skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Antarctica is a terrible example. First of all, settlement of antarctica is illegal. It's all claimed and off limits by treaty. We don't know if anyone would settle it if it were open. Secondly, there is a qualitative difference between another planet and another place on this one.
The Mathiness of Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Nature doesn't intend anything. Things just happen. People come along later and romanticize whatever occurred, tell stories about it.
It's only a matter of a few more decades before someone who's 82 will be diagnosed with "what was previously terminally ill" liver cancer, and given an extra 20 years of life.

Why don't we put a moonshot effort into medical research? The Baby Boomers are about to retire. Cancer(s), alzheimer's, heart disease, etc can all be turned into treatable diseases with the proper amount of research. There are 76 million baby boomers. In the end it might be cheaper to find cures than to treat all the conditions.
Cisco Drops Data-Storage Hardware Line
I was going to say "taken in context, then inverted".
Thanks for your reply, I am looking for a Product based tech company.
These might be obvious already (and hence redundant), but many computer history museums have sections covering software and programming language history.

http://www.computerhistory.org/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_History_Museum

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computing

Also try the Internet Archive (archive.org). It has a lot of "Programming History" stuff, but finding it can be painful:

https://archive.org/details/Kfest2011-PeterNeubaueLogoHistor...
China to End Ban on Videogame Consoles
Africa Makes Leap in Cross-Border Mobile Payments
I see a pattern. I may be revealing a bit too much about my longevity, but I've always hated two thing about 'reading' a magazine: the little subscription tear-offs that fall out littering every floor, and that you can't actually read and article without experiencing some form of ADD by flipping through pages of ads you don't care about to get to the next paragraph.

Sound familiar? I just described most web sites by recalling reading a 20th century vintage print magazine. That should sadden everyone. We have a triumph of human progress in not just the Internet, but the Web that rides above it. The promise is a more intelligent and enlightened interaction between content provider and content receiver, perhaps more like a conversation than the print-radio-TV one-way street. Instead, it's not really much different at all, except with more ads and popups.
It looks very "Linux" from however long ago - that is, poor and inconsistent spacing, hodge-podge of icons (especially overcomplicated ones), frugal padding, etc. It's a common look for open source stuff. Doesn't really have and stick with a design language.

For some people, that will seem really jarring and uncomfortable.
For the most companies your specified reasons are used to start with a clean fresh new Version 2.

New System, new Language, use the good parts rewrite the bad parts.

And new Language would make it more interesting for "younger" developer that start with e.g. Rust / Go / Whatever. (That did not mean the code will be better)
Hell, I'm driving a 2015 Jeep Cherokee as a rental right now and I don't even want it connected to the Internet. But you've gotta have car apps, right? How else would car manufacturers be priming you to accept in-car advertising than an Internet-connected screen that you can't turn off completely?
Ask HN: How do you migrate from static to dynamic typing
I've been using statically typed languages my entire life. I've been working with clients on some dynamic languages projects lately though. In a static language, I'm used to being able to e.g. change variable names, change class/record structures, etc and have all that either caught at compile time or (better) have the code change propagation fully automated by tooling.

With dynamics that obviously doesn't exist. I'm not complaining, just looking for coping mechanisms. Unit testing is obviously one, though I've found it's just as likely if you forget to update a function to use the new record format, you'll forget to change the test too, so lots of stuff gets through.

Do you essentially stop refactoring when doing dynamic code, or does it change what you refactor e.g. less "structural" or "naming" refactoring? Or do you find yourself using longer variable/function/class names such that a global text search will be less likely to produce collisions? Other things?

Mostly interested in opinions of people who have successfully/happily made the switch from static languages, especially if they previously liked static typing and were similarly disgruntled initially with dynamics. I'm curious how you've found your programming style has changed.

I recognize many benefits of dynamic languages; that's not what this post is about nor is it meant to start a flame war.
I've seen toddlers use standard WIMP desktops, as well (I used to be one). It's not like they will be familiar with much else at that age, anyway. They'll learn whatever they have access to.

Same goes for elderly people with no previous computer experience. They have no prior familiarity, so they'll learn whatever is given. Of course they'll have natural preferences for one UI style over another, but many of them use WIMP just fine.

It's all a matter of preference and the user's threshold for degree of control. For a person like me, Android is a UX disaster and a regression. It took me half an hour to figure out how to delete a photo from the Gallery as I ended up finally descending into the proper File Manager directory, holding on the filename and selecting the Trash icon.

A convoluted and awkward workflow by all means. I agree with the parent poster that Android usage is a cargo cult ritual of swiping and touching, both from my experience with it and observing how other people use it.
Maybe they'll look at our remains and say "Ah, so this is how we'll go"
PostgREST serves a fully RESTful API
7 Days with X – First blog series on Java 8
Denial and the Importance of Reflection
PayPal started in 1999 as a way to "beam" money from one Palm Pilot to another via the infrared port. You'd load your Palm up with money from your bank / credit card, then use it like cash on your mobile device. http://archive.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/1999/07/20...
One thing that I have thought about a few times is not just the time scale but also the technological advancement and where we might sit in that continuum. For example, spread spectrum radio technology that is used for some wireless communications would be virtually impossible for us to detect even a couple of decades ago. So even efforts like SETI may not see anything because you would have to focus in on one of the habitable planets, at the moment in time when they are using the type of radio technologies we know of, in the spectrum we are looking at. It is possible that there are technologically advanced civilizations out there but they moved past radio and are using something more advanced like quantum entanglement modulation or something we don't yet have the technology to decode. If there is a Galactic Internet, it is probably not based on the modulation of electromagnetic radiation which is limited to the speed of light.
iOS 9 Jailbreak release
> I've never seen somebody hate Japan so much!

I don’t hate Japan, I absolutely love it! This country paid for my PhD studies not asking anything in return.

But that does not mean that there are serious societal issues and it should not be criticized.

For example, the culture of forcing employees to work overtime. Is it good that so many men have no relationship with their children because of it? In what world is that good? Power harassment and maternity harassment in the workplace is absolutely sickening.

Corporate Japan’s success is built on the exploitation of its employees. Traditional Japanese companies are absolutely horrible places for most people. Do you think that the level of suicide is normal in any functional society (1)? What about the phenomena of young employees dying of heart attacks(2)?

What about the treatment of woman as second-tier employees? Do you really think the function of a grown and educated woman is to serve tea for men?

Many people have an overly romanticized view of Japan and Japanese. But the fact is that Japan is in serious need of reform in many areas. In some areas Japan competes globally (e.g. autos). But in some areas are seriously dysfunctional. Examples of this is the dysfunctional university/research system. Second example is the small scale unproductive agriculture with its over-sized political influence. Third example it the legal system: 99% conviction rate, and the extreme difficulty of getting access to the courts. Until recently, the supply of lawyers were also severely restricted.

> In all of this you've failed to explain why the American auto industry, with our superior company culture, can't make competitive cars.

I did not discuss the auto industry. One of the reasons that the American auto-industry failed was because of out of control labour unions (as the article states).

Clearly the Japanese auto-industry excels. That is due to many things, such as attention to detail and the responsible actions of employees at all levels. These are some really good aspects of Japanese culture.
(Another is cleanliness, the ability to plan and timeliness. Just compare Tokyo’s train system to Paris’ subway).

(1)	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_r...

(2)	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kar%C5%8Dshi
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBIOS
Front end Frameworks yesterday, today, tomorrow: Polymer, React, minions, aliens
When I trained lifeguards this was the most important lesson, bar none.

I personally have never seen IDR look like 'climbing a ladder' (hands are usually out sideways, though I'm not doubting other's more comprehensive experience). But head tilted right back, so the mouth is the highest point of the body, and only the face visible, that's been the key. The nasty thing is that, in an outdoor environment where the water isn't transparent, this means that drowning people are very difficult to spot. Most of my years spent lifeguarding were hours spent counting and memorising people: 28 people in this section, two leaving, three boys with blonde hair horseplaying, twelve girls kicking up splashes, watch for the dark haired girl in green who is bouncing along not swimming, careful of the four people the splashes are obscuring...
Origami Pots That Grow Together with Your Plants
It's not a question of CPU power, it's shittycrap designed websites that push everything to the browser.
Quite similar in terms of feature-sets, but I would say Kotlin has better tooling and Ceylon has better documentation, and tutorials.
> Not because refcounting adds a tiny bit of overhead,

I think you may occasionally find the overhead is more than tiny. Especially when you consider that shared_ptr should also be doing atomics to keep things thread safe.

Anyway, I've heard similar recommendations against overuse of shared_ptr for various reasons and I understand them. But I think it's interesting that one community's recommendations can completely contradict another's. This is before taking into consideration the diverse opinions on what the "proper" C++ is. Compare the C++ world to say, the objc world, where in the latter, everything is refcounted by default, and ARC gives you the equivalent of shared_ptr everywhere all the time. They don't seem to mind.
Have you ever been to India? Do you know what they would be doing to survive if they couldn't program for U.S. businesses from across the globe?

I saw people in India eating trash. I've been there. I have seen the other jobs in the area. Not everyone was dirt poor, but there were many. Meanwhile, there were also affluent people, with drivers and servants.

Trust me, the people who work to become programmers in India are among the middle to upper class.
Great, a phone that supports telepathy. Just w3hat I've always needed.
I am the OP.

In some cases the messages they've deleted have been important real emails. Not spam.

Also you're being a little dramatic in characterizing my comments. You might want to temper that, esp when you're accusing someone else of doing what you are yourself doing. ;-)
Collection of useful npm-scripts
Any generative model can be used to generate a follow up chord. Of course, you need to learn it on a significant amount of data.

There has been some generative modelling of CNNs but I'm not sure if there's generative ability in any of the existing frameworks.
Micro-Talespin: A Story Generator in Common Lisp (1992)
Not (entirely) serious: A Brief, Incomplete, and Mostly Wrong History of Programming Languages by James Iry

http://james-iry.blogspot.de/2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-mo...
Exactly, electromagnetism is too primitive. Quantum entanglement modulation is more plausible.
Or some other phenomenon that could factor out space and time like some hypotetical tech that can interface with Consciousness.
We will, it just might not happen for thousands of years.

Once we have the ability to freeze our bodies in stasis to wake at intervals and check progress, time taken to travel huge distances may become meaningless. Set probe for x light years away, program the alarm for arrival. Of course, communication with anyone not travelling with you becomes a bit meaningless.

Obviously a huge deal of progress to be made in terms of energy and replication, maintenance, etc.

We're a bunch of stupid animals on average, but I wouldn't bet against the best of us making this sort of thing happen eventually. "Never" is a very definite thing to say!
I've gone back and forth between statically typed and dynamically typed languages so I don't find the transition that hard.

One big detail is which particular dynamic languages you are using and why. Is it ColdFusion? PHP? Python? Do you have a choice of what language you are using.

The best case for dynamic languages is when you get a truly large improvement in concision. I think for instance of how Clara is about 1% of the line count of Drools Core for a whole bunch of reasons. My favorite environment now is Java + Clojure because I get to use Java when Java is comfortable and Clojure when Clojure is a better fit.
On the design of news sites: Where's the beef?
On a related note, a really cool thing happened at a conference I went to last year -- there was an artist in the audience who sketched the talks as they were given to produce a single page thought-bubble summary!! They looked amazing, and generated a lot of discussion in the pub afterwards :)

Not sure if they're all online, but the one of me is here: https://www.filepicker.io/api/file/TIBDmf66Q5WPBF3ZBzKY

PS: Thanks re writeLaTeX -- exciting times ahead (we relaunched as Overleaf at the start of the year and things are growing pretty quickly!)
On a tangential note, I ran across Dr. Hall's personal page[1] last night and learned (at least according to him) that he coined the "saltwater v. freshwater" classification in his 1976 essay.[2]

FWIW, it's refreshing to hear that eggheads can't follow Krugman. It puts me in good company!

[1] http://web.stanford.edu/~rehall/

[2] http://web.stanford.edu/~rehall/Notes%20Current%20State%20Em...
Trade deficits are driven by national savings and investment rates, which can be in turn driven by all sorts of mostly benign social or cultural factors, and so its hotly debated whether they matter at all.

DeLong has some explanations, claiming that savers around the world pay a premium for dollar denominated assets, which really messes up this entire analysis. [0]

The upshot is that the rate of return on our foreign assets tends to be better than the return to foreign investment in the US. [1]

That could be right, at least makes some sense... foreigners are just buying something to say they bought something in the US (as a hedge against political catastrophe? maybe still a good buy).

So if it's true that there's a rate of return gap, then our massive "purchases" abroad are really investments that will pay for themselves. If so, we'll probably reinvest those returns, often abroad, so we'll never wipe the deficit, and probably even add to it over time, even while coming out ahead.

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20070806050555/http://www.j-brad...

[1] http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2006/08/do_we_even_have....
I hadn't heard of SafeStack, but it sounds like very cool research. Thanks for sharing!

I'm by no means an expert on binary exploitation, so I don't feel qualified to answer your question. That being said, SafeStack sounds very similar to a fairly recent exploit mitigation technique known as heap partitioning, or heap isolation. My explanation wouldn't do the concept justice, but Google recently wrote a great article on how they're using the technique to eliminate some of the biggest causes of Flash 0day [1]. I don't know how effective the technique is in practice, but it seems to be in use by a few major browsers now, and it seems like Internet Explorer has been using it since June of last year [2].

[1] http://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2015/07/significant-fl...

[2] https://labs.mwrinfosecurity.com/blog/2014/06/20/isolated-he...
Ok. I'll be the crazy person.

At what point do we consider that at least some percentage of the more credible and interesting UFO sightings might be evidence of visitation?

We now know with a high level of certainty that earth like worlds are common, and we also know that a high percentage are older than Earth. That means more time for the evolution of intelligence and the growth of knowledge in any civilization. Interstellar flight is hard, but is technically possible with technology contemporary with The Beatles: look up Project Orion and read about Dyson's thermonuclear performance estimates... And if that is possible with 60s tech, there are surely better ways. Of course we are also assuming no undiscovered physics, which is an arrogant and naive assumption given that we haven't been doing this for very long.

The UFO topic is verboten largely because of all the bizarre and often silly folklore and quasi-religion that surrounds it, but it isn't hard to strip that off. For the longest time I was a climate change skeptic because of a distaste for green ideology, but then I realized that the physics of atmospheric CO2 is utterly unrelated to how humans process issues culturally.

One potential answer to the Fermi paradox is that there isn't one. Life is common, intelligent life is common, and occasionally something stops by. Of course "then why do they not land in the middle of a city?" But turn that around: why would they? It would place both them and us at risk. I can think of many rational reasons not to.

Edit: not arguing it is so, just thst it is possible. The more extrasolar planets in habitable zones we find, the less I think we should laugh.
Name (todo) is pretty funny
I don't think the website is marketing the phone correctly. It should be really telling my I would want this phone over others.
Your Lead Architect Doesn't Really Understand Cloud
I second Mr. Rippetoe's work. Starting Strength is a great book for those learning to lift. The technical detail he goes into is lost on a lot of people, but I really enjoyed how thorough he was.
This article is flawed.

It seems to revolve around the fact that 'people commuting to work are more dangerous than 1 car stopping on the freeway'.

The article then proceeds to explain why this is so:

> 'No human is a perfect driver. Every time we get into our cars, instead of cycling or taking public transportation, we add risk to those around us.'

> 'We often see cars on the side of the road. Few accidents are caused by such cars. Sure, they add risk, but so do people abruptly changing lanes.'

The problem with this is that, obviously, the act of stopping the car in the middle of traffic needs to be _added_ to the risk that the security researchers involved have been generating the whole year round. Instead the author seems to compare the security risk of this incident with the risk an average driver generates in a whole year.

And even if it didn't the author's example is also a fallacy of relative privation. The fact that other things are more risky than stopping a car on the freeway, does not mean that it is not dangerous.

Pretty ironic that the author fails in his own analysis while talking about 'proper "risk analysis"'.
I wouldn't diss puppetry too much, even though there are reasons to move beyond it.

For instance, IBM Watson started life as a television performer and still is behind the scene in IBM's TV ads. So far as presentation of self and other things that will help people relate to an A.I. it is not bad to think of the A.I. as an actor and the people developing it as writers, directors, etc.
This has always been one of my favorites. I love it all over again every time I read it! So creative -- and hilarious!
It's hard to take anything Krugman writes seriously. All his writing is so intertwined with his politics It's impossible to sort the factually sound parts from the rest and he has a track record of saying some truly wrong things with great conviction.
I would argue that Apple creates products with "just enough" functionality.

It took them decades to get around to letting users resize a window properly. Their maps product was steering people into lakes. They sell a computer that looks like a trash can. I mean, there are plenty of examples to show Apple doing things improperly.

Normal people buy Apple because it's a status symbol, hackers buy Apple because it's Unix and we all know the deal with graphics designers. If it weren't Unix though, nobody here would be using an Apple computer and they'd probably be making fun of how annoying OS X is (well, they still do that but hey, it's Unix!).
Hey HN,

After cutting the cord I was sick of having to decide what to watch whenever I flipped the TV on, instead of sitting back and letting it play like cable does.

This side project of mine auto-generates channels and redirects your browser to the next show's URL when the last show ends. That way you can leave the TV on while cooking, or just sit back on the couch and relax without having to grab the mouse and make decisions every twenty minutes.

Hope you like it.
You're welcome :) Glad to be of service.
An inability to quantify risk is attributing a skill set to an industry which is probably not responsible for quantifying risk. Infosec researchers should only be beholden to identifying and detailing risks. There are infosec subsets that require better skills to identify risks, but those subsets are the one's more responsible for quantifying risk in an appropriate manner not the ENTIRE industry.

Quantifying risk is a very difficult endeavor to do properly so any measure of it is done from the security researchers biased perspective. Yes infosec researchers seem to want attention for their work this is often because there is not near enough attention paid to their work. Actuarial science is an entire professional field specifically tasked with quantifying risk, at least from an insurance perspective.

The inferred statement, at least in the title, is that not only do infosec researchers now have to stay up on crypto, assembly, js[buzzword] framework and on and on, but now they must also become actuarial scientists. As a neophyte in the industry I'm having trouble getting caught up to a static point let alone that the static point is a moving and rapidly accelerating target and not in my favor. Adding to this unachievable standard I now must study and become at least somewhat proficient in actuarial sciences is maddening!
Where can I find an app like this?
My Mac is only connected to Gmail to sync contacts, but when I authenticate with Google, mail is in the list of permissions. Now I'm worried this could happen to me, even though I don't have mail checked.