skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It's not the same issue. With your approach, a compromise of the seed is catastrophic and reveals everything. With a regular password manager, you also need access to the vault encrypted using that master password. That's not a given -- most password managers either store their vaults locally or offer 2FA when synced.

(Nevermind that you can't change individual passwords or the master password at will with a deterministic scheme.)
These pieces always tend to feel to me like complaining. It assumes the reader already agrees that tech interviewers are broken and does nothing to convince others. I for one don't see whiteboarding questions as a problem, so the scenario rings hollow.
> Social media was about self expression and finding out where the party is

Exactly! My next project is going to be something like that. Based on the fediverse/Mastodon, but firstly about self-expression, connecting with real friends, meeting people. You curate your own home page, share what you want to share, you are invited to interact with strangers. No social media bs. Trying to capture the feeling of local / university social networks pre facebook, or the feeling of myspace.
Well that's exactly what is happening these companies employ people who work more or less full time on Ruby core issues. A lot of Ruby features are funded by big corps. The 3 people are just the 'core' core team. Like Linus did for Linux for years
> You mind clarifying that? I constantly have compile-time errors from type mismatches. You can cast a variable to a different type, but you can do that in any language.

Well, for one people overload types. The practice of, for example, using return codes as error values. The second problem is unions. They exist to make people converting bytestreams into structures happier, but often get misused elsewhere.

And void* is essentially a black hole, but it's a very common black hole to see in programs.

> That said, JavaScript doesn't have types at all, really. Every type can be implicitly converted to another type, and yet Node is still used server side.

Yeah and that's the most solid criticism against it! While it's true that it's quite a bit more difficult to cause fatal errors in a program in node, the language does little to help you solve these problems once you expose that functionality to it.

That's why Typescript has been doing so well, I think. It's consuming the javascript ecosystem faster than anything I've ever seen, and having written a fair sum of it (for a server side application, no less) I'm constantly surprised how capable it is.

And of course, I'm on record as a big fan of Purescript and Elm, with more bias towards the former.
More information on the technology behind this can be found here: http://blog.leaningtech.com/2017/06/announcing-cheerpj-java-...
>Even if someone refuses to learn, educate everyone around them and let social pressure either break their stubbornness or isolate them.

Out of context this is a very ominous sentence.
When they're situated in mountain passes, they kill a lot of birds.

When they're situated in windswept plains, they do not.
Show HN: Interview with Vincent Chen (writer of YC's Post “How to Get into VR”)
Last week, we got a chance to interview Vincent Chen, project lead at Rabbit Hole and writer of the YC blog post "How to get into VR" (https://blog.ycombinator.com/how-to-get-into-vr/). Was amazing to get his thoughts about his past work and future plans in the VR space.

Watch the full interview here: https://youtu.be/hhGoqVI6_6o?t=90

* Our green screen started glitching a little bit of the way through, but we think the content is still super valuable.
I don't believe that one should try to create a single tool that covers both synchronous and asynchronous. Their UX is too different.

It seems to me a better idea to create an asynchronous deep collaboration tool and integrate it with synchronous tools like Slack.

The bigger question to me is what should an asynchronous deep collaboration tool do (if anything) beyond first-class threads.

In my mind the opportunity lies on three dimensions

1) Bringing updatable content and structure to threads. This makes threads vastly more useful for real collaboration (not just communication).

2) Making "catchup" much more efficient as this is the main problem with email.

If you think of one of the most successful asynchronous collaboration approaches, it's source control like git. The key thing that these tools to is make changes "diffable". That allows users to work at completely different points in time and still easily "catchup" with what's changed.

3) Allow regular users to easily convert unstructured one-off threads to semi-structured template threads. This naturally and gently moves teams to greater process-orientation.
thanks so ever much!
You're not selling it at all, there is no incentive to hand over my email address. This is partly due to the fact that I had to turn off the lobster typeface to actually read the strap line.
History of European Union and Brexit Explained
I wonder how much coal it takes to produce a steel steam turbine...
This article seems to me to be a sales pitch, which makes me think that Dr. Rowbotham wrote the historical context for the article and Dr. Clayton built up the scientific portion. I'd call shenanigans, except the article was originally published in three parts by the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine (which is refereed), so I'm just calling shenani.

Since I am (or was) an historian I'm going to look at Dr. Rowbotham to see if I can make sense of her motivations for writing this paper.* That might help us understand why an historian would even consent to publish an article like this. At first glance, things don't look good. She's working in the school of business at Plymouth, which is weird, but perhaps that figures in to her interests in crime? She co-founded the SOLON institute, which has been the vehicle for publishing some of her work. Her work has been published by several journals and publishers, but generally they're not that great. The SOLON institute is also led by what most academics in English would consider "tier 3" universities, at best.

She just looks like a fringe academic.

But then we dive deeper into her resume. She was a Reader at Nottingham Trent Uni. Now, Nottingham is nothing to write home about, but being a Reader is-- in the US it's the equivalent of being an Associate Professor. Now she's a Visiting Research Fellow, which is usually a stipended position and allows the researcher to work solely on ... research. That means that her project, whatever it is, at the very least was interesting and viable to the University of Plymouth. So that's worth knowing, because even at low level universities research fellowships are desirable.

I think that this line from her bio may be key: "My research focus consequently shifted to 'bad' behaviour, and I began to develop my interdisciplinary credentials as a lawyer and criminologist as well as a historian of crime." After publishing her PhD thesis in 1989 she doesn't appear to have produced much research. Then in 2010 everything picks up. When seeing vitae gaps like this on the resume of a female professor the assumption of most (male) academics is that she was raising children, and that's probably true, but she also made a pivot in her career to law and criminology, which further interrupted her career.

She is likely a very rare creature in British academia: a generalist. That's the sort of thing that's horrible for a career in the UK, but may very well make her an excellent teacher and a great resource if you're into crime and law in Victorian England. I can't say of course. One thing I do know is that it's good (for the historical profession) to have historians reaching across fields and asking these sorts of questions. So, Dr. Clayton notwithstanding, this may very well be a worthwhile endeavor. I think we'd all like some corroboration, though, because the article itself is pretty shaky. I wonder if Dr. Rowbotham's training gave her an understanding of statistics.

* In theory someone could just ask, but then that wouldn't require the kind of qualitative analysis that historians do so well!
Definitely. I pretty much keep silent on political/social issues online these days. It's just not worth the risk of being targeted for personal/professional destruction by the internet social outrage machine (Fortunately, we still have secret ballots here in the US, so at least some form of political speech can be engaged in safely).
You are probably comparing it to real time communication. It is still communication, just like leaving notes on a refrigerator is communication.
> Using Slack as a one-line-at-a-time chat service is a choice that a user makes. Slack itself doesn't enforce it.

Thats like saying you can drive your car with your feet, the car doesn't enforce driving by hands. The point of this post is saying that slack has these shortcoming by the nature of its design. You can make as many arguments as you want defending it, but everything has a design that influences usage.
The demo takes a minute to initialize (firefox, windows 10, surface 3 pro) then shows a window that ignores all UI conventions.

Yup, they got the applet experience nailed down perfectly :)

(Somewhat joking. The technology behind it is still extremely impressive)
Ruby does have % too for quite a while. As in

'%s won $%i' % ['herbst', 5000]
I don't mean to be pedantic but I do get confused by people writing about tenants and building in one sentence, when they probably meant tenets?

"...we can leverage another one of it’s key tenants, which is that the building,..."
How to Create a Budget in 5 Steps with Free Spreadsheet Download
I wanted to try this out, since, my company still has some legacy code and we use swing/applet as our frontend. It has worked very well so far, but after NPAPI support has been dropped from Chrome and Firefox it getting tough to keep that as our frontend now. We have slightly moved to HTML5.

I installed and went to https://www.java.com/verify/ on google chrome and still says "The Chrome browser does not support NPAPI plug-ins and therefore will not run all Java content. Switch to a different browser (Internet Explorer or Safari on Mac) to run the Java plug-in."

Am I missing something here?
I generally like Stratechery articles - but I found this one stretching to make everything fit into a nice, neat box - particularly the comparison of AWS to the Grocery business. I found the graphics representing rather incomprehensible (perhaps I'm simply not bright enough to get them) and it feels like someone looking for a grand unifying theory of Amazon, as opposed to something simple: the grocery business is huge ($900b/year), Amazon wants to be a part of that channel.

It's basically doing the opposite of Walmart. If there is a grand unifying theory of Amazon, I think it is also pretty simple: start with a specific niche in a category, dominate that and then grow. But that is hardly a unique approach in business. Amazon does, however, execute it extremely well.
For a while gmail had this ui "feature" where <tab><enter> or <tab>string-of-characters<space> would send an email without prompting.

I still fear the web UI. I guess emailing out bullet lists was against the implicit use case the gmail UI team had in mind.

Stuff like this definitely changes how tools are used.
Ask HN: What business can I create around avid readers and book lovers?
I've been working on my side-project Booknshelf (https://booknshelf.com) for couple months now (recently open-sourced) but I'm having a hard time to think about the ideas that I can use to monetize it.

Any ideas, advice and suggestions will be appreciated.

Thanks.
The be fair, C# was a lot less entrenched at that time than Java was, even though I think Java could have made the same step at the time. But the Java maintainers probably had good reasons for that decision as well.

As for better class libraries, I found the .NET BCL to be excellently designed and thought through. It's also very consistent throughout. Now, parts of the FCL, like System.Windows.Forms are another matter ...

There's still some warts, such as there not being an ISet<T> before .NET 4, but Java's standard library has its share of quirks and historical weirdnesses as well. And as libraries age there are always old ways of doing things you can never really remove, and newer ways that are better. None of the two is as bad as C++, but depending on what you do you can stumble around in a swamp of old APIs for a while before finding what you're actually supposed to use.
Who writes JS like this?
Sweden’s Museum of Failures pays homage to products that flopped
branding, marketing, etc.
Yeah, Notes is basically written in the Lotus 123 spreadsheet scripting language :-) Eclipse just made it worse. Obligatory http://www.ihatelotusnotes.com/

The one positive comment I can make is that you did end up with a unified enterprise-wide set of collaboration tools.

Oh there was a new tool I hated before IBM decided to get on the git bandwagon: Rational Team Concert- project management and source control tied into one. Imagine having to start a giant 500 MB Java application to "git checkout". (In fact the project management part was OK, just using it for source control was horrible).
How is Twist (the product they announce in this post) much different from email? Besides not using open protocols? Don't get me wrong, it looks like a beautifully designed email client. There are some interesting features here but it seems like you could do this all using existing email features. Am I wrong?

The choice of asynchronhous vs. synchronous is a false dichotomy. Development teams I have been on use a combination of both since forever. Before Slack/Hipchat there was XMPP/Jabber before that was IRC. It must be business people binging on the glory of synchronous communication then having a hangover. In my experience this has never been an issue.
Nobody actually hammers screws because it's obvious how the tools are intended to be used and that isn't it.
Ask HN: Best place to find freelance app devlopers?
Hey All, has anyone every used any of the myriad places online to find/hire freelance developers? I started working on an iOS game but I find its probably better for me to find someone whose has more experience with SpriteKit and Metal. I'm willing to pay for it.

What sites did you use and how did you go about finding quality people to work with?
Neat, gives Chromebooks some new options. I have a few things I'd like to try, like Dell iDrac.
Hah, I suppose it is! But sadly, it's the only effective solution I've found for dealing with e.g. actual Nazis that tried to encroach on my social circle.
E-Myth is one of the few books I wish I had found years before I did.

There aren't many challenges we're the first to face in the history of the world, or the first to ever think about.

A lot of wasted time can can be saved from accessing the experience of others, and learning what to extract for your own journey.
That was a big part of my motivation in building http://LightScript.org as it was clear that was never going to happen with coffee.

Currently works with Flow syntax, but not yet the actual flow checker - would love help making that happen!
Would you allow me to interview you and ask you some questions on algorithms and data structures and have that recorded for everyone here to see. I bet you that I can ask relevant questions that you'll struggle and most likely fail to answer in the 20 minutes time allotted. And no they won't be from any standard 'cracking the code interview' questions. The point is, the relationship between interviewer and interviewee should be reciprocal. Both should ask questions and the winner gets the job (maybe even the interviewer's job) Now, I think companies would love that as it exposes weakness in their ranks, but interviewers would then join the rank of complainers. You haver to think more deeply about this stuff, not just state whatever you feel like as your righteous opinion.
Click on the CheerpJ extension icon and and then click "Run Applets". Sites such as that one dynamically check if the Java plugin is available and CheerpJ needs to refresh the page to properly spoof the plugin availability.
You have to click on the extension and on "Run Applets" after loading the page, it works fine for me («Congratulations!
You have the recommended Java installed (1.8.0_300).»)
You can see if you have been breached in other similar breaches and leaks at https://HEROIC.com
Click here to get access to Accordiums Beta waitlist
The situation only holds when the market price of mammoth ivory is roughly the same as that for elephant ivory. If mammoth ivory was much cheaper than elephant ivory, then killing elephants wouldn't be economical. Unfortunately, mammoth ivory is an extractive process, like mining, so it is unclear if the price could be brought down and kept there for an extended period. Still, it is more than likely that mammoth ivory has had a protective effect on elephants; although, I know of no studies examining the issue.
Interfaces are as powerful as modules in ML:

'Interfaces in Idris are similar to Haskell type classes, but with support for named
overlapping instances. This means that we can give multiple different interpretations to an interface in different
implementations, and in this sense they are similar in power to ML modules (Dreyer 2005). Interfaces in Idris are
1st class, meaning that implementations can be calculated by a function, and thus provide the same power as
1st-class modules in 1ML (Rossberg 2015).'

Quoting from https://www.idris-lang.org/drafts/sms.pdf
Surely this is a case of "why not both?"

Campaigns to get people fired when their online posts are revealed are well-attested from all parts of the political spectrum, and generally come out of doxxing efforts that hiring managers don't undertake. There are even campaigns that boil down to "this person said X, harass/troll their employer so that even if the employer doesn't object to X it becomes too costly to keep them employed".

But at the same time, hiring managers have Google and all kinds of tools random harassers don't, like the ability to check criminal records and credit scores. (And there's a great example of an opaque and inaccurate tool governing people's lives - just read about the people sharing a name and birthdate with someone who has bad credit or legal issues!)

So yeah, hiring managers with Google. But I wouldn't discount the other issue either, since it can cause people problems even for comments that don't violate any general social standard.
>> In other words, I simply don't believe that interviewers are, as a group, so stupid that they regularly ask obscure Excel questions when they are plainly not relevant.

I was interviewed just a couple of weeks ago. The interview itself was pretty straightforward, but they asked me to do a few test questions, which were very much like those described in the article.

"Here's some really obscure C code with undefined behaviour, what's the problem"
"Well, that you wrote it that way, who the hell would write that?"
"Sure, sure, but can you see the problem"
"Well yeah, you've got someone who delights in writing obfuscated C in weird ways, that's your problem. You could avoid many classes of error here by writing things out in simpler steps."

They were all seriously contrived. (--edit-- and equally as semi-relevant to the role, which is to do with microservices and scalability)
Technically Congress and the Courts, however history has shown this generally doesn't happen. Unless someone files a lawsuit, the FBI intervenes, or the case gets tremendous media attention (i.e. ATF with Ruby Ridge) the Government is often given the benefit of the doubt by Congress, etc.
I see Slack as being real time and asynchronous because the contents of your conversation remain resident in the chat and there is no expectation that you respond immediately.
My past initial screen was hilarious:

- I see that you worked for a consultancy firm on your previous job. Do you
have experience working with clients?
- Yes. My client at the time was XXX Bank where I was involved in foo bar
baz...
- So you don’t have experience working with clients.
- What? Yes, yes I do. I worked and interacted with them on a daily basis,
with meetings and the like.
- Okay. Do you have experience with databases?
- Yes. Mostly Oracle and MySQL. Some postgresql. I’m also quite comfortable
with NoSQL databases such as Redis and MongoDB.
- Good. Do you have experience with programming languages?
- ... Yes.

Some codility tests and interviews later I was notified I was not getting an offer due to lack of first hand experience with AWS (previous interviewers were apparently fine with that, but this one saw it as a red flag, although it was not listed as a requirement in the job offer).

Definitely a good call for both ends, as this was one of those modern companies where everyone are supposed to be friends, play with nerf-guns and have after work drinks. I think I’m too old for that.

For the record, it feels good for once being rejected on lack of technical merits rather than failing some “culture fit” interview. A trend that is giving me the worst interview streak of my career and is making me consider a change of profession.
Show HN: Algorithm Cookbook in Rust
Sure, here's src/main-process/atom-protocol-handler.coffee from the atom codebase (it's a really long URL because it includes the whole source code):

http://bit.ly/2rIhFD4

In this case, the __guardMethod__ usages should probably be rewritten by hand after running decaffeinate.

In general, you can paste any code into the left side of http://decaffeinate-project.org/repl to get output on the right side.
Oops, fixed :p
GiftsApp
Analog Devices has done the ADALM-PLUTO which is less expensive than the HackRF-One. I don't have one of those but I do have the HackRF one, and if UPS is to be believed a LimeSDR :-). The cost/capability matrix is sort of

RTL Dongles -> ADALM -> HackRF-1 -> LimeSDR -> Ettus SRP

The RTL's don't transmit but all of the other ones can.
I've seen it frequently used on American websites, and on numerous articles submitted to HN (social issues in the US being a frequent topic of inquiry)

I don't think it's surprising that people would read it that way.
Wow, I love all these features! You're not saying it:

10. Has open-source implementations,

11. Allows HTML formatting,

12. Has a hierarchy of topics, splitting up topics in a generic way,

13. Is blazingly fast,

14. AND allows referencing specific articles using an URI scheme: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5538 ?
Vice has raised $450M ahead of a potential IPO
You can check if you have been breached in other similar breaches and leaks at https://HEROIC.com
Voter registration information is public. It doesn't seem like any of the information "leaked" is actually private.
I'm paranoid enough to only use my own password manager, but if you must use a password manager written by someone else then don't use one that runs in a web browser. Moreover, although this doesn't apply in this case, don't use a password manager that stores anything on a server not totally controlled by you.
Yup, this guy gets it. Slack and other real-time messaging apps should be treated as a phone call or a knock on the door; an intentional interruption for something important enough to warrant a real time conversation.

Everything else should be handled through email, to allow people to consider and tailor their responses, to allow others to be added to the conversation through a CC: of a single focused thread, and to provide a directly searchable historical record of conversations.
I missed where it was all public; couldn't you share information with your political party you wouldn't want shared with others? And wouldn't the accumulation of all that data be valuable?