skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Out of touch may be a tad bit harsh -- I see it as being not aligned.

When you live in SV and make your 125k+ salary you're going to come up with a lot of pretty damn good useful things for yourself -- but not everybody else.

I am from an immigrant family and parents combined income was ~75k for my entire life (in Canada, no less, where we pay much more for the same products as our neighbors down south). You can reduce the cost of access or improve the experience but at the end of the day we simply didn't have the disposable income to even make use of Amazon in any kind of life changing way. It just wasn't that big of a deal until I started making the kind of money that the benefits of Amazon became obvious.

Most of SV hype is around products that simply don't apply to MOST people. This is also why you REALLY notice when someone strikes to the core of universal affordable (if not totally free) services - Google, Facebook, AirBnB, Uber etc. The big successes (in the consumer space) are ones that have the blanket appeal across income ranges.

For now, Magic+ is not one of these.

I kind of just wrote straight through and realized I didn't make any solid 'points' but hopefully something resonates. The basic idea is that most things being done by SV are STILL things that most people CANNOT afford.
How to write emails people actually want to read
Depends on the situation - a bunch of dedicated servers means a sizable shift from "operating expenses" like AWS fees to "capital expenses" for hardware. It also means shifting expenses from monthly as-you-go to mostly upfront.
It did happen and my clients were affected. After AWS fu$%up rollout of software update in 2011 that overvelmed their control plane and had whole zones down for many hours and took many days to fully restore, they rolled out patches that throttle cross zone migration. After those patches at one point Netflix was having issues and started massive migration that hit throttle thresholds and affected ability of other tenants to move to non affected zones. It's very far from hypothetical given netflix consumes about 30% of resources (which translates to many whole size physical datacenters) if they spike 50% they will overvelm the spare capacity.
> What I want to get rid of though, completely, is news and noise.

Why? I'm being serious.

Everyone assumes that our lot in life is to be productive. For Americans it seems we need to be as productive as possible. It's untenable.

The most productive person is the one who dies at 40 because they didn't get enough sleep because they drank too much caffeine and augmented themselves with other drugs to maximize wakeful productivity. Is that worthwhile?

I can definitely see a problem with spending considerable amounts of time keeping up with social media because ultimately the thoughts, pictures, and videos posted by your "friends" aren't important. You, them, and everyone else will have long since forgotten what was posted in a week and nothing of value will be lost.

On the other hand, "keeping up with the news"--especially news in your industry--is important. There's a lot of things going on all the time that could make a huge difference in our lives and careers. Things we need to stay on top of not just because we care but because they have impact.

I don't know about you but at my job it is a common occurrence for me to solve problems with tools and techniques I've learned about through sites like HN. Keeping up with these sorts of things also gives you insight on how to schedule things. For example, if you just read that the next release of ProductX will include a feature that you need you probably won't bother to spend time writing your own implementation since it will be obsoleted soon.

Then there's the entertainment aspect: What's wrong with "wasting" time if you're enjoying yourself? I enjoy reading the news and the occasional entertaining Reddit post. When I laugh at a meme was my time truly "wasted"? Or perhaps the time I spent trying to discover "something good" was wasted?

"Getting things done" in spite is the opposite of happiness.
"This guide will eventually have three versions, Basic, Intermediate, and Advanced, with each version focused on defending your infrastructure against a different class of attacker."
Love this approach! It must be a different game defending against really talented and dedicated people vs. a bot. I'm looking forward to parts 2 & 3. Those little "DO" and "DON'T" bullet points were a good idea too.
Remember the triple constraints of cost, scope and time. If you are going to commit to releasing at a certain time you are going to have to let the scope slide. (Sometimes you can add more people on a 2 week basis but the ramp up time makes it usually impractical.)
We've used Kanban (or something like it) for 20 years. Long before Kanban existed as a thing. Near the end of a project, we'd draw up the "finishers' list" with numbered items and initials next to each. Daily team review of each remaining item, reassign priority or responsibility as needed.
Using `try` is definitely a code smell, but unfortunately it's often a necessary one in production environments that have seen some wear and tear in the integrity of their database structures.
The linux-tegra mailing list is the canonical communication channel when it comes to upstream Linux kernel development.

I should add here that both Alex and I focus almost exclusively on upstream development, which may or may not be what you're looking for. On one hand, upstream is where most of the new technologies are developed, so it's the "bleeding edge" from that point of view. On the other hand the amount of manpower that goes into upstream development is limited, so the upstream kernel might lack a bunch of features that you might be interested in. That said, we are working very hard on getting upstream closer to L4T/Android from a feature perspective and would very much welcome contributors.

We also have an IRC channel (#tegra on Freenode) that we use for realtime communication. If you're interested in chatting with us, feel free to drop by.
That profit margin seems really low, unless the contract they have is a cost-plus type where they are guaranteed to have their costs paid plus 3.5% profit. Otherwise the risk seems too high to settle for a profit margin that low.
You're reading me very uncharitably. I believe that debunking this article properly, point-by-point and with overwhelming evidence, will take stupidly big amounts of time and is almost an impossible task - since no matter what I say, people with the same approach as the author can find something else to twist into criticism. On the other hand, Googling quotes he uses and checking them with source material is easy and provides ample proof that the article is dishonest. It's something a reader can do, and I want to clearly state that in this case, they absolutely should.

RodericDay asked about three concrete examples taken from the article; each of them is a perfect example how utterly nonsense this article is. I provided relevant source material and explained the real meaning of quotes Bond uses when taken in context of said source material. So did other HNers. Check out the responses in the parallel subthreads. I could do it for every one of his sentences but frankly, I feel it's a waste of time. I think I've proven enough that this is not an honest criticism, and fact-checking the rest of that article shall be the task for the reader, who is now properly warned.
> The rituals, mainly the standups and grooming sessions, were fantastic. Standups are a great way to keep everyone aligned on the work.

Can anyone elaborate why they find standups useful? The planning board should already communicate what's being done, what's been done and why people are blocked. I only find them helpful if some people in the team generally don't communicate well what they're up to (e.g. during daily work, over lunch). Otherwise I find most people zone out during the standup and it just interrupts work.
Redesigning the App Store's Homepage
You need to go to Japan more often. I worked quite a lot with NTT DoCoMo and they had amazingly useful games and apps. Everything from a bank machine locator to physical vending machine purchases (with NFC).

They had motion sensor support in J2ME devices that they used mostly for fishing/golf games circa 2003-2004 (don't hold me at the dates my memory is the gray equivalent of Swiss cheese).

Anyway, J2ME had a lot of levels CDC was pretty much Android equivalent but it didn't have GUI API on top of it because Sun disallowed MIDP on top of CDC and didn't offer anything other than AGUI which nobody used... I can go into endless details here but generally, the reason J2ME failed was that it was a tool built in 1999 with a single moderate update in 2004 and nothing else!
Woman's home ‘trashed’ on New Year’s Eve after renting it on Airbnb
Agreed. See Craigslist.
Another response to the article with a somewhat different angle available here: https://www.codenameone.com/blog/debating-brendan-eich-over-...
Ask HN: Working remotely on first programming job?
Hi HN,

I'm a beginning programmer and I need to work remotely because I can't work where I live. I studied information science (not CS) and worked for startups and programmed in a volunteer setting, but never had a programming job. I'm diving more into JavaScript and trying to learn all I can now. Is it possible to work entirely remotely even in the first job in the industry?

And if so, what should I make sure to master before I start?
Demon core
I see it the other way round. We're doing Scrum (ish, I guess) right now, and the see-saw between either ending a sprint with a couple of late-night panic sessions to get everything out of the door, or ending it with most of the team kicking their heels with one pair still going up to the deadline is what feels like the slog. I see Kanban as much smoother: I don't see artificial, self-imposed crunch mode every fortnight as a positive. It's all very well aiming at a social commitment, but the way it works in practice is either a) you under-estimate and have dead time; b) you over-estimate and crunch; or c) you nail it and one sprint runs smoothly into the next. The trap is that c) never happens.

I think what makes the difference is that we're continuously delivering, so there's no delivery ceremony between one sprint and the next to make the crunch mode mean something.
It's not the money waste.
It's the power vacuum that opened up where people established themselves as the good and others as evil.

Big money in being an "anti-racist".
Anyone pointing out that you charge 1600 per hour while living/owning in the most exclusive (homogeneous) parts of Stockholm (Gamla Stan) is obviously a racist.

Obviously none of this shit is related to any form of civil rights issue.
> I find most people zone out during the standup

Out of curiosity, how long do your standups last? How big is the team?
> The parent made no error in his language.

The parent claimed a 3-4 point in an individual's IQ is statistically meaningless by point to the standard deviation of IQs for an entire population. That is either (a) misguided or (b) intentionally misleading.

The standard deviation of a non-identical population has no relation to the statistical significance of a change for an individual.

Let's say the standard deviation of heights for males is 2.8 inches; that is what some of the internet claims. Let's use two standard deviations as statistically significant. That means, if someone woke up one day and was 6'3" instead of 5'10", that was not a "significant change" because they only changed in height by 5 inches.

Standard deviation for a non-identical population is completely unrelated to the significance of changes for an individual.
Oil price falls below $35 a barrel to fresh 11-year low
This shows they detonated something, but not whether it was fission or fusion.
"There has been a domineering subculture—that's been the most wealthy, prolific, and influential subculture in the technical world—that for a long time has not only promoted the idea that there's an equivalence between algorithms and life, and certain algorithms and people, but a historical determinism that we're inevitably making computers that will be smarter and better than us and will take over from us."

On a different discussion site I recently pointed out there is a similar religious belief or religious dogma in the idea of the self driving car, that went over like a lead balloon. People acting in a religious manner and expressing religious belief don't like to have that pointed out to them. Probably vestigial monotheism, if they act religiously at their traditional church on Sundays they don't like it pointed out that they worship a different altar online, or the atheists get really wound up when they are called out for joining the atheist movement but acting as deacons of the church of the self driving car of the future.

Anyway just saying its a line of reasoning, that while true, can only lead to unpleasantness. Like discussion of scientific racial / gender differences or discussions about IQ, all you're gonna get is social signalling screaming "see no evil".
Didn't they also have a stint as a patent troll?
Makes you feel a little uneasy, finding something so large right in our neighborhood. Like finding a cold campfire by your back fence.
I had the exact same idea. Problem is that on iOS there is no way to get rid of the browser. Also, I fear that even if it is possible on Android, I would be too weak: As long as it's "just software", I'll find a way around (like downloading the browser again if I feel the urge to check something, undoubtedly important and urgent, on the web).

On the flipside of the coin, physical nudges seem to work quite well for me. I can usually not be bothered to get up and fiddle with the SIM card. It's an experiment, we'll see how it goes.
Its, information on billions + authority with huge and complex set of laws which are selectively applied = problem.

RE regulation on software engineers, Its impossible. For a software written, its PURPOSE and AUTHORS are subjective interpretations. It is much much harder to get common consensus if the software is surveillance, malware etc. So any regulation would do nothing but increase the already-so-complex-and-huge set of laws.
Generate a C# Enum with Rosyln
Yeah, we need "This Week in Hacker News" like those "This Week in Science" and "This Week in Tech" summaries put out by Futurism.com...

http://futurism.com/infographics/?cat=science

http://futurism.com/infographics/?cat=tech
For all we can tell, you may have already done so.
Sometimes it's the imperfections that we are attracted to. I started with digital audio a long time ago, but have been buying almost solely analog equipment (synths, effects, reel2reel) for the past 5 years. Often it just sounds more alive. I still use digital too, a lot, but it's nice to have another type of texture in the tool box.

Not sure I'd film on Super 8 though, it ends up being pretty costly and hassly, and you can get a pretty good match to those colours (if that's what you want) using flat or RAW profiles and film stock LUTs on digital cinema cameras
You need to tighten up your standups. Each person should be saying what they did yesterday, what they're going to do today, and identify any dependencies or blockers.

It's important for everyone on the team to know what others are doing in order to share knowledge. If people are zoning out, you're not getting that benefit.
It won most counts and lost on the API's aren't copyrightable stance. The thing is that even if API's are copyrightable what is the damage if someone does a clean room implementation...

Since Oracle/Sun is effectively giving OpenJDK for free I'd argue the damages are effectively 0 USD so Oracle would win a 0 USD compensation. Since the lower court justice mostly sided with Google I'm guessing compensation won't be much for Oracle.
How Mobile Apps Can Increase Operational Efficiency In-Store
How the Daily Fantasy Sports Industry Turns Fans into Suckers
Where are all the people who like dynamic languages? Do they just hide while other people duke it out over this?

It just seems like everybody except me hates dynamism sometimes.
Like how everyone wears bluetooth earpieces now, right? :P If I recall correctly, bluetooth earpieces went through a 15 minutes of fame "oh cool" public reaction followed by un-ending "ugh, what an asshole" as everyone had the experience of answering someone saying "hello" at the grocery store and then realizing they were talking on their bluetooth.
I'd assume that rather than saying it's a good thing he's just accusing the US (and friends of the US) of being hypocritical. A tired and fairly pointless thing to say, but not as bad as saying that a nuclear-armed NK is a good thing.
> It is incontrovertible that the U.S. is using electronic data gathered right now by itself and by private technology companies to screw with people.

Yes, it is. But these are not the people that the argument is about and that's precisely the problem here. They don't feel that it concerns them at all, it is always others who need to worry about what is done with that data, they have nothing to hide and absolutely nothing to fear.

> Literally billions of dollars will be spent on that purpose this year alone.

10's to 100's of billions of dollars.

> There are also the government agencies of a dozen or two other countries which the U.S. government agencies work with and share data with to a greater or lesser extent.

Yes.

> Literally thousands of newspaper articles have been written about this.

Indeed. But since this has not yet resulted in mass arrests on US soil this evidence amounts to nothing in the eyes of those that see it as a 'good thing', these people are keeping us all safe and are merely doing their jobs. Incredible to you, to me and lots of others but still that's a position that quite a few people hold and not much that you will say or do will persuade them from that point of view.

So, I don't need to use the past as a reference. But it is strange to see a person that would refuse to learn from history to be able to apply the lessons to todays environment. I'm working on a second part of that blog post about 'if you've got nothing to hide' that concentrates on the present (I think the past has been dealt with), but I still feel that those are such enormously important reminders that they serve as a good backgrounder for why all this stuff matters.

So this is a simple choice grounded in the 'those that refuse to learn from history are bound to repeat it' line.

> The U.S. government has several orders of magnitude more information about the private lives and communications and beliefs and activities of its citizens than East Germany ever had.

This is true. But the mere possession is not enough to sway a die-hard denier of danger and supporter of the surveillance state. All that data by their reckoning is in good hands it is there merely to protect them from unseen dangers.

Obviously I disagree strongly with that position but that's probably because (1) I've lived for a bit in a country that was a police state by most definitions and (2) I've seen how the various layers of that society would deal with this (the majority were just like karmacondon here, only a very small minority dared to take a stance, the rest saw the whole thing as essentially beneficial, which retrospectively may seem very hard to understand. In fact even today there are still those that yearn for the communist days when life was orderly, everybody had a job and everybody had a pension waiting for them at the end of the line).
Ninebot/Segway Robot
Aligns with my experience. We're always continuously delivering, with madeup goals stuck in to align with arbitrary sprints. The real activity takes as long as it takes. Sprints are a stilted reporting structure, adding drama but little real value.
PyGame – a primer
Ditch the iPhone for Android, uhm, ok, apart from the fact that Android = Google.

You could use Thunderbird with GMail, so that argument doesn't make any sense.

etc. etc.
It is also often the cast that best intentions lead one to write part 1 but life gets in the way for part 2. I try to tune out feedback that isn't constructive (like a lot of feedback is these days). I wonder if it is (or could become) a thing to ask the original author if they'd mind someone else taking up a new draft?
IndiaHacks Bot Challenge on HackerEarth
> Perhaps Kanban is better suited towards long-lived product development than Scrum.

This is the key take-away. And in my experience this is absolutely true.

On the other hand, working now as a consultant where I am frequently on shorter-term projects with a definitive "end" for the engagement, the time-boxed sprint approach (or "Scrum") actually seems to work well.

Scrum might work for individual "projects". It does not scale or coalesce well with long-term development and maintenance.

> Perhaps there is indeed a natural progression of engineering teams adopting Scrum, then moving to Kanban.

This also mirrors my experience.
America having done something bad doesn't mean this isn't also bad.
I really like KanBan and think it's a better fit for a lot of teams than SCRUM is. SCRUM works great for teams which have a stable backlog of work and an incidental problem that might pop up. If you can't keep a backlog stable for three weeks, you shouldn't do scrum. KanBan allows you to pick and choose practices from scrum that do add value, and ignore the ones you are just doing to follow the book.

I worked in a team for 2 years that tried to do scrum because it's new thing that everyone should be doing and I feel it added nothing of value.
Makes me think of a recent talk at ccc.de about libusb, and how there was a "hostile takeover" in part fueled by the maintainer failing to push out new releases even though there was activity on the tracker (he wanted to make sure the new stuff worked before releasing, others saw it as the project stagnating).
I don't need to 'cite' what I can see with my own eyes from the stats of my payment services provider. Browsers are very easily released, they take a very long time to die. This is one reason why I tend to keep things simple, this vastly reduces the amount of resources required to make something work on a lot of different platforms and browser combinations.

Of course if your web app relies on all kinds of sexy stuff then you're going to have to convince yourself that those people don't matter.
Yes. https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/3zfadv/til_t...
Patent lawsuit says Apple Watch designers illegally downloaded white papers
A site to acquire users for alpha-stage products – Found on PH
made a test, strong words have been erased in the past in one of my comment, but it was not an automated blacklist
But how do you know how long a request will take? Maybe I think a request will take 15 minutes, but in reality it takes 3 hours. I make less than $100k/year. There's a big difference to me between $25 and $300. What if I start the request, decide it's taking too long, and ask that it's cancelled? Can it even be cancelled? And then am I charged for the time used and get nothing in return?

To use your taxi analogy, I can get in a cab and ask "About how much will it be to get from A to B?" and probably get a good estimate (or not even have to ask with Uber and the like). Does that exist for this service? Maybe public transportation would be better for me depending on the answer.

It sounds to me like, at least from their perspective, they wouldn't want a poorer customer like me.
Come on man, everyone knows solid state amps > shitty 1950s tube amps! ;-)

Sarcasm aside, the modeling amp I'm looking at getting has a tube in it (Vox VT40X, 12AX7). I love my JVM410H but it's nice to not share with the entire neighborhood sometimes.