skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> The common theme was seeing complexity and, especially, abstraction as a universal good rather than something with real costs

Rich Hickey did a great service outlining some common problems when thinking about the word complexity itself: http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy

I don't think it's about the engineers wanting to see complexity, so much as the problems you mention stemming from design-by-committee.
It seems the key point is here: "It’s kind of counterintuitive, but maybe you can actually do more projects that are less related to each other. Normally in a business, you think about, "What’s the adjacent thing that I can do?" because that’s where you must have experts."

I wonder if we'll see more companies doing the same, growing by moving into areas orthogonal to their first successful product?
Why not throw the weight behind VP9? edit: I actually am curious, this isn't a question pointed at the validity of Thor. I just really want to see a great, open-source standard emerge and see people get behind it.
Why is Wordpress on a VPS a nightmare? You install nginx, php-fpm, mysql, enable unattended upgrades in Ubuntu, create a new user for Wordpress, run it, enable automatic updates, done.

It's a blog. It doesn't need to be bulletproof or run on a cluster.

(Of course, the hip choice is Ghost.)
You should check out this algebra.js project I've been working on for funsies.

var exp = new Expression("a");
exp = exp.multiply("b");
exp = exp.multiply("x");
exp = exp.add("c");

console.log(exp.toString());

exp = exp.evaluateAt({a:5, b:1, c:-1})
console.log(exp.toString());

var eq = new Equation(exp, new Expression("y"));
console.log(eq.toString());

var x = eq.solveFor("x");
console.log("x = " + x.toString());

Yields:

abx + c
5x - 1
5x - 1 = y
x = 1/5y + 1/5

You can play with it here: http://algebra.js.org/
In both of your example cases, there are actual legal protections. In the case of a content farm, they're making content available for _free_ without a terms of service in the hope that people visiting them won't be blocking the ads they're also serving. Show me the content farm that makes users agree to a terms of service requiring ad viewing, and then your examples make sense.
I have, at my website (for objective metrics) http://arewecompressedyet.com/

Summary is that Thor is performing at a slightly better level than Daala and worse than VP9 or H265. But it's also missing a lot of features right now, and the encoder is only tuned for PSNR.
So, just for example, loading artofmanliness.com allows 14 different third-party companies to track your browsing history. There's more to fixing this than just putting in work to manage ad inventory -- we need a system that doesn't depend on broadcasting private information to dozens of anonymous companies.
I am a equal opportunity app user. ;-)
I really like the philosophy of the project and the guys running it, but my recent experience trying to use it as a dropbox replacement has been bad: machines that stayed "syncing..." forever, deleted files that reappeared after a while, renamed folders resulting in duplicated folders with both the old and the new name...

I think it's just that the software is not yet mature and production-ready, and perhaps I was throwing too much data at it at once. Seeing the project progress, I'm confident that when it becomes more stable it will be a very nice piece of software, but it's not there yet.
No, but it will run apps that use a subset of the API for universal apps (ie. the app must be able to handle some parts of the API missing) https://msdn.microsoft.com/library/windows/apps/dn726767.asp...
You definitely need to be careful how to configure things, but enabling caching, event MPM + php-fpm, mod_pagespeed, etc. like we do in our Bitnami images helps a lot. The good thing is that it is relatively painless to resize if you need to.
If you're running a dinky site, then no, it isn't a problem. If you, on the other hand, you have thousands of lines of front-end code, moving frameworks is not feasible.
Are Humans Wired to Be Monogamous?
Clojure to MiniZinc
Slava @ RethinkDB here.

I'll be around all day to answer questions about the release (along with a few other engineers on our team).

We're very excited about this release -- it makes the lives of RethinkDB users dramatically better because they won't have to wake up anymore in the middle of the night in case of most hardware failures :) It also took over a year to build and test, and has been one of the most challenging engineering problems we ever had to solve.
Yes. She doesn't get along with Veracode.
That just illustrates the incredibly unfair and outright bizarre voting system the US has. I don't understand why people put up with this. Why electoral votes aren't split between candidates seems perverse.
I slightly cringe when startups that receive funding start a kickstarter campaign just for the hype.

Nevertheless, the product looks really awesome and I would love to try it.
I think it's an accurate representation of her employer, however.

Interesting that all the reasons she cites for why she thinks trying to reverse-engineer Oracle products is a bad idea are the same exact reasons why more and more administrators with any sense in security are switching to open-source software and have been for the last decade or so. Being able to inspect the code yourself (or hire someone to do it for you) is apparently important enough to a sufficiently-large population for Oracle to whine about it.
You mentioned in another post that you have a donate page in your navigation. Have you A/B tested showing a call to donate along with the result?
This is Canonical, a company that would not have existed on the work of the free software community. For them to even consider writing closed-source software is entitlement.
I tried to install wordpress from apt-get and it wasn't trivial. File permissions were out of whack, plugins and upgrades weren't working.

I eventually scrapped it and installed from source. Took a little longer to configure but worked out.

I also added some extra firewall and server monitoring tools.
Do you really think we're better off now than we were in the 1970s?
Do you believe that a small number of individuals providing most of the campaign funding is the problem, or do you believe that a concentrated donor base creates worse outcomes in government? Your citation describes the concentrated donor base, but does not make any attempt to demonstrate that it has negative consequences (in addition to being of disputed factual accuracy).

If campaign spending was reduced, and this increased the effect of public opinion on the government, it is likely that government would be worse.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_the_Rational_Voter
RESTful APIs, the big lie
In fact there is already a Pepper plugin for Flash that works on RPi2; you can get it from an ARMv7 version of ChromeOS.
I built a Twitter bot that entered–and won–1,000 online contests for me
It's disappointing to see Mozilla's leadership respond with sarcasm and denial when faced with the fact that 80% or more of their users are not happy with recent versions of Firefox.
I'd...search for things I need? Or rely on word-of-mouth via people I actually care about? (Of course, you could argue that these are also forms of advertising, in which case this argument ultimately devolves to "people hear about things most often by hearing about them".)

Or: even though it might be possible to interest me in buying said products and services, maybe I don't need/want them enough to justify the purchase, and so reducing/eliminating pervasive psychological coercion is in fact helping me to act in my rational self-interest?

Also: "most businesses are supported by X, therefore X is good and/or there is no viable alternative to X" just doesn't hold water as an argument. For instance: "most businesses are supported by chattel slavery..."; "most businesses are supported by the local feudal warlord..."; "most businesses are supported by the infinite benevolence of the Church...", and so on - failure to imagine a different model is a failure of imagination and/or historical perspective, not of existence.
Well, doesn't seem too private or secure :(

https://www.eff.org/secure-messaging-scorecard

Not even open-source.
looks interesting, Opus is great
VP9 is a good choice if you want a royalty free video codec right now. NETVC is shooting for the next generation. In addition, the goal is to get the video codec standardized at the IETF.

NETVC participation is open to anyone though, so it is possible more players will show up.
Banks.

As much as we like all sorts of features of the web, integrating commerce was what brought the enterprise in, drove down costs, etc etc etc.
I don't think IRV is worse than first-past-the-post (FPTP) at all. IRV eliminates vote splitting, reduces strategic voting, and results in fewer wasted votes. Also, the fact that IRV ignores all rankings except the first until the first is eliminated means that you won't hurt your most preferred candidate by changing the order of your other preferences. If you're voting A>B>C, then if A wins, then you wouldn't really care whether you helped B win or not.

Approval voting has the problem of electing a candidate that's acceptable instead of one who the majority actually likes.

Also, IRV has a greater tendency to elect the Condorcet winner when compared to FPTP.

Every voting system has its problems but IRV is still a lot better than FPTP.
So it's: Password -> KDF -> Key+Plaintext -> AES-CGM.

Better than nothing, but just that isn't very secure. It's not safe to use the same key indefinitely.
Rails rumble 2015 is here
I disagree. Having no PDF viewer is more secure than having a PDF viewer.

I'd have no problem with Mozilla releasing a separate PDF viewer, either as an extension, a standalone application or even a Web site. I also have no problem with Mozilla setting Firefox's default PDF application as a stub which downloads their separate viewer. But it shouldn't be built in to Firefox.

In any case, it is not the job of a Web browser to subvert the user's OS setup.
tl;dr: Unauthorized updates are deleting massive fractions of he and his family's media on iOS platforms, which was discovered just after plane takeoff.

To quote a Microsoft guy, "You made a mistake, you trusted us."
3 skills every software tester needs right now
Are there any analagous "implied agreements" that lend weight to your opinion, or are we breaking new ground with this?

And as a counterpoint, I would suggest that the "implied agreement" respects the user to whom ads are being served. Sites like gawker, huffington, techcrunch who attempt to sell my behavior to 6-10 ad networks are stepping over that line.
Apparently yes, it would: https://archive.org/about/exclude.php
As a guy working in digital forensics and data recovery, I find this very interesting. When it comes to flash-based storage there's very little real information and studies, with a lot of myths that just add noise and almost no value.
Interesting, and I think Seattle is at least vaguely aware of this. It's worth noting that in recent years tons of other companies have been setting up shop in the area.

I know Facebook's second largest office is here, Palantir just opened an office, and it seems every week or so I hear of another SV company opening a satellite. That's not to say this isn't a real problem, but Amazon's success (and how frickin' awesome Seattle is) is attracting other people to cushion the blow.

An important note here is that the revenue sources and the markets for these are very diverse. The 5-10 notable companies with notable presence have probably 5-10 mostly discrete markets driving their growth.

Silicon Valley, on the other hand, has hundreds of companies but 90%+ are entirely dependent on ads (or the ad bubble, depending on which side of that fence you're on).

Any thoughts on how this plays into the risk calculus?
"Specialty graph paper" - wow... I had never suspected there was anything but the square grid - and I'm old enough to have used it in my teenage years !
Though ServerPilot focuses more on ongoing server management (e.g. updates, control panel, monitoring, support) for DigitalOcean servers rather than one-click installers, there is now a one-click WordPress installer.

https://serverpilot.io/blog/2015/07/22/one-click-wordpress-a...
Does Dyson have trouble fighting knockoffs?
Yay another one!
As a googler, I would agree with this bucketing. Amazon and Microsoft are in the same ballpark scale-wise, but companies like LinkedIn and Netflix have lower scaling needs (this isn't a knock on them, just a technical reality). Netflix would likely be in the same ballpark if they didn't leverage Amazon. Facebook is also hovering near the line, and has probably crossed over.
Amen. As Thomas Jefferson (correctly) described patents, they're a part of positive law, not natural law. In other words, their only justification is pragmatic, not moral. You can't "own" an idea the way that you can own a couch or a car. We allow for (temporary) patent protection because it's supposed to encourage innovation and help our economy. If it doesn't - and it's clearly reached the point where it hinders rather than helps innovation - then we need to change things.
Good points :)
I see at least a couple of posters in this thread are suggesting "there should be a confirmation dialog".

Stop.

Confirmation dialogs are dead UX. Users have been trained by internet browsers with pop ups and other poorly designed pieces of software with poorly worded dialog boxes to completely ignore dialog boxes. I've tested this several times. Users don't even consciously register that the dialog box ever appeared. You can watch them, right over their shoulder, and as soon as they close a dialog, they will turn to you and ask "what do I do now?" you will ask, "what did the pop-up box say to do?", and they will respond "what pop-up box?". Walk them through the process again, don't pre-warn them about when the dialog appears, and they will do it again.

This is also why crapware is so easy to install on any system that has wizard-based installers.

Do not use dialog boxes. It's better to hire two testing teams and set them against each other to break the software. Test and test and test again, then disallow bad behavior. The "plugger" example should not have allowed issuing a fire command on its own location, unless some explicit, completely out-of-band, one-time-use option would enable it so. Actually, better yet, it should not re-initialize the target location on start-up with the device's location. Just clear out the target, when the user tries to fire, they will see the lack of target and probably know "oh, must be because I changed the batteries". There is a reason they are called "fail-safe"s. You create failure modes that err on the side of safety. It's better if the device fails to fire than to fire at the wrong target.

I don't care if you can't afford it. If you cannot afford a large testing infrastructure, then you can't afford to make safety-critical software at all. You cannot solve this problem with software.

These situations come about when you have a management infrastructure that cares more about feature lists than correctness. I can hear them now, "we need to move faster", and "if it works, don't fix it."
Exactly. The idea that the only reason someone would buy a Chromebook is b/c of price and not being able to get Windows computer cheaper is ludicrous to me. Even if I bought one of these I'd put Linux on it before I used a bloated Win10.
I say this because so many peeps think using these pre-installed WP bundles is all kittens and unicorns; it is not. I am not singling out DO specifically, but any VPS provider that has pre-installed soft that does not respond to threat landscapes and it not hardened correctly. Users install without a care in the world for having their VPS naked and like a sitting duck. (Yes I monitor inbound traffic on VPSes and there are people who are interested in flooding if you don't practice throttling and load balancing, or PTR records which resolve the raw IP to other domains).
Certainly the risk is better with a royalty-free video codec, though. In the case of Daala, the goal is to be sufficiently different to avoid these broad patents, too.

Also, any companies contributing to the NETVC standard are required to declare IPR, which is not the case for MPEG standards.
Just two months ago, they announced expansion of delivery to Manhattan's downtown area: http://blog.goodeggs.com/post/120709577938/good-eggs-is-comi...

I'm guessing the logistical and financial troubles described in the OP were pretty clear 2 months ago...was expanding service to Manhattan a Hail Mary to attract additional investment?
But I don't understand - why wouldn't Larry Ellison think he's Larry Ellison?

--Dad
There is a reasonable Gallium / Mesa driver for the GPU on the way; for simple OpenGL / OpenCL workloads it works reasonably well. It is being actively worked on so it is still improving.

https://wiki.freedesktop.org/dri/VC4/
So https://xkcd.com/927/?
A software maker has no particular right to control what I do with that software once I have it.

In terms of a rental agreement, a "no reverse engineering" clause is not equivalent to "you must pay rent." It's more like a clause that says you're not allowed to consume meat while you live there because the landlord is a vegetarian.
College didn't used to be terrifying - the middle class existed and the cost was much lower.

I'd need a puppy break too with what the kids have on the line today.
This has been the inevitable end-state of TOR-based black markets for a while now. Neat to see someone has actually tackled it.
Agreed, with a price tag of $400 this is a luxury product. Early adopters aren't going to care about a payback period in the slightest - they just want to experience the cool factor of a new shower + the feel good factor of saving water.

Maybe the company foresees on some kind of government subsidy to make these more affordable in the future?

Side note: Without having tried it, I find the idea of being misted like a vegetable in a grocery store somewhat unappealing as opposed to a nice hot shower after a long day of work. Perhaps the actual feeling is a lot nicer than I'm imagining with this level of VC/investor support.
I really recommend against starting your letter with negatives. It's good (in theory) to be honest about strengths/weaknesses, but always at least start with your strengths and use them to position your weaknesses in a more positive light.
You are the one proposing a restriction on a fundamental right, the burden of proof of necessity is on you.
Kubernetes on Raspberry Pi
$2 Followers – Socials Fire
I don't know, seems like access is a big deal. I'm sure Buffett could get a meeting with any presidential candidate he wanted to because of his celebrity. Me? Probably not for good reason.

However, if I had a super PAC with $5 million in the bank "trying to figure out what to spend it on" I bet I could get a lot of politicians trying to meet with me. Let's even say I said I was going to spend $1 million on each of the next 5 elections in my local district. So the first meeting we talk about some "ideas" I have and they just nod their head. If they don't think that would help in the next election, maybe they just ignore me, but if maybe they didn't have strong opinions on my important policy points to begin with, or are even against them but "have other things they want to prioritize first" then maybe I'll tilt the odds in my favor. Let's say they even want to pass their pet project, but need votes from other congresspeople they know that they can influence their colleagues if they can "sell" access to me as a "donor".

None of this is hard corruption, but it's access and influence all indirectly acquired through money.

Also, failed campaigns often just end up paying out the candidate indirectly by buying a book written by the candidate and giving it to donors as a "gift". While it might be hard for a politician to sell 1 million copies of their book, if they can buy it with campaign funds it's a lot easier.

This was the example I can remember.
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/sarah-palin-pac-buy-book/story...
People subscribe to podcasts. Why couldn't people subscribe to his site (for a trivially small payment) and get access to one new article per week? (Or access to 50 articles for a set period of time.)

If the content is good, then people will be willing to pay for it. That's how books work. That's how, for example, wikipedia works. That's how newspapers work (although of course many have been failing).
>A PC running Windows 10 (Prepared in the previous step)

That requirement itself is a big step:

http://ms-iot.github.io/content/en-US/win10/SetupPCRPI.htm
Hi Manish,

Our images do change some configuration options based on the type of instance that we detect on boot. It would be great if you could get in touch with us at hello@bitnami.com and let us know the details of what you had to configure manually, so that we can improve this.
- Parallel watches of multiple threads variables

- Visualization of threads and their stacks contents

- Customizable breakpoints in many different ways (conditions, hit count, only on special thread)

- Visualization of tasks (PPL)

- Its STL visualizers are much nicer to use and customize than any of the alternatives

- Selective control of threads execution behavior

- Re-execution of code blocks

- Ability to perform code navigation across .obj and .dll files without access to source code (only on Architect version)

Yeah sure, gdb can have some of this stuff, it even allows for some kind of C/C++ REPL, but I won't be debugging parallel code with it.
I really hope React plays out better than Angular. And with FB using it for their web and mobile apps, it seems a good bet. Angular and Ember seem to move into the React direction, which lets React shine even more.

I was forced to switch from ExtJS to Ember to React, so I don't mind learning another framework in the next years. But it would be nice if I could work with my React skills for 5 or more, haha.
Sociopathy is not rare¹, nor entirely maladaptive. Objectivism (a school of thought whose name begs the question) is an attractive philosophical stance for folks already wired against empathy and remorse.

_____

¹ http://www.quora.com/What-percentage-of-people-are-psychopat...
Startup Connections Matter
On the other hand, if you had said "Pi is 3", you would have been accurate, but not very precise. If you said "Pi is "Pi is 3.14", you would have been so precise that you could have gotten to the moon and back.