skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
That was a case of not reading the link rather than asserting meaninglessness. The abstract makes clear that deep learning as an umbrella term would even fit RG, a completely unrelated concept from physics.
He accepted that ads were discriminatory. His original paper mentions job ads. His claim was about signs in windows or on buildings.

The fact that he accepts the ads were real makes his claim that Irish were delusionally propagating a myth of oppression even harder to understand.
The F-35 could be the best solution to the complex problem (of making a joint stealth fighter with stovl). No one is arguing it could be done much better, but right from the start it should have been obvious that it's a problem without a good solution at all. The problem just shouldn't have been solved!

It should have been two (or even three) different airframes sharing engines, electronics.

Some craft wouldn't need full stealth, some wouldn't need stovl. Cramming everything into the same body and adding stealth just made it expensive, heavy, slow and unmaneuverable.
> There are even studies on the subject to prove that there are ‘two kinds of people, those that can program and those that can never learn it no matter how much effort they put into it’

If you're referring to the "The Camel has Two Humps" paper then perhaps you'd like to know that the authors retracted their claim: http://www.eis.mdx.ac.uk/staffpages/r_bornat/papers/camel_hu...
Advanced metaprogramming in C
The Subtle Art of Email Spamming at Work
Goldenkey actually posted

SELECT c,d FROM t WHERE a=(SELECT MAX(a) WHERE b=X from t)

But that post got flagged because he also gave his opinion on the level of understanding the article writer has. The query you posted is actually the one by the article writer.
This is a discussion that happens in a lot of different fields of practice. In medicine, you might have the argument over to what extent chiropractors or naturopaths are physicians; /r/justrolledintotheshop, one of my guilty pleasures, has recurring posts about embarrassing things that shadetrees have done. Right now they're doing the, "hah, car mechanics? Try being a boat mechanic! Hah, boat mechanic? Try being a diesel mechanic! Hah, diesel mechanic?..." It's all pretty light-hearted, one of the reasons that I like that sub, but still, there are similarities.

I get where they're coming from. I've put some effort into teaching programming to other people too: young kids, guys with electronics backgrounds but not software, even a homeless kid. I look at programming as a skill, like dancing, martial arts, or swimming, that can be practiced and improved for anyone that wants to put the time in to it.

But then sometimes I find myself on the other side of the fence, where a project is being made a lot more difficult by someone because, "I know Wordpress, so I'll just handle this complicated not-Wordpress-related hosting issue myself." Or, "my system was acting strange recently, and I saw this thing about hackers on NCIS, so I..."

So that's where I start to have a problem with thinking of spreadsheets as programming. Technically, Jacques is right, it absolutely is. People do hilariously incredible things with Excel -- even flight simulators! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmlqgQidXtk) But it's also not the same as developing an api or wrangling some other more advanced project, and when the people you're working with understand programming to be as difficult as a spreadsheet, it can make for some hopeless no-win situations.

At least in martial arts, if you decide to spar with somebody that's a lot more advanced than you, you'll learn your mistake pretty quickly. If you practice swimming in a backyard pool and then decide to have a go at the ocean, you'll have a pretty sobering experience if you're lucky. But in software, it's possible to muddle along for quite a long time, making a really expensive mess, before you realize that you're in over your head. (Which probably most of us have done at some point.)
Why has Quora eliminated the promote option?
Are you describing jobs or activities?

As an example of what I mean, the word 'mathematician' usually refers to someone who works as an academic in a University department and teaches advanced mathematics and who contributes research. This is hard, requires considerable focus and dedication.

Most people in societies with good educational systems can do mental arithmetic, and a majority could learn to apply mathematical results to situations e.g. at work if they needed to. Some countries have invented a special words for this latter kind of maths use - 'numeracy' and 'functional skills' are in use in the UK.

So again the word 'programmer' or its various synonyms covers your case - a 'programmer' helps to produce complex software as part of a team (usually) and spends most of their time on that.

Other people may do tasks that look a bit like the easier bits of programming as a smaller part of their job. OA mentions complex spreadsheets (and wow can they get complex but that is often part of the problem) and I'd go so far as to include a bit of bash, and perhaps a few lines of python to help in administration tasks.

Perhaps it is the last activity that we need a word for?
War against stupidity
Will this fare better than when it was submitted 3 days ago?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9968214

That one was flagged and sank without trace.

http://hnrankings.info/9968214/
They could very easily be profitable if they wanted to slow down their growth. Instead they're investing all their funds back into expansion into new cities and fighting the regulatory battles in order to win the biggest markets - which is exactly what their investors want/need them to do.

Uber is a highly disciplined company. I'd completely expect their new HQ plans to be focused on optimising the company's performance, not extravagance.
> What term should we use for people that can write software?

I don't think there's a need for a word, just as there is no word for a person who can swim (swimmer implies they do it regularly) or a person who can assemble IKEA products.
Tangentially related to this, but I bemoan the fact that there's no portable playlist format. I have various services my music is on, and I wish there existed a playlist format that detailed every piece of metadata you had per song, such as file path, IDv3 tags, AcoustID, etc. That way, I could load the same playlist file on Winamp, Spotify and iTunes and have the songs available in each immediately, even if one was a cloud services and the paths were different in the others.
Bucharest, Romania: CloudFlare's 37th data center
I guess it is easier to downvote and put head in the ground than to argue reasonably on what you found wrong...
They're so doing 2bn overall and with their 20%+ish cut it becomes 450m.
Oh wow, that is amazing. The guy flipped out on anti-depressants and wrote an influential paper that he now disavows. I wasn't expecting that.
There's a difference between well paid and overpaid.
Sorry? How can a taxi service (uber) be running at three times the size of the taxi market?

Is this dodgy accounting, grey market taxi services previously (understating size of market) or has uber genuinely expanded the market by reducing friction?
Hi, as people say, the best is to do a detailed writeup (for your future self, when you want to fix your project a few months down the line and realize your forgot all the pinouts and such...)

For this you have a bunch of options:

Blog: having a blog is great, and that would be my first recommendation. Set up any kind of blog (roll your own, or Tumblr/Blogspot/Wordpress/Github pages...). This definitely have a long term benefit, and you are pretty much independent of any platform. An example, here are the maker projects from my blog: https://gergely.imreh.net/blog/category/maker/

Instructables: It's pretty good for sharing projects, especially hands-on stuff, even smaller, bite-sized instructions of a particular thing you did, or full projects. http://www.instructables.com

Hackster: One of the newer platforms, it's great to see that it's aimed at hardware, so you can see for example "what other things people made with Arduino?" or any other platform. This looks like more of a place for detailed project, and besides your blog, this could be a good place for showing off your learning, and learn from others (they strongly encourage sharing schematics & code too, not just description) http://www.hackster.io/

Hackaday.io: this could probably be a very inspiring environment. A lot of projects are shared there, can get other people to collaborate on something you are making, can see a lot of really hard-core designs - perfect to learn from!! https://hackaday.io

I'm sure there are more than these, I kinda use these ones, for personal projects, for things that we do at our local hackerspace, and for work as well (an embedded hardware company).

Good luck, and have a great time!
The list tops with profession which are all blue collar jobs. Midwifes had highest with 99.7% majority, following with dentist nurses and floor carpenters each having above the 99% line. After that we got motor mechanics, thin-metal worker and nurses for children hospitals which are 99%, 99%, and 98% respectively.

If we only look at CEO/president professions in different industries, the highest majority was in CEO for minor construction with 96% majority, followed by CEO for electric installation at 92% and CEO for health and child care at 84%. Badger, Badger, and Squirrel respectively.
16 Interesting facts about fundraising
There is a binary test for a programmer: someone with basic proficiency in a Turing-complete language. I like this answer on SO about what that is:

https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/132385/what-...

> In general, for an imperative language to be Turing-complete, it needs:

1. A form of conditional repetition or conditional jump (e.g., while, if+goto)

2. A way to read and write some form of storage (e.g., variables, tape)

For a lambda-calculus–based functional language to be TC, it needs:

1. The ability to abstract functions over arguments (e.g., lambda abstraction, quotation)

2. The ability to apply functions to arguments (e.g., reduction)

--

Note that you can be a programmer without ever having touched a computer, people have been coming up with algorithms and integrating them into systems for ages.
Anything that comes out to $thousands? Most people wouldn't want to risk their own money like this.
Well, playing Devil's advocate, is the "technical" in "technical founder" a description of the person, or of the role?

I mean, if she starts a tech company with someone, what will she be doing all day? It seems to me that designing the company's website, while doubtless a technical task, would only take a small section of her time. If she does non-technical stuff the rest of the time, is she really filling the role of a technical founder?

This isn't a slight at her, just a difference in what we understand the "technical" to mean. I'm not sure I'd consider even Linus Torvalds a "technical founder" if his role involved almost no programming.
I'm sorry to disagree but you're wrong. There are better programmers than I, that no matter how hard I work I will never be as good as. Not everyone can be a Mozart or Mozart wouldn't be special.
Looks rather old to me
That's why I love Monkey Island so much. You can't do anything wrong so that it becomes impossible to finish the game, and you can't (really) die. Although it is possible to "die" and get the "credits" or a "load old save" screen, you come back to live through some miracle (like the rubber tree).
Linux Gaming on Fire in July
Do we need a C++ compiler that allows only a subset of the C++ standards?
The weight option has lots of moving parts under tension from about 10kg of weight hanging off the mechanism. That's going to present its own durability problems, and the parts are going to be a lot harder to obtain and fit than a new battery.
The myth of bad treatment of returning Vietnam vets is something you see in the movies but apparently didn't really happen much:
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/press_box/20...
So you're saying that someone writing a small self-contained script is a programmer, while someone who constructs a complex, multi-layered spreadsheet with complex functions, graphs and formatting isn't?
Microsoft's Edge team received a congratulatory cake from the Google Chrome team
I can't put a figure on it now because I believe there would be different packages for different service contents. The bottom line is, I will pay.
http://wp.me/p5sIGP-kK
You do realize that an F-16 mission is flown by 1 pilot, and a drone mission is flown by 3-5 staff? It's not just manned flight it's 3-5x more manned than conventional craft, just from the ground.
FFmpeg team lead Michael Niedermayer resigns
Trans Pacific Partnership talks fail in face of NZ, Canada dairy clash
It works the other way too. If instead of thinking of yourself as a programmer you think: "I solve problems" You can broaden your reach. There was a time when I was reluctant to work on something because I couldn't use C++ !
The animated logo immediately caught my attention. Kudos to Ken, the illustrator [1]. Great portfolio.

[1] http://cargocollective.com/kensamonte/
EAngel: Having a Personal Proofreader for Your Emails
Protect your business from online state-sponsored threats with UK VPN
I'm guessing you probably don't work in Health Care. Or if you do, you don't work at the level of policy or population health.

The issue with implementing Eugenics in certain populations... is that suspicion of Health Care workers is abnormally high in those populations. I'm not talking about the mentally ill, or the deficient. But certain ethnic populations harbor DEEP suspicions of medical professionals and the medical industry in general. So, over time, it's become hard to get those populations to do even those things that really are objectively "good" for their health. Let alone implement a Eugenics effort.

The problem is social... not technological. We have had cheap, and effective technology to keep people from getting pregnant for decades. How do you get people to use it??? If you had ever worked in health care, you would realize this is not so simple a question to answer. You have to get people to trust you. That's what Buffet should have spent his money on. Getting certain populations to trust medical professionals.

All Liletta is... is yet another birth control device. We have those already. How do you get people to use them??? I mean forget Liletta. How do you get people to use ANY of them ???? The patch? Implants? The pill? ANYTHING?

If Eugenics was the goal, the money was wasted. Because what you need for Eugenics... is cooperation. And, right now, you just don't have that from certain populations.

Now... if you could FORCE them to use birth control... then you'd be on to something. But that's already been tried... with Norplant. And it turns out that forcing them doesn't really work either.
> Former? Well, he resigned today, but this blog seems quite old.

In context he may consider the vote to keep Michael Niedermayer as team lead a farce. Several of the voters mentioned that they only voted for him to enjoy the resulting drama.

> This is a feature, not a bug. Unfair competition? Piggy backing? You are developing an open source project.

There is hate between the projects. libav was (iirc) started with the intent to be ffmpeg done right, something that is hard to show when the ffmpeg maintainers can simply copy paste every improvement until libav collapses from lack of support/donations.

Not going to take a side in this either, there seemed to be a need to grow up in both groups.
I'm a bit surprised they decoded json on the main thread...
It's not about being a dick and discouraging people who want to learn programming but they should know in what they are getting into: programming is hard and the learning process is a long road of many years.

Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years
http://norvig.com/21-days.html

with that wonderful quote
"Bad programming is easy. Idiots can learn it in 21 days, even if they are dummies."
I use it to find my raspberrypi IP address
If you will learn NLP as a side effect, I would avoid the book as a plague. If
the author puts such a big lie as NLP, who knows what else is false in the
book?
If Go's overriding focus is speed then why have a garbage collector ? Or write the compiler in Go ?

Or do you think that just maybe using speed as a reason not to do something is a bit of a cop out. Especially without any benchmarks to back it up.
Yeah, Ken is very talented. I'll extend your appreciation.
Colonizing Mars would advance our technology far enough to give us confidence to research forward into colonizing beyond our solar system. Which is arguably the next major important developmental steps as a species.
Not Sierra, but I accidentally bought the EGA version of Monkey Island despite having a VGA card (I didn't realise there were separate versions and only saw the sticker on the side when I got home), but they did a really nice job on the EGA version:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B0BX6n1CUAARP_S.jpg
Formal verification is incredibly brittle WRT requirement changes (one of the sources of problems mentioned in the article). There are compromises, of course; eg. a small, verified answer-checker, which we can use to select correct answers from a collection of unverified implementations.
The difference being that programming is not very competitive. You can have a very successful programming career without being or, more importantly, being considered a good programmer.
Seems there are some fundamental but overlooked assumptions running through these comment threads, the stance that companies "should" pay higher salaries to workers who create more value for the company being one. The assumption is that the company, or its management, is like a parent that must treat each of its children equally. Why should this be the case? Who says a company should be a full-fledged meritocracy? If you work for me and I wish to pay your colleague more money than you, even though you produce more, why shouldn't I? I may have good reason to. Your colleague, I may think, simply needs the money more. Of course I understand you might choose to leave. I may even feel that would be best for you, that you have more to offer the world than you'll be able to give it in your current role. At any rate, you're free to make your life choices, including where you work. I'm free to make my life choices, including how I run my company. CEOs are not moms or dads.

A second assumption is that companies "should" reward people who have invested in educating themselves and cultivating valuable skills. You're in danger if you think like this. Companies pay good money for such knowledge and skills usually because they need to, not because they "should". That is why most will ask you to tell them your salary expectations when you apply, rather than tell you up front what they are willing to pay you. By letting you speak first, they may find you're willing to accept a less-than-market rate.
Bill Gates: Ctrl+Alt+Del was a mistake (2013)
Her replies display an impressive amount of maturity, and her style is perfect.

She'll go places.
Ask HN: What would you like to see in a booklet helping programmers get fitter?
I'm Andrei, the man behind www.ProgrammerFitness.com. Having worked with tens of customers in the past year to help them lose weight and lead a healthier lifestyle, I want to write a booklet about what I've learned so far.

What would you like to see in it?

I'm frustrated by the fact that there is only generic advice floating around, that assumes we all have a 9-to-5 schedule and time to do certain daily routines. I want to offer solutions for hackers instead!
I was quite surprised my submission wasn't already in HN. Hopefully the link will spark an interesting discussion.
The Chinese 5gen we don't even know what it's for. It's not stealthy like the F-35, only from the front.
The Russian 5gen (T-50) looks like what the F-35 would have looked like if it was made as a 5gen fighter for the USAF without the stovl crap bolted on. As such it can get a huge energy/payload/maneuverability advantage over the F-35, like the F-22. In any case, the F-35 might run into problems when pitched against 4.5gen or 5gen craft, if the battle isn't decided at long range before the F-35 is detected. A large part of the problem lies in the payload capacity; if you face an adversary carrying 2-4 times as many bvr missiles per craft you are at a huge disadvantage.
I hate to say it, but please don't feed the troll.
> maybe you don't want to accept that there are good reasons against

I'm a scientist. Before I accept something I need to see it first. I have not seen a single non-straw-man argument against macros yet. Not a single one. Either vague scaremongering without any specifics, or attacks on something that is totally unrelated to the macros.

> Things of great power are almost always dangerous.

Macros combined with the proper discipline are by orders of magnitude less dangerous than pretty much any other programming practice in existence. That's the whole point - our aim as engineers is to eliminate complexity. Macros are the ultimate way of doing so.

> So unless D or Rust have macros, you end up with Julia and Clojure.

Rust got proper, Lisp-style macros. D metaprogramming is Turing-complete, but yes, quite a bit behind, now even less powerful than the modern C++.

> C, PL/I, Common Lisp, SAS, M4, Forth

Of this list, only CL and Forth had proper macros.

> that collectively overweight the advantages of macros.

Nothing can overweight the infinite (literally) list of advantages of macros. With macros, every single semantic property you can imagine is available to you at no cost. Without macros - only the limited set of things that the language designers decided to give you.
Since aesthetics are subjective, trying to sell the merits of a language on beauty rather than capability wouldn't mean a whole lot. As with "easy" vs "simple".
Amazon Fresh is _explicitly_ same-day.
Given TBL is involved (who helped start the Open Data Institute in the UK) I would have thought they'd be pretty much 100% open by default. I guess not.
BTW, this is from 2013, and mentioned in the Wikipedia article on "Control-Alt-Delete".

> Later in an interview, Bradley said he didn't understand why Gates and Microsoft decided to make it a login feature, adding that "I guess it made sense for them."

I thought it was because it's a secure attention sequence to prevent login spoofing, since that cannot be emulated software in userland. Certainly the WP page suggests that.
> uber genuinely expanded the market by reducing friction?

Absolutely, particularly in places like SF (where getting a cab was a giant hassle and very unreliable). By making on-demand transportation viable in way more places, Uber has definitely expanded the market. There are tons of times and places where I never would have tried to get a cab but happily order an Uber.
Some of the claims. From the abstract:

I continue to believe, however, that Dehnadi had uncovered
the first evidence of an important phenomenon in programming
learners. Later research seems to confirm that belief.
Show HN: Historian, Generate “Release Notes” in 5 Seconds
I agree strongly with Jacques Mattheij. Part of the programmer superiority (especially HN readers) syndrome is driven by fear; they consider themselves special and enlightened and "better" than others, and fear that teaching anyone to be a programmer will undermine their value.

I have seen it repeated multiple times here, in the context of the value of "unskilled" labour, that you are not adding any value if you are digging up a ditch and working hard to fill it over and over again. The automatic assumption is that programmers are providing more value. However, if you are writing hello world (or a slightly more complex program) in a new cool shiny language over and over again, then you are not adding any value just like any other labourer.
Such a great answer.
Homejoy could'v done a better job, but how were you being fair to them?