skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Valid point, I hadn't considered that the amount of data they're trying to send you may end up costing you more money than you were willing to allot to their site. However, I don't think that makes the entirety of the analogy invalid. They still think about their website differently than you, regardless of how you're being charged to view it.

It could also be argued that once you're in a store, there is a very real disrespect of your personal finances placed on you by the burden of advertising and product placement. An abuse of consumer psychology in a physical space is just as bad as an abuse of your phone data. Both cost you time and money. While it still stands that you couldn't have seen the video advertising coming ahead of time, you also can't see the psychological tricks that get you to purchase more coming ahead of time either. In both cases I think it's up to us to not get fooled again.
I'm sorry if I came across as a snob, I honestly value highly the unions contributions to workers' rights (all workers), historically.

I just do not see any factual reason for a "SW developer union", since it is a very modern role, and as a group never experienced any need that could be solved by unionizing.

As you mention for the case of baseball players (or the actors, in another post), the union was made during a period in which the current work conditions were not seen by the category as fair.

Do SW engineer think it is actually so, today ?
Hopefully, I won't be alive. The trick of maintaining a high quality of life is not overstaying your welcome.
I guess it'd depend on how this is counted. If it is simply "total volume of gallons of water consumed divided by permanently resident population" then your suggestion probably explains the bulk of it. I would have hoped that it'd be measured slightly smarter however.
Can you give an example of a country where the laws are hard to break unintentionally or otherwise? I know only one, Somalia, because there are no laws. So I don't think I'd like you "fixing" this.

As for this case I am pretty sure their intent was to break the law, they just did not expect the consequences. They did try to get J-1 so they knew they need a visa for their visit and a waiver is not enough. They went without a visa anyways, probably hoping to talk their way through the immigration, feigning ignorance.
They do!

http://www.wikihow.com/Get-a-SAG-Card

I mean, they don't stop SAG members from performing, but they do keep non members out of SAG shoots.
If I had money to throw away, I would gladly buy this computer. War Games is by far the best "hacking" movie I remember from my childhood.
Same way with piracy. Most people who are pirating content weren't a potential customer in the first place.
No need for a motor, you can do it in a glider too.
>When I was in a unionized position, it was frustrating because I couldn't choose to not join

Sure you could. Join a company which wasn't a union shop.

Or did you like this particular one because of the salary and benefits negotiated by the, uh, union?
Ask HN: Do you have problems to reach people at startup pitch events?
Hey,

I'm part of a 3-people startup, and we realized that, at startup pitch events, it's difficult for us to reach everybody to promote our startup and to find other interesting startups to talk to: there are lots of people, lots of startups, and no easy way to quickly get information about any of them on the spot. So, we thought we can do something about it, we can fix the problem.

We came up with an idea we call Nowy Startups (https://nowyapp.com/startups/). Nowy Startups is a a smartphone app that enables you to easily promote your startup to nearby people and learn about interesting nearby startups, by automatically exchanging startup pitch cards. A pitch card shows a startup's value proposition, audience, competition, and differentiating factors.

What do you think about it? Do you have the same problems as us? Do you need Nowy Startups? Should we build it? Learn more about it and show your support here: https://nowyapp.com/startups/

Thanks,
Silviu
I used this site for a short time. It's a great idea but it was let down by the fact that most music videos have absurd rights restrictions which disallow embedding on third party sites. Never understood why music publishers would purposely limit the free marketing available to them.
Just losing 2 inches would be a huge confidence booster for me. I'm 6'3", 285 pounds, and between a 40-42 inch waist. If I could get below 40's again, I'd feel so much better.
Yeah, I got 2.53% error rate, but that's nothing to worry about - using 79 servers, that's exactly 2 errors, both of them in China, which kinda makes it feel less Amazon's fault, than the Great Firewall's.... Maybe there should be some more meaningful error measure than the raw failure percentage.
Literally finished listening to that episode like an hour ago before seeing this post. Talk about bad timing.
As another Google engineer, I have to concur. The author has no idea what he is talking about with respect to what happens at Google.
Hey Elie! Not directly, no. It looks like both of our projects originated from "real world apps" (as you say) with SEO requirements and, in my case in particular, ensuring mobile users get a response ASAP before React progressively enhances the page.

It looks like we've landed on about the same architectural solution given React's synchronous nature.

I'll have to check it out in more detail as, to be honest, I was more aware of the Nexus Flux library.
Aside from labour issues and collective bargaining over employees getting "shafted", unions are the first to pick up unsafe working practices. As software and tech in general ingrains itself into society the risk of deadly mistakes becomes ever greater - people already die due to bugs, and we can't remove the possibility entirely but we should be damn sure when the finger is pointed at our profession that we've got it covered. The free market typically doesn't cause this kind of enlightenment.
Lets be grateful for yuppies and their money. Computers and gadgets are today cheap and widely available. And there is finally no social stigma related to nerds. 'Real hacker' who works on AI, security etc.. has now life easier.
Same order of magnitude. EU and US each have their pros and cons. But the EU is absolutely worth considering.
Netherlands is only probable if he is under 30.

AFAIK, no-one has ever received a Blue Card in the NL. The salary requirement is higher than for knowledge migrants, so it doesn't even make sense to try.

Knowledge migrant law discriminates on age. If he's over 30, the salary requirement is prohibitevely high - high enough that it is highly improbable he'll find a company willing to pay him that much with his profile.

If he's under 30, than the salary requirement is around €3k per month, and that might be doable if he does his interview exceptionally well and convince them he has a "thinking level" of somebody with a university degree.
I can't speak much for unions in the US, but in Argentina, unions eliminated child labor, introduced paid time off and reduced working hours from 90 to 40-50hs a week. When they protested for these things we consider today to be only reasonable, the conservative power at the time repressed public manifestations killing dozens of protesters.

In the US, union leaders were forced to make a sworn statement regarding their political inclinations.

Unions in the US are viewed very negatively, but as a political institution, it does solve some issues. I don't think a world without unions is a better world, though I wish they behaved more transparently than they do.
Another anecdotal experience: zero of my friends drink soda at all. We're all in the US in our late 20s. It's definitely a cultural thing, because we're all different kinds of people with different diets, different weights, etc. No one is diabetic.

On the other hand, 100% of us drink alcohol, and so far the only people I've met who are my age, from the US, and don't drink are recovering alcoholics and people whom I've later discovered are extremely anxious and worried about the possibility of feeling "out of control" (which is a totally valid reason not to drink).
Of course there's widespread use. When you put in 2-4 video ads with sounds per page and clog up my browser, you'd be out of your mind to think I'm not going to take steps to stop this assault on my senses.

I don't see how advertisers don't get this. Surely they are not entitled to my eyes and ears.
Ellipse: NLP Research Tool Built with Meteor
Maybe ad blocking and the ensuing evisceration of the "free but agree to view ads tailored to you via the deep profiling of your identity using information you would ordinarily presume to be private" business model will be good for us (good for privacy)
No Flex Zone: Empathy Driven Development
I think this is what he is referring to: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/24/linkedins-new-mobil...
Just because he was a bad poster doesn't mean he's an un-person.
Learn to like it. It's water for pete's sake. Vital for life.
> I like to think that in our field of work, we prove ourselves by our abilities and nothing else.

How certain are you that the best developer you know is also the best paid? Is "being good at interviews/charming management" an ability that you consider important? How about "being well-connected"?

Unions would not fix this. Badly run, they would swap charm for seniority. Well run, however, they would tackle the objective economic fact that in a negotiation between one human and an institution, there are information and resource asymmetries, which the larger entity will exploit to their advantage, and it would even the playing field a whole lot. Avoid fixating on silver bullets and try to think of the many ways in which the dynamics would change.

I think unions would be a net positive for most developers, including tons of excellent performers without much mind for business who get taken advantage of by both management and slick-talking peers.
Companies are pure capitalistic enterprises that respond to market demand right? Right

You can imagine if meth or other addictive drugs were legal thst they would be in our drinks (which is the exact history of Coke). Modern food engineering is about maximizing consumption, even at the detriment of those consuming.
Basic CSRF. If you don't know what CSRF is and how to protect against it, any website you make is probably going to be insecure. If you call yourself a web developer and don't know about CSRF, please, go learn it. I don't think I'd hire a web developer who couldn't tell me what CSRF is and how to prevent it. Even if your framework takes care of it for you, you still need to know what it is.
My experience with soda is the same. Once my friends and I stopped drinking it, it actually becomes pretty disgusting to have something with that much sugar in it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_to_hide_argument

In this context: I have no health problems so its fine by me. Meanwhile it is a great injustice on others. Not to mention the fact that once you start allowing limits there will be no end to them. Can't walk, guess you can't fly. Too slow? guess you can't fly either. What happens if you ever end up having health issues?
>I like to think that in our field of work, we prove ourselves by our abilities and nothing else.

You'll learn soon enough that that isn't true at all, and when you learn the reasons why, you'll probably be wanting a union.
This is more common than you to think. Making everyone pay union dues is intended to avoid free rider problems. When things work like they're supposed to all employees in unionized positions benefit from the union so it makes sense for all of them to pay dues. There may be plenty of reasons for this to not work in practice but that's the logic behind it.
Tesla's charging arm wasn't created by a member of the Big 3....
I don't know - I'm italian as well and I never had any particular problems with not liking football. Although I may be somewhat of a special case, as I seem to associate with people who don't care particularly for the sport.

By the way, how are you finding life in Munich as an Italian? I've been thinking about moving after I complete my degree, so I'm quite interested to see what other people's experiences are in that regard.
This reads like a typical cultural critique article. Long text, contrived definitions, lack of overall insights into the subject. At least I didn't see anything that would make go "ah, I never thought of that". It's mostly word games.

Even though many people try to draw parallels between hackers who creatively modify systems and hackers who break into systems, there is little overlap these days, except, maybe some common roots in history and the fact that the latter usually have ample skills to do "creative" hacks as well.

Hacker culture being subverted? With multitude of security conferences, daily news about research into new vulnerabilities and increasingly frequent criminal hacks, I think hacker culture is actually doing pretty well in many of its diverse forms.
No, in the US it's ~40g. It might be different in other countries or with cane sugar instead of HFCS.
How can you be unionized by the government? That seems like a contradiction in terms to me...
Network Repository. Download Datasets. Interactive Analytics
Don't get me wrong, I'm sympathetic to your frustration. A lot of U.S. unions are pretty undemocratic and mediocre. It's not unrelated to their weakness.
I take GT without G. (Gin-tonic but no gin). Often the bartender laughs at this a bit and gives it for free.
Unionization is part of the free market, provided that it happens without compelled membership or coercion.
I'm always in favor of microsoft blowing more of its cash reserves... I was so pissed when the yahoo deal fell through.
Estimote (YC S13) on Powering Target and the Future of Beacons
And here we learn that:

(1) a can of coke varies in volume based on different places in the world. 330 ml in europe, 355 ml in north america.

(2) Sweetness of a can of coke varies by country. 10.6g sugar per 100ml in France, 11g sugar per 100ml in USA, 12g sugar per 100ml in Canada.

A canadian can of coke is 355ml and 42g of sugar, per the label printed on it.

A uk can of coke is 330ml and 35g of sugar.
Absolutely.

It especially hits when you try to teach someone new how to do something. It is terrifically easy to open notepad and show them how to make a <p> tag, but the curve then climbs quickly. Stuff that I take for granted I didn't really realize until I was teaching someone—I had to introduce them to browser's developer tools, what caching is, and hey what are these status codes anyway, etc. On top of that, deployment seems harder these days for new folks.

I actually have high hopes for Meteor JS simplifying some of this. Thus far I've noticed that people really like being able to do "create" and "deploy" and have a working URL they can share with a friend.
10 Free and Helpful Online Tools for MSPs
>* I feel like unions are first a way for the less competent to kind of hang in there and not have to try harder*

That's a common misconception; not all unions are like that. Some unions do value seniority such as teachers' unions which seem to think that even the shittiest teacher still deserves to keep their job and lately, at least in Canada, they haven't been fighting properly for benefits.

Valuing seniority despite incompetence is something we typically see in the corporate world. Where do you think the inspiration for the Pointy-Haired Boss in Dilbert comics comes from?

A programmers union would only need to establish a lower limit; if you're a bad programmer you'll eventually be found out and your salary will never go above X but we at least need to establish what X is. I've seen decent junior programmers start at 45k salary or even 40k (gender discrimination was at play there) and no benefits or 401k/group RRSP or anything else. They were basically treated like crap. That's something we can prevent by unionizing. The programmers making 100k can join the union too and won't be capped in their salary or anything else; they'll just get the satisfaction of making sure other programmers aren't exploited.

>and nothing will be done about it so long as most software engineers remain apolitical cowards who refuse to fight for themselves.. Thanks...?

You will have to admit that it is accurate. I've seen lots of programmers who think that keeping their head down and just coding will magically result in promotions and pay raises and a bigger training or conference budget. It won't. It won't and you'll get screwed. There's a coder at work who didn't even take vacation! And the company doesn't pay out vacation so you're forced to take it. He was screwing himself by not asking for $$$ in exchange for not taking vacation time, and every year he never uses the $500 training budget. Working for 3 years that's $1500, enough for a few good conferences, enough for travel expenses and hotel to be paid for a 2 day conference at least. But will he attempt to go for that? No way; Why? Because it requires politics. It requires actually interacting with people.

I've seen other programmers come into the office on weekends and they didn't band together to avoid that unpaid overtime just to avoid politics.
I'd be interested to see benchmark numbers for LuaJIT, which makes it extremely easy to compile with either replicated dispatch (each bytecode instruction footer has a separate dispatch "jmp" instruction) or common dispatch (each bytecode instruction jumps to a common dispatch "jmp" instruction): http://repo.or.cz/w/luajit-2.0.git/blob/a5b1c4d98eeb97a95077...

// Instruction footer.
.if 1
// Replicated dispatch. Less unpredictable branches, but higher I-Cache use.
.define ins_next, ins_NEXT
.define ins_next_, ins_NEXT
.else
// Common dispatch. Lower I-Cache use, only one (very) unpredictable branch.
// Affects only certain kinds of benchmarks (and only with -j off).
// Around 10%-30% slower on Core2, a lot more slower on P4.
.macro ins_next
jmp ->ins_next
.endmacro
.macro ins_next_
->ins_next:
ins_NEXT
.endmacro
.endif
unfairnesses listed in the article:

- stack ranking

- binding arbitration

- non-competes (outside of California)

- IP assignment

- mandatory inclusion of performance reviews in a candidate’s transfer packet for internal mobility

- severence pay
Not so popular JavaScript/HTML functionalities
>Unions would not fix this. Badly run, they would swap charm for seniority.

The reason why unions often settle on age/experience as a way to measure seniority is because it's objective so it makes a decent compromise.

If you leave it up to management they will usually end up rewarding/promoting those who pledge fealty to them over those who are more skilled, and union sympathizers will be singled out and punished no matter how skilled or productive.
The real dirt on programming certifications
There is an 80 char limit on subject!!! so had to cut short.
>it's skewing the amount of evidence away from diet and towards exercise, when the reality is that both are important.

I very much doubt that a series of studies, if valid, and even if funded by Coke, is "skewing" the amount of evidence.

It's common knowledge that fitness is dependent on diet and exercise. I don't see much wrong with a corporate entity producing legitimate science that happens to support their product (if that's the case here), especially in a maternalistic society like the US, that wants to "ban" things like soft drinks for "the good" of the populace.
> camaraderie of poorness

Would you mind expanding on that?
Extremely Easy Exercises Now Connects to FitBit
There's a lot about this comment that makes me sad. I think it as, at best, naive to think that somehow software engineering is the one true meritocracy where there is no tension between labor and management. Nevermind the death marches so many developers and engineers are put to (e.g., game developers), or the insane hours that many developers and engineers are regularly forced or heavily socially pressured into working, with often clear career repercussions for not playing along.

> I feel like unions are first a way for the less competent to kind of hang in there and not have to try harder.

Perhaps that is true with some of the more entrenched unions. I don't think unions are all perfect by any means. But that is a far cry from many unions, and certainly never (or at least rarely) the reason the unions started. Unions are not about letting you rest on your laurels, though leadership can turn them into that, they are about ensuring fair treatment and due process.

I'm not saying unions are right for West Coast tech sector, but I don't think they should be dismissed out of hand. And while I appreciate where your view of unions comes from, I don't think it appreciates the whole picture.

And finally, it must be noted that some unions are just very small in scope, but still effective. My wife is in a union, and their main sources of negotiation are 1) parking and 2) the incredibly inequitable distribution of work for those not on a particular "pathway" (this is a healthcare field). That's effectively it, and it has made a huge difference. There is no protectionism for bad performance, or tenure, or scheduling preferences, etc.
Didn't mean to accuse you yourself of being a snob. A lot of people take the same line as you.

I think the linked post describes some issues that could be addressed by unionizing - arbitrary management and degrading ranking systems. You could add secret non-compete agreements to cap salaries (which are not too far from that pre-free agency baseball case) and gender and race-based discrimination in hiring, pay, promotions etc.
but isn't the plan with Relay to do just that? or not?
In Germany they have this alternative structure called the work council. My understanding of it (I had 2-3 workers in Germany 5 years ago) was that it was essentially a union, but only the "good parts". They spoke up around things like stack ranking (and could vote it down) and generally acted as the "employee's HR". Everyone in the council also had to be an employee so you didn't have the overhead (or mob influences) of a traditional "pay in" union scheme.

Anyone here from Germany that can describe it more and talk about what you like / dislike about this system?
When I realized that the kids of the old money elite began to see Silicon Valley, not Wall Street, as the means to big money, I decided I could never go back.

The elitists came to Northern California - a vanguard of social liberalism, student protest, and most importantly communitarianism - and brought their elitism with them.

Northern California still exists in the nostalgic hippie image of the 60s, but it's compartmentalised, like the Dropbox brogrammers elbowing out kids at a playground. Public spaces increasingly become private in the name of profit.

Over time, the feel of free love will fade away entirely in the Bay Area. Everyone interesting who isn't a millionaire will be pushed to the margins, and eventually, more welcoming spaces, like Detroit. I implore the tech elite of Silicon Valley to consider a future where an expensive tech-centered monoculture makes the Bay Area an unattractive location for long-term employees, and instead relying on mercenary college grads who put up with the cost and the crazy for a few years before moving on to a more fulfilling job and place to call home.
Error Rate: 41.98% Response Time (avg): 5,518 ms for me.
Talk about Non sequitur!

It does not seem like you understand my use of the word 'default'; because scales are nested, the nanoscale is everywhere. One can design molecular machines using classical models; but those models are chemical rather than mechanical. The diamondoid structures are the fruit of carbon research; and the molecular mechanics has gotten much computationally cheaper, especially with regards to biomolecules. The motivation for using carbon is the modularity, not rigidity; albeit biomolecules are even more modular than carbon alone.