skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: Why do large tech companies still fail to encode my name correctly?
Recently, I updated my Twitter profile and included, in quotes, my name with the é replaced by the Unicorn replacement character [1]:

André “Andr�” Wendt

It was meant as a joke. I remember Apple being the first large company to address me as "AndrÙ" when I ordered a product in 2005.

That profile change isn't even two weeks old. Today, Twitter sent me an e-mail [2], addressing me in the subject line as:

"AndrÃ© â€œAndrï¿½â€ Wendt, thank you."

I guess the joke's on me now.

Why is it that in 2016, large tech companies with an international audience and whose only product is a digital service, still fail to encode names correctly?

[1] http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/0fffd/index.htm
[2] https://twitter.com/awendt/status/711887885595758592
We all know that avoidance behaviors (running to mommy) don't work for long with bullies. They just wait until mommy isn't around.

Likewise 'acting pitiful' - whining and crying. That's what bullies are looking for! Its the payoff.

No, the way to avoid bullying is to stand up for yourself. Pepper spray, loud noises, flashing lights would all be more effective.
No, I am not.

That was the purpose of: "Obviously there is more information to go on than just a watch, but that's the point you were replying to."

Your reply did not, in any way, address the conditional probability issue. Which is important, although clearly oversimplified in my example.

This has nothing particular to do with terrorist detection, but to do with detection of any sort where the true positive rate is low (e.g. cancer screening, drug detection,etc.). This is often a very real problem in practical application, and saying "but they actually really found X" does not address it at all. It is exactly that sort of muddy thinking that causes problems with detection in application.

Obviously this is manageable by including enough different information that the marginals get much tighter - if you can find the right ones - but that wasn't the point being made. A cogent reply would have pointed out how exactly additional information was used to reduce this risk.
> But you need servers, recipients need computers, you need a network, with last-mile connectivity, everything needs power, there's security issues, there's authenticating who's what, and more.

Sure, you need all that stuff, but you already have all that stuff.
a well funded competition can easily crush you

Who crushed Balsamiq?

<spoiler>Nobody.</spoiler>
And having the cutscene there would perhaps not have been as effective, as it would have removed the player from the "world" if only for a split second.
The two scariest words for Hollywood studios in 2016: “Animated” “Movie”
The Emperor's New Mind (1989)
> Many of my colleagues never touched node.js til Microsoft started using it.

Couldn't there also be the reason that before Microsoft started to become active in Node.js the Windows support for it was really bad (bad Windows support is a typical problem of lots of open source projects; I mean: I could understand it if OS X (at least the same degree proprietary) support were similarly bad, but this is usually not the case).
A good way to know what kind of contractor they are is to look at the vendor. Robert Half, Tech Systems etc probably augmentation. Smaller vendor, or independent. Better chance of "Specialist".
If you work in an average company who hires average people and you are well above average you quickly risk becoming exactly that. You can be the top 5% (I know it's subjective and controversial yet I'm sure we all have a clue what that means) of developers and this will make it likely for you to be that "local maximum" as everyone will see you internally as a guru.

But at companies who are employing the top 5% of the top 5% you will probably won't even make the first round of phone screens.

Get out of your comfort zone, and simply learn something new. Go wide, go deep or go both just realize that the moment you feel you are an expert on something it just means you are probably just ready to start learning it for real.

tl;dr
Knowing more than your peers doesn't make you an expert. You are at a local maximum and you need to look at the big picture to avoid being stuck there forever
The secrets of the wave pilots
DLL Hell could have got a lot better since I last had to deal with it. I occasionally bump into a dependency problem with Ruby gems that reminds me of it.

I don't use bash a lot, but there is an expectation in Linux-land that everyone has some familiarity with it. That's not true in the Windows world so much. In my experience anyway. I'd be interested to see if a much more functional shell environment generates more use of it.
It really depends on what 1 bad apple is, that it is someone that is not the most productive but is still productive and don't completely harm whatever they work is seems too much but often that is the meaning in use.
Software-defined magnetism?
>Jared Cohen is the President of Jigsaw and an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.[3] Previously, he served as a member of the Secretary of State's Policy Planning Staff and as a advisor to Condoleezza Rice and later Hillary Clinton

It looks like high tech in US is in relationship with politicians who promote war, warrant-less NSA spying and built torture programs
http://www.drop-dropbox.com/
iText can be somewhat frustrating to work with, so it would be great if this is a viable alternative.
I assume that you're referring to Revelation 13:17:

> And [the Beast] causes all, the small and the great, and the rich and the poor, and the free men and the slaves, to be given a mark on their right hand or on their forehead, and he provides that no one will be able to buy or to sell, except the one who has the mark, either the name of the beast or the number of his name.

Like most of Revelations, I think this needs to be interpreted in the context that it was written. Jews during the time of Nero saw Nero as the "the Beast". From what I understand, these "marks on the hand" were a plan by the Romans to control Jewish citizens in much the same way that modern governments try to control slum populations. I doubt the author foresaw contactless credit cards and Apple pay, though I admit that the authors of both the article and of Revelations were worried about similar consequences.
Sorry about that! I mistakenly assumed the settings UI would be the same between Android and iOS. I don't have an Android device handy, but will try to hunt one down and get the instructions updated.
Do the Time
I really, really want to support sandstorm! I think their model is awesome, especially because i fully support a decentralized web where the masses and the regular Janes/Joes have a valid alternative to the silos on the web. However, I tried using rocket.chat recently, and while installation of app was dead simple, actually using it seemed non-obvious. I'll admit I'm no super devops/engineer, but i do successfully manage my only little server via other providers (e.g. digital ocean, etc.)...so it was a little annoying that i had to spend more time than i expected to see how to actually use rocket.chat via sandstorm. Here's where a little documentation could have gone a very long way. My interest in sandstorm was for setting up apps only for my family...and eventually having my "non-technical wife" (her words not mine) use and manage things. I'll be honest, i will speak highly of sandstorm for techies, and I will support you guys - even if only because you so greatly support open source and a decentralized web - but seriously, you guys could be getting so much more attention and BUSINESS if you only had much more "civilian" documentation (I'll say more on the "how to use an app" side, since installation of apps is so dead simple)...until then i can not in good conscious recommend your service - at least not for all apps - to the "non-techie" people that i know. Again, i state this not to disparage your service, but because I really, really want you guys to succeed! When you do (update/create more user documentation), let's talk; my handle on your platform is mxuribe. Thanks and good luck!
There are some gems at the glassdoor site referred to in the article.

It is true, CTO did make whole team of people redundant on New Years Eve via voicemail - maybe 'how to' book on leadership taught him redundancy procedure.

Led by a truly odious individual, this attitude is prevalent throughout the company. Senior management are relics of the 80's living off their success in the last dotcom boom (and bust), who believe the film 'Wall Street' is a training manual for management, business practices and team leadership.

These were via https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Employee-Review-Powa-Techn... - looks like a signup would be necessary to get the full reviews.

I noticed, though, that clicking through to the full reviews page, the most recent are glowing ones from Powa's head of development and head of sales ;)
WNYC chooses to shorten the pledge drive the higher over the goal they run. So a two-week pledge drive has gone as short as ten days from people front-loading donations.
> Also, if people are unbanked and below the poverty line I would expect they would be more concerned with getting by than "Orwellian levels of surveillance."

They're probably more immediately concerned with getting by, by they're more affected by surveillance than someone with more resources. The primary use of commercial surveillance is to enable better price discrimination, and being poor means they're easier trapped in local maxima designed to extract any surplus they do have.
How to Upgrade from PHP 5.X to PHP 7 (Cheat Sheet)
If this is so important: why don't they specify the desired culture values beforehand in the job ad so that people who don't fit don't have to waste their time applying for the job?
As a Christian, I hold a mostly preterist view on those prophecies (they already took place): "Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place." - Jesus
Roads are shared infrastructure as well with regulations, but it is up to you how do you meet with those. You are allowed to hack your veichle, but if you fail to keep the highway code or exceed the allowed limits, you will get some. But you are free and not treated like a criminal up until then.
The other problem with taking jobs for less than market value is that you are affecting the salary of everybody else, not just yours.

You might not care because you don't need the income, but other people do and they are not being greedy for asking enough to support a family.

I spent many years as a cheap developer and I will never go back if I can avoid it.

It hurts more people than just me.
that is a great presentation. the degree to which everything is asynchronous in NT is awesome. it's a shame techies don't engage with it or dig in to it and just say that linux is better because it has a better shell.
I'm glad that I'm starting to get feedback like this. I believe you that more companies are doing work sample tests.

For the the gigs that asked you to do these problems: did you also get interviewed with a standard programming interview? If you had to guess, between 1% and 100%, how much of the weight of your technical evaluation do you feel was on the sample challenges you did at home, versus Q&A and whiteboard coding on-site (or on the phone)?
The funny thing about negative interest rates is it is one of the few good reasons to buy physical gold, especially with the elimination of large denomination euro notes.
I assumed he was using it as a metaphor, because the actual Ivy League schools aren't especially known for computer science. So "ivy league [of] CS" as in the top CS schools, not literally the Ivy League schools.
Proposal: remove cash, add constitutional amendment defending the right to transact.
Fair enough. I still have doubts about whether that would scale up to millions or billions of coroutines, but I will defer to your knowledge in that it's probably Good Enough™ for most purposes. Thanks for the explanation!
Yeah it's a GPS module, it reports an "angle" and I guess it calculates that by comparing the previous position to the current one.
Not very accurate while standing still but works pretty well while on the move.
If this is true of programmers as well (and I have no opinion on whether it should be), it should be even more true of standard on-site job interviews, which are more disruptive to your work schedule and more demanding of your time and attention. But, of course, people do not generally get paid to go on job interviews.
I see that they have released 2.0 lately, but can't find any dates, nor the improvements over 1.x. Is this the news? A press release would be better, probably. It's not [Show HN], it's an established Apache project, so I don't get what the news is here.
A friend of mine experienced something similar to this. She was advised to find a small upcoming startup and join them. "You need a win," was how one of her mentors phrased it. This did not necessarily mean a win for the company as much as it did mean a win for her and her career. I would strongly advise a similar approach to getting your leg in the door at TrendCo.
Basics of Functional programming [video]
The 'C'/C++ APIs are something to behold. More or less awful. There is a rich set of choices out there.

This being said, there are lots of choices in actual applications that may or may not be available on other platforms in the same way.

Ideally, I'd run a Linux host and Windows guest. For a long list of reasons, it's the other way 'round.

Also, don't embrace the upgrade death march with Windows and life gets better. Keep full-install media of The One That Works.
Show HN: Info overload when trip planning is annoying, we made Your Local Cousin
Whenever I see numbers like that I always wonder if it's inflation adjusted.
Stay or Go? Cuban Entrepreneurs Divided on Where to Stake Futures
There is nothing preventing you from starting a company or becoming a "suit".

This seems to be a prevailing view here on HN and it is actually sad. There are a thousand reasons "preventing you from starting a company": family circumstances, disability, mortgage/debt, no savings, good executor but not a great businessman, etc. etc.

So dear HN, could you please stop repeating this useless, hypocrite mantra.
Most of the growth pre-legalization at a federal level won't be at these companies though, right? There's no way these guys can be supplying the markets in WA/OR/CO/AK because they'd need to transport a lot of product over national borders and would have to deal with federal border agents. Right?
Sales research startup Mattermark raises $7.3M, now valued at $42M
But this takes far too long.
A Stanford, Ivy, or UIUC email at the top.
I think this is an U.S thing where this kind of division has sprung up - so you have
contractor ("temp", "paid less")
full-time employee
consultant ("paid more")
The difference there is that the education you get from trying and failing at a start up will rival most business Master's programs.
I check HN multiple times per day every day, and I hadn't seen it yet.
Are you aware that some people live outside the United States?
I believe that this kind of behaviour will be the reason why the Internet as we know it and are used to it will end some day.

We will have many island solutions with firewalls around them just to prevent foreign powers from interfering in internal political processes.

For example I certainly do not like what Erdogan is doing in Turkey (cutting off Facebook and Twitter), but is he wrong when he is accusing foreign powers from trying to incite demonstrations or manipulate public opinion? I'm pretty sure he is not.

Same goes for China, Russia and all the other countries that are implementing or already have finished implementing their own great firewall.

There is no reason in the world why any country should ever accept this. (I doubt the US would ever accept China doing this to them)

But there are also serious internal problems. For one Google could influence the US presidential elections by skewing search results and making certain candidates look bad and others good.

I'm sure almost 100% of Google employees would never support such a thing, but when Google does this regarding Syria you can't really be sure that they wouldn't do this internally too.
Any proposal on how to ensure that it doesn't end up like the right to a speedy trial [1,2]?

[1] http://fusion.net/story/5419/right-to-a-speedy-trial-this-in...

[2] http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/04/do-louis...
> San Andreas Deer Cam is a live video stream from a computer running a hacked version of Grand Theft Auto V

It's from GTA V, GTA IV was set in Liberty City

It's just odd that the title has "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" which is the exact name of an existing game but not the game being used.
Nobody's defending anything... except you, just a couple sentences later, in the same paragraph. Not only that, but your defense is: "clearly people enjoyed it". That's what you came up with.
You fire one cashier and install 100 self checkout machines. Problem solved!
Emotional problems are best dealt with, in my experience, not by more emotional exercises (imagery, counseling) but by new experiences, expecially physical ones. Go on a week-long bicycle trip. Rock climb. Start running. Play basketball. Anything to get you out of your mind and back into your body.
As the article suggests, I think it's just code. The recruiter is being subtle in case the employee overreacts and passes on the message to the candidate. Contractors are expensive, more experienced, less malleable and can give other employees ideas that there's an alternative.

Graduates and junior developers will burn themselves to hell and back trying to impress their employer because they don't know any better. That includes people who have never worked for a proper business (i.e. not a VC backed startup).
Mic: what happens when millennials run the workplace
Similar situation here. The company I'm currently contracting for mentioned they struggle to find experienced Scala devs who will interview for permanent roles.
I understand the other two, but I'm curious why "working at a popular company" makes sense to you. What does that have to do with avoiding risk? Is it the assumption that those companies don't make hiring mistakes?
How are Microsoft technologies not trendy?

F#, Reactive Extensions, Xamarin, Typescript, etc.
There's something missing here, timelines don't align... So TJH sells express in 2014; Doug ploughs on for two years, with zero contributions from StrongLoop (?). Then IBM takes over and assigns two devs to actually do some work, and Doug quits...? Stating a problem of trust. So what happened? Did SL promise something that is not going to happen now that IBM is in charge? Did SL promise him a job or something?

Sure, Doug should be thanked for his tireless job; but the post is simply lacking or omitting important details.
Ex Amazon here. I've done a lot of interviews and I've never seen candidates being refused an on-site interview for having extensive Windows experience.
Still, the hire rate would be really low. Most would have little knowledge of what exists outside of an IDE: OS internals, system design, networking.
> Weev repetitively accessed information that he knew he was not authorized to access on a server owned by someone else.

Not to mention giving the hack to Gawker before notifying AT&T, getting caught with cocaine, violating a gag order, and saying "I won't nearly be as nice next time" shortly before his sentencing.
The whole conference is "optional".
Work-sample tests are clearly protected; it's IQ tests which aren't permitted (Duke Power v.)
Not really. Would you enjoy a game that starts with 100% progress? Probably yes, but not for long.
Having no safety net means I have to keep moving no matter what.
Cash is not free, there is a time cost to handling the cash, depositing it, there is a risk cost for vendors from employees stealing it, there is a risk cost from being robbed...there are always trade offs.

A lot of these comments mention that cash gives the government less control, however try visiting India or China or Greece and ask people the real reason they use cash. It's to evade taxes and launder money! Same with cash tipping in the US. So in some ways electronic is better to help catch the cheaters, but if it's not transparent it could pose a problem if the wrong people get in charge.
PDFBox does not seem to depend on anything but the JDK (1.6) and commons-logging, so it might work if you manage to find a working and matching version of commons-logging for GWT, and if PDFBox only uses the JDK parts supported by GWT. That is a pretty big if though. I doubt someone bothered to port this to GWT, but who knows, you may be in luck.

If you are trying to generate PDFs in a web-application, I would delegate this task to the back-end.
I see where you're coming from, and on the one hand it is admirable, but on the other hand:

This is all fine and dandy when say you're working for a non-profit, or DWB, or open source or whatever else betterment of mankind.

The point here is that sure you're doing what you love and that's enough for you, but the only one benefitting from it is your employer. If you don't feel that you need that money, negotiate for it and donate it to something of your choice and feel even better about what you're doing, but don't line someone elses pockets with your benevolence.

That's my 2 cents.
Apple March 2016 Keynote – 10am PDT
All this is true, and I would add that even if you're being paid well, once things get bad enough to affect your health, you should consider change. There are more cases of "should've left earlier" than "should've stayed longer"; usually the reward for staying, if any, is not worth the damage done.
" The start-up said that adding its PowaTag button to sites would reduce the risk of customers changing their mind before completing a purchase "

Instead they'll change their mind after it has been dispatched, costing the vendor more.

In the UK at least distance selling rules mean that anything[1] bought on the internet can be returned up to 14 days later without requiring a reason.

[1] There are of course some exceptions for certain product types.
Could you expand on how you ended up walking that line? Did you feel you wasted your time on under-qualified people? Did you end up hiring anyone who initially didn't seem like a textbook candidate? If so, how did they turn out?

The reason I ask is that I've always been nervous about applying for jobs when I don't have every skill listed on the ad.

The advice I've been given is usually something like "Apply anyway. The job advert is a wish list, not a minimum."

But I'm still terrified of an interviewer opening my CV and asking how the hell I slipped through the screening process. Or even worse, being too polite to be so blunt and awkwardly going through the motions of an interview.

It would be awesome to get the perspective of an interviewer.
> linux is better because it has a better shell.

Are the usual GNU/Linux shells still better than Powershell (being better than cmd.exe is trivial ;-) )? I'm really interested in a serious evalution from both Windows and UNIX nerds.
You need to be a highly skilled wage slave
Ok so how about joining a startup? Its a job like any other (in most regards). And provides much the same education/experiences. If you can work at all, its possible to be in a startup.
The federal judge behind Brazil's largest corruption probe
The cloud is a herd that, when attacked, all members fall, making the attack worthwhile. An individual in that herd falls because he was in the herd.

My laptop and disks at home are just me. The payoff just isn't that great.

The best way an individual can protect himself from a list of personally identifying information being stolen is to not be on the list.
Goodness, how dreadful! Running a blog at the domain webblogs.asp.net on ASP.NET! Who would have thought this possible?
This might be very true for startups, unfortunately, but it's not true for Amazon/Google/Facebook and so on