skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm only partly ok with this analogy. It's true that the lawyers do a lot of work, and only might be paid, but there are some key differences here too.

Many viewed this as a slam-dunk victory, the only question was how much. At 25%, the lawyers were in a situation where by settling, they were virtually guaranteed a huge payday. As a result, many people feel that they didn't pursue this case rigorously enough, because they were extremely risk averse. This happens when the numbers get so big that you're comparing a guaranteed huge payout with the risk of losing a larger huge payout, but when both numbers are so high that the decision maker is far more concerned about a small possibility of losing the payout than the difference between the two numbers. Ie, y > x, but when x and y both cross a certain threshold, they may start to lose meaning when such a large chunk goes to the people in a position to settle. As I recall, the lawyers for the plaintiffs were actually scolded by the judge, who rejected the first settlement and told them to go back and fight harder for their clients, which is unusual.

Many people see this case as a slam dunk for an easy payoff. A better analogy might be that I convinced you to let me sell your house, and then sold it in five minutes for a huge commission, preferring a quick and guaranteed return for myself. I'd harm my reputation in the future, but if the payoff is big enough that I'm one and done, what does it matter to me?
95% could be accurate. I'd consider every "acqi-hire" an overt failure. Your business failed, but you personally got to fail upwards. acqui-hires are generally VC-engineere soft landings (everybody has friends they can ask for $50 million in a pinch, right?).

Just because money changes hands in the end doesn't make it a success. You fail upwards until you become a creature of pure thought leadership (i.e. a VC whose only job is to 'have an opinion' on stuff and can never be proven wrong because, hey, it's all an opinion or luck or the market or some unforeseeable outside force you failed to consider when failures continually happen).
Thing is - their current model was sort of a dumb semi-forced yearly upgrade anyways. "Oh WebStorm 8 is out already, didn't we just buy 7?" etc.
> But the problem with comments is that they'll inevitably get out of sync with the code.

Eek, then by all means take comments seriously and change them when your code changes. I think it's particularly important to comment functions and methods (especially effectful/stateful ones) with what precisely they're expected to do, what invariants hold, etc. (insofar as the type system and function name don't make these clear). Otherwise another programmer has no way (aside from looking at and completely understanding every call site) of knowing what bits of the functionality are incidental vs intended behavior, and are likely to make small modifications for their own purposes which break other things.

Programmers seem very eager to lack of comments and I'm super unsympathetic; this is the one thing that just kills me. Comments hold together a codebase, make it much easier to learn and read, and are a way for programmers to impart all sorts of bits of knowledge about the domain that is valuable "we would do X here but foo() from library Y works in such and such a way so, blah blah blah". And if you don't like to read comments like that I'm sure your editor will fold them for you.
By homoiconicity, I was referring to Julia and Elixir, both of which are cited as being homoiconic (even though some purists disagree).

Also, I think "Homoiconicity isn't the point" misses the point. Homoiconicity isn't about syntax - indeed, Lisp isn't technically confined to s-expressions, and was originally designed for M-expressions before folks realized that s-expressions were much easier to implement - but rather about the ability to represent a program as ordinary data and to manipulate it as such. Yeah, I can do all sorts of metaprogramming in, say, Ruby or Perl, but you won't be able to go very far before you end up passing strings into `eval`; this is because they're not homoiconic (at least in their current forms). Meanwhile, the ability of languages like Elixir to actually modify a program's syntax tree directly - a.k.a. homoiconicity - makes metaprogramming much easier. The two concepts go hand in hand.

S-expressions happen to be very convenient for defining tree-like structures, like - for example - Lisp programs. They're not strictly required, however.
Oracle may have let their Java Evangelists go
Include full quotes of relevant information - because context is important.

The very next sentence following your quote:

>More importantly, when we fix them, your vendor probably
won't have the fix for at least another week or two in most cases anyway.

... ...

>We'd basically be announcing a bug that (a) may not be relevant to you,
but (b) _if_ it is relevant to you, you almost certainly won't actually
have fixed packages until a week or two later available to you!
Does the size savings matter in comparison to the effort needed to identify (URL) and download the file? I mean to say, is this purely an exercise in graphics optimization or will Google see practical costs savings?
I agree. Let's take these imaginary points away from corporations. They're imaginary, they shouldn't care.
Hello Elixir. Wow
Not a commercial one; it's a size of aircraft which already has an anomalously large number of competing new generation rivals.
The only one of those that has anything remotely approaching reality is being born in the US, or another first world country. Had he been born somewhere in undeveloped 3rd world, or somewhere torn apart by war, we likely would not be talking about him.
Lawrence Lessig is running for President 2016
If that's your definition of the "American Dream" it never existed.

You think folks back in the 1920s could live in the most expensive cities in the US, own a home, send their kids to college, all on one income. I don't think so.
Moving to a subscription model for 1 thing is okay, perhaps 2, or even 3. But with every company gradually moving to subscription models, it is emptying out our wallets every month and removing more and more of our income to maintain the status quo.

From my own perspective, and I know this doesn't apply to all, but I cannot imagine I'm the only person with this viewpoint, I'm sick of other developers saying things like: "You know what? For the amount developers earn, $X is a small price to pay." You're right, $X for a single piece of software is a small price. But when you add the cost of your MSDN license here, your JetBrains license there, your Xamarin university/license, O'Reilly Safari License, PluralSight license, Apple Developer License, the Mac required to compile/publish for iOS and countless other licenses, software and hardware purchases to do our jobs - all of which are gradually moving towards month-by-month subscription models with excessively large combined annual overheads, it cuts more and more into your budget... and not to forget that the income you make doesn't just pay for an ever revolving cycle of tools to maintain your competitiveness as these arguments seem to forget [unless you're still living in Mom's basement and all your income is expendable or can feed the endless software-as-a-service lifestyle]. It's also used to ensure that your kids get a good education so they can make their own valuable contributions to society; that you're able to live comfortably and not worry about where your next meal is coming from; that your family is safe and secure and well prepared for the unexpected; medical plans; retirement plans; mortgage; vehicle payments; the list goes on... all of which costs money - every month!

I'm growing tired of companies feeling like they can reach into my pocket month after month and take every spare penny for "services rendered." At what point will people turn around and say "Enough's enough! My money is mine!" I'm happy to buy products when they move me forward, but I hate paying monthly subscriptions on the off chance that you're going to provide an update that may [but probably won't] benefit me in the longer term.

As a company providing software, I'm not purchasing you as a service. I'm purchasing your product. When I work for a company that pays me every month, I'm selling myself to them as a service - to do their bidding and write the code they want. If I'm to pay for you as a service, then the money I'm paying you had better be providing what I need to do my job more effectively, just like if I pay a cleaner to come clean the house, I'm not paying for them to develop makeup products that benefit their other clients while I don't wear makeup. I want the option of buying the product that does help me do my job more effectively and then I'll hold on to the rest of my money and allocate it where that is the case.
The point is not that they decided "we are going to be a billion dollar company" and then chased it to get the MSFT acquisition. It's that when given options about which way to take it they took the Billion dollar route consciously instead of choosing to not sell and stay small - which again is how I read the article to promote.
Pipefy – What you need to know before investing in a CRM platform
or for some people who don't know how a computer works ;) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Qj8p-PEwbI
Facebook Mentions
I feel like they took something out of this guy's books: http://bchanx.com/logos-in-pure-css-demo
It's important to note that the numbers discussed by the New York Times were only of VC-funded tech companies founded this century. There are at least a few thousand private companies in the US worth 1 billion or more. Forbes keeps track of a few hundred here http://www.forbes.com/largest-private-companies/list/ with the lowest on the list having over 2 billion in revenue.

It's nearly impossible to start a company and have it worth a billion dollars within a decade. But if you drop the get rich quick thinking of Silicon Valley, it's much more possible if you grow slow and steady over a few decades or generations even. My family has a business started 30 years ago that's now worth in the hundreds of millions for example, and we are ecstatic if it grows 15% per year. In the next 20 years, if we don't fail, we should have a billion dollar business. We don't take excessive risk, so there's a fairly good shot. It's a bank in the South FWIW.
And small enough to hold in my hand. I have a 4.7" screen on my phone and can barely use it one-handed. Granted I have tiny hands, but I don't get how people use some of these newer phones.
I also didn't like the swiping, though had no problem with latency.

The swiping does make sense from one perspective - it's hard to hit an exact spot/region on your phone repeatedly without looking at it. Swiping removes the chance you're going to tap in the wrong place/wrong direction. It's a trade-off.
I have to ask - what on earth would you do with a virtual d-pad and two buttons that would cause your screen to crack?
We have proper job ads for all positions now:

JavaScript developer: https://eyeo.com/en/jobs/javascript-developer

Python developer: https://eyeo.com/en/jobs/python-developer
> I decided to use scikit's machine learning libraries. [...] The writer I create uses multiple SVM engines. One large neural network for the sentence structuring and multiple small networks for the algorithm which selects words from a vocabulary.

This person has no idea what they're talking about. sklearn has no neural network code whatsoever.

EDIT: this feels like a testament to sklearn's greatness, honestly.
Nicely done! I wrote a small app to connect phone <-> computer and use it to control your mouse and keyboard. I've been having an extremely hard time getting users. It might be asking too much, but I would really love if you guys could share some numbers :)

Great work!
This gets the point backward. Again, it's not that they set out to create a billion dollar business. Certainly at one point they were trying for a smaller exit.

The key point though is that, somewhere between their Yahoo pitch and today Sergei and Larry made the decision to grow to the $B scale. I think it was when Eric came on actually was when that shift happened.
You sound like some bitter guy who's tinkered around with some self help stuff and gave up after a bit. Or maybe you haven't even tried. For one Bill Gates who worked hard to become who he is, there are tons of other people who were in similar or even better situations than him who didn't.
A Mail from Paymentwall CEO to Employees
Bummer. Been using Intellij for almost a decade. Will give Eclipse another try.
I'm with you. It especially bugs the hell out of me to see this attitude coming from other software developers. I've never complained about having to pay for someone else's software, because I really hope other people will see fit to not complain and buy mine. This is our livelihood here. We can't all be independently wealthy open-source developers.
Quoting Harlow here:

Great question! When we don't have an email address (or company domain) in cache we use our robust worker platform to doing live lookups. We leverage Sidekiq Pro to process millions of Lookup Jobs per day. We can typically finish a Person Lookup in under 3 seconds by leveraging the massive concurrency that Sidekiq affords us.
My favorite version of this aphorism is "fortune favors the bold".
My best friend died from an overdose. While a tragedy on all levels it doesn't change the fact that he was abusing while I am using.
Hmm.

I'm using my account on the Perl 6 community dev server hack.p6c.org.

I used rakudobrew to rebuild rakudo last night:

This is perl6 version 2015.07.1-215-ge6f3602 built on MoarVM version 2015.07-108-g7e9f29e

I just ran `panda install p6doc` and it worked fine for me.

What do you get when you run `perl6 -e '$*DISTRO.say'?

Investigating...
If you don't like it, take your ball and go home.
Funny, because neither Pycharm or CLion have randomly frozen for me in Linux. Sounds like they support Linux in my case!
This is what my Chinese friends were telling me over the years, it's true, but shows a broken legal system.
This reminds me of Paul Prescod's article from 2003 which specifically used Google's landing page as an example of performance improvements that could be obtained by a judicious use of SVG:

http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2003/07/16/svg-prescod.html
C64 emulation is very tricky. Sometimes games run too fast, sometimes they don't run at all. The C64 floppy drive is a constant source of pain for emulation, as most games and software actually included their own drivers for the floppy drive to make it work better...

Fiddle with the floppy drive settings and emulation configs around them.

The other thing is that most games require a joystick, so make sure you've configured one in settings. That said, space bar or joystick button generally starts games, but not always.
Few, if any, people are complaining about paying money for the tool. I don't know where comments like this are coming from.

What I, and most, are complaining about is the fact that they are turning their offerings into "rental only" software (a disturbing trend in the industry).

I have no problems paying JetBrains, and I do, every year, even for duplicate product offerings whose functionality is included in the main IntelliJ product because I love them so much.

I have a problem with rental only software that will stop working the second I stop paying you. I will no longer be a JetBrains customer if they do not bring back a perpetual license offering, and I have told them so.

See my other comment [1] for why customers are allowed to complain.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10170759
Material Options for 3D Printing Clear Parts
Ask HN: What disciplines will contribute most to IoT analytical methods?
I am starting to work on an article digging into which existing disciplines or domains we should look to for algorithms and analytical methods in order to gain the most insight from the growing Internet-of-Things (IoT).

Some that I have thought of:

1] Signal Processing - filtering

2] Array Processing - wave detection and location/shape

3] Industrial control systems - local logic and system-wide control

4] Stock and commodity analysis - time series and trend detection

5] Medical instruments like EEG - spike detection

6] Quality Assurance/Control - thresholds and ceilings

7] Systems monitoring (server and network monitoring)

8] Motif detection and matching - more complex time series pattern detection

9] Agent-based modeling

What domains am I missing? What algorithm or statistical approaches might have languished in academia for years but might become important as sensors become cheap and pervasive along with cheap computation both at the edge and in the cloud?

If I pull a quote from this thread in the post I will attribute it to your HN username. The post will eventually appear at computationalimagination.com

Thanks
The Neural Basis of Multitasking
Bossfights.

If you have two thumbs, two hands, wrapped around a device it doesn't take much to break things. Phone touchscreens are built on the assumption the user is looking at the screen, targeting an icon of some sort. I think people will use much more force when the aren't looking at the screen, when they are jabbing at a stationary icon/button hundreds of times during a play session.
> the tool I rely on

Then don't stop paying for it.

Meanwhile, its not like they are holding your data hostage. Apart from your customized settings in their IDE you can always access your project files with another IDE or editor.
I am not. We already own permanent licenses for what we need and do not intend on moving to the monthly plan under current conditions.

I am simply pointing out people are not stupid. Doubling the monthly cost just because it is a business can't be justified and this is bound to lead to people gaming the system.

Again, pick a service, say, gardener, and have them charge you twice as much to mow exactly the same size lawn just because you are a business. What will happen is they'll be treated to a big "fuck you" and someone else will get the business.

Someone needs to tell me what they deliver to a business user that supports charging twice as much. There's certainly zero difference in the already questionable level of support, so, where is the justification?

To me that's bordering on being offensive.
Mature
Chutes and Ladders of Software Contracting: 4 Lessons Learned
I've used Eclipse for development at my current place of employment for years. I recently tried the JetBrains product and loved it, so I started pitching to my bosses that this will improve productivity blah blah blah. I can still do my job without it, and pitched it 2 months ago and have still not gotten approval (but haven't got said no to either) and it's a good year money wise, so the upfront cost is nothing to us. Now I would have to do this annually, even during down years? It's easier just to stick with Eclipse.
Title slightly misleading... still pleasantly surprised about the content. Will definitely use some of those tips
I took the base 2 quotient of the Bear Claw Constant and divided by the number of Winter Solstices since the age of the Pharaohs. :)
DOJ Reverses Course and Requires Warrants for Stingrays
Ask HN: Facebook ads best practices?
Does anyone have any learnings or best practices to share about Facebook ads?

I'm looking to try Facebook ads and see what the conversion rate is for my website, but before I do that, I'd like to see what the community thinks about them. Thanks!
The surprising reason some people’s muscles suddenly turn into bone
I'm not an airplane engineer, but I think a fair amount of it is technical debt, not the quality of the DC-9 design. For example, the 737 - a competing design that came out around the same time - is not only still being made, it's is getting prepped for another minor revision (the 737 Max), and the newest narrowbody airliner design in common worldwide usage (the A320 series) is going on 30 years old. The 717 was launched as the MD-95, a project at McDonnell Douglas to update the DC-9 series for the 90s, and Boeing (after merging with McDonnell Douglas) mostly just built out the already-sold MD order book and then shut the line down.

It would likely be very good for a manufacturer to make a new, clean-sheet design with updates like a carbon fiber fuselage, but the time needed to bring such a product to market would cause major problems for any company attempting such a project.
This isn't about paying money (we'll pay the money), this is about whether the software will just curl up and suddenly die on you, while you're on the hook to meet a deadline where minutes count.
Sorry to beat this issue to death, but this is not an easy mistake at all, even given only a cursory understanding of the field.
Do you have anything that says that's specifically what happens? Cause their FAQ says that when your subscription expires, you can continue using the last version that was released when your sub expired.
Yeah, except in games ...

Don't blame others for your fault.
Well that's a judgement call for the user choosing the service. If they think the value is there, they will pay. That's how capitalism works, and I daresay if Gitbook had it wrong, they'd have given up by now.

What experience do you have with Gitbook to deem that it doesn't add enough value to deserve the payment?
Google continues Flash phase-out, begins pausing Flash ads
I feel like at first it probably was a very good slogan. The founders were interested in following through but as they got further and further form their employees the numbers just looked too nice.

This does not excuse they for being assholes but I can see how it happened.
Have they? Where have they said that?
Thank you! Fiddling with the drive options got rid of the error (although now it just says "ready"). I'll figure it out from there, thanks!

EDIT: It worked, thanks again!
You were right about my inconsistent meditation - it has to do with my procrastination. Ironically, when I do meditate the experience is wonderful and so are the hours afterwards. And yet...

I'm familiar with the notion of the 10,000 hrs benchmark popularised by Malcolm Gladwell but haven't heard of The Talent Code. Thanks for that as well!

Regarding writing your book - you should do that and let us know when you do. I'll definitely be interested.
In vice: load the daffy-duck-ds1.d64 to device 8 (file->attach disk image->unit #8). Then run:

LOAD "DAFFYDUCK",8
RUN

Edit: for debug controls you rename the "OFF" file to "ON":

OPEN 1,8,15,"R:ON=OFF":CLOSE 1

Verify that you did it right with:

LOAD "$",8
LIST

You should see an entry that says "ON" at the bottom of the list. Then you can run the game as above and will be given an option to have infinite energy and to skip the level with space bar. It also has a nice little banner at the beginning that you don't get with it off.
As my username probably reveals, this is my favorite game, and one of the most enjoyable / funny gaming experiences that I have had. The part that I still remember, after all these years is sword fighting insults. Till today, my friends and I sign off our emails with some of these dialogue writing gems [1]

"Nobody's ever drawn blood from me and nobody ever will."
"You run THAT fast?"

"People fall at my feet when they see me coming!"
Even BEFORE they smell your breath?

"I'm not going to take your insolence sitting down!"
"Your hemorrhoids are flaring up again eh?"

What a great game, and what a great era for gaming.

[1] http://monkeyisland.wikia.com/wiki/Insult_Sword_Fighting
Wow! Really nice. I love the animations.

I made an endless random card (and die roll) generator: http://staticresource.com/shuffle.html just tap anywhere to draw a new card.

Seeing what you've done with your Deck of Cards is a big inspiration!