat, but I can't see where the users will be.

Most outdoor events, I wouldn't leave a camera on a tripod alone.

I thought it might be useful for people who make Youtube videos: these people usually work alone and it's a hassle to get actors sometimes--but in these situations, we have the tech for cheaper to already control the camera from a little far away with more control so I can't see that really having a lot of user base either.
the network is 100% reliable, always. The internet, doubly so (it's so big, you know). Maybe you missed the memo.
I also expected more from the d3 visualisations.
Java is very explicit that anything not part of the public API may not work in the next version. So I'd say them disabling it, they're in the right. Since so MANY projects use it though, I think it might need some special attention.
IBM's crazy-thin 7nm chip will hold 20B transistors
It actually gets swapped with a new Boxfuse.com on write.
EasyPost (YC S13) Is Hiring a VP of Fulfillment
Not sure if it will go that fast , but i'm using any language that compiles to JS instead of using JS. That includes C#, but rather ClojureScript, PureScript & Shen. It is definitely already possible to never touch JS, however the debugging side of things is not very nice mostly... You have to dive into the generated JS and then have to think how it translates to your code... With webassembly that should be a lot better.
Disable, uninstall, or click-to-enable.

I'm in favor of everything moving to click-to-enable (which flashblock does for me, and is nice). Of course, companies like Adobe and Oracle probably don't want that as it means less people buy their products or support as they move to natively supported features.
I agree that its uses are probably more practically limited than the demo videos show. However, event photography and videography are pretty big sub-markets.
Eh, sort of. I do Devops/Infrastructure exclusively, and while the tedious stuff is automated away, I've seen too much shit break on the other side of the fence to trust it fully (AWS API throwing errors when you absolutely need it to work, etc).

If something is broken, you should have enough automation to get it into a known good state without a human involved, while maintaining data consistency. Anything else should be automated, but you should still be around to babysit it while its going through the motions.

If you think you can automate everything and always trust it to work flawlessly, you haven't been around long enough for the edge cases.
Entire companies existed around DOS extenders and TSRs. Microsoft rearchitected and everyone is better off for it.

The argument needs to be that the use of Unsafe by these companies (or the projects listed on the blog post) both is good and has no alternatives, not that the use exists.
"Works-out-of-the-box" backwards compatibility -- without flags -- has never been guaranteed (even the default GC is about to change), let alone for non-public classes. Whenever you compile a class that uses Unsafe you get a warning (that you can't disable!) that says "this class may go away at any time". Still the reality is recognized, and you'll still be able to use Unsafe -- despite all warnings -- and all you need to do is add a flag. I think that's very reasonable.
No, I'd already been at it for a while when I started my "Saas for passive income". In fact I had already built and sold an app.
It's part of the OpenJDK/Oracle VM implementation, not an official part of the Java standard library. It allows for all sorts of fun stuff like native compare and swap operations (used for concurrent collections iirc), object allocation without calling the constructor, accessing blocks of memory directly without object references, and other things. The reason it's called unsafe is because it allows developers to bypass a lot of the safety guarantees that java is supposed to provide as a memory managed language. But it's useful for getting more performance out of the VM.

There's currently an effort underway to push through a variety of Java enhancement proposals that would add a lot of the unsafe functionality to the official standard library. This would enshrine the unsafe functionality as official, remove access to some of the more dangerous and less useful parts of unsafe, and would also mean that the functionality would be properly documented, which it is currently not.
Now that is a good point. You could still have someone sitting near the tripod, but now they don't have to be paying attention to the camera-- they can enjoy the moment.
The hard reality of no remote debugging in software deployed to end-user machines leads a wise developer to make potentially inconvenient trade-offs to compensate, e.g. reducing the chance of failure by minimizing dynamism. I believe, and I think the OP would agree, that applying the same discipline to server-side software leads to more robust applications, whereas if you know you have the crutch of remote debugging (via SSH or otherwise) when something goes wrong, you may well be more lax about preventing failures in the first place.
That's nothing. I have 5 windows and 2 actual bedrooms although one is debatable and that commands an extra £1100 a month on top of that.

Going back to 2002 my first flat was a place under a betting shop in Islington and had a door that we couldn't open and had no idea where it went to and that was £600/month. Oh and it smelled of piss and shit.
> That means nothing to the person being laid off. By not removing that restriction you're still putting the threat on the individual.

No one forced them to sign the employment agreement in the first place.

2nd, it's protection for the company. Outside of backdoor collusion between large silicon valley companies, and key hires, how often do you see non compete agreements enforced?

For your rank and file, rarely ever. Companies don't have infinite resources to sink into litigation, especially if they have to have layoffs to reduce costs.
Willingness to learn and pick up skills. Not the technical ones - your co-founder has that in order. I'm talking about:

Sales

Marketing

Fundraising

How to talk to a lawyer

Figuring out what business licenses you need and how to maintain them

Accounting

Interpreting from Geek to English

Hiring to fill the gaps in your knowledge (and firing those who don't)

Contract negotiation

Identifying niches for business opportunities

Basically, anything involved in creating a business which doesn't involve technology; there's quite a few of these, and in many ways they are as or more important to the success of the business than technical knowledge. Even if you create the perfect product, you still need someone to market and sell it to the masses.
Yes, completely preventive. I have two family members who developed it in their 70's.

I am 30.

Update because I can't reply re: self-experimenting:

Deprenyl is an incredibly well researched molecule, with a great safety profile. We also have a lot of reason to suspect amphetamines like adderall are neurotoxic to dopamine neurons, and hence my fervent belief that deprenyl should be a first line treatment for those wishing for enhanced focus, and amphetamines should be reserved for tougher cases.
If a given language you enjoy can run a web server, you could potentially take advantage of Electron. This of course includes Go, D, C#, Java, Clojure and plenty of other languages everyone loves. Not telling everyone to do this for every type of application though, but it is definitely not impossible to approach making a desktop application with web technologies.
If you're not technical, I'd assume your must already be good with sales or have the background for it(social skills).

So, I'd ask technical co-founders and build a network around engineers: it will be the best way to really understand your product and iterate on ideas.
Being able to execute and follow through on plans/vision. This applies to both technical and non-technical founders. Its the hardest thing to do.
Backwards compatibility is only guaranteed for official Java SE and Java EE API's existing in the java.* and javax.* packages, anything in sun., com.sun., etc is internal to the JDK and has no such guarantees.

Every time you hear of an application that only works on a specific release of the JRE you can know for sure it's because they use undocumented internal API's — keep in mind this not only impacts compatibility with other releases of OpenJDK/Oracle JDK, but the sun.* API's are not typically part of third-party JVM's like JRockit or the IBM JVM.

Stop using internal API's and then bitching when Oracle makes changes to them, you only have yourself to blame.
smth interesting
Yes, you could rebuild the project in any language if you wanted.

Ceramic opens an HTTP server (in lisp), starts electron (using a shell command), communicates to the electron process via streaming, then electron sends back HTTP requests to the lisp process.

However this is tied to Common Lisp because the containing project itself is built in Common Lisp and can't be switched out without completely rebuilding in another language.
I find it quite ironic that you and author of the article completely misunderstand what is happening.

Creating then deleting a temporary file is very common technique to make sure that that for will be removed as soon as the application closes it, it also is used to make sure that nothing will tamper with it. I find amusing that author found a way to still tamper with it.

Now depending on what the file was used for either the corrupted files caused database to return corrupted data to the user, write corrupted data to the database, our in the best scenario return error to the application issuing the query.
They're working on it however:
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/126843-think-gps-is-cool-...
This seems a bit hyperbolic. Especially the comparison of Python 2 to Python 3. Its not like you could run Python 2 and Python 3 under the same interpreter by passing a flag.
Regarding the second issue, Griggs v. Duke Power Co. asserted that requiring a high-school degree for a job that arguably didn't strictly require one was discriminatory because it could act as a proxy to race.

If the author is on board with height, I can take him down all the way to a reductio where you give everyone the exact same credit terms.
Question: Is this possible because they are using Linux servers? The Linux kernel adopted TCP Fast Open?

https://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/tcpm/current/msg08204....
IMHO: They should know how the VC/Angel world works, they should be well adept at networking, and they should be "good in a room" (sales wise). If I'm the technical guy building the product I expect the non-technical person to be out raising money and closing deals/pre-orders every moment that they have free.
The only problem you could solve is recruiting new contributors who want to port open source projects, as pressuring the current developers is highly counterproductive, doing the porting without help doesn't need any social networking, and collaboration on the software development itself is going to use different, established tools (most likely those of the existing project: forums, mailing lists, public source repositories).

This niche of making people port open source projects to different platforms is better served by more general software developer recruitment approaches (why focus on porting?): for paid work (I want a port of this library but I don't want to do it myself) there are existing employees who might be just assigned to do it, general-purpose job/contracting boards and targeted announcements and advertisement to experts of the involved platforms.

For the delusionally small niche of volunteer work (If you don't know what to do, maybe you'll decide to port these great libraries to neglected platforms) interested parties are perfectly able to research what would constitute a good porting campaign for them in terms of effort, utility, learning opportunity, etc.
Well, what if these users you speak of are trying to accomplish more than just homework?
I agree in most cases that it's perfectly reasonable. But from a pragmatic position, I think this needs to be treated as a special case because of all the people that are using it. I still like the idea of having a flag that opts people in to using internal classes. It's like an agreement almost that they know what they're doing is not supported across versions.
I would too, but I want to track things I can't put a tag onto. Wildlife, cars speeding past my house. If I could hook it up to an arduino with infrared sensors that would be awesome.
yeah they went the fast and cheap route instead of doing the right thing, and they are now going to be bitten by it, and they can go cry a river for all that I care.

those are the sloppy engineers that are holding back evolution of software at large, from little things like obscure functions to huge operating systems like http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2005/07/28/44439...
Fucking assholes...
Let the guys behind Telegram work, they're elevating the current level of messaging apps s big step further.
The description of the genre reminded me of Cabin in the Woods. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1259521/

Is it the beginning of a geek take on horror? It was a fun film, and felt very original when it came out, but it was also a bit of a gimmick. I'm not sure it's ready to become an entire genre without becoming very quickly stereotyped.
Hi jeff, sorry, but you have some minsunderstanding I think. I use Leadpages to create 5 or 6 things I had delete immediately, I had NO leads with them, none.
Google's Deep Dream in a Vagrant Box
This is exactly the same line Microsoft took when they broke poorly architected applications with the new (and much better!) security model in Vista. "You're the one who wrote an app that needlessly requires root privileges, you have only yourself to blame."

It... didn't go well.
http://www.commitstrip.com/en/2015/07/08/true-story-fixing-a...

The "just add more to the pool" solution seems akin to the "solution" in the strip above.

And i have seen similar arguments for when a daemon or server goes down. Hook it up to a script that reboots it automatically (or fires up a new instance over and over and over) and go back to coding.
Does containership has any difference with last.backend?
> Everything else is niche, recommended by people drinking too much Kool-Aid.

Objective-C and Swift are niche? Apple has sold 100,000,000s of devices.

PHP is niche? Python is niche?

Be careful about writing in absolutes.
The most crucial knowledge is the one you need to get shit done and this is different every day. There is no such thing as that one key to everything. The only important thing is: learn. If you don't know something, either way hire someone who knows or learn about it yourself. That's the key. Technical or not, it doesn't matter.
Sorry I wasn't clear enough in saying that I agree with you here in most cases. But since Unsafe is used in so many applications that it should probably be an exception to this rule for now. That a better solution is to create a public API, then keep track of popular projects as they move to it. When it's moved then enable the flag.