jkeisling/hacker-news-corpus-2007-2022 huggingface dataset:
This exactly the same for me. Just out of muscle memory, my reptilian brain starts typing Reddit or Hacker News into the URL field in my browser when I'm not paying attention. If I start my day wandering down the hacker news/reddit rabbit hole, I never really get out.

So when I wake up in the morning, literally before I do anything else on my computer, I turn on Self Control (http://visitsteve.com/made/selfcontrol/), which blocks sites that kill my productivity.

I've recently adopted org-mode for emacs, and it has helped immensely. Task #1 everyday: Turn on Self Control for a few hours. The last task everyday: Close all windows and make sure org-mode is greeting me when I wake up with Task #1 for the day.
The hope with a real free market is that you wouldn't have to negotiate in that situation, the prices would already be reasonable.
There's a fundamental flaw with this idea. The existence of multiple participants in the chain of decision making doesn't make it secure and trustworthy. If those participants have little to risk or lose anything by being corrupt, then it doesn't matter how many of them there are, they'll find ways to hack it. You can't just call a judge trustworthy because he's a judge and he's supposed to be honest and uncorrupt. If you ask me, I'd say that judges should probably be even more corrupt, since they don't even risk losing their seat.

In order for trust to work, a price tag should be put on it. That's why it works so great in business: if you give money to Apple and they don't deliver you your iPhone, their reputation would be severely damaged and they might lose a lot of money as a result. With politicians it doesn't work this way, because the maximum they can lose is their seat, and even then they just go and work for some company as a lobbyist.
>Who owns the means of production?

The shareholders and board, primarily.

>What class do I fall in to if my income is below average yet I have significant stock holdings?

Well, you're implying that you have to work for a living or starve, so you're working-class.

>Anyone with a computer, an Internet connection, and the gumption to do so, can send a product to market.

And yet only roughly 0.1% of the population actually lives off anything other than wages.
> Both do automatic text wrapping and reflow it on window resize, which is hard to find on Linux terminals. Also, neither relies on the control key for menu item key equivalents. Copy is Command-C, SIGINT is Control-C.

I actually hadn't noticed this as I usually run things inside of screen, but it seems that there are options[1].

> When you use Linux, do you use key equivalents in the terminal (copy, paste, etc.)? How do you handle the inconsistencies with other apps?

I'll give you that one. This bugged me at first (usually doing Ctrl+Shift+C in Chromium, I've never done Ctrl+C in a terminal inadvertently) so I made an extension that calls me an idiot when I Ctrl+Shift+C in Chromium. That cured it fast.

What I like about Linux is that I haven't found something that can't be done - for example, if this bothered you sufficiently, you could remap Super-c to be copy universally - this[2] seems like it would work. The terminal would possibly need its own override.

[1] http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/24793/looking-for-x-...

[2] http://askubuntu.com/questions/10008/how-to-make-keyboard-wo...
You mean like in multiterm or something? I guess so. In emacs there are always many ways to do things, which is awesome.

You can also open the file and engage auto-revert-mode or auto-revert-mode-tail. In my status bar it shows up as ARev mode.

Also you can bind those to your auto-mode-alist so all .log files get the tail treatment or whatever.

Scrolling can get weird.

Theres some google-able settings for the timeout to revert, default is about a sip of water (a few seconds?) but I guess you could crank it down to 1 second or something.

I like doing this in emacs so its all in the same ecosystem, if I need to cut and paste something weird to test it or put the message into code or even more likely to cut and paste actual error messages into docs or comments, I can do it inside emacs.
I really hope this becomes the next big thing. They seem to understand that a fast language CAN have a nice syntax.
Think about it, syntax is what we (programmers) look at all day long, it's not a detail.
"A vector is a composite quantity that has a magnitude and a direction. If something has a direction component and/or a magnitude component, it can be represented by a vector, and if something is a vector, we can ask for its direction or its magnitude (or both.)"
I honestly thought all those "Share for a chance to win*" buttons were going to scold you for clicking on them, but they're actually serious...
A similar journalistic annoyance is that when articles want to say something is expensive, there are only two values.

"X costs millions."

or

"Y costs billions."
This is a good reminder that tech is about improving people's lives, not the latest NoSQL-Node-React-NextShit-OMGYouDontUseThisYet. Sometimes I need to remind myself.
To this excellent article I would add one fact.

A huge difference between the dot com bubble and now is that Sarbanes-Oxley makes IPOs a lot less appealing. That is the most likely reason why acquisitions and late funding rounds have replaced IPOs. This also means that the amount of money that can pour into a bubble is less than the last time around.

That said, bubbles usually are based a new theory about valuation for some key asset. The echo chamber of people who believe this theory bids up the value of that asset until they collectively do not have the resources to bid it higher. Then when it starts to collapse, and everyone abandons the theory, the bubble pops.

Given that, the growth of valuations is very worrisome. Doubly so since they center around social apps. One of the elements of the last bubble was the widespread belief in Metcalfe's law, that the value of a network scales as the size of the network squared. I was one of several people who came to the conclusion that O(n log(n)) is a better estimate. See http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/networks/metcalfes-law-is... for more on that. Networks were not worth as much as people thought last time.

This time round we're again seeing a belief that social networks (such as the one Facebook owns) are worth a tremendous amount. And this belief persists despite the fact that those networks are regularly being forced to buy newer social networks at high valuations because they can't prevent new entrants from gaining traction in the marketplace. So current valuations seem to be based on a theory which we have fairly direct evidence is wrong.

That fact is my top reason for believing that current valuations will not hold up over time.
Thanks for the feedback Doug

Blockbuster had videos, that did not stop Netflix

What about a fixit AI?
> 3% to Stripe (which is criminally high, but there you go)

Compared to what? I thought Stripe was famous for offering competitive fees.
They are very connected.

Tech bubble burst will trigger real estate bubble burst (lower salaries + unemployment will cause defaults)

and as someone on other thread said:
"Everyone and everything attached to the real estate market starts to freak out that home prices might decline. More panic, more layoffs, more defaults."
Previously, on HN:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4874304
I interviewed with FoundationDB last August or so and got a very paltry offer. On top of that, they wanted me to pay my relocation and cover the cost of the signing bonus clawback. My stock options (had they fully vested at the time of the Apple sale) would have been worth under $14,000. I don't think I missed much.

edit: scratch that, $23 million is the amount they raised, not the amount of their sale. Regardless, unless they sold for 10 figures, I don't have any regrets.
> But what features does JS have that no other language has, other than the ubiquity of the browser as a platform?

That's its only distinguishing or redeeming feature I can see. If you had a free hand to choose, would you ever want JavaScript?
> Driving on a road also blocks other cars from driving on it at the same time.

Except it doesn't, because cars can share the road as long as all the cars keep moving. Of course, if you add too many cars people start to slow down, but that's an issue of the road being to small. This honestly isn't really much of a debatable point because there are lots of freeways that have minimum speed limits, meaning that if a car is blocking the road by going to slow (or stopped), it's breaking the speed limit and thus breaking the law, only for the reason of going to slow. Thus, it is illegal to block the road in such a way. The only times that it would be legal is if it you applied for a permit (Which they didn't do here).

Again, we come back to the library example. Is it legal for people to stand and block others from entering a library? Yes they're legally allowed to stand in-front of the library doors, but at what point does it infringe on the rights of others to use the library and become illegal?

The entire thing reminds me of this quote:

> "The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins."

- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
There's no "wage stagnation" in this industry. Also, for the positions under discussion, no unions to "weaken and destroy". I can't tell if you are a software engineer in the bay area, but as one trust me that there are hundreds of high-tech employers who don't coordinate, and they do spend a lot of effort and money to attract and retain employees.

You know who wasn't part of the alleged cartel? Facebook. Microsoft. Yahoo. Amazon. Oracle. Salesforce. Twitter. Yelp. Autodesk. HP. Cisco. VMWare. AMD. Workday. Electronic Arts. Zynga. Netflix. Etc. Etc. Etc.

Also, no seed- or VC-funded or YC-backed startups of the past 10+ years were part of the cartel. Also, no consulting/contracting shops were part of the cartel.

You seem to be applying some sort of undifferentiated-laborer/factory-floor model to a region/industry where it doesn't apply.

There certainly are market failures; when they happen, they can be studied and quantified. There's no evidence of that here. All we have is angry crusaders with grandiose damage claims, who probably weren't even affected by the no-poaching agreements.
I'm not sure what this article is about. At a minimum it is misguided. I don't think anyone is seriously arguing for abolishing time zones. Also, while zoneinfo is great, it doesn't help with the more serious issues that arise from arcane/archaic timekeeping.

There are several major, common issues with timekeeping that cause huge engineering headaches:

- Frequent or arbitrary changes to time zone standards

- Daylight savings time

- Time zones with fractional hour offsets

- Frequent or arbitrary adjustments to UTC (universal time) in an effort to keep it more astronomically correct

The good things I can imagine happening to timekeeping are:

- Abolish daylight savings time

- Separate universal terrestrial time from "astronomically correct" time, with infrequent synchronizations fixed in time (e.g. once every decade or century)

- Abolish fractional hour offset time zones and encourage countries to consolidate time zones
Now a DARPA program!

https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=236fa83...
Here is an article by a smart person on Vox arguing precisely for the abolishment of Time Zones: http://www.vox.com/2014/8/5/5970767/case-against-time-zones
Having a CERT standard seems to speak poorly of a language. I'm a little surprised Java has one.
Gmail was heavily used by the young educated class. It might not be as fast as QQ mail, but they didn't have to worry about the government (well, their government) spying on them. Otherwise in China there is not even an expectation of privacy, even a small time local government thug can get access to your email.

If the CCP wants to close China from the world, these are great strategies for doing that. Things have definitely slid backwards since 2008.
Area? Population? It's certainly not large.
Thanks for the link, looks quite informative
A jackhammer makes a terrible alarm clock

You should call (646) 252-2670 and complain, that's what the hotline is there for. The project has construction noise limits to adhere to, and contractors tend to ignore them unless their feet are held to the fire.

If anyone's doing a startup involving maps (e.g. google maps or earth), please put in estimation methods for ambient noise in an area.

This is actually a great idea. I'm not a programmer or I'd do it myself, but if anyone wants to give it a shot, you can generate a very rough estimate of ambient noise by using the equation:

Ldn = 22 + 10log10(p)

which gives the day-night average sound level (Ldn) in dBA where p is the population density in people per square mile (there are a number of population density data sources around the net). This figure will be low for areas near transportation sources like highways, rail lines and airports.
Thanks for the support, I just wanted to make sure I'm not stepping out of the line and being weird to think that his deal is weird.
You may want to provide an inline summary of the issues. There's nothing wrong with providing a link to the full version, but providing only the link makes you look self promotional.
Honestly, when it comes to compensation, there is no such thing as "proper financial practice". There's only what you are or aren't willing to accept. If you don't like the deal, turn it down.

That said, if a company gave me a deal like that, I'd say, "Well, if $30K of cash is only worth $20K of equity to you, why should it be worth $30K of equity to me? I'm taking a $30K pay cut to work for you - give me $45K of equity to make up for it (since their equity is apparently worth only 2/3 of its cash value), or the deal's off." If they accept, you've just upped your $60K compensation to $75K. If they don't, well, you probably don't want to work for people that play games like this anyway.
None of the links contain affiliate codes, and the disclaimer at the bottom of the article specifically mentions this:

> I don’t often write about specific products but I think this is a handy tip for startups. I wasn’t asked or paid to write this, or any other post on the blog. And there are no affiliate links.
I think the author is saying they already finished setup fur the other three.
liked the "access granted" and "access denied" popups (triggered by caps lock / alt keys > 3 times)
Beautiful pictures. Would be nice to have more resolutions. E.g., retina Macbook Pro is 2560×1600.
They make plastic "ice cubes" which you can chill and then put in your whiskey (for cooling without any dilution).

Although I wonder if my posting about plastic ice cubes really misses the point of the article.
It's a chicken and egg problem: it's hard to artificially create centers of population density. China is doing it, with mixed results, because they can just relocate people.

It's not as much building new cities, but expanding cities. One of the reasons for Manhattan's "success" as a city is it's physically constrained, so developers build up, so population density increases.

All the development happening in the Seaport area of Boston is a good example. The Fort Point area, just north of the Seaport, was an artist enclave until recently, when people were priced out of the city and buildings started flipping in Fort Point. Now, there are multiple luxury high rises being built on the water, and tech companies are moving into the area.

Artists moving to Detroit will happen, but it will take a lonnnnng time to gentrify the city, just like it took decades to bring NYC from what it was in the 1970s to now.
Records is the thing that any Haskeller will "up-front honestly" tell you is a gripe with the language.
Mostly because the legacy of PHP as a toy project carried forward forever. Here's a great tidbit about why all the original functions have ridiculous, inconsistent naming schemes:

> "Well, there were other factors in play there. htmlspecialchars was a very early function. Back when PHP had less than 100 functions and the function hashing mechanism was strlen(). In order to get a nice hash distribution of function names across the various function name lengths names were picked specifically to make them fit into a specific length bucket. This was circa late 1994 when PHP was a tool just for my own personal use and I wasn't too worried about not being able to remember the few function names."

That's right: Every one of the original function names has a different character length because length was used as a lookup. There are a lot of clowny things like this that have never been stamped out of the language.

Add to that its history of being a beginner language that most of its early adopters sprinkled into HTML and where many people who mayyybe have no business being professional programmers started making a career out of it. This severely undermined PHP's credibility as a language for professionals even though good software can be created in PHP in the right hands.

That all said, I spent about year coding in Hack, and while the parts that still feel like PHP are annoying, it is awesome in so many other ways. Hopefully it either starts to unseat PHP or PHP turns into Hack at some point.
Slides: http://www.slideshare.net/CrossPlatform1/the-medusa-project
exactly! many people dont realize in big companies there are (relatively) very few people that matter. rest are just cogs in the machine. doesnt mean you can grow up from being a cog, but what you say is true.

B wants me badly. My skill set is very niche. B needs me to propel them forward and in a different scenario, thats a great situation to be in. But I am very hesitant of how motivated B is to transform to the next level.
Odd, when I go there in Firefox I can get to the pages but if I click View Demo on any of them (well, I tried the first 3) it still yells at me and tells me that I need Safari.
I've been pining for just such an app for a while now. Nice!
My interpretation is Apple wants to influence what the final standard is going to look like. This is their vision for it which is largely based off the current W3C working draft. What's wrong with that? That's how the process is supposed to work. Apple has a few features not presently in the working draft that they want to see in the final standard. Here's the demo and you can get the WebKit source code to see how it works. The W3C, which Apple is a member of, may ratify it as part of the standard or they may not. I don't think there's any indication it will effect WebKit's ability to follow the final standard.
Really? I never would have learned the math on my own, and liberal arts could cost you $1.50 in library fees. I grew up reading for fun though, perhaps that facet of education is harder for some people?
I hate the way it is done on OS X, too. I can't remember keyboard shortcuts I only use every couple of months.

Usually I use The Gimp for screenshots.

Anyway, this thing should be easy to fix for Android.
Sadly though it still pails in comparison with fastStone capture. It is impossible to take a screenshot of a menu such as file >> Save As with the windows 7 too because focus goes to the tool when you select it, where as in fastStone it does not...plus you can annotate, add drawings, and when you save it automatically timestamps the filename for you so you don't have to rename all your freaking files...

In the interest of fairness i take a HUGE number of screenshots (tech support) so the win 7 tool may be adequate for most, i still find it sub par ( also for a mac shift+ctrl+cmd+4 saves a snippet to your clipboard...better than the windows 7 equivalent IMHO shift+cmd+4 to save as a file to your desktop)
I think you just proved his point. What a ridiculous price to pay for the benefit of networking, especially today with this internet thing.
The basic point is:
You think your dataset is big, but it probably isn't. A well written C program running on a modern laptop can handle a few billion node sized graph dataset fine. Before paying for 128 cores running a "scalable" implementation, first check your dataset size. Is it in the terabytes? If not, you're probably fine running any computations on a single core.

Google and Facebook need cluster computing solutions like MapReduce and Spanner. You most likely don't, and are years away from needing one. Even a successful startup like SnapChat or Tinder could probably do all their analytics/graph processing needs on a single core. So worry about the other things first.
Tried to add my Heroku account and got the typical rails 500 error:"We're sorry, but something went wrong."

EDIT: Refreshed and it seemed to work!
I'd rather have laws against TALKING, CHEWING IN MY EAR, MAKING PHONE CALLS, and SLURPING LIQUIDS in the movies.

Once, I had two folks sitting behind me, with one giving a running summary of the movie dialog to her neighbor since the friend was hard hearing. I wished I had a flashlight that I could shine in their faces.
So adblock users are parasites?
I noticed this recently, developed a concept that I thought might be a good substitute for some prolific higher ed software and pitched it. The result: "Great idea! But we've got no funding? We'd love to use it though... maybe you could sell it to our current vendor and they could bundle it in? We definitely couldn't afford to pay for it ourselves though."
I worked for a year as a software developer at a company that made educational products. In many ways it was a good company, but I was frustrated by what I considered substandard quality in their software products. It wasn't that they didn't care at all about quality, but the nature of the education market tended to encourage us to cut corners on quality.

Most educational software is used by students and teachers, but purchased by administrators. The administrators making the buying decisions compare competing products according to price and feature lists. Therefore, we were encouraged to match and exceed the feature count of the competition in order to get sales. If the new features introduced a few bugs or made the user interface awkward, that was less of a problem than not getting the features out in time for the academic year buying cycle. The buyers might never use the product enough to experience the problems. Other commercial software developers have similar struggles with the balance of more features, meeting market windows, and maintaining good design and quality. However, I believe this problem is exacerbated in the educational market by the gulf that separates those who buy from those who use the software.
Hacker News has built in re-submission detection. Put in a link that's been posted before and it gets caught.

The headline on this thread is based on a Straw-Man fallacy, and in my opinion has a nasty 'tone' to boot.

How can one assume omnipotence on the part of the submitter? They're somehow supposed to be aware of everything that has been submitted to HN? If the news engine doesn't detect it it's new - if the news engine does detect it, it's caught. So how can someone re-submit and article?
Also muscles look nice on guys.
see also discussion a month ago about this exact problem https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25672733
The alternative would be to allow doctors to dispose of the remaining doses as they please, and the moral hazard of that should be pretty obvious to everyone.
Well, in that case we mildly disagree. My take is this:

That functionally M-Paxos and Raft are equivalent does not make them the equivalent. RAFT uses a protocol that looks awfully like Paxos for election of a single leader - so it has nothing to do with multi-Paxos (as I understand it). But that L.E. phase + the interim regime gives you functional equivalence to Multi-Paxos.
This is why I generally support universal basic income if it could replace the US safety net. Currently we spend more than it would take to eliminate poverty if we just gave it away. But the beauracratic machine just destroys so much wealth.
Some blockchains don't support that use case. Others do.