skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Startups can and do get government contracts, but the government isn't going to come court you. You (the startup) have to figure it out yourself.

Selling to the government is very similar to selling to any other industry/company: you (the seller or maker) have to understand the customer's acquisition process. The big difference is that the federal government is the largest customer--millions of people and trillions of dollars. Therefore, they have a lot of rules and they all attempt to ensure "fairness" when the government tries to acquire something.

How do you do begin to understand that behemoth? Here are some tips:

-You invest some (a lot) of time understanding the Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR) https://www.acquisition.gov. There are training classes available online and in person.

-Speak with acquisition specialists or contracting officers to understand the regulations specific to your product/industry.

-Learn about the specific rules/advantages that may apply to your company. There are many many preferences for small business, veteran-owned companies, disabled-owned companies, women-owned companies, etc.

-Understand what "fair" means to the federal government in the context of acquisition. It doesn't mean "the best solution". It doesn't always mean "the cheapest solution".

-Learn how to navigate the government's Request for Proposal (RFP) and Request for Information (RFI) processes so that you can be a part of delivering answers/solutions to the problems that the government has determined they have. The big government contractors have this stuff figured out. They know how to read an RFP and respond, even if they don't have the solution themselves.

-Understand the concept of "prime contractor" and "sub contractors". Prime contractors often win large government contracts but decide to/have to "sub" some of the work out. There are often regulations on how and what types of companies they must sub work out to. For example, AT&T may win a large networking contract but sub the work out to 10-15 other smaller companies to execute.
congratz, nice job! really interesting and helpful. I'll try to use it.
nowadays I am using sollo atlas (which is used by the http://www.findmyninja.io):

http://atlas.sollo.io/atlas/api

it's possible to easily navigate through resources (places data) and, a helpful feature is its capacity to have synonyms.
Sounds like a tax avoidance scheme.
The owner can remove it, too. Marco Arment's iOS ad blocker is the most immediate example that comes to mind.

If an app is "completely gone", it probably has a good reason not to be there in the vast majority of cases.

Cold comfort to those who paid for said app.
You'd be surprised at the number of credit card companies that are perfectly willing to keep a card (and its associated credit limit) open with no activity.

But granted, if for some reason the system scores you as not-auto-grant on the initial card application (in which case I have no idea what they base it on), then you might have to go with a fee secured in order to jump start the limit climb.
I think this is really only true for big-ticket military contracts, which are designed to siphon money from the tax payers into the wallets of specific crony contracting firms in the first place.

If you're a small startup, there are dozens of ways to get into government contracting. Start looking at your city level. My home town even has an open-access procurement website where I can sign up, register my credentials, fill out my tax paperwork in advance, and configure email alerts for different keywords on procurement contracts that they post. If I had 5 employees--instead of my company being just a loose conglomeration of three consultants working on three completely different projects but sharing our billing--then I'd be able to even bid on some of these GIS software contracts.

I know my state has a similar site, I just haven't gone through it yet. I'm pretty sure federal has such a system that a number of the different bureaus use.
I don't like how it creates so many binaries.

average
count
example
filter
graph
group
parse
render
render-basic
sumo
sumosum

It would be better if these were subcommands on one `sumo` binary.
I wonder how the device will keep good air conditoins for 6-8 hours. It looks so small...
The ATM feature you mentioned is not totally apocryphal. It's a software called SafetyPIN, which has apparently been patented but not commercially adopted.
This shouldn't be an issue since the basic premise around these parts is that options are worthless anyway. In 20 years I've never once got an exit or cashed in options - it's just not part of the culture in Canada.
Well, that was already covered under "no forced self-incrimination" AFAIK.
http://blog.codinghorror.com
http://lea.verou.me/
http://ejohn.org/
http://byfat.xxx/
http://www.windytan.com/
http://meowni.ca/
and many others
Encryption back doors: Is there more to this debate?
Thinkpads (used to, don't know about these days) ship with a utility that allowed to prolong the lifetime of the battery by limiting the amount it will be charged. The article mentions "tlp" software which apparently does similar thing. So yes, it can be solved in software.
"And it won't solve the problem that the client still needs to be written primarily in Javascript." Nothing's going to solve that. But rails could definitely work on making working with Javascript front ends easier. As great as Sprockets is, it doesn't fit so will in modern JS workflows.
The importance of checking spam
Volkswagen Said to Manage Faked Test Results from Germany
Yup, I was sure I recognized a classic parcheesi board. I might now have to try this six-sided variant sometime. Maybe I can pull folks off Settlers over the holidays...
For some reason, despite the fact that keeping a Li-I battery near full charge and in high temperatures drastically decreases its capacity over time, most laptop (and phone) manufacturers don't bother to have battery management software (to limit state of charge). I only know of Windows drivers for Sony and Lenovo.

http://superuser.com/a/664583/32370

This is probably because of some sort of planned obsolescence - they want you to replace your device.

On the other hand, in electric cars (using the same battery chemistry), where it is in the company's best interest not to replace the battery, it is charged to a maximum of 70-80%, except when soaking up extra energy going downhill, and basically maintains its full capacity for much longer.
Show HN: Discover coupons while you shop online
"Done is better than perfect"

"Move fast and break things"

I'm glad they're not holding any critical data like our personal information, what we do, what we think and where we are then!

If this set of slides embodies 'hacker culture' which it claims to, I am not a hacker, neither are my colleagues and I'm proud of that.

The whole thing stinks of arrogance hiding incompetence. I'm not putting anything near facebook, ever.
Given that key escrow failed eventually, what is different today that would make backdoors possible?
How so? A Debian package can run arbitrary code as root on install. A Nix script can hardly be unsafer than that.
That is awesome, I hope I still have that exploratory attitude when I'm 70.
google has even less of a monopoly. You cannot be monopolist with GPL product.
Totaling up investment brokerage fees
Light-duty trucks aren't considered cars in many states and so laws like seat belt requirements and emissions standards don't apply to them. I think it was just this past summer that seat belts became mandatory in trucks in Georgia. It wasn't until 2009 that light-duty trucks needed to be emissions tested and there's still all kinds of exclusions.
Is it ethical to sell complimentary copies of textbooks?
>trusting random sources

A recent example to add to this, for those who think "nobody who's not a complete beginner would never do that":

https://www.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/3lefc6/chinese_ios_...
It would be so much more friendly to have a functional UI hosted locally on the device and to serve updates and optionally populate additional functionality from the web. If your web offering is good enough, most people would have no problem with this setup; it satisfies everyone's needs. If they don't want it to connect out, they just block external connections from this device.
In the past month I started watching the programs Difficult People & You're the Worst. One made for Hulu, the other for FX. And to be perfectly honest if I was blind taste testing and had to peg which one was which, it be a shot in the dark. Also, haven't cable boxes just been really crappy computers for years?
Was everyone involved capable of standing back and asking some basic questions?
https://youtu.be/_y36fG2Oba0
Many things I could respond to, but out of convenience I'll just note that there's a reason why nobody programs in Haskell in the Cont monad unless they really can't avoid it!
davidu, I'm the founding CEO of both Socialtext and Pingpad. Socialtext was sold in 2012 to an HR software company and continues to operate. At the time I was on the board, but had moved on to SlideShare.

Pingpad is a very different company, a social productivity app with a consumer freemium business model.
We currently support ~1,000 stores for full automation.

Would love any feedback or suggestions.
My lawn mower's LI battery is connected 24/7 and still works after 10 years, using it every summer. My phone battery recently died after almost 3 years but my previous phone battery still works 5 years later, both 24/7 on charge unless in mobile use. I think/thought the prevailing advice was that car batteries like lead/acid should be cycled (actually I know this) and the same for NICAD and for LI it has always been best to charge 24/7. Sometimes batteries including LI go bad, it just happens.
The GhostWriter, a JavaScript 2D Game with Canvas
Ah. Good point. I expected dpkg to handle data blobs that were allowed to be moved into specific locations. I guess that would make post install configs impossible.
Interesting stuff. Never thought of this. Will try this for my next trip.
Doing full battery cycle every month sounds like a very bad idea for lithium batteries. You generally want to avoid deep discharges as much as possible, this is even pointed out in the link you posted:

"The shorter the discharge (low DoD), the longer the battery will last. If at all possible, avoid full discharges and charge the battery more often between uses"

Keeping the battery constantly at stable 60-80% charge is far better than doing full discharges every month.
And it's depressing that we're cutting the budget of stuff like New Horizons while funneling ever more money into killing other humans.
This post is very interesting. News reported Facebook would create a simplified Android app for low end phone owners in Africa. I think They should do it for iOS too.
Circular Gallifreyan Generator
In a Gold Rush, Sell Picks and Shovels
Link to full article: http://web.cs.wpi.edu/~crtaylor/files/woot13.pdf
tar.gz vs. curl|bash is a false dichotomy, there is no reason for either. We have better ways to install software these days.

And yes, when I download tar.gz (e.g. when I am responsible of managing my own packages) I do check the signatures. You should, too.
The unnecessary bashing of PHP, the lame justification for a sloppy architecture, the immense ego... I don't think hack culture should be used to justify asshole-ery.
You aren't legally required to unlock your door and let the police in with a warrant. They will force their way in without your consent however, in some cases with out asking nicely first.
Apparently the rate of inventions per capita is approximately constant. We just became a lot more.
At a glance it looks really neat. I have to admit, I'm still reluctant to install random Chrome extensions (as much as I am to install random desktop applications I guess) I really wish they would change their permission model somehow (Like this tab I currently have open gets access only)

How do you feel about RetailMeNot? I stopped using them fairly quickly on because the vast majority of coupons were expired or otherwise invalid. Do you think you'll run into that problem or is the automation you mention getting around that?
Thanks for sharing! It's... strangely horrifying to mess around with. At one point, it suddenly hit me that the same biological structures were thinking the thoughts I was having and operating my smartphone.
Because 20 year olds may not have the extensive government contacts required to land big money contracts.
They already have, it's called Facebook Lite. You can't get it from the Play Store in the US, but I download an APK. It's nice.

I only really downloaded it so that I could get notifications, and now m.facebook.com can send them from Chrome, so I'm very happy to totally app-less.
Beautiful Handmade alloy mechanical pencils a must have
Oh, and.. ..video demo can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Zwp09O4R2M
"AFAIK it's just an urban myth"

Your doubt tells us that your PIN is not a palindrome. The second most common PIN is 1-1-1-1, followed by 0-0-0-0 (says http://www.datagenetics.com/blog/september32012/ ), and looking at the top 20 numbers, over 10% of the people have a palindromic PIN. (If selected randomly, that should be 2%.)

So either the police get called a lot, or there's some special flag that say "palindrome PIN - false alarm" (and it must be supported for international cards) ... or it's simply not true.
I've heard of some FinTech startups that are offering forward-contracts (think futures, or put-options) on Bitcoin. If I can get my hands on those kind of contracts, I'd totally accept my salary in bitcoin. It seems like that would eliminate any potential downside, as long as those contracts are relatively cheap to buy.
I've worked with clients that had all their code in one repo at Github, and it took me 5 tries to even pull it down initially. You need not operate at Facebook scale to overwhelm git :)
A Parent's Survival Guide to Common Core Math – Kindle Edition Free This Weekend
That, I think, is the key observation that the article essentially ignores in favor of trivial sidebar issues (like acronyms for procurement systems that haven't been used in three years). Governments are structured as large, top-down bureaucratic entities; their projects, unsurprisingly, tend to be structured as large, top-down bureaucratic endeavors. Some of this is due to structural concerns (fund-based accounting imposes limitations on how you procure and encumber expenditures) and some due to substantive concerns (agencies do not have the space to "pivot" their operations; when you're responsible for public safety and welfare, incremental iteration can be a pretty risky play); in either case, it certainly, as you point out, biases governmental organizations to caution, trading money and time for predictability.

Unfortunately, as we know, in project management unameliorated risk is a compounding factor, and iteration and hypothesis testing are some of the few risk sinks we know about in practice. Squaring that particular circle is the holy grail for practitioners inside the government and out.
Yes interestly enough there was a period when the front-end for mobile was html5 based but they since ditched that for greater (native) performance, in fact as this article reveals, a number of implementations!
To be fair, most of these specific signs have been removed now/changed (I was an intern there fall 2013). They actually talked about how that used to be a slogan, but breaking stuff isn't really acceptable anymore because facebook is so big. They still wanted us to move really fast though...
16,500 commits on Meteor
Reread the comment, it addresses that issue.
$ gpg --verify software.tar.gz
gpg: Signature made Fri 25 Sep 10:20:57 EDT 2015 using RSA key ID 99BD2CF1
gpg: Good signature from "Keith Alexander <keith.alexander@ironnetcybersecurity.com>"

I'm so glad I'm using PGP!
> My 2010 MacBook Pro 13-inch's battery is still in good condition (relatively).

My 2006 MacBook still holds about 30 minutes of charge in the original battery. Most of the time I left it plugged in all the time, what do people do that kills them so quickly?
Measure twice, cut once. D=
Cool! I had no idea. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATM_SafetyPIN_software .
Can't even imagine the amount of crap in their code-base. I bet that amount of commits is necessary to continuously correct the shitload of mistakes coming from their "Hacking" culture.
I'd argue that it's much more important to maintain strong privacy rights than it is to convict the minority of criminals that would be caught by indiscriminately searching their phones.

Keep in mind, almost all this data lives elsewhere too. If it's important enough they can still get it.
Yep. 2005 G5 powermac. Totally usable machine. Can get a dual 2.5GHz boz with 4Gb of RAM for equivalent $40 in the UK.

But no, it's stuck on OSX 10.5...
Like others have mentioned, in my experience small startups can and do win Government contracts.

Most founders have intimate knowledge of the contract process and a large network from previously working at a large DoD contractor. Once they have this information and rolodex, they normally have an easy time running a small defense contracting firm as a sub on large contracts and winning their own through contract vehicles like SBIR.

This is also the story of how all those mega-mansions in Great Falls and McClean VA came to exist.
Selection bias? Rich people who are not good investors won't stay rich for long.
Ask HN: Monetization Ideas for my little project
Monetization Ideas for http://mailwebo.com

Okay, so by even posting this I feel like I have failed. I'm looking for some thought / ideas on how to monetize what I have today. I'd personally consider this project a success if it just paid for hosting on it's own.

I have several ideas on how to move forward, but perhaps I'm just looking for validation on those ideas.

I know there exists services like this today, but what services, features would you find beneficial and pay a small fee for.

Possible ideas:

* Callback webhook for when a message arrives with API

* Email Parsing API

* Being able to handle custom domains and providing an API to work with message for that domain

* Add simple advertising to the site ( meh.. not really interested in this idea.. )

* Close down the project.. it's not going anywhere, it was fun to tinker with?
Moonstruck: How moon phases affect life on Earth
These good government groups complain about this stuff, but they are the reason we have this ridiculous situation. Google "New York State Appendix A" for a good example of standard contract terms that you need to comply with to do business with that state government. Examples include:

- You must certify that you don't use certain tropical hardwoods.

- You must report on minority and female employees in some circumstances. You must meet goals for hiring subcontractors owned by the same.

- You need to certify that you've divested assets in Iran

- You must certify that you don't discriminate against Catholics in Northern Ireland.

Understanding how to navigate this stuff and not get in trouble requires "fixers" (ie. lobbyists, congressmen, etc) and domain expertise to stay compliant with everything. Competitors have to meet these too, and will submit grievances to screw up your contract awards. For a startup, that's death, as you'll hire people and buy stuff, and not get paid.
The real anti-Facebook is good old email
What keywords do you think the interviewer was looking for? Was it along the lines of "disruptive", "game-changing", "innovative", etc.?
I sincerely doubt the fact that there are companies which thoroughly fix "technical debt".
How human stampedes, like the one near Mecca, turn deadly
I'm the opposite. This release excites me more than it did for Rails 4.

Turbolinks 3 sounds like it's going to be real nice. My biggest reason for using SPA's are not the components, or the data flow, or the states, etc. It's for the partial rendering and the nested views. With Turbolinks 3 coming out, if it is as advertised, then I will pretty much be reaching for Rails for most of my projects.

I've moved on from Rails to Node for websockets. For ActionCables, the real-time library for Rails, I have to admit that it does kind of sound like a PITA to have a second server running for it. Doesn't sound right. But I can't judge it before it comes out (nor do I really have any right to judge. It's so easy to be entitled as a FOSS user). But if it is a pleasure to use, just like the rest of the Action* family, then that's another nail in the coffin for my use case for anything else. But then again, my needs and your needs may be different. I usually build small to medium sized apps that will never hit 4 figures in terms of users.

It sounds like you're looking for that "magic" you've felt when you first got into Ruby and RoR. We all do! But things like Rails once comes once in a blue moon, so even though it may not be the new hotness, I just like to appreciate that it happened. I don't think you'll find any other tech that will give you that "this is it!" feeling like Rails did for a long while.

In the mean time, instead of stressing out about tools, just focus on writing good software.
Thanks. I hear ya, but supervisor jobs are much more limited than operator jobs. And if you don't have experience as an operator, how can you be expected to supervise (especially the next generation)? Just saying: https://medium.com/homeland-security/if-you-don-t-think-you-...
Inheriting money is not a learnable skill.
You might have some luck grabbing their DNS records, look for TXT records with the string "spf" in them. If they're a big sender of email, they've likely needed to add SPF records (referencing their transactional email service of choice) to their DNS, in order for their emails to avoid the spambox.
4+Things+We+Can+Forget+About+With+Time+Management+Software
There are always tradeoffs. In this case, risk compensation might lead a seat-belted driver to drive in more reckless fashion.
No, but I do trust some software enough to run as non-root. Sadly to install this non-root software I need to install the RPM as root, and then I have no idea what it's going to do during the pre- and post- hook scripts.
The real problem here is the fact that there is missing oversight on these court orders, since it might be the case that the judge handing out the order does not have sufficient knowledge of the matter at hand and so there is a huge potential for misuse by the police or intelligence agencies.

In the end it boils down to the simply dilemma of choosing between either catching all "criminals" or protecting the rights of the people.

The latter way of course makes life a bit harder, since you'll never be able to prevent all crimes and people will potentially die, but people die all the time, since dying is a a basic risk of life.

The former way is essentially a rabbit hole, because it allows you to rewrite the definition of a "criminal" to just about anything you'd like and once you get a court order the "criminal" being is pretty much done with their life. This of course was and is still used in dictatorships of all kinds of sizes and employed by numerous secret police agencies around the world. Once there is a way to criminalize any action and then instantly "get rid" of that person, people who are going to use these powers WILL pop up and take over power.

Now of course in the short term no third party candidate is going to show up on the US politcal floor and take win a majority in the elections over night and then install a dictator system based on all the pre-existing powers by simply outlawing all other parties and anyone who objects to the new rulers claims. But 10 or 20 years from now things might be different and if we don't fight over abuse of the law and protect the general public we might end up in a pretty bad situation someday.