skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> Look at TV before Netflix/iTunes/etc. came along.

I think that undermines your point: Netflix and iTunes are paid content channels. TV used to be freely broadcast over the airwaves (still is, but used to be too) and needed to earn money exclusively from advertising.

Netflix and iTunes were not the beginning of that trend. It started when cable TV came along, and began selling subscription access to content like HBO, Showtime, etc. which have no ads. The differentiator with Netflix and iTunes was the ability to stream TV over the Internet, and consequently pay for it without bundling it into cable, and paying for individual shows/movies a la carte.

It's also taken a while for Netflix and Amazon to begin offering their own premium content. HBO has been in operation since the 1970s, though to be fair its critical mass really began in 1999 with The Sopranos. Netflix introduced streaming TV in 2007 and received its first real primetime Emmy nominations for its own content in 2013 (House of Cards)

In 2015, HBO received 126 Primetime Emmy nominations (Game of Thrones), the most of any network, a spot HBO has held for 15 years in a row according to NYT. That year, Netflix received 34 nominations and the nascent Amazon Studios garnered 12 (Transparent).
"Defensive Programming is a well-regarded technique in software engineering."

No.

No, it's not.

Fail early, fail fast, crash loudly, and then react. That, plus deep validation testing, is how you build robust systems. Trying to soldier on when things are wrong just propagates bad data and bad behaviour into a larger surface area that needs cleanup.

Assert everything, even in production.
Capture all failures and action each one (turn a 500 crash into a validation failure 400, etc)

Monitor all logs for unexpected/new anomalies.

Be vigilant around testing. Failure cases are part of the spec, too!

That's how robust systems are really built!
> People hail the internet as a great way to find information -- if you type anything into the google search bar you're curious about, you either get wikipedia, which is clean and usually pretty great if incomplete, or clickbait ad-filled trash

A perfect example of this: I got a rash from poison oak exposure, and wanted to find out what the recommended treatment was. Seemingly a perfect use case for the internet. I was greeted with search results that are perfectly described by this sentence.
You have to know that there's a better place to go to, or have a need/drive to move. If you find a local maxima (shelter and food are available, breeding is still feasible) and everywhere around you seems worse, why would you travel through those harsh conditions without the certainty that there was something better elsewhere?
What's wrong with vanilla React/Flux? I'm currently working on a greenfield project and I've more or less settled settled on that stack. I have immense respect for Abramov but I'm finding it hard to justify Redux when Flux works well.
I disagree about the jsx, but I do agree about Redux. React is beautiful in its simplicity, but Redux kind of throws all that out the window and adds all the missing complexity back in. Granted, part of that is due to the relatively simple nature of React, but I do think there has to be (and likely eventually will be [I see your eye-rolling]) a better, more enjoyable way to handle state management.
And not the be confused with Satyendra Nath Bose, known primarily for his work on Bose-Einstein condensate.
I have limited React experience and none with Cycle, but I am not surprised to find that a framework that solves the problems a particular developer wanted solved works better than other frameworks for solving those problems. The real test is in scenarios that were not foreseen.

This is generic, of course, and the article gives no real view of the capabilities of cycle as its own thing, but I feel sufficiently experienced to be skeptical of claims of blanket inferiority.
Plan on it! There are definitely some nuances to TS specifically that it is very appropriate to discuss on an individualized basis. I've had friends go through all the major and a few minor accelerators now, so I think I have a pretty good view on it and am always happy to discuss. It's a huge decision!

TL;DR on TS for us it was a homerun, I don't believe it is for everybody. I believe there are times it a particular TS program is a better situation for a company than YC, but that there are MORE situations where it is better to do YC if you can. That's my 2 cents.
I'm currently trying to train a new developer and slowly introduce him to the world of React/Redux and only now am I realizing how incredibly complicated it is.

I enjoyed learning them and am efficient using them but now I'm not so certain that it's the best choice for a team with developers of different skill level and experience. Once you throw in React-Router even my days in Angular 1.x seemed simpler.
This is interesting.

I wonder what you feel companies should do in the event of a strong pivot: reincorporate or retain their cap table?

Based solely on this post, it seems beneficial to reincorporate in order to retain an undiluted cap table.

However, that seems contradictory to YC's thesis of investing in teams instead of ideas. If a team's first idea isn't successful, I imagine YC would want to retain its stake in whatever their new venture is.

Also - is there any chance you've previously used pre-accelerators as a positive indication? "Letting up" on your standard assessment of a team simply because they had gone through a pre-accelerator could also explain this trend.
Totally depends on the type of game and how the design is structured to deal with latency.

See my reference to SubSpace farther down, it's a highly skilled game that can be easily played on a ~250ms latency. The large majority of the game is predicting where the other player will be in ~0.75s and setting things in motion ahead of time to intercept them.

Any game based on prediction and designed for smooth re-integration of the game state can be done on latent connections. Heck there's even been some really impressive stuff in the fighting game space involving re-winding gamestate to resolve hits ~0.25s in the past(the original Counter-Strike does this as well, although not as well which is why you'd sometimes see people rubber-band back around a corner when hit).
Each kind of contract makes sense in different situations. There are already laws that cover this situations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misclassification_of_employees...
And there are precedents in the UK for this on Uber: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/sep/11/uber-drive...
All this app companies that people work for like employees but are classified as contractors are breaking the law. And I think that, as the abuse is growing, this laws should be revised and improved to cover all the cases.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkBMAHUkibY
The obvious explanation is that companies that truly accelerated raised VC, removing the need for added acceleration.
There isn't much of a market, considering so much is available for free and is of high quality (whereas the quality of your work is totally unknown).

You could write a book and submit it to an existing publisher, I suppose. That's selling documents.
I believe HN regular munificent has done some solid work on programming languages that can deal with abominable things: https://github.com/munificent/vigil Perhaps some lessons could be ported out of that into C++.
That is definitely a better way to put what I meant, yes.
As someone who is mostly a spectator lagging months behind the JS framework du jour, it would be helpful if these discussions were a little less personal and a little more objective, even if cooperation isn't in the cards. I really don't have the time or patience to sort through all the WWE-style back and forth, and it is really painful to make a new project using every new thing just to see if it is any good.
How tech giants spread open source programming love
Ask HN: What will be the strategy of CAs after Let's Encrypt
Now when SSL certificates could be free for everyone, I am thinking about, "What will the current Comercial SSL/CAs like Synamtec, GeoTrust, Thawte, Comodo...". What you think will be the strategy to sell SSL for money. I think I would still consider some other CA that Let's Encrypt for example to serve HTTPS for mobile applicaion API. But what do You think about the next steps of Synamtec, GeoTrust, Thawte, Comodo... ???
Ask HN: Any startup working on a os for consumer routers?
It seems that this last couple of years we have seen the hardware side of the average consumer router evolve quite a bit (probably due the volume economy from smartphone).The software on the other side haven't progress as nicely :
1 - Lot of security issues and bugs
2 - No automatic update
3 - Complex configuration
4 - Usually missing basic feature like parental control, bandwith allocation,vpns etc...

There are a lot of opensource OSes and project for router but most of them end up target at either hackers or enthusiast.

Why isn't anybody trying to build a better software platform for consumer routers ? The only real initiative we have seen lately is google's onhub.
You might also try being rigorous about regular cleaning, if you don't already. In theory you're supposed to thoroughly clean the hose, mask, and reservoir daily. I'm lucky if I manage it every other month, and it works fine for me, but I don't have any major allergies.
Intro to Backbone JS
AFAIK the Droitwich transmitter isn't run by the BBC, but bu another company, so it could have been a requirement of that.
Using AWS Aurora
I have the pleasure of working with Josh, and first heard him talk about this in a car ride to get lunch. :) Very cool stuff, and very excited to see the things he builds in the future.
It's not free anymore for gTLDs. There's a fee for abusing the Add Grace Period.
> That's it.

What? Do you have a source for that?
Given that YC has less than a 3% acceptance rate is it wise to turn down a program because it might affect your chance of getting into YC?
Although the author is biased, he is presenting valid criticism for fundamental flaws that truly make React inferior from a structural standpoint.

Additionally, he presents the framework/language Elm, a library he is not really involved in, as a superior alternative.
> - Pearson's strategy is to cut off all R&D to drive up profits.

> - Keep prices at "expected" levels that bake in high R&D. Instead just eat the profit.

I don't think it's so clear whether this part of the strategy actually makes money. After all, to get those drugs, somebody else had to do the R&D, then Valeant purchased the drugs. So at the very least, the cost of those purchases has to be subtracted from the "extra" profits. The cost of future company/drug purchases also has to be subtracted, to account for the fact that no new drugs are going to result from no R&D.

Don't they just end up paying for R&D at once during an acquisition instead of paying for ongoing R&D themselves? How is this supposed to make money for them?

I personally think it's less to do with R&D than with lazy analysts and accountants: they cut the R&D spending, but convince inattentive observers to apply the same valuation multiples that otherwise apply to pharmaceutical companies that do their own R&D, so the observers ignore the necessary future costs of acquiring R&D companies. The same logic would work for all their weird insurance shenanigans — they trick people into thinking those are the same "type" of revenues that they see at other companies.
> They also found that 69 percent of black children under the age of six (2.2 million total) lived in low-income families

American ancestors fucked the African American community so bad. They are left in this perpetual cycle of poverty, where they grow up poor, can't afford education, end up poor adults, and have children who also end up growing up in poverty.
Polygamy is prohibited based on the total number of individuals, gay marriage prohibition is based on the identity of the individuals; it's a critical distinction as far as the protection of individual rights are concerned.

So then, it's not discrimination that you oppose. You just want to be the one to decide the target of the discrimination.

Love is love, right?

I am not projecting or setting up a strawman, I am heading off common arguments in advance of their appearance in the discussion, that is why I said "culture", "tradition" OR "god's divine word".

None of which are among my justifications for my position.

It is the prerogative of the courts to weigh in on the constitutionality of the law.

That is true. It is also society's prerogative to overrule the courts via a constitutional amendment, if they so choose. However, this wouldn't be a concern if the underlying issue had been decided by the people in the first place.

It doesn't matter if society wants to prevent gay people from being married, the constitution is pretty clear about protecting the rights of individuals from the government as well as from the tyranny of the majority.

Don't delude yourself. Everything is subject to the tyranny of the majority, if two thirds of the elected officials can be persuaded.
C++ is one of those "does everything" languages. You can do everything from high level, garbage collected code, down to inlining assembly. The level of explicit control and setting up your own abstractions is really powerful. It comes with very high shoot-yourself-in-the-foot potential, but most people don't accurately assess that cost.

I'm sure other languages or combinations of languages will be able to supplant C++ eventually, but the combination of inertia and some of C++'s niche capabilities, plus its extensively optimized compiler support, makes C++ just a generally hard language to replace.
The Zephyr Abstract Syntax Description Language
With ads every visitor/reader contributes regardless of their agreement with the content, while micropayments are more like "likes", and you'd mostly pay those who you agree with. This could lead to karma-whoring but this time for real money.

I mean, authors would have to kiss the asses of the readers and try to be as friendly to their preconceptions as possible and make them feel like they are buddies.

Most donations are done based on emotions. So now we'd have distorted content, catering to the online hivemind even more than today.
My thinking has changed on this. I think investors shouldn't get a free option on every idea a founder ever has; after a few pivots and rounds I think a clean start is often a good idea.
My guess is that companies doing multiple accelerators tend to be those playing startup or placing too much faith in external factors making them successful. Networks and alumni and advisors are important, but if you're optimizing on that front, you're distracted from the real work of building a company.

The core of a great company is the same: work your ass off building something your users love. No accelerator can give you that.
For us they seem to delay the shipping the item yet still claim two day shipping. For example ordering around midday (Pacific timezone) on a Thursday often results in the item not shipping until later on Monday, which then arrives Wednesday but more often Thursday morning. Every step on the way can be contrived as "two day", but it really took a week and that is the number we care about. We likely won't be renewing Prime.

Amusingly there are also those orders of things you don't care about getting immediately. Those seem to come fast, often less than 24 hours from ordering. Amazon doesn't know which items fall in which category (their media $1 credit is not worth it). Nor do they seem to notice breaking their own promises and proactively doing something about.
Show HN: Tripsak – Plan your next trip with the best travel tools in one place
I can think of half a dozen plausible reasons for this effect, but only YC has the data.
It was a simile to express the critical importance of latency of calculation and dispatch in the system; in a graspable form for the reader - when I don't really know their technical ability - as its a blog post about a game; rather than a technical paper in a journal. I did say "is like" ;-)

For example in the interest management; it is working out what custom messages to send to what players about each other and with 50k players in the same combat it needs to do this without it ballooning to 2.5Bn messages for a round of position updates - of which there are many per second per player; then convert these individual compressed output streams that are unique per player; and move on to the next set - and even then as stated in the article we are still at 267M messages a second.
It's true that Angular and React are supported by huge corporations. It also means that they will tailor these libraries for their mega scale usecases.

The problems that Google and FB is trying to solve at their unique mega scale is rarely the issues that startups and medium sized companies are facing. Flux and Graphsql comes to mind.

For example micro-services are great for Amazon but may add more complexity to tech team that are less than 50 people.
Why we don't use estimates in our day-to-day
> Sure, I could grab my spear and join the human herd.

How's your immune system? Allergies? Asthma? Eyesight?
New largest prime number found
This is so common among developers. We forget how the complexity happened bit by bit. But when we explain it to a newbie, it all comes back.

Want to re-evaluate your whole base of knowledge? Teach programming to adults who have never written a line of code before. Wow, the things I thought I really understood. :D
Blend Secures $40M from Founders Fund for Data-Driven Mortgages
Makes sense. It's easy to remember as well!
Keep in mind that english is not the author's native language.
Twice in the last few months I've had a package change status to "delivered" -- while I was home, and suspiciously just a few minutes before 5pm. One of them was never delivered. The other one showed up 2 or 3 days later...

I'm losing faith in those 2-day guarantees, and the number of items available for Prime has been slowly dwindling. That, and their minimum spend for certain items went from $25 to $35. Starting to wonder whether renewing my Prime membership is actually a good idea.
Hey everybody! I made this website to make it easier for me and other nomads research potential destinations.

It basically groups a lot of resources per destination (Wikitravel, Wikipedia, visa rules, weather, cost of living, flight prices, accommodation prices and more). You can also explore destinations on a map and see distances.

Example: http://tripsak.com/bangkok

Would love to hear comments!
Astronomers Find Evidence of a Ninth Planet
Bearing in mind the Saudis launched airstrikes against ISIS in Syria themselves a couple of months later, it's not really plausible they want[ed] to protect ISIS as opposed to avoid the US stepping in to stabilise the Iraqi government (or bombing Sunni cities)

ISIS being Sunnis actually makes them more dangerous to the House of Saud, since they represent a challenge to their legitimacy as rulers rather than their population's natural enemy. Similarly, the US damaging the ISIS economy and prestige actually strengthens Saudi Arabia's position as the benefactor-of-choice for aspirant Sunni militants.
maybe users want animated UIs
Datomic: The most innovative DB you've never heard of
My solution to this problem (and yes I've noticed the same) is to generally pay the price to change to one-day shipping which never (so far at least) goes USPS. Of course we are in one of the areas with Prime Now service, and I am willing to consider that this may be to make me think "Do I pay a driver a $5 tip if the item(s) are available or pay $5/item for one day delivery".
How do you find Redux complex? I found I got the gist of Redux in a few minutes, and was very productive with it a couple hours. I find it much simpler than flux. What do you not like about it?
"Standing on the shoulders of giants."
Here's a link to Zcash's first blog post on their official site:

https://z.cash/blog/helloworld.html
I don't know if banks work differently in Poland, but in the UK if I see a fraudulent transaction on any of my cards (debit or credit) it will be refunded, except where I disclosed my PIN.
vanilla flux has WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY more boilerplate than redux
Delays in build logs showing up on travis-ci.com and travis-ci.org
That's like a secret sauce, post launch; great success, here's how we did it, article - too early for that :)
Yea. That's kinda like what Elm does for its views.

ul [] [
li [] text "Foo"],
li [] text "Bar"]
]

Took a while to "get" it, but now I really like it.

(`ul` and `li` are functions that take two lists - the first is a list of attributes like class or ID or whatnot, and the second is the inner content... text or other elements.)
"the cards have a limit of 300 pounds for ATM withdrawals"

Some banks have slightly higher limits, I've seen up to £500 but I have not seen any that allow you to set an arbitrary limit.

"only after the card arrives I can see what sort of limit was given"

It is quite common to request a credit limit when applying for a credit card and have it accepted or declined, but I guess different banks do things differently.
Metaphors in Games (2016)
>But I will say that if I can learn how to model, query, and display data, then pretty much anyone can.

This isn't really true.

>This could be a case where I just don't know enough.

It sounds like you've picked up some very important things pretty well tbh. Better than a lot of people in the industry.

I mean, your code could be a complete mess for all I know. But what you're describing is a potentially very powerful and robust design. You're likely not giving yourself enough credit.

Hey, if you can navigate the tangled nightmare of conflicting redundancy that is music theory, modelling business objects and doing CRUD on them is surely a piece of cake ;)
Increased resident participation in planning produces extreme wealth segregation [pdf]
There are hardly Facebook features. There aren't branded as such either. There are separate products.
Cycle.js has the most elegant and powerful component composition mechanism of any JS framework I've ever used. With React you have to be extremely careful in how you design components to make them re-useable and flexible.

The inversion of control that happens with Cycle.js makes it really easy to compose components together. At first it feels weird to not manually specify event handlers (e.g. onClick) in DOM-generation code, but as a result there's much less embedded opinion on how the component be should be used. Instead each component simply returns a collection of queryable observables, which is extremely flexible and adaptable.

It's also cool how components have the exact same function signature as a full Cycle.js app, so you can think of your app as being composed of several mini-apps. It's very clear Cycle.js was designed with composability in mind from the start.
I want to browse content provided by companies that won't go out of business. I don't mind ads as long as they don't slow down the browser.
Is there any evidence that design work and prototype work is done in the same fashion as manufacturing by these Japanese firms?
I am working on a project that requires symbolic computation, which I am learning a bit by myself. For now I can manage, but could I get in touch with you in case I would need some advice about that? My email is in my profile (thanks!).
Being backed by a huge organization did not stop Angular from basically throwing away their stack with 2.0.

Although, to be fair, unlike Google with Angular, FB (more often Instagram) is actually dogfooding React and using it on their own stack. And with react-native they've invested a lot more in React tech than Google has in Angular.