skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
When someone walks up to me and opens with "quick question" the hairs on my neck stand up. I had a job where that became an office trend, everyone would start with "quick question".

I started responding to "quick question" with "long answer". That and I also hung a sign on my chair with my official office hours. Neither actually worked, and people thought I was rude, but it did make me feel better to try to push back. ;)

Long term my takeaway is that while too many meetings drain the life out of people, there's also a layer of communication that needs to happen, and when too much interrupting is going on, it's a sign that the right kind of meetings aren't taking place. Now instead of getting annoyed, I start to track the "quick question" categories, and create new channels for the commonalities, ideally Slack or email rather than a meeting, but in person when it gets big enough.
Ask HN: Do cold pitches e-mails (without warm intros) really work for raising?
Hello Hacker News readers & lurkers,

I am surprised to see that there is always a "contact us directly" e-mail address or an "upload your pitch deck" form on most of the VCs around there.

From an unexperienced point of view, it seems weird: I have read a thousand times in blogposts that it is better to try to find someone in your network that can provide you a warm introduction with someone (or even better, a double opt-in [1]).

So… Is it really useful to send your pitch deck through those kind of forms or these contact@example-vc-fund.com e-mail addresses?

Have you any example of companies that did succeeded to raise seed money in this manner?

Any examples, stories or whatever insights are welcomed :)

[1]: http://avc.com/2009/11/the-double-optin-introduction/
Hmm, what about _declared_ terrorists and _actual_ killers which post videos of them throwing gays off the top of buildings? Cloudflare was providing service to those people.
How are software patents protecting or encouraging innovation? I have seen patents cover algorithms that had not been proved feasible at the time the patent was granted. I have seen patents granted on academic research that do not recognizably cover the same invention. Most programmers have no idea whether or not they are infringing on patents.

Patents are supposed to come with limitations. For example, nobody is supposed to receive a patent on math. In my own field (crypto) math patents are the norm -- I have seen countless patents on results in algebraic number theory (elliptic curves, pairings, lattices, etc.).

The software industry has demonstrated an ability to innovate without patents, both in open source and proprietary software. Open source is obvious. Proprietary software is monetized with copyrights and trade secrets; patents play a minor role at most, and legitimate software companies just amass defensive portfolios to protect themselves from patent trolls. The only people making big bucks on software patents are lawyers who represent a drain on our industry.
At first glance I read this as "Stupid Parents Are Dragging Down AI And Machine Learning", and all I could think was- what 13 year old girl wrote this article?
If you were them, would you want to make your physical address public?
“Them” and “theirs” are plural. Talk about confusing.

I don’t get why using “one” isn’t more common. It’s gramatically correct and is as gender neutral as it gets.
I'm fairly sure there are many other things that'll kill me first (hello, lack of exercise), but I do wonder where a detached turbine blade might cut through the fuselage and any passengers contained therein, and thus try to avoid the rows parallel to the engine.

However, I'm wondering - would the blade go straight lateral? Or, relieved from having to pull the whole damn plane forward, would it fly forward and hit the fuselage in front of the engine? Or, slowed down by the air resistance, would it hit the fuselage behind the engine?

Best, I suppose, to sit up front in first class...
Great opportunity for all the bitcoin enthusiasts to show the world how a (small) nation can run on cryptocurrencies (you just need mobile phone connectivity - SMS/text could also be sufficient).
<anecdotal>

Can confirm, addictions to sugar, caffeine, alcohol and cannabis evaporated during my trip and did not return for many weeks. I had never felt so peaceful and balanced in my life. Whereas previously I was trying to escape chaos with substances, now consuming substances would only serve unbalance me.

I felt like, wow, this is what a human being is supposed to feel like! When you face what is within you, and process it, it no longer burdens you. Psychedelics seem to facilitate this process.

</anecdotal>
Further reading indicates that it just someone posting on their forum. User-generated content is hard. Cloudflare users should make sure to censor what gets posted on their sites if it refers to the political opinions of Matthew Prince.

https://gizmodo.com/cloudflare-ceo-on-terminating-service-to...

>“The Daily Stormer site was bragging on their bulletin boards about how Cloudflare was one of them and that is the opposite of everything we believe. That was the tipping point for me.”
And that work is mostly false.

The US has extremely strong protections for "intolerant" and "unpopular" beliefs. And it works out fine for us.

Freedom of speech, and tolerating everyone, including the intolerant, has worked out pretty well for us.
At least you (as a pilot) are behind a solid locked door in that scenario.

However, that brings up another question I've been wondering about: Could the pax/cabin crew of an airplane collaborate in bringing a jet down, by e.g. all together going to the very front of the plane (near the cockpit door), moving the trim up, then all running to the very end of the plane, bringing it into an uncontrollable stall?

I haven't really seen a satisfactory answer to that question. See Quora and Stackexchange (where I attempted an answer):

https://www.quora.com/Would-a-passenger-jet-stall-if-all-the...

https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/2507/can-passen...
As for the former portion, I think the goal here is to force the applicant to be as succinct as possible to make the review process faster. I think you're right in that it would result in a larger number of patents, and there are certainly patents that couldn't fit on a single page without omitting a valuable prelude. For example, an algorithm patent may require some initial exposition to delineate the novelty of the idea.

The latter portion of your comment is not necessary and does not contribute to the discussion at hand. There are many possible reasons for using "her" instead of "him" and the majority of them are valid.
> German police in the last G20 (Hamburg) was more violent, for example.

Not even remotely.
A More Natural Approach to Biohacking
Funny, there must be at least 10 years of "prior art" on any kind of machine learning patent application these days. Guess the patent officers are as good as they have ever been.
Have we never seen it before because it's inaccurate and irrelevant?
> (you just need mobile phone connectivity - SMS/text could also be sufficient).

kinda hard without power
Univalent Foundations is apparently controversial. It appeared to come to a head a couple years ago when a lively debate played out in the comments of a blog (including a comment by Voevodsky himself): https://mathematicswithoutapologies.wordpress.com/2015/05/13...
To frame in a comment we often hear around here: if you don't control your funding, you don't control your destiny.

Building anything for the US government that's big enough and has potential military applications is virtually inviting them (and the large project procurement morass they bring) to become involved.
The Red Atlas: How the Soviet Union Mapped the World
If only there were a way to direct it toward some useful purpose...
I always have heard the goal of meditation is not to 'think of nothing' but if a thought enters your mind observe it and let it pass. By 'trying to not think of anything' you are actually thinking of doing just that.
False logic. It's not like the absence of patents has prevented innovation in the course of History. Imagine how poor the world would have been if a patent on "fire" was ever granted to some kind of proto-human organization.
As a practitioner of traditional amazonian spiritual tradition, I and my family drink Ayahuasca on a regular basis and find it to be invaluable, our first line of defense for disease both physical and spiritual.
I'd be curious how many large diameter applications there are. Physically-contrained uses (mirrors & EM dishes), but do those make up that much of the market? And does it make that much of a difference?
Finding Inspiration for Conference Talks and Blog Posts
I remember a talk from a map librarian who said that the Soviets didn't just copy western maps, as they often had more detail and unique elements that the western maps didn't have. One thing, for example was the heights of bridges, and widths of roads.

You might want to jump straight into the examples: https://redatlasbook.com/cityplans

Flash is needed though...
The "on a computer" trick doesn't work post 2014. Alice v. CLS Bank killed it. Business method + a computer now gets you into an art unit with a sub 5% allowance rate. http://www.bilskiblog.com/blog/2016/06/two-years-after-alice...
Side note: the entire site (http://elth.co) appears to be a single-person operation (a side project even — “I am currently put up in the lovely city of Bangalore in India, working for a startup as an Android Engineer.”)

Kudos to the creator (OP). Looks to be a very well-done (if click-baity, but hey, that’s how you....well....kind of...get clicks these days) project, and it comes across very much like many of the larger content creators.

Care to share some background on the project? Looks like you launched pretty recently. Goals? Am I correct in my assumptions here?
Show HN: Secure Windows Shell (SWSH – Pronounced Swish)
It plays terribly on my 4k resolution laptop in a regular Chrome window (ie not full screen). Played a few of the others and they were fine.
I always found it surprising that the US calls regions where people live the same as regions where protected animals live (reservations). Isn't that offending to anyone? I would be deeply offended.
I thought grey... but i guess thats a shade.
I'm not American, so I'm not going to quote the constitution, I'll say I'm comfortable not giving rights to Nazis and no there are no slippery slopes.
Trump tweeted something. It's not an official statement, and he has repeatedly backed down from things he's said on Twitter. I suspect his tactic is to draw attention via overblown tweets, and then make his actual move after the media storm blows in. In other words, he's taking the "no such thing as bad PR" angle.

This doesn't excuse what he says; if I'm right, he's specifically trying to inflame people's anger toward him for free advertising. All I'm saying is that this explanation fits the pattern.
To all the critics, what would be a better map of say 1400 with the distribution of tribes?
Tech entrepreneur under fire for nonprofit's fundraising tactics
Seriously, I cannot think of something more irritating than this. I worked with a person who was more senior in my org who had this habit.

Not only did that piss me off because I would be in the zone (I usually leave my phone at my desk and close all emal/slack tabs to not be disturbed) when he would totally interrupt for a silly question (a la the "did you get my mail?" question).

Please please don't do this. Nothing comes across more selfish and signals that you feel that your time is more important than mine to me than this.
And there's no "shyness" of overweight people telling healthy-weight people they're "skinny". I hear it every day, and my weight is dead-smack-in-the-middle of the "healthy" range for my height.
The same way you deal with them now. You go after the content discovery platform for which there is usually a small number of authoritative sources.
They're both derived from "reserve", which is just saying that this land is reserved for these people.
Part of the problem with motorists not yielding at zebra crossings is because many pedestrians are not aggressive enough and behave as though the car has right of way.

What seems to work for me in most situations is to walk up to the crossing while making eye contact with the driver and not slowing down or breaking step until it is clear that if I go further I will be run over.

The driver must then decide whether or not I really mean to walk out in front of him and most don't really want to run me down so they stop.
In aviation, that is new and shiny :)
We've been running Erlang directly on Xen with "no os" for a while. Works great and very efficient.
You declare "there is no flaw" and then you proceed to describe it in detail.

Surely you can see the flaw in this new line of reasoning as well?
The map of Europe might give the misleading impression that European nations were a static mix of people, sitting in a time capsule, [...]

In reality, the situation was fluid. The standard forces of disease, warfare, trade networks, natural disaster, and human ingenuity were always at play.
> My conclusion is a lot of bodily tensions are connected with unresolved emotional charges. This is related to the nervous system at some level.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Reich#Character_Analys...

> ... Reich proposed a functional identity between the character, emotional blocks, and tension in the body, or what he called character (or muscular/body) armour (Charakterpanzer).
As the saying goes: If you have an engine failure in a twin, the remaining engine has enough power to take you to the scene of the accident.
Props to Cloudflare for evicting DS and dealing with subsequent bullshit. Some people might think it's a bad move, I'll just say I'm glad you guys acted.
perhaps we should then idly speculate that a stash of child pornography was discovered by a longtime gay lover, who flew into a rage and killed him for it.

then we random internet posters can idly discuss hard hitting topics like exploiting children, suppressed sexuality and violence in relationships. and undoubtedly solve them fully before getting distracted by the announcement of a new cpu or something.

nobody in the world thinks or talks about these things other than we concern trolls on the internet, so we have a sacred duty to the world.
"The response is pure politics" "That political hack of a mayor". I see exactly one person making a humanitarian disaster political, and I'm replying to him. You act as if a mayor can magically fix a rotten power grid for the entire island, or magically dig San Juan out of a giant debt hole herself. Stop airmchair governing and go talk to someone from the island. This is a massive problem that is going to take many years and a lot of cooperation and forgiveness to fix for millions of people.
Cloudflare set up a limit to what they allow or not so now they will have to fight where that limit is. It can become death by a thousand papercuts.

Twitter also enforces its policies very selectively, and seems to be getting away with it so far, but they are walking a tightrope. E.g. now violating the ToS is OK if it's "newsworthy" etc. Or how "Kill all X" will get you banned for some values of X but not others.
But isn't the mental energy required to come up with this answer (and judge its rude/nonrude status) already a distraction? Once you've left the bubble, there is a cost to coming back into the zone.

In my experience it's difficult to set the bubble boundaries. Some days I'm working on small tasks and wouldn't mind being interrupted, other days I need uninterrupted concentration. It's hard to communicate that with colleagues. Maybe there should be a general rule — mornings in the zone, then after lunch handle all tasks that require sync-up + training + selling.
Profits. For being better, not first.
Opt-in community based blacklist.
Right, if you're running a site you'll still need to have your own infrastructure to host the authoritative source. IPFS is supposed to reduce the need for CDNs.
Your reaction gives the implication that he was suggesting Europe didn't have that issue, but I'm fairly certain the standard in "The standard forces of disease, warfare, trade networks, natural disaster, and human ingenuity were always at play." is acknowledging that. That's the entire point of what he is saying.
On the other hand, I feel like people like you make the office a worse place where talking and interacting with people is harder.
i guess that leaves one's fate in the hands of passers by.
Wow that is one horribly incomplete map. Where are the Kansa, the Wichita, the Osage, etc
If you post on HN about a problem, you'll likely get 1 useful answer and 6 answers pointing out that your problem is symptomatic of a wrongheaded approach and you should be doing something else instead :)
Taking a look at Hacktoberfest
That happens anyway. The Hillary Foundation and the American Red Cross have come under fire for doing just that.
Zuckerberg speaks Chinese. What is your point? That being multilingual makes you a better programmer?
>If a group of people doesn't want to be governed by a certain body they should have the right to secede.

If you follow this principle to the extreme then laws become essentially voluntary, which contradicts the whole meaning of law.

I think democratic principles can never be applicable to decisions about the existence of the entity as a whole in the same way they apply to governing an existing entity.
What purpose does it serve but to double QA efforts. If you are testing the same stuff both in develop and master, why not just test only one and save some time. Ramming gitflow into a docker workflow efficiently is not really possible I believe.
> 'Did you get that email I sent you?'

Just for fun, somebody should write a "track-and-trace" type of website for email. Then whenever somebody asks that question, give them a track and trace code.
They could have responded with a lighter touch but if the referendum is suspended, conducting it is illegal. If a judge orders seizing voting booths, they need to attempt to do that. For example, the local police did exactly what you said, paid lip service to the judge and left people to vote. Guess what there are already 6 judges investigating them for negligence. Personally I expected an smarter police action plan.
Some Romance languages use that for AD, like Italian "dopo Cristo" and Portuguese "depois de Cristo" ('after Christ').

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/AD#Translations
Image search for "new guinea tribes" shows a lot of people who look pretty physically fit.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=new+guinea+tribes&t=hb&iax=1&ia=im...
I find etymology fascinating and really enjoy noticing and reflecting on cognates. That said, the actual uses of the words in their current context and their connotations is more important for communication and understanding what people mean and intend to convey.
What is the market demand for Haxe like, for employees and freelancers, anyone know from personal experience?

Edit: To make it more clear, I just looked at:

http://haxe.org/use-cases/who-uses-haxe.html

and that page does show that many well-known companies are using it. My question is more about the {perceived|anecdotal} usage level that anyone thinks it has in the industry, vis-a-vis other products in roughly the same space. Asking with a view to whether I should consider learning it for work.

Edit 2: Checking out http://haxe.io/ based on MoOmer's comment.
Any map.
"young girl" and "young intern" are odd ways to describe a 21 year old.
Cool but I’ve never heard of a programming language that doesn’t come with a compiler or standard library does that really need to be spelled out?
See

https://www.daedtech.com/how-developers-stop-learning-rise-o...

Psychiatrists, salespeople and many other people persons believe that it is more powerful to ask people questions than tell them something. If you can draw him out and get him to delineate the territory he thinks he understands he might start to understand that there is more about it.
A quick googling would show you Quebec is also 20% of Canadian GDP and 15% of Canadian population.

Quebec moreover cuts off maritime provinces from the rest of Canada
Sounds like you want to help out.
When I see the description that monort gave, I would think that in Germany this would be seen as somewhat bizarre (as in mathematician ;-) ), but not as "terrible taboo and social stigma" or something to be outraged about (as dean Schmid was in monort's description).

Quite the opposite: If you keep in mind that in many large German cities (such as Munich, Stuttgart and Berlin) it is hard to find an apartment, in particular if it is supposed to be affordable, I can imagine quite well that "living to the logical consequences that it is not worth the time to look for an apartment" could easily give him lots of sympathizers in Germany.

On the other hand Voevodsky would probably get in trouble with German law (Meldegesetz (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meldegesetz) - I don't know an "official" English translation of this word, but perhaps "registration law" might fit). But always keep in mind when talking about Germany, what Germans think and what the German laws say are two very different animals.

---

Concerning your point

> There is no stigma against homeless people in your country?

monort's description of Voevodsky's lifestyle does not sound like the lifestyle of a homeless person. So the argument void. But to give nevertheless a point: I don't think there is a lot of a stigma against homeless people in Germany. The stigma is rather against things that accompany being homeless like drinking, rarely showering etc.

EDIT: To elaborate on the point that I don't think there is a lot of a stigma against homeless people in Germany: I (as an academic) actually know someone who was homeless for a longer time in life (at least 6 months, probably much more) and also had an interesting discussion about homeless people face in Germany with a homeless person who was begging for money when I was waiting for a train that was massively delayed.
Why are you at the office? To chat? Or to get work done? They are sometimes mutually exclusive.
Alice in Python projectland
I don't. This looks super shady. It's clearly in CF's interest to justify their decision. I'd even say they have a very powerful need to do so, given that they just took an unprecedented action against them in order to appease a mob, and now need to convince all of the rest of their customers that they won't do the same to them if they ever fall afoul of the internet hate mob.

We have 1. Cloudfare has a powerful need to justify their actions, 2. The person they're making these claims against has drastically reduced ability to provide his side of the story, thanks to Cloudfare's actions, 3. They already did one thing that most people believed they would never do, in arbitrarily terminating services to a site they didn't like, are we really going to make the claim that they would absolutely never twist somebody's words to serve their own purposes?

I don't think they straight made something up, but I can certainly believe that they took a quote out of context, interpreted something creatively, or misrepresented a post on their forum as an official statement by the site owner. In what other situation with such a powerful conflict of interests would we take the word of somebody in Cloudfare's position at face value?
It happened almost by accident for me. Today I can't stop people from saying I am a data scientist so I've stopped trying.
It's not offensive, though, unless you are trying to be offended.

The reservation system is a broken acknowledgement that the US stole land from all of those tribal groups, but the purpose of a reservation is to set land aside, to reserve it for those tribal groups, to say the government cannot go any further.

There's much better things to be offended by. Nobody is offended by hotel reservations.