skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: Who is firing? (April 2017)
Question in the title.

Post any companies that are having layoffs, mass firings, unusual churn, etc. If possible, please identify the company or as much specifics so you can help others in the community.

Other valid discussions include: The Tech Bubble, people leaving Uber, H1B visas, and the SF housing crisis.
Some other car manufacturers could do this intantly. Nissan has the best selling electric car (Leaf) on the market and Toyota has some kick ass hybrid engines (that's an electric engine AND a combustion engine) available for most of their cars. If they decided that battery only cars is the way to go they could switch from one day to the other. But they don't.
What Are the UTM_Source Codes in URLs?
Philips Hue | iOS and Android development engineers | Eindhoven, The Netherlands | ONSITE, VISA, https://goo.gl/dztRfH

Since the launch in 2012, Philips Hue is changing the way people interact and experience lighting. We currently are the world’s leading connected home lighting system and work with all major smarthome platforms (Amazon Alexa, Apple HomeKit, Google, Nest, Smarthings). Philips Hue encourages other companies to develop devices, apps and systems that interoperate with our system. Through a vibrant developer program there are more than 600 third-party apps for Philips Hue.

For our mobile app development team we have multiple open positions. Please see https://goo.gl/dztRfH for our vacancies.
Well, for one they got manufacturers to adopt Google branding for Android phones, but then we're led to believe that getting them to update on time was hard. But from Google's POV, the only "necessity" here is that Google gets your data and tracks you.
Ask HN: Django vs. Flask
I am noob to programming, python, and of course web development. Which framework django, or flask to start learning?
I think he sounds like every person with security awareness who ever looked at the Android situation in the field.
Periscope Data | Full Stack Engineer | San Francisco | ONSITE, VISA www.periscopedata.com

Hiring engineers at all levels (Ruby, Go, CoffeeScript). Periscope is the fastest, most powerful data analysis suite on the market. It's the platform of choice for professional analysts who spend 5+ hours a day using the product. We're growing revenue about 10X per year while growing the team about 4X per year. If you have a proven track record of delivering results and shipping great products, we would love to meet you! Join our team of 85: Email amanda@periscopedata.com
How to have affordable cybersecurity for small businesses
Where does one get a job writing actual algorithms and data structures?

Two big areas that come to mind are simulation/mathematical modelling, where you're often crunching data in ways that aren't just textbook examples, and embedded systems, where you often have resource constraints that make efficiency more important.

This doesn't just mean modelling weather systems on supercomputers or writing the control software for cars, though. For example, consider user interfaces. We are increasingly looking for more intuitive input methods using techniques like natural language processing, speech recognition, handwriting recognition, and gesture-based UIs. We are looking for more intuitive output methods, such as integrating additional data with real world imagery like maps or the view through a 3D head set or camera. We are looking for systems that learn patterns in their users' behaviour and adapt to provide more likely options more quickly next time.

You won't see much of this if you're just writing simple form-based web front-ends for CRUD applications. A lot of real world software is like that, and it gets a lot of useful work done, but it's mostly pretty mundane, join-the-dots work as far as the programming goes. However, there are plenty of interesting problems out there and we could directly improve the user's experience in new and helpful ways if we could solve them, and much of that work involve developing data structures and algorithms far beyond anything you'd find in an introductory textbook.
Today is the 93rd of Checkuary, 2016. That is equivalent to the 3rd of April, 2017.

Checkuary is the unofficial 13th month of every year. It lasts until you remember to write the correct year number on all of your checks.

As an American, I write it as 3Apr2017 to avoid ambiguity. I can't stand how the traditional all-numeric date format is neither big-endian nor little-endian.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parachute_landing_fall
fair enough - the article site didnt work that well on my phone
A Closer Look at Guetzli
All of these products can potentially be commoditized. But their brand is strong.
Interesting, but no more.

The commonly used curve P-256 has the prime order 115792089210356248762697446949407573529996955224135760342422259061068512044369.

From the paper "The largest group of elliptic group of prime order that we tested is 129159847, in which a discrete logarithm problem was solved.".
Perhaps there could be penalties for non-use. But in general, the total market is so much larger than any given firm and its competitors that it shouldn't be an issue.
Location: Campina Grande - PB, Brazil
Remote: Yes
Willing to relocate: Yes
Technologies: Java, Android, Spring, AngularJS, NodeJS, MongoDB, Python, Django, Git
Github: https://github.com/jordaoesa
Résumé/CV: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordaoesa
Email: jordaoesa@gmail.com
For that matter they could move up to places with better weather like Eureka or Reading. However, given that companies prefer to stay in the local scene and there is underutilized land, it would seem like something worth looking into given the demand as well as availability, if not government willingness.
New details emerge about 2014 Russian hack of the State Department
So long as you're willing to document exactly how your compiler packs those structs into memory, and your bytestream, go for it. But don't come crying to me when you upgrade compiler versions or switch compilers or add fields to your struct and the rules change on you. I'm going to hold you to your earlier requirements.
Will they continue to have European customers once that regulation takes effect?
>Yeah, this is a bit like Microsoft announcing they're going to make a "killer lifestyle gadget"

What, you don't think the Zune was killer? /s

>They have the resources to succeed, it's just that it's baked into the company DNA not to focus on the things they need to excel in that market.

No, not really. I don't think it's even possible for a "lifestyle gadget" to succeed as long as it has the "Microsoft" name on it, even if Apple secretly designed it for them and MS seriously committed to it.

With the Zune, MS really was focused on making it succeed, and it still failed miserably. As a company, they just don't "get it" (they don't understand what it'd take to succeed in that market), plus their brand is a big negative in that market. IIRC, the Zune didn't even have MS's name or logo on it anywhere, so they even understood that much, but it still wasn't enough.

I think MS trying to make trendy consumer devices is a lot like Jeep trying to make sporty electric cars. It just won't work; the company doesn't understand the market and the consumers won't take the company seriously.
Depends on jurisdiction and charge. Sometimes no contest isn't on the menu.
I think a better analogy is that CRISPR (Cas9) is the cursor package within the text editor. The (nearly completed) genomic text editor is the the entire suite of biological technologies we have at our disposal. Copy/Cut/Paste have been around a long time and made these discoveries possible. Rendering has been around for quite a while. Keyboards have permitted larger buffers to be written. But until recently a non-random, arbitrarily positionable cursor has been missing. Cas9 is importantly, and just, that piece of the suite.
Sorry, we didn't notice that. The design comes with this feature, but we will probably change it very soon.
Nitro Inc. | Principal Platform Engineer | San Francisco, CA | FULLTIME |

Nitro is changing the way the world works with documents. As the global leader in document productivity solutions, Nitro enables people to work smarter every day with their documents, on the desktop and in the cloud.

We are looking to hire a Principal Platform Engineer (Java/Scala) at our San Francisco office.
Apply: https://www.gonitro.com/about/jobs/267352
More info: joty.chahal@gonitro.com
> Question: what is the standard human physiologic "click" time?

According to Disney in the 1960's, it takes from 3/4 to a full second[1]. :)

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPHGI_5BaSQ&t=570
>Keep in mind that, because the number of programmers is increasing, the majority of them are fresh out of school or close to it.

But the number of unfilled positions is also increasing, so we are not closing the gap, right?

So the gap is widening, but the requirements to get a position are also going up. That just makes no sense to continue for a long period of time.
> And it's not ready, it's not mature. They have to accept that.

Do you have anything specific in mind that makes it "not ready"? And when you say it's not ready, what isn't it ready for?
"They found that at least three-quarters of kids who died from influenza between 2010 and 2014 had not been vaccinated in the months before they got sick."

So, nearly 25% were vaccinated and died of flu anyway? I'd like to see a breakdown of how many died because of mismatched strains, and how many died because the vaccine for the specific strain just plain did not work.
> creating something that makes creating presentations unnecessary

I think you're missing the point. Presentations are no different than giving a speech with visual aids, with the additional benefit of sharing your notes after the fact. You can give a sales pitch, a conference talk, an internal update, or share some info about your favorite band. Its free form and incredibly versatile. Analytics isn't going to replace a conference talk, or a sales pitch.

That's not to mention the wide variety of uses for Excel. It's everything from a financial analysis tool to a digital scratch paper.

Slack is fine but it's just a slow irc client with pretty good search.
There is ... a crude spell checker could be implemented by dumping a dictionary of words into a metric tree and using levenshtein distance (or damerau-levenshtein distance) as the distance function. The spell check would then consist of doing a K nearest neighbor lookup.

But it doesn't work as well as you expect. A metric tree requires a true metric to be used as the distance function, which means the distance function must satisfy both symmetry and triangle inequality. Levenshtein distance satisfies this - but unfortunately this usually isn't enough for a robust spell-checker that just "does the right thing". For that, you usually need something like a weighted levenshtein distance (e.g., an incorrect first character should weigh more than an incorrect Nth character, or an incorrect consonant should weigh more than an incorrect vowel). But it is much harder to guarantee that such a distance function is a true metric.
Today the only country in the world that never sold anything to foreigners is North Korea, and it's not a shining model of prosperity.
This article mentions latencies in the order of magnitude of 50 to 100ms. For reference, the speed light takes to travel 3m/10ft is 0.00001 ms. For the problem being considered (latency in user interfaces), it IS insignificant, and rounded to zero.
I don't think teams should be penalized for not hiring people that aren't team players. There are good spots for introverts in IT but teams usually (though not always, I've seen some interesting exceptions to this rule) are not too welcoming to that sort of person.

If the world were gamified to the point that your skills are all that matters then yes, a solely merit based approach would work. But in the world we live in today people skills matter (a lot, actually). On a personal note, this was a very hard lesson for me to absorb, the first years of my career introvert would have been too friendly a description, anti-social probably would have been a better one. But over time I got a bit better at working with others.
The Mighty Mouse
I think you'll find the hundreds of millions in question were dollars, not people.
Try telling that to anyone owning a Nexus 5 (still a very viable phone) or older.
This happens all the time in the US, especially for poorer/disadvantaged folks. They'll be advised to plead guilty whether they did it or not because they'll be given a lighter punishment + be done with it instead of missing more work going to court and possibly still being found guilty.

Hell I did it and i'm white middle class, but I was actually guilty too so...
I will second the person who said it happens. I've gotten a ticket for cutting through a NYC park after closing.
without some uncertainty, there is no market
Founder/market fit
My objections were to his idea that Turing was virtual unknown who somehow got recognition because he was gay. I was in SE uni program in the 90s, but "Turing-complete", "Turing test" and FSMs with references to him were there in theory textbooks written in the socialist 80s. For example, a friend's mom was a professor in medical school of my university, and a textbook from the same era in his house was pretty darn assured that homosexuality is a mental illness that needs to be treated in a mental institution together with alcoholism and drug additcion.
I agree. I don't think we'll see large scale solar power generation in Alberta. The gov subsidies are mostly for residential use. They introduced a revenue neutral carbon tax Jan 1, 2017 and need to return the tax to green projects. This is just one of them.

Alberta does have quite a bit of wind generation though. They blow pretty consistently off the mountains and we have a pretty low density population in the south end of the province. Hopefully under the NDP (left wing) government, we can see some expansion of this. Prior to this, oil sands was the only game in town.
Drop | Engineers/Developers | Toronto | FULLTIME ONSITE https://www.earnwithdrop.com

Drop is a venture backed start-up building a mobile first and automated coalition loyalty program. Through our mobile app, users can supercharge their debit and credit cards to automatically earn points from places they already shop at, like Starbucks, Under Armour, Forever 21, and Uber. Users redeem points for rewards at their favourite restaurants, brands, retailers, and more. Drop provides our community with a unique experience by intelligently surfacing offers.

Our tech stack includes Ruby on Rails, React, React Native. We're looking for all types of software developers (backend, frontend, fullstack).

Apply by emailing me at darren[AT]earnwithdrop.com
Nitro Inc. | Sr. Platform Engineer | Dublin, Ireland | FULLTIME |

Nitro is changing the way the world works with documents. As the global leader in document productivity solutions, Nitro enables people to work smarter every day with their documents, on the desktop and in the cloud.

We are looking to hire a Sr. Platform Engineer (Java/Scala) at our Dublin office.
Apply: https://www.gonitro.com/about/jobs/640815
More info: joty.chahal@gonitro.com
>>Never mind the specifics of the selection process, Silicon Valley's risk-adverse approach to hiring is baffling.

I think it makes perfect sense. A bad developer hire is not just unproductive. They also tend to be a burden on their coworkers and reduce their productivity by asking trivial questions and writing buggy and/or hard to maintain code.

With startups the risk is even greater. Think about it: the odds are already stacked against you. Why would you take even more risk by randomly hiring developers? Sure, you can fire them, but by then it may be too late.
What's usually forgotten is what IBM was doing. IBM was slowly grinding their way forward into computers, as cost-effective products. They built the IBM 601 (mechanical multiplier), the IBM 602 (mechanical multiplier and divider), the IBM 602A (a 602 that worked), the IBM 603 (a vacuum tube electronic multiplier and the first commercial electronic computing product), the IBM 604 (a plugboard programmed electronic computer), and the IBM Card Programmed Calculator (at last, programs on punched cards). The IBM 600 series continued through the IBM 650, which was a real digital computer with drum memory. Donald Knuth learned to program on one. These were all real products with real business customers.

IBM had also had their DoD business. There was the IBM Defense Calculator, called the IBM 701. There was a whole series of expensive small-quantity vacuum tube machines sold almost entirely to DoD and DoD contractors. These were much closer to modern computers, but they were really expensive and didn't sell well. That part of IBM was mostly separate from the commercial side. In 1943, Thomas J. Watson Sr said "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." He was thinking of the monster vacuum tube machines.

What really changed the industry was the UNIVAC I and magnetic tape. Again, it was memory, not compute hardware, that mattered. Eckert and Mauchly formed Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation, and built and sold the UNIVAC I. This was the first business computer with fast I/O devices - many spinning tape drives, all going at once. At last, you could get business-type work done. At last, fast sorting!

A UNIVAC I could directly replace huge amounts of IBM's mechanical card equipment. Which is what happened with one of the first customers, the U.S. Bureau of the Census. They had acres of rented IBM punched card gear at Suitland, MD. At the time, IBM didn't sell machines; everything was rented by the month. Census bought two UNIVAC I machines in 1951, and moved much punched card work over to them.

One day, the IBM sales rep was called in, and told that Census was terminating the rental on most of the punched card gear. This was a huge shock to IBM. Suddenly, large electronic computers were a real threat to the company's core business. Until then, computers had been seen as an additional business, but not a threat to the existing one.

In the early days of computing, there were "business computers", usually with decimal arithmetic and good I/O, and "scientific computers", usually with binary arithmetic and less I/O power. Business computers had to be cost-effective. Scientific computers tended to have government funding of some kind. The two lines didn't really come together until the IBM System/360.

That's the early commercial history of computers. The compute part was figured out well before the storage devices. Development of new storage devices resulted in huge jumps in capability. This is all pre-transistor; once transistors came in, the first step was to re-implement the existing stuff with transistors (IBM 709 -> IBM 7090, etc.) and then things really started to move.
> Metrics are key to good management

This doesn't follow from the GP's comment. All we know from that comment is that Metrics + some managers = bad.
That word doesn't oppose "fast" though...
In England, there's no such thing as a plea deal, but a guilty plea is taken into account at sentencing. It's tacitly understood that you'll get a modest reduction in your sentence if you plead guilty, but there's no explicit guarantee. It's enough to induce pleas from the obviously guilty, but it won't sway anyone who stands a chance of winning a trial.

The American system is clearly not serving justice, as we saw in the Swartz case. The gulf between plea deals and sentences at trial can only be explained by an intention to coerce innocent men into pleading guilty.
True, but if you're going to use this, it would be easy to put together your purchase, use the barcode to add that much money to Amazon, then complete your purchase. Yes, it would probably be simpler over the long term to get a bank account or a credit card, but this is perfectly usable if someone is already planning not to do that.
New mechanism found in creation of paired light particles used for entanglement
Please review the HN guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> Please don't insinuate that someone hasn't read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that."
Ask HN: Should I Sign an NDA??
I'm a founder who freelances to support my startup. I'm in talks with a client to build a 'Fintech app to assist with personal financial planning.'

My company is in the blockchain space and there is a low chance of any conflict.

The potential client is a director at a wealth management firm. She's requested that I sign an NDA before we meet.

Should I sign it??
Pathlight is the first platform dedicated to helping sales managers. These managers are critical to any organization’s success (and revenue), but are stuck with using whiteboards, email, and spreadsheets to do this vital job.

Sales managers use Pathlight every day because it helps them control their team's pipeline, productivity, and development like they've been doing it for 20+ years.

We’re looking for hungry and talented full-stack engineers to help us.

Pros:

- Green field development. An opportunity to build things from scratch and own large parts of the stack.
- Real world problems. The kind that companies pay $100K+ to solve.
- Experienced founders. This is our 2nd startup - our first was acquired in 2013.
- Well-funded and well-run. Series A, low burn. Capital efficiency is important to us.
- Product market fit. Companies already using it every day.

Cons:

- Very early. Very uncertain.
- We’re not going to match your offer from Facebook
- No free lunches, gym memberships, massages, etc.
- We play Yacht Rock on Fridays.

Our application pulls from a customer’s existing CRM and uses a whole mess of buzz-words to perform our magic (cue shameless buzzword dump):

- Python/Django (Python3, Celery)
- Machine learning (scikit-learn, numpy)
- GraphQL (a la Graphene, graphql-js)
- Thick frontend client (ES6/Babel/React/Flux)

If you'd like to apply, please email your resume and contact information to trey[at]pathlight.co for more information.
exactly. Ford is stagnant. Tesla has much more potential.
Zurb Plugin Working Example – Blink Tag
USCIS seem to provide two provisions with this:

1) An avenue for members of the workforce to report H-1B abuse. People on H-1B are offered some protection against retaliation.

2) Targeted onsite visits at worksites of employers who have larger fraction of their employees on H-1Bs, and those who sent employees to other locations.

Together, this seems to be aimed at curbing H-1B abuse by staffing companies. Some Silicon Valley employers - like Apple, Cisco etc - who use these staffing companies extensively might also be affected. But overall, this should be good news for both H-1B employees and citizens/permanent residents.
Remember the time the United States was doing terrible damage to the environment (noon in Pittsburgh, strip mining, coal ash in the rivers), then we became a world superpower, then the EPA was given teeth to clean up the environment?

History suggests your friend might have a point. Might. There are likely good counter-examples to consider.
No, actually latency is a time interval (duration) whereas the speed of light is, well, a speed, and so not directly comparable. But I think we both know what the author meant by the original statement.
Thanks and yes, I did.
Looks very promising and interesting, hope you'll reach your goal. Also, backed your fundraising :D