skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
My books on LeanPub: https://leanpub.com/u/raganwald

I had been approached many times by tech publishers to write books from scratch, but I never found the process and economics attractive.

Then I spotted LeanPub--quite possibly on HN--and I thought, "Hmmm, there is nearly zero barrier to entry." They accepted Markdown, and I already had my entire blog in Markdown on GitHub.

So I published a collection of essays (https://leanpub.com/shippingsoftware), and launched it with a "Show HN" style post, making the book free. LeanPub allows people to pay more if they want, and an amazing number of people paid more, I made $2,000 in one day just from being on the front page of HN.

I've written a few other books since then, but I firmly believe that writing is a side project, not my profession, so I make a lot less than other authors who really put their backs into it.

But I'm happy, and my readers are happy, and I get a little money every month from people I like.

---

A few observations that may be valuable for other side-projects, whether media or software:

Some of my biggest wins were the books I didn't write. LeanPub has a feature where you can cobble together a book title and a cover image, and it creates a landing page that collects emails from interested readers.

Several times, I have created landing pages for books I was interested in writing and when I promoted the landing pages... Crickets. I didn't write those books.

Another thing that worked for me is that when I decided to write the original JavaScript Allongé (https://leanpub.com/javascriptallongesix), I was going to write my first long-form book from scratch. My previous books were collections of essays with additional linking and filler material.

I resolved to write a trial book first, so I wrote CoffeeScript Ristretto. I had a rough idea that the market for a CoffeeScript book was about 10% of the market for a JavaScript book, so I didn't have big expectations for revenue, but I figured I could gain experience writing the book and a lot of valuable feedback.

The secret was, when I then published JavaScript Allongé, it was basically the same book, just in JavaScript. The big differences had to do with the differences between CoffeeScript and javaScript, obviously, but most of the chapters were identical.

I found this process was a really big win, when JavaScript Allongé first hit, it was already refined by all the feedback I got from CoffeeScript Ristretto. If I was doing a software side project, I might take the same approach: Start in a smaller market where I can refine the software and business, then repurpose into the target market.

JM2C, YMMCV, &c.
jus cuz this comment is near the top, ill mention the major contributors according to the article: "plastic bags, styrofoam takeout containers and plastic cutlery"
Hacker News probably did the majority of the seeding.
Well, that was a first attempt. A lot of people spend a lot longer than 4 years not making a first attempt. Then, when you know how to do something you can be faster at it next time round. But, in all honesty, I don't know anyone who built a business in time less than 3-4 years.
Or - "trust" became a curse word used by critics of that sort of business practice at the time. The world was all-new-and-all, and this was the base layer for legal strictures to follow. It's still all rather incoherent, as anyone who followed the Microsoft monopoly case can attest.
Publications promoting Trunk Based Development include the best-selling book called Continuous Delivery - https://trunkbaseddevelopment.com/publications/
Keygen - https://keygen.sh

Keygen provides a hosted SaaS product and app licensing API. Support for self-hosting Keygen is planned. Currently in closed beta, but have a few contracts lined up already so it should be profitable from day 1 after launch.

I have a couple other side projects that are barely profitable, but none of them seem to have the kind of market Keygen has.
What are you doing to market your courses? Given Udemy's generous split when you drive outside traffic to your courses, it seems like that's super important to make money on the platform.
Mapzen bans Trump, denies service for “promotions of hate”
Move fast and donate to non-profit organizations?

That looks a lot more like "taking a stand" than Travis Kalanick's:
We are working out a process to identify these drivers and compensate them pro bono during the next three months to help mitigate some of the financial stress and complications with supporting their families and putting food on the table. We will have more details on this in the coming days.
Almost enough to make a living so I can basically work on it full-time. I guess there's lots of unused potential if I find the right marketing partner. That's the goal for this year.
You can try to use some extra tools that clang provides, such as the static analyzer ( https://clang-analyzer.llvm.org/ ) or tidy ( http://clang.llvm.org/extra/clang-tidy/ ) with checks like the cppcoreguidelines.
Gotcha! Hahah..... crap. Nothin... How are you doin?
This workflow, like all others, is just a formalization of some reality. The reality is that many organizations and teams run on nothing but trunk - and it more-or-less works on them. Some teams work by building blocks separately and then joining them together; other prefer to hammer away on a problem all together. Both approaches work. What worries me are emotional claims that the other approach is fundamentally flawed, or that some git workflow is The One True Way.

I've seen feature branches get stuck in review for weeks. I've seen trunk-only developers not knowing how to merge a branch back to trunk. I've seen trunks brought into a state of disarray and never fixed again. I've seen svn-only devs get completely bogged down and confused by a git wofkflow.

Trunk-only is a reality. Not a reality some of us would want to live it - but one that nevertheless exists.
You can notify the user that their phone is not a legitimate product and is likely insecure without completely crippling it in the process.
Learning Word-Like Units from Joint-Audio Visual Analysis
The swamp did need to be drained. We forget so quickly (or bury) all of the damning emails from the DNC. The collusion with the press to destroy Bernie Sanders and all of Hillary's enemies, the fake protesters they hired, the racist and sexist terms they used throughout different party communications while at the same time excoriating anyone that they think is racist or sexist.

We also can't forget all of the blood money HRC and her husband have received from the financial industry over the years for their speeches and favors. And in her own words, HRC was also against marijuana in all forms (this can be found in her emails).

The Russian hack scandal, which really had no conclusive proof, was just a distraction away from the message (the corrupt and horrible DNC) and towards the messenger (the 90s called).

What shocked me was that seemingly intelligent people in the IT and security fields came to the conclusion that because a person has a Russian IP address, they must be physically located in Russia or working for Putin. I've been on a computer since I was 12 and know that this is bullshit. It's trivial for someone to: obtain a Russian IP address, use the Russian language to type out a message or email, and make references to Russian political figures and history (this was all the 'conclusive' evidence).

I also find it ironic that my local station (and many other news organizations) for weeks were showing a ballot box and implying that the Russians hacked the election through some sort of voter fraud. Yet, when Trump wants to investigate voter fraud, those same news organizations said there is absolutely none.

..and then I have to ask the question: Why are we listening to the same assholes that colluded with the DNC (the mainstream media) to destroy Bernie Sanders again?
It would be really cool, once the new base pairs code for something, to see whether this increases evolutionary fitness.

I'm not at all sure whether or not denser information and thus bigger-step mutations are evolutionary advantageous.
As I recall, the Rockefellers ( both Jr. and Sr. ) at least took pains to be seen as part of the solution rather than part of the problem.
Take off the xargs part of the command and run it to see. :-D

Just looking at it though, it looks like it'll purge kernel packages that are the currently booted one. I don't have a system handy to check though so take that with a grain of salt.
> and the conditions under which they are allowed to stay.

^^ this. I've had a few friends on H1B, and as far as I can tell they're just "stuck" in their jobs, or "forced" to leave the country.

Maybe, there should be an app for finding US citizens compatible "life partners" that would enable the acquisition of Green Cards.
http://speedeoapp.com/ - Speed up almost any video on the web using a custom player.

This was made to scratch my own itch of wanting to watch videos at faster speeds. At first I had ads, but that wasn't making much. When I made it not free, it started pulling in about $500 a month.
Feature Teams, CI, CD: How to Align Scrum Teams
You could push an OS update that bricks illegitimate phones :)
https://trunkbaseddevelopment.com/youre-doing-it-wrong/#mere...

Subversion having that TBT thing made it easy for people to respond 'yes we're doing trunk based development' when they're not
For convenience, here's a direct link to the Uber help site for deleting your account: https://help.uber.com/h/24010fe7-7a67-4ee5-9938-c734000b144a
(They even give you a nice box to explain why)
Viral gifts
If you want to work in a more academic area such as Machine Learning it would be helpful. For something like frontend development it would not be very useful.
> There was a time when it was much harder to come to America and that meant that only the best people went to America. Not just everyone and anyone. The DV lottery program was the beginning of the end for the right kind of immigration to America.

The diversity visa lottery program requires that you have a high school diploma and come from a country that has sent very small numbers of people to America. And the DV lottery includes only 50,000 winners. Are you aware of how large America's population is, and how small 50,000 people is relative to the U.S. and to the size of normal annual immigration?

Yes, the point of the diversity visa is to add diversity to the immigrant pool, so that it isn't totally dominated by Asia and Latin America, because the U.S. has had historical success with diversity.
I just kicked in $250, one-time. To echo other posters, this was something I've been meaning to do.
AirBNB might want to adjust their offer since the majority of the world population are not allowed in the US. Visas are limited by country and can be an arduous process.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_policy_of_the_United_St...

Only visitors from the few countries in blue or green are permitted entry automatically:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Visa_policy_of_the_USA....

I mention this without any advocacy for any position, but because some commenters seem to expect that borders are normally open. Every country has similar restrictions. Many countries don't admit US citizens without a visa.

Edit: Rayiner, I'm in favor of more and easier travel generally, I'm referring to the wording of Brian's tweet.
You're missing the points. Both parties have run huge smear campaigns, and no matter who won, there would have been huge stains on their reputations.

Almost every single thing you've said can be applied to Clinton. She's defended a sexual predator, written off 25% of United States citizens as stupid, failed to eliminate domestic conflicts of interest, used a private email server and deleted emails, destroyed the relations between the sexes, and presided over the death of a diplomat. She is unfit for the presidency.
Ask HN: Best iPhone content/ad blocker that respects my privacy?
Hi,

I've recently upgraded my iPhone and as a nice side effect I can use all of the contact blockers now.

I've been looking around the web for recommendations for a content blocker but none seem very in depth.

I'm looking for one that is

1. Able to block ads in Safari, this is my main one because mobile websites with popups and overlays are getting harder and harder to read

2. I don't care about in-app ads, unless people here think there is a good reason so start

3. Uses a set of rules locally to block content so every URL downloaded doesn't cause another network request
4. Doesn't use a fake VPN profile. For work I sometimes need to use a real VPN so I would like to avoid that

Anyone have suggestions or ideas? I don't mind buying one and pay good, real, money.

Thanks!

Edit: Formatting to get list to show up correctly
And many of us have gained a great deal by having you publish on the side.

Thanks, raganwald!
Certainly not. I build private/enterprise apps for Android and iOS using Ionic/Cordova. I don't use Apple's app store at all.

When I show my customers what a giant PITA it is to work with Apple and iOS, many of them start planning a switch to Android or Windows.

I've been single-handedly responsible for moving entire companies away from iOS in one way or another.
Does Corruption Happen Slowly, or All at Once?
Uber undermining the taxi strike [1] yesterday was pretty visible -- at least in my social circle here in Seattle -- and when Lyft made this announcement we all deleted our Uber accounts.

Will that have a material impact on anyone's bottom line? Who knows, but I'd love to see the graphs for new account signups/account deletions.

[1] Taxis were not servicing JFK in support of those who were being detained there.
I tried it on Lubuntu 16.04; it required modification:

# mystery one-liner from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13513171
# dpkg -l 'linux-' | sed '/^ii/!d;/'"$(uname -r | sed "s/\(.\)-\([^0-9]\+\)/\1/")"'/d;s/^[^ ]* [^ ]* \([^ ]\)./\1/;/[0-9]/!d' | xargs -p sudo apt-get -y purge
# my corrected/improved version:
noncurrent_kernel_pkgs() { dpkg -l 'linux-*[0-9]*' | sed '/^ii/!d;/'"$(uname -r | sed "s/\(.\)-\([^0-9]\+\)/\1/")"'/d;s/^ii *\([^ ][^ ]*\)[^ ]*.*/\1/' ; }
# corrections/(possible-)improvements:
# - dpkg -l 'linux-' # returns nothing
# - dpkg -l 'linux-*[0-9]*' # moves 'pkgnm must contain a number' rule (last sed cmd in orig: '/[0-9]/!d') forward
# - pkgnm isolation/extraction was broken (did dpkg output change?)

output:

kg@kg-VirtualBox:~$ noncurrent_kernel_pkgs
linux-headers-4.4.0-43
linux-headers-4.4.0-43-generic
linux-headers-4.4.0-45
linux-headers-4.4.0-45-generic
linux-headers-4.4.0-53
linux-headers-4.4.0-53-generic
linux-headers-4.4.0-57
linux-headers-4.4.0-57-generic
linux-image-4.4.0-43-generic
linux-image-4.4.0-45-generic
linux-image-4.4.0-53-generic
linux-image-4.4.0-57-generic
linux-image-extra-4.4.0-43-generic
linux-image-extra-4.4.0-45-generic
linux-image-extra-4.4.0-53-generic
linux-image-extra-4.4.0-57-generic
kg@kg-VirtualBox:~$ uname -r
4.4.0-59-generic
kg@kg-VirtualBox:~$
Nice site. But I don't see any advertising?
Software systems are relatively predictable, and built on mathematical models and rules that we designed. Even so, there are still many negative unforeseen consequences of their operation.

Biological systems are relatively unpredictable, and based on rules that we didn't design and cannot begin to claim we fully understand.

Your analogy therefore strongly predicts negative unforeseen consequences.
In case the link doesn't open (as it doesn't for me), here's the post on Robb's blog on Medium:

https://medium.com/@johnrobb/the-race-to-weaponize-empathy-5...
What about Traveling Ruby? I've never used it, but it looks promising. https://github.com/phusion/traveling-ruby
http://t-filter.engineerjs.com - online FIR design app

There used to be an advertisement at the bottom and sometimes I get donations.
EmailOctopus: https://emailoctopus.com
Cheap email marketing via Amazon SES.
Let's say they implement this. What are some ways around it? You could uninstall Facebook and say you don't have an account. You could sign out of your Google account (Android). I wonder if there is a way to programmatically back up your contacts, remove everything, the reimport them.

I happen to be a US cit, but if I wasn't, I would just factory reset my phone before entry. Periodic factory resets seem to be a good idea anyway.
Case law is based on "whatabout-ism" so there is little unusual about it. It's nice and quippy to say "whataboutism" and be dismissive but it's a really important principle in common law.
It is definitely not mandatory for big companies. Although depending on the specific hiring manager, some might be more skeptical of your experience if you don't have a degree in CS, but that is true at any company. Not saying it isn't helpful, but not mandatory.
So are you using undocumented windows APIs or hooks?
My fiancee and brother are both architects. I'm quite familiar with this career. I work as a professional software dev in the Bay Area.

One thing you'll find really quickly: there's not nearly as much focus on credentialing and licensing in software, compared to architecture. Like, I'm talking, zero. No AIA, no AREs, none of it.

My advice: focus on getting an education, but realize your education can come from a lot of places.

If you want to be a software dev but aren't sure exactly what you want to do, just take the first job you can get and work your way up. You can absolutely get to the top of the profession this way (Google, etc.), it will just take a while. Advantage: practical work experience, cash earnings. You need to find a place that will invest in you and your skills though; most startups won't do this, so avoid them. Look for a great manager and a balanced team of junior/mid/senior people with strong engineering leadership, and a good culture of code review, learning, and leveling-up. [2]

Graduate programs in CS are better if you want to get into a special area of computing that requires a lot of theoretical learning. The more established the field, the more you'll need graduate education. You can probably "sneak in" to some of the newer subfields with high demand, like genetics or machine learning/AI. If you want to do signal/image processing, you'll need graduate school.

You won't get a job at a big, high-paying company without work experience or a degree. Feel free to try, but the AmaGooFaceSofts don't really recruit for the jobs you want to get [1] without the right degree or work experience. People say otherwise, but they're basically full of shit.

I wouldn't advise going to university for you. You've presumably already got a BA or BS, so you've gained a lot of the non-disciplinary benefits of college (how to write well, how to organize and structure your time, etc). If you really just want vocational cross-training, find a good company and clock up a few years of work experience.

Feel free to email me for more on this topic, email is in my sig.

[1] You can probably get dead-end, low-status jobs in a bigco with the right credentials, but you'll do better avoiding these.

[2] This can be very hard to spot/recognize unless you've been in the field for a while. Try to figure out who works there and back-channel to figure out what it's like working there. All crunch time, endless death march, all senior people with no juniors, all promotions from outside (no internal talent growth) = avoid. Probably 90% of startups and most tech companies in general are terrible in this regard; everyone's in such a damned hurry all the time.
For convenience, here's a link to the Uber help page for deleting your account: https://help.uber.com/h/24010fe7-7a67-4ee5-9938-c734000b144a
(They even give you a nice box to explain why)
It only works if the whole company buys into it, including only linking against libraries whose authors also adopt those practices.

What I have learned since learning it in 1993, using it including teaching the language to first year students, is that any safety feature that isn't imposed by the language instead outsourced to best practices or external tools tends to be ignored by the majority.
McDonalds answers $15 minimum wage with the Big Mac ATM
> How did Obama make that decision not to follow his promise on crossing "red line" by Assad? What were the pros and cons for that decision? How can we be sure that it were not purely U.S. internal politics arguments for giving up? Questions like that do not allow us to forgive mistakes: they force us to hold the governments to account.

And questions like that are asked and answered? Obama had good reasons for not following up on that threat. Read, for example, theatlantic's 'Obama Doctrine' article. It was never obvious that a heavier US intervention in Syria would help the people in Syria at all - in fact, history suggests that the opposite.

On the other hand, it's hard to imagine how the US refusing refugees would make the Syrian situation worse.
Based on the article, it looks like the bricking/disabling occurred after an update to the latest version of the OS.

So, I don't think it is accurate to say that it 'allows remote control by its masters,' as it appears that they just added some sort of check in the latest version of their OS that can tell if the hardware is legit. There isn't any evidence, at least not in the article, that indicates they have some sort of remote control/phone home service running on the phone that allows them to control it arbitrarily.
I had a successful software engineer career without a degree, but some time ago I decided to go for it (to leave open the option of pursuing the PhD). So, here are the results:

- Change in my career possibilities and new job offers: exactly zero. Nada. Nil. I work as a software engineer in finance (high-frequency trading), and there domain experience matters much more than the amount of computer science education received. (If I would have been a quant trader, not an engineer, it would be another story -- education matters there).

- Mind expansion: some. I've got some preliminary math education (so I am not scared of reading quant papers anymore and can immediately work with formulas), and also there were excellent courses on coding theory and automata. Some other courses (e.g. computer graphics) was on subpar quality, but this is not my specialty anyway.

Was it worth it? For me, that't a definite yes, psychologically and intellectually. But if my motivation would have been only related to career -- the answer would be no.
Page 18 and 19 of the second edition of Numerical Recipes in C [1] support your comment. There is also a discussion on the books forum [2] that suggests that all C editions are 1-based and the current C++ editions are 0-based.

This doesn't fit my recollection of having the C edition with a foreword that described how hard and error prone it
was to convert everything from 1-based to 0-based. Maybe my memory plays tricks on me. I'm sure I had the C edition and not the C++ edition and this was before 2000.

[1] http://apps.nrbook.com/c/index.html

[2] http://numerical.recipes/forum/showthread.php?t=65&highlight...
Building a SaaS, or even starting to build one, is very rewarding. Out of my projects, nothing has become profitable (but it's not about becoming profitable in the short-term, at least for me), but wearing 100 hundred hats teaches you a lot. I think you will grow a lot faster as a developer/entrepreneur by just throwing yourself in the chaos. So whatever your idea is, I'd say go for it!
It seems to me that the postal system has become little more than a subsidized marketing channel that is difficult to unsubscribe from, and a lazy communication choice for the most inefficient companies. It should at the very least be priced based on the costs of operating it. In it's current subsidized form it produces incentives to keep using it and makes electronic alternatives seem more expensive.

For environmental, business efficiency, and personal reasons it seems like we would be better off receiving far less physical mail.