skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It has really gotten bad. It's all a desperate grasp for ever shrinking ad dollars. Users get wise to the tactics and develop coping behaviors. You can track our eye movements and see we don't ever once even look at the common areas where ads lie. Popup boxes get closed in less than a second, with many people not even registering that it ever opened [0]. I've personally taken to sliding my cursor past the top edge of the page to see if the "subscribe to our mailing list" dialog appears, in some cases bailing on the article completely just because it's not valuable enough to me to bother after that affront. Major advertisers are swooning over 0.5% click through rates! That's not just random chance, that's a set of users highly-trained in the art of dodging ads, with an extremely-low-but-not-yet-zero failure rate!

Advertising is dead. Good riddance.

[0] Which has also killed the modal informational dialog in desktop applications. I've ran training sessions for internal enterprise software and the users literally could not remember there was a dialog mere seconds after dismissing it.
Autodesk to launch its own game engine
> After a few months I realized I was unemployable and set out to change it.

First, as 20 something I can't imagine how hard it must be to wake up with the realization that you no longer have a job. Second, I think you deserve some real credit for 1. identifying that you were unemployable and 2. fixing it.

However, the real trick is identifying when you're unemployable (or even starting to get close to it) before you're unemployed. This is a game - and one that you'll never really win. But like all games: you keep playing - you get better. The trouble lies in that this is a game in which you need to be ahead of the gamemaster (that is - current and future employers).

> I do think if I found myself unemployable again I could repeat...

I want to stop you right there. I think your objective from here out is to make sure you never find yourself unemployable again - rather than waiting and/or hoping it doesn't happen.

> almost any kind of expertise in a major JavaScript framework like Angular, Ember, or React/Flux might get you a remote job fairly easily

These are valuable skills and expertise to have - and they will land you a job - but don't let it make you a one tricky pony - as that's a fast-track ticket to unemployment. I think few of these front-end frameworks will be here for the long-haul.

If I were in your shoes (of course I'm not in your shoes - it's 100% your choice) I would take what you've developed so far and start to dive into the fundamentals and then get the expertise.

For example: get to know the architectures of these frameworks: analyze and criticize them, attempt to improve them if you can; learn design patterns and identify the anti-patterns (important !); learn your algorithms - as it is these features that make you a valuable professional in the long run. Not just another PHP/JavaScript/ColdFusion dev.

Then you can wade in deeper and build up deep full-stack expertise. You could think about:

"Oh how can I optimize view rendering in Angular?"
"How can I solve head-of-line blocking when using web sockets?"
"What is the optimal compression algorithm in order to serve JavaScript files for mobile devices?"

I can't imagine a huge number of people think about how to solve these challenges - but I would bet that a lot of people face them.

All the other stuff is just tools to enable you to apply your expertise easier and faster.
The big problem with this is oversupply of the grid. While Denmark has the ability to export to Norway, Sweden and Germany (amongst others) it's likely wind production will be at high levels in neighbouring countries. Germany often has a huge oversupply of energy, with electricity prices turning negative.
Best Meme Generator Android App: Instameme
I don't think that's true at all. SJW has no more content than "hairy man-hater". It's just an insult that can be thrown around at any feminist without any justification.

It's not like "TERF" or "anti-sex-worker" or other disparaging terms that nonetheless have specific meaning. There's simply no pattern to who gets called a SJW, other than that they pissed off gamergaters or MRAs.
Importing food or nutritional supplements into the EU is difficult because the EU still has a very protective agricultural policy. You might have to look at competitors such as mymana.
Just grind some nootropics into your Soylent to turn it into a Smart Soylent 3000™
I’ve been using Mint for several years. But there actually was a point two years ago where I got concerned about them having all my credentials. I deleted my account and changed all my passwords.

Fast-forward a few months later and I’m using them again. Whatever concerns I had about data security did not outweigh having immediate information to all my accounts and reports that would take me too long to generate myself. I don’t worry so much about Mint abusing my data as someone hacking their services. I wouldn’t have the same trust level with a startup or smaller company though.
Amazon Aurora Performance, as a NoSQL Store
I saw Greg Nichols give a talk about this at the UICC [0] this year. It was a very entertaining talk covering the business and technical aspects of this project.

From the start the art team on Big Hero 6 wanted to make a really big movie. They envisioned those big sweeping shots of San Fransokyo that made the technical folks shudder. They have a massive rendering farm at their disposal but still probably wouldn't be able to render all the shots in time for the release; for one reason, because the art folks kept making changes, and for another, because they contain so many entities. A handful of folks on the rendering team built a proof-of-concept renderer with support for the global-illumination look they wanted while also being able to handle the massive scale.

As the linked article mentions, the solution was to optimize a massively-parallel algorithm by finding coherent rays that can be efficiently calculated together. It's a batch method: start casting a bunch of rays, identify similar rays and group them, calculate collisions for each group, cast reflected rays, identify similar rays and group them, etc. What I like about it conceptually is that in a way it treats light as a field rather than as individual directed rays.

Their initial tests were rendering an infinite plane of generated buildings. The dystopian metropolis was mesmerizing, and I think Disney would be wise to come up with some dark plot line to set there. Anyway, someone way at the top (the director or art director I think) saw the proof-of-concept renderings and decided that it was the perfect tool to attain their vision of this movie, which, by the way, has a hard release date something like three months away.

So they proceeded to turn the proof-of-concept into a production-grade renderer in time to render all the frames and save the movie. And somehow they pulled it off, they released a really beautiful movie, and they wrote a paper about it, too.

[0]: http://www.acm.uiowa.edu/uicc/speakers.html#nichols
Errors and exceptions in Haskell
Why do you think you need TDD to write logical and tight code? It's one way, but there are less drastic ways to the same ends.
Exactly and for the subscription model to work provide quality content.
That's a good point, the value of the comments on articles is often >> the value of the article itself.
Used wakatime via phpstorm. Interesting product.
Google ad networks frequently display ads that are designed to trick you into installing malware. That is true for both the text only Adwords ads you get in search results [1], and the display ads Google runs on other sites[2].

For many years Adwords was probably the biggest risk to people setting up a new computer and wanting to download things like Firefox.

When supposedly the best and most responsible sector of the online advertising market was prepared to profit from malware distribution for years then it's no wonder the entire industry has a reputation in the gutter.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8879229

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9870479
I'm the exact opposite -- have a shitty degree (that I'm almost a bit embarrassed about) so I leave it out of my resume. With 10+ years of solid experience I compress my resume pretty tight to fit it into 2 pages but just leave out my degree. Most people don't care and I don't have trouble getting a new job (and no I am not a 20's something hipster programmer, whatever that is).

A degree doesn't show how smart you are, it shows you have the ability to get things done (or at least show up and do your work). But guess what? So does shipping real products.

Best of luck, UP. You seem like a smart guy so keep up the perseverance and get more stuff on that resume!
Lost in this debate, for me, is whether online ads actually work and are worth the money. My technical experience with online ads is that it's very difficult to equate the ads with increased sales unless you have a very small sample size.

I've long suspected that online ads are actually more of a scam than anything else. Because you can't easily tie the expenditure to a benefit that ad sellers and hosters (Facebook, I'm looking at you) can promote them without having to back it up with quantifiable results. And that has led to a weird "ad ecosystem" which exists for its own purpose, not for actually trying to sell products (cause it doesn't actually work for that). I think the people most worried about the ad blockers are those that make their money from that ecosystem.
http://getpocketbook.com is not a feed/api but offers a similar service of what Mint does.
I believe they're keeping the powdered option.
Oh.. I thought he was going to go on an argument that we need to implement basic income as a method for improving efficiency when his second paragraph included an author who put herself into the one percent by being creative and making a product while being unemployed and on socialist welfare and that by removing a lot of what is effectively the "chaff" of the capitalist workforce the workforce that wants to be part of the workforce improves overall.

I guess since he also included an businessman known for his abhorrent disdain for socialism that he flippantly crams his vehicles into spots designated for people with disabilities, I should have realized the final outcome would be an argument that extreme wealth creates utilitarianism and is more efficient then trying to broaden wealth.

Reminds me of the decay of the Roman empire in the 400's and how the rich started abstaining from the government and society that tried to represent and assist everyone to create micro-communities in their villas and start up the process of feudalism. What shall we call our new era of a society that is now 90% capital deprived and rising? Feudalism 2.0? Feudl.ism? Feu.dl?
It's like going to the stand and asking for a magazine. You have it given to you for free. Now it's yours, and you can do whatever you want with it, including giving it to a 3-year-old child to cut out the ads and throw them in a bin, so that you don't have to ever see them. It's yours, you have a right.

Giving away the magazine for free was the choice of the person at the stand. If they want to profit, they have various means to do this. Ads are one way. Asking you for money when you ask for the magazine is another.
C++ User Group Meetings in August
JS will probably mess up my kid's mind as much as ruby.

My choices for intro programming language would probably be Haskell and Coffeescript - both has a simple but coherent set of concepts and a straightforward syntax designed around those concepts.
Having tried soylent in powder form before, I came to the conclusion that on the 3D scales of convenience, taste, and price, it just wasn't far enough in the desirable region (low price, high convenience, and good taste) that I was ready to buy any more of it.

With Soylent 2.0, that seems to have changed: it's more convenient (no more mixing needed) EDIT: but higher-priced. I'm looking forward to trying it again (not until it's generally available, though). Hopefully the taste has improved, as well.
Perhaps the centralization is a necessary function of technological progress. Once Web 2.0 was a thing, everybody had comment sections. Now the dial is being turned back, and comments sections are beginning to be seen as tacky.

In some ways, the web is already decentralizing, or at least moving away from monolithic control by social networks. For younger people, Facebook is basically dead and snapchat does the job.

I doubt we will see significant technological innovation in the next 20 years that matches the scale of interactivity the web brought for the first 20. Maybe VR will be that next step, but even that won't likely change the dynamics of casual web browsing in between work, for example.

So in short, I think that since we've developed all the basics, the state of the web will start to resemble fashion, rather than technological progress.
What worries me is that soylent is 20% based on soy. Some studies indicate that eating a heavily soy based diet leads to increased estrogen levels. Which can have negative side effects regardless of your gender. [0]: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3074428/ [1]: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0303720711...
Platform  Rough Draft Ventures
Does that report mention consumption anywhere?
This article is about consumption, not production, so it doesn't really make sense to compare this report to the article.
From Landscaper to Web Developer: How I Landed My First Web Development Job
Well, in Germany we call the system we're using 'social market economy' and it does not aspire to be pure capitalism.
> the inability to control spam

Actually, I think that could have been fixed. If the originating site signed a message, and the each relaying site signed it, then one would be able to calculate a reputation score for sites. Spammy originating sites (or originating domains pretending to be relaying sites) would be easily identifiable, and thus blockable.
Seconded! Inoreader is completely free to use (but there are reasonably priced upgrades if you want to support them), and offers web-based and app-based reading.

I tried several RSS readers after Google Reader closed, and Inoreader is the one I've stuck with.
NY Times creates all their own content. HBO in comparison creates a tiny fraction of their content and licenses other companies content for rebroadcast.
Scotland does pretty well with regards to renewables with ~49.8% of energy consumption sourced from renewable sources (17.1k GWh wind/hydro out of 19k GWh total renewables).

This puts wind and hydro at around 42%.

https://www.scottishrenewables.com/sectors/renewables-in-num...

http://www.gov.scot/Resource/0048/00480365.pdf
This comment rubs me in the wrong way.

Content creators aren't "putting it up for free" - they're putting it up with ads attached. They're certainly not "throwing it over your fence." They're not injecting their articles into your browser, you're going to a URL to request them. You seek the content out.

So, you go to a site, and download all of the content. That is what the company offered. Some of that is what allowed the company to create the content. You elect to not display that part using your client. I suppose that's your prerogative, but don't pretend like you're the victim in this.

And also don't pretend like it's the company's fault for not choosing your preferred business model. You don't get to choose other companies' business models for them - you can either accept or reject what they offer. The reason they're not on a subscription business model is probably because that wouldn't be sustainable for 99% of the sites you use.
Reddit is still losing money.
The no-injury situation is probably more beneficial to males in a male vs female matchup indeed. Even the strongest male fighters seem to have a serious problem with getting hit by groin strikes, while I haven't seen any targets on females of comparable weakness. There's of course eye gouging, but that goes both ways and isn't as easy to execute.
Because Floyd is a douche who beats women up and this would be one woman that would most likely kick his butt. I am talking about a one-on-one scenario. I know its juvenile but I would personally get a thrill out of seeing Floyd beaten up by a woman.
Preliminary proposal to add emoji characters for food allergens [pdf]
In the current world of abundance, advertising is crucial to content and product producers. Let's say you make an application, how do you sell it if nobody knows about it? You make a nifty product, how do you make people know it exists? Advertising, in principle, is good, the way it is done currently on the Web is awful.
Be advised that the most relevant credential for this author is that he was the top economic advisor to the administration of George W. Bush. Defending the 1% is literally what he does for a living.
Where do you live and what is your skill set? If you know PHP, .Net or Java, look for jobs in the Washington, DC, area. There are plenty.
I have a similar impression. Moreover, I think people are actually seriously fooling themselves and each other. There's lot of tracking being done, lots of people looking at "metrics", but when I think about the statistics education of majority of people (including some professional "social media marketers" I know) I come to the conclusion that they don't understand what they're doing and can prove any conclusion they want with the numbers. All those metrics only help people to bullshit themselves and each other.
Upgrading my 4k bike to a 10k bike?
for me the issue is cost, why does the 12 pack cost more than $6 + shipping? Seems like tremendous markup.
Agreed. To extend the analogy though the customer sees the free one next to a quality paid one, chooses the free one and then complains about it having ads in it.

At the end of the day, everyone wants a great experience for nothing. It's not possible.
You are comparing apples to oranges. Semantic HTML is important because it is a publicly defined semantics and various consumers and user agents are programmed against this semantics. Semantics in class-names, the choice of inline styles vs style sheet etc. are purely for maintainability, e.g. you don't reduce accessibility for anybody if don't use semantic class names, at worst you make it more difficult for yourself, but that might depend on your workflow etc.
It's not uncommon for the price of exported danish electricity to turn negative either.
Beware of double-counting pumped storage.
They have some pretty cool papers on there, but the few landmark papers that Pixar published were all published in the 80s.

Here is a better source for papers (SIGGRAPH, Eurographics and EGSR have the best papers on rendering):

http://kesen.realtimerendering.com/

The Hyperion renderer was made by Disney, not Pixar by the way. Pixar only uses their own RenderMan renderer. Disney uses a mix of Hyperion and RenderMan, as Hyperion is not useable for test renders, as it can take up to 15 minutes until a pixel will appear on the screen, as they trace millions of rays at the same time.
Hell, I wish everyone would provide a nice API.
I would argue that most vegan diets are unhealthy. You have to work damned hard to get the same nutrients that are readily available in animal products.
> As the linked article mentions, the solution was to optimize a massively-parallel algorithm by finding coherent rays that can be efficiently calculated together. It's a batch method: start casting a bunch of rays, identify similar rays and group them, calculate collisions for each group, cast reflected rays, identify similar rays and group them, etc. What I like about it conceptually is that in a way it treats light as a field rather than as individual directed rays.

How does this differ from "coherent ray tracing" and "ray packets", like people have been doing the last 15 years?

(e.g. "Interactive Rendering with Coherent Ray-Tracing" by Wald et al.: http://www.sci.utah.edu/~wald/Publications/2001/CRT/CRT.pdf)
Developers should realise that when you come to an interview the interviewer isn't looking to dismiss you because you can't recite Knuth. For the vast majority of jobs they are desperate for you to be competent having just interviewed 5 incompetent people. I've worked as a programmer for 3 very good paying companies over 15 years and none of them could get enough good developers.
well, let's look at someplace where ads truly work well.

fashion print magazines. buy a vogue and look at the ads. hard to tell apart from the content, glossy, relevant, beautiful. they make up at least 70% of the whole magazine.

i like gruber's ad system on DF, one of the few sites that seem to follow a user/reader centric approach. first you ensure the eyeballs, THEN you show the ads, always paranoid to piss off your readership.

mobile safari adblock in ios9 will hopefully bring movement into this ad game.
I see this as a result of two problems:

1: We expect everything to be perfectly packaged and ready to go, including people. We aren't interested in investing in people. A cog is a cog.

2: Older programmers are more expensive (see: skilled), and are more likely to have families or obligations that prevent their hustle (see: working bullshit hours for free).
I've been running it for years and heartily recommend it. Both the web and android clients are very robust. The killer feature for me is the ability to share arbitrary content to your own public feed provided by the ttrss instance. (https://tt-rss.org/gitlab/fox/tt-rss/wikis/ShareAnything)

I'd recommend using Postgres as opposed to Mysql, as that is what author specifically recommends (mysql support has been a bit subpar)
Increasing Your JavaScript Efficiency with Stubs, Improving Tests in the Process
[edit: I should bracket this with something about how when I am talking about OOP languages here, I was not thinking about Smalltalk]

What I was getting at is that Object Oriented Programming Languages are typically presented in "popular culture" as something discrete and concrete: that C++ is as discontinuous with Scheme as walruses are with penguins. And by this I'm not making a beeline for the Turning tarpit because we are talking about the same abstraction: dispatch.

I suppose that's why I haven't ever found object oriented programming fit quite right into the wrinkles in my cerebrum. I'm still trying force fitting the world into a model based on the computational idiom of dispatch...it's selecting an implementation mechanism as the first step. Object oriented programming feels to me like it is primarily an abstraction about computers not the world...and the simpler abstraction of dispatch works better for me because it is simply simpler.
Skipping breakfast and keeping your insulin levels low for a couple more hours is probably preferable to ingesting a bunch of cheap oils and flours (soylent is only a slight upgrade to breakfast cereal, imo)
As far as I can tell it measures the number of hours one has spent coding using each language. Does it measure anything else?

I went to the site hoping that it would explain what metrics it is gathering and why those metrics might be useful. It might just be me, but I couldn't find that information.
INTERPOL Is Training Police to Fight Cyber Crime in Darknet – Security Zap
I totally agree with your correction to my analogy, though I do not think it changes the conclusions.

I don't think it's a problem that consumers aren't willing to pay for content. That's literally the description of consumers, to decide what to consume, how to use it, and what they are willing to give in exchange.
I wouldn't call it zealotry, but probably resistance to change.

As with anything new and interesting, it's easy to insert a fictional future scenario that takes away what makes our personal lives rich and enjoyable.

I love to cook but it's all a bit sci-fi and uncomfortable to think that we'll all have our government mandated NutriSludge dispensed twice a day so we can all stop worrying about cooking and work harder.