skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think society has grown accustomed to rolling its eyes upon hearing software/web developers boldly say, "Let's save (i.e. disrupt) the world with a full-stack responsively designed Web/iPhone app"...which is what I had thought this linkbaity-sounding headline was guilty of...but I'm all for the idea of programmers saving the world by focusing on logistics...God, how great things would be if talented programmers could be drawn into high-visibility projects, but to apply their engineering in solving the mundane, unsexy kinds of things that computers are best at alleviating -- and be appreciated for it.

A lot of well-meaning hackathons I've read about that tackle problems such as world health/hunger crisises usually look at how they can better disseminate vital information, such as where the nearest shelters/hospitals are, etc., which is usually done in a beautifully designed site/app. But I suspect that's of limited use to those in the impacted zones, not because they lack phones/computers (though...that's not a bad assumption)...but because an app/site is probably not much better than a printed poster...and the well-meaning developers lack access to information and real-time data that is essential for adding value to a digital versus paper product.

But focusing on payroll? I know the adage, "an army marches on its stomach" is centuries old (and similarly, the less old adage "Amateurs talk about tactics, but professionals study logistics")...but I don't think I would have ever zeroed on that as a pain point that was both potentially fatal to the greater mission and one in which software developers could easily tackle...and I wonder how such an insight could've been reached by the head developers if they were either working remotely, or relying on a non-programming administrator to convey the medical staffs' needs?

A post-mortem on this would be great :)
Little drummer toy
Condolences to his friends and family. Ian and the hundreds of Debian maintainers who followed have left an amazing legacy which I use and appreciate every day.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_suicide_crisis_lines
I think this is a good visualization for things like that:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_distribution#/media/File...
It mentions that it takes advantage of improvements in the Windows 8/10 bluetooth stack. Does the fix work in Windows 7?
Thanks for the info! Interesting management was contemptuous of it. I wouldn't have expected that.

Though with that said, I'd like to lay a bit more guesswork down now.

Those devs were probably good, I'd guess too good (for these purposes), and that management wanted them focused on core products which serve their target better... Like iOS? So it is probably less about contempt for the Mac product and more about the best usage of resources.

I have a feeling the rogues at Twitter who want to work on this are in a pretty high pay grade, even compared to the folks at the shop that made it. So it even still probably saved money.

With all that, has Twitter made the best use of those developer resources? I have no clue.
None of these things are a problem in Washington state, where marijuana's legal.

In my personal experience, nothing's changed in Washington safety-wise. Only difference is that sometimes you'll catch the scent of a stinky plant someone's lit on fire.
sounds like most of the forks of ircd to be honest.
There had been library API on PS1, PS2 had been an exception with the DMA chains and VU code exposed to developers but Xbox 1 and all later consoles come with libraries and no poking into registers business. So you can already try your idea by writing an Xbox 1 emulator (which is as much a PC as PS4 or Xbone). Spoiler alert: these libraries are statically linked on top of developers going around them all the time. Ultra High Level emulation seems to work only on Nintendo consoles, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UltraHLE
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolphin_%28emulator%29
And so the attack on the upper class changes to now include the upper middle class. I wonder how long till it changes again down the class ladder, and how long till it reaches the natural conclusion of from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.
I would strongly disagree with you on both points -- that you're getting paid to do a job, and that you have to be paid to be a leader.

For one, you don't become a leader by being paid to be a leader. That's how you end up as an incompetent manager. You become a leader by taking responsibility and doing what you can to ensure those responsibilities are taken care of. One of those responsibilities is to make your organization better.

And you shouldn't think you're getting paid to do a job. I'm going to do a job whether I get paid by my employer or not. What I'm getting paid for is to take my employers priorities and goals into consideration, and the strength of that consideration is proportional to the pay. If you don't pay me very much, my priorities will be considered first, and one of my priorities from a workplace is to be comfortable and happy within a good organization -- I will work to help and support my friends and coworkers. So that's what I'll focus on. If you want me to 'just do a job' or 'maximize company profits', you need to pay me extra, because I won't care about those things for cheap.

You must be miserable at work if you think you're getting paid to just do labor. That's a waste of an education, assuming you have one.
From

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/12/30/ian_murdock_debian_f...

"According to the San Francisco police, officers were called to Steiner and Union St in the city at 11.30pm on Saturday, December 26, following reports of a man trying to break into a home – that man was identified as Ian Murdock. He reportedly fought with the cops, and was given a ticket for two counts of assault and one for obstruction of an officer. The techie had been drinking, according to the police logs. A medic arrived to treat an abrasion to Murdock's forehead, and he was released so he could be taken to hospital.

A few hours later, on Sunday, December 27 at 2.40am, police were called again to reports of Murdock banging on the door of a neighbor at the very same block. A medic arrived to treat him for any injuries at the scene. Next, the cops took Murdock to the county jail where he was held in a cell.

Murdock was bailed later that day, on Sunday, after a bond, said to be $25,000, was paid. He died the next day."
Hackers gonna hack. Every generation of these consoles is a new challenge to all the hackers out there. You've got to think that the engineers who designed these systems eventually get "engineering syndrome" from staring at these systems for years and eventually start to be blind about tiny problems. Corporations put millions and millions of dollars behind the design of these systems and a ragtag group of folks comes in here and owns everything you worked to protect. I guess the only thing these hackers have over Sony is time. More time than money..and a fresh pair of eyes.

Is there a future with an open gaming platform like the Steam Machine? Why do developers choose a closed platform like PS4 vs the Steam Machine? What's there to protect that they work so hard to guard it?

Beautiful work here. Keep on hacking.
I'd certainly like to know how of those down voting me think I am wrong. Are you going to resist arrest and think that will turn out well? Maybe you don't like reality, but it is what it is. The police frequently have to deal with dangerous people, thus they are trained to use force to subdue and arrest. You cannot question an arrest as it is happening. Your right to due process happens in court after the arrest, not on the street.

Again the best thing to do is to just avoid encounters with police in the first place.

I'd like for someone to comment as to why they down voted.
I need a prompt: Generate sentences from a dictionary you define
It might work just fine, but it clearly does not have the sex appeal associated with a big potential market and a profit seeking gatekeeper.

And nothing wrong with that, mind you.

Frankly, I see the incentive to develop such a thing directly correlated to how well existing, centralized players treat their market potentials.

Uber appears to have developed a lot of negatives quickly. I know little about Lyft.

The dynamic might just be the same sort of thing we see with closed vs open software, only with law playing the role patents play in software.

Like with closed software, ain't nothing wrong with that, but it had better be real easy and deliver real value, or people will attempt something to keep that equation honest.

Notice how it's not hard, nor expensive to get access to Office these days. Some of that is Microsoft working hard to deliver value and serve it's markets, but the prospect of free / OSS out there keeps it all pretty sane too. There is zero chance of an OSS tool reaching critical mass, and the work needed to prevent that is good for everyone.

Say Uber continues to irritate... enter FUber, the decentralized, direct compensation, combination ride share, taxi service to the rescue. It could be a general marketplace. People want a taxi, exuber driver, rideshare, etc... sign up, check the little boxes and go.

Doing this would devalue things, but also doing this might show that there really wasn't anywhere near the value to begin with.

And some people just don't like the thought of that kind of check and balance gaining traction.
I call B.S. A nuclear powered one would probably be pretty quiet.
Doesn't the UCC cover 99% of those regulations though?
Murdock, it seems had an argument with someone who thought he should have known not to say anything with the police and who was very insensitive about how Murdock felt after (allegedly) being beaten up twice by the police and fined 25K for an assault he didn't commit.

That person also criticised Debian.

But none of the insensitive things said are are responsible for someone killing themselves. Please don't turn this into a witch hunt.
The challenge is finding an exploit to load up linux instead of the signed, stock operating system.
This web page is annoying to use on Safari on my iPad. Every time I scrolled down, it would bounce up and down for several seconds, as though something above the visible part of the page reloaded every time I scrolled.
"reasonably priced". You never needed a private network with 3 nodes.
Why pay for a ridiculously powerful desktop that's idle 98% of the time?

Because you actually own the physical machine; some may disagree, especially the DRM crowd, but there's a big difference between having hardware that is and on your property and just having volatile control over a machine in some unknown location.
The key difference in our viewpoint here is that you take the standard model as dogma, and I do not. It is incomplete, subject to amendment as new facts are discovered as any good scientific model should be The logical progressions of our arguments diverge from there, understandable so.
> You're not going to acquire the agency if the app takes off... you already own the IP.

Well I think you're discounting the value of their domain knowledge and their contribution vastly too much. It will take time and resources to bring a new team online. Often times, that time is greater than the business can allow. The cost of simply acquiring the company isn't going to be sufficiently high enough for the corp to even worry. As you said, they (Twitter) own the IP.
Thanks for saying this. I don't understand how people can forget that everyone relies on public roads, the power grid, police and armed forces, and a plethora of other expensive infrastructure items without which it would be nearly impossible to make a penny.
Bill Gurley Steps Down from Grubhub and Zillow Boards
Ask HN: Can you help me find a junior ML job?
Hello HN, I'm new around here, but from what I've heard, this is the place to be.

So long story short, I'm a bit down on my luck these days job-wise, so I thought I'd see if anyone here could help. My background is in quantum mechanics. I pursued that into my post-graduate education, but dropped out of my phd program in order to switch focus towards machine learning. I'm currently enrolled in a short-term intensive ML course which is finishing up in January.

My programming mostly uses C/Python, and I am familiar with packages including scipy/numpy/sklearn/seaborn/matplotlib/pandas. I have some limited experience with mysql/html.

My long-term goal/dream is to get involved with bleeding edge AI research since I find that field incredibly exciting.

Obviously, I don't have much industry experience, so I'd be looking for a junior role where I can get some mentorship while getting my hands dirty in the field. I work best with some direction, but I also have some very exciting ideas for applications of ML which are currently a bit beyond my grasp, but I'm working towards them.

I have a github page, but its pretty sparse right now, and I only have a few samples of old coursework with poor commenting/formatting.

I learn fast.

I'm located in the Boston area, and I'd like to stay here, but I'd consider relocation for the right opportunity.

So, that's me in a nutshell. I'm clearly higher risk than a seasoned veteran of the field, but I think I would bring good value to the right organization.
It would be exciting to hunt, too. Catch one and never pay your power bill again!
You don't need web workers, you just need to host each app in a sandboxed iframe. Then it can render however it wants with normal DOM access and have script and DOM isolation from the OS and other apps. You would need some sort of IPC system on top of postMessage, and probably some way to send theme data down into the frame and get things like content sizes back out.

I don't think same-origin iframed apps would be out-of-process in Chrome yet, but I do think Chrome is supposed to get out-of-process frames eventually. That would prevent an apps from exploiting a browser bug to take down the whole tab.
Show HN: Songlink – Link generator for sharing songs across streaming platforms
"Me three" re: Amazon Prime videos. Netflix and Hulu work wonderfully. We only occasionally watch something on Amazon Prime and I don't think there's been one time that we didn't have an issue with it (and I have fiber at home, 50x25 Mbps, and my ISP is well-connected network-wise).
Spending bill to accelerate NASA habitation development
Imagine how useful a wiretap would be if the phone company immediately notified the target. I'm not sure there's anything unreasonable about this amendment. Something similar is probably already the case for telephone and postal surveillance, and this was just a previous oversight in the law.

I think there's a case for having a time-limit after which the surveillance must be disclosed, unless a judge thinks there's a very good reason not to for a specific case. I believe that's how this works in the US. Unfortunately, the UK's version of surveillance oversight is typically ministerial oversight, which is not very encouraging.
> Jew is a race that I'm aware of.

What? No. Ashkenazim might be genetically similar, but even there, not a race. And there are also Sephardim. Also Jews from Africa? Definitely not a race.
Gamer keeps Nintendo system on for 20 years just to preserve a saved game
I think you're significantly downplaying the cost which could potentially come from acquiring an agency.

It would be quite different if this was done by a startup whose sole or primary purpose was making a Twitter app. But an agency has dozens of different projects and clients (up to hundreds) and most of their team probably wasn't even involved in the Twitter app.

If Twitter wants to refocus on Mac, they'll just hire a Mac developer or two and pay the agency to train them on the app.
Also... that was a really low, shameless edit:

> Specifically, the goal is to streamline tax codes to be more clear, more consistent, and more algorithmic.

Your original post said (I don't have it saved), that the goal was to make all income from US companies taxed as US income. COMPLETELY different.

It is very dishonest to completely change your post after there's a whole comment tree under you.
They do offer cheap and cheerful desktop grade gear but their PX and R ranges are server grade (Xeon chips, ECC memory etc). They offer PowerEdge boxes too.

I've been a customer for a while but needed some spare, cheap server grade boxes this month. Decided to give their server bidding system a try and picked up two 32GB quad-core Xeon boxes (with 2x3TB SATA disks, Intel NICs and unlimited bandwidth) for €39/month each. So far, no complaints.
I feel like you are getting distracted by the sound bite. This post is not about telling employees that it's okay for them to do mediocre work - it's about having a healthy perspective about their jobs and not getting emotionally entangled with failures. Rationally, this should always lead to better outcomes, aggregated over a large number of employees and personality types. Working on one of these double-down-rally type companies myself, I can say that all you would have to show for it after sufficient time is burnout and mental exhaustion. You seldom feel like you are doing your best work when you're in crunch mode all the time.

As to expecting companies to keep private thoughts to themselves, and maintaining a different public front - are you really better off paying money to a company where the staff could riot and quit at the wrong time, as opposed to one where they ask you to manage expectations more realistically?

But this does inform why leadership and PR so rarely attempt to reach out to the public with honesty and frankness. Without critical reading, a lot of people simply "take it the wrong way", and the wrong kind of misapprehension can do significant damage to their public image.
This. What she is really saying is that she has permission to fail the customers who trusted her. We achieve success by being given a position of trust by people who depend on us. She is unilaterally demanding the right to betray that trust in order to have both the benefits of success, and also the easy lifestyle of someone who is just a worker bee.

This idea that everyone deserves an easy lifestyle, regardless of their position, is one that needs to die. Marissa Mayer and her ultra short maternity leaves gets it. This lady does not.
Point completely missed: the officers should have known that the field test they used had a high false-positive rate, and should have taken a sample back to be tested by more reliable means. Either they're lying about being ignorant of the fact that the test is unreliable, which should be grounds for throwing those claims away when testing if the warrant showed probable cause, or they actually were ignorant of the test's unreliability, in which case they (or the person in their department who approved the test for use) are recklessly incompetent.
At more than one company, "Agile development" means "the CEO gives his cell number to every customer, and Waterfall development happens very fast."
Is Twitter the new Yahoo!?
At first, no it didn't bother me that it was culturally homogeneous -- I thought "Hey this guy is running his own business, that's great." Lots of small businesses that grow organically are confined to a single culture. After all, it was founded by two Orthodox Jews, former competitors, undoubtedly part of a business-friendly community with more contacts who were open to good employment.

But now I think you bring up a fair point, and as they grow, they're probably facing pressure to diversify. Their numbers will start looking suspicious, and it will get harder to find employees within the same community, if nothing else. And how they handle it will affect their company culture and reputation for sure.

Inclusiveness can be hard work; in an ideal world, it would develop organically, with time to learn as they go. I'm sure it will go better if they work at it proactively rather than resist it. But they live in a multi-cultural city, so I'm sure they have some life experience.

I love the hint in the article about that process. It's colorful and shows that it's not just about cultures, but also about individuals:

> "The buyer that does all the storage products, he's the only guy I let work out of home," Pikarski says. "He's Italian."
€12,61/month extra per server and a one off ~€25 for the switch is hardly extortionate given what they charge for servers...
I was one of those affected by the mentioned data loss and inconsistency issues. Even though I kept backups, I was fairly annoyed at the time, but now I'm glad to see they moved past it and things are stable.
> I am the kind of person that believes in the existence of a universal absolute moral truth. I don't believe in subjectivity. A disagreement implies that at least one person is wrong. Yet, I don't think a central and rigid infrastructure should exist to enforce this ideal even if we were to discover it.

I have a similar view of disagreement - it is my belief that two rational people should, having the same information, reach the same conclusion. I don't believe in an "universal absolute moral truth" (after all, where does it come from, and why?), but I think humans share enough of their basic morality to make it de-facto universal for us. We should delegate only the bare minimum of it for the law to enforce, but the government is literally an embodiment of the concept of people getting together and agreeing on things, so I see no problem to it being a way to scale up what in small groups you can do through social customs.

> Can you provide one example of a law that should be enforced by a government?

I think you enumerated some examples yourself - "scarce resources, ownership, roads, defense, languages". Those things are suitable for being managed centrally, and management involves enforcement - even if you delegated most of it to the market, you still need to steer the market to do the job, lest it bails out when it's profitable to do so.
I'll add:

NFS home directories don't seem to be tested by KDE developers, taking 30seconds or so to start fully everytime you move machine because they generate stuff in /tmp.

Most programs don't take quota into account when calculating free space, and fail in weird ways when it gets exceeded

Cups password authentication can't send a prompt to the user. Windows did this in XP (OSX has this problem too)
Interesting he was kept on for so long. Not sure if you could say Time is much of a "gatekeeper" in the art world though. The guy himself comments on how it wasn't a super important role at Time.
> If developing software for a major platform isn't one of Twitter's competencies any more, that bodes ill.

Why? They aren't desktop software company. They're huge-scale services, social interaction and growth company.

"Software development" is too broad a field for even Twitter to specialize in. They don't write firmware for hard drives that spin in their servers either — and I'd say that skill of writing firmeare is as far from skill of writing high-load servers as skill of writing desktop software.
I guess VF hasn't cut beverage expense accounts for its developers yet :)
Nope, the tax system is pretty screwy. The whole Irish domicile thing is basically Deleware or Nevada headquartered corporation just on a larger stage.
The blue-eyed islanders puzzle (2008)
I was about to say that ChromeOS is a lot closer to being a conventional desktop Linux, with X11, blah blah blah... Good thing I checked that! I had not been paying much attention to ChromeOS and was surprised to learn of Freon.
AT&T to Ditch Two Year Contracts for Smartphones
Its not about what they'll do in a "what we always did just more/faster" kind of way. Its about the new, unimagined things that will take off once everyone is linked well at 1gbps.

When we went from modems to "broadband" (>1mbps or so) it grabbed the good-ole-boy music industry by the throat and shook them so hard they've still got PTSD. >10 and the movie/tv industry had their reckoning. Consumers won huge both times. Can't wait to see whats next.
The Best Quotes from the Tech Industry in 2015