skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Amen.

I'll be the first to admit that "you don't want me doing your UX design"[0], but I found the whole violent shift from skeuomorphic to flat to be too much. Almost over night we went from nearly cartoonish to IRS forms "with color". As a non-designer, I was happy -- finally, I could hit up a web site for a reasonable color palette, grab a popular font from Google and have a design that almost passed as typical. As a user, I found the look ... boring and uninspired.

Here's the thing, though, skeuomorphic design did serve a purpose. It was to equate, for non-tech-savvy folks, concepts from the "real world" to concepts in an app. A few simple design elements can differentiate my calendar from my task list from my playlist and can be highly effective in circumstances where providing a UI more than a very brief glance can be dangerous[1]. And outside of those scenarios, it's nice reducing the cognitive load required to recognize the context of what I'm doing. Unfortunately, it was taken way too far. But it went too far the other way, too. There's a happy medium here, and I rather like the UI presented here as that happy place.

[0] I'm not completely miserable at it, but I'm a developer. I want a knob/switch/setting for everything and the ability to customize everything (I joke that I never quit Firefox because I love "about:config"). My mom doesn't. For most of my projects, which are either personal or targeted at engineers, a lot of time isn't spent thinking about design.

[1] For instance, waking my phone while driving to change the song -- It's nice to see something that indicates "that's a playlist" which is obvious and instant.
Did you get hired yet? (If not, I will email you)
> The point being-- the gap between scientific research on intelligence and what it means for A) society, and B) my personal life is a chasm I have no reason to bridge.

The problem is that well-meaning people on the left come to the table full of assumptions and intuitions about how reality works and what causes inequality, and base their policy positions on these. People on the right bring up biology because it can expose weaknesses in these assumptions and beliefs.

> Looking towards the past on how (pseudo)science about intelligence has been leveraged to commit atrocities

You can also look at how blank slatism and Lysenkoism were leveraged to commit atrocities in the USSR. Science and pseudo-science have been use to justify all kinds of horrible regimes. That isn't a license to ignore reality and form policy based on unfounded beliefs.
The explanation I've seen is that multiple leads actually do a random walk search algorithm of sorts until one connects. https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/questions/580/why-doe...
There is a bit of very recent, new epigenetics controversy in this preprint: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/09/20/170506

>Frequent lack of repressive capacity of promoter DNA methylation identified through genome-wide epigenomic manipulation

tl;dr: they engineered a protein which methylates regions of the genome in human cells and checked how that affects gene transcription. In many cases where they showed that the gene's regulatory region was methylated were still transcribed, contrary to what many other studies are indicating.

>These findings suggest that promoter DNA methylation is not generally sufficient for transcriptional inactivation, with implications for the emerging field of epigenome engineering.

Perhaps methylation could be a footprint of something we don't know about yet.
Warning sign 1) People aren't doing what they're supposed to, and rather than wanting to improve/rectify the situation, they don't care.

Warning sign 1.5) Manager didn't consider this a problem.

Warning sign 2) Manager burned you, the employee trying to do things right.

Given my experience, at this point I'd leave. The department, or the organization, if I believed the problem went higher or would continue to haunt me.

I've spent way too much time and energy making up for others willful deficiencies.

Move one. Let them put themselves out of business.
If there was a bunch of pent-up consumer demand for repairable machines, someone would eventually notice, start doing making those products, and make a lot of money.
The term 'team' pops up about five times in the article, yet passive aggressively leaving an identified issue that is responsibility of the team unaddressed to prove something to yourself is the least team-like behavior I can imagine.
I agree that most UI is the same these days and some change from the norm should be encouraged, but I don't think that UI with actual real world things like binder clips is needed. Mobile apps don't need clips to keep pages together, so lets not bring new constraints into a field that already has it's own to work with.

I love how Google is updating material design to have more aggressive shadows and bring in elements that make the UI feel more like the real world, while also pushing the boundaries of app design with newer interaction models that most haven't seen, but immediately feel used to.

Mobile app design is such a new field, let's not jump back into our time machine because we feel nostalgic for Steve Job's Apple. Let's keep pushing the field forward.
Sounds like there was bad blood or a general cultural problem there already. I can't imagine a well gelled team of people who like each other ever being unable to solve this kind of problem.

An employee should be comfortable going to their manager and their manager's manager about problems like this, and a manager should "nip it in the bud" when an employee begin running such "little pseudo-managerial experiments" on their colleagues instead of voicing your frustrations directly. What even is a managerial experiment? Colleagues and subordinates are not experimental subjects.
> There's a ton of unresolved questions: what are the rules around driving high? Who can buy cannabis legally? Which jobs are allowed to be worked high? Which businesses can sell cannabis? What license do you need? What are the penalties for flouting age restrictions on sales? Can you smoke cannabis in a bar? Can you vape cannabis in a restaurant? How is cannabis taxed, and at what rate?

Those are mostly pretty easy questions.

For driving and working high, it's just the same as working or driving in any other impaired state. It's slightly trickier than alcohol because it isn't as easy to measure the level of impairment, but that's also true of many prescription and probably even some over-the-counter drugs, so it's not a new problem.

For all of the other questions, you could just copy the rules for tobacco verbatim and end up with a workable set of rules.
Thanks, I figured it was something of this sort, but wanted to confirm. I find it interesting the distinction even exists in Rust, whereas in C, authors just tell you to not alter the data, or use a cleanup function they've provided, etc.
I have to say the when Elon Musk correctly schooled him on general AI threats it certainly raised my eyebrows that maybe Pinker wasn't as clever I believed, as the more simple among us could have appreciated the point Elon made in a tweet.
I rarely look at candidate's GitHub profiles anymore. I used to do it, but I didn't get much value from it, and I didn't notice any correlation to job performance.
Hey! I said don't judge me :-)

The reality is that I only wrote as much as I needed to go back to working on the project I needed it for. It works for the 'Everything is fine' case, which is what I needed to go back to developing the client side. Even a hint of malicious intent could probably bring it to it's knees.

But therein lies the rub. Is it worth hardening it or should I just go to Rust where most of those things just won't pop up?
I know this is a piece from 2012, but I can share my experience from the one being on the receiving end of this. I had a very very similar colleague and I really repent my working experience with her. What people like Rachel post as acceptable behaviour is actually not conducive to the workplace at all.

In my case, I was just transferred to another position and I was required to maintain some production machines for clients. These machines are all hosted on the cloud running their own CRON. My job was just to ensure everything was smooth and no downtime happened. This person, SSH-ed into the instance, removed the CRON tasks on one of the machines and let the system on. I was still fairly new and I was only a few days into this new position. Eventually I found out based on login logs that this person did something and when confronted directly, she said she wanted to see if I would do the work diligently in the right situation. Almost like what Rachel did, except she didn't go out of her way to do something nasty. I think you don't have permission to do these things to your colleagues because you're exactly just their colleague and not their boss.

We had some heated arguments and my ex-boss sided with her because she played the minority woman in tech card (no kidding) and it affected my appraisal as well.

Just a note to any of you reading this really bad article. Just don't do this. There is no win win for anybody here. If you feel you have a problem with someone, directly confront with them. Don't do all these indirect things which may have serious consequences in your career in the long run (eg. Management's Perception of you). What Rachel did is exactly what you're not supposed to do at a professional work place. Don't do stuff like this and play the victim card. It's really uncalled for and annoying.

In the end, a lot of people left the company because of this one nasty colleague and management wouldn't take any action because of her gender as they kept her to maintain the gender ratio. About a week ago I learned that about 7 engineers quit this position over a span of a year for the very same reason.

These kinds of actions are the foundations of passive-aggressive behaviour and culture rot and are breeding ground for politics. Please don't do this.
Maybe cars are complicated and it takes more than six years to figure out how to make them well? Maybe Tesla is using a very different process to make the Model 3 than the model S? Maybe we shouldn't compare a car that's been in production (with some changes) for 17 years with a car that's been in production for a couple months?

The Model 3 is substantially different than the Model S and has been in production a couple months. Just because Tesla made a similar car before doesn't mean that making cars is a solved problem and there won't be new problems with each new model that have to be overcome.
Why Clothing Matters
GitHub profiles are incredibly useful for college grads, bootcampers, and self-taught devs that typically can't speak of professional accomplishments.

As your professional accomplishments increase, the value of GitHub profiles (for most) as a marketing tool diminishes dramatically, but can still be helpful.

For developers at any level, repos are a good conversation piece for interviews. The interviewer can ask why choices were made, what the candidate might do differently now (shows growth), and start interesting technical debates.

I always ask my clients (I'm a resume writer and career consultant) if they have a GitHub profile if I don't see one listed, but I don't always include it on the resume. New entrants to the industry are not exactly punished for not having one, but it's becoming an expectation. This is different than expecting an older adult that may have life responsibilities that prevent (or simply no interest in) coding outside work.
You're always free to buy gold with your money, if you think that's a better store of value. I don't think the government cares.

(Personally I invest in productive assets and bettering my standard of living, but to each their own.)
Didn't look that bad from the co-worker. He could grow up a little bit but that's all I see really.

Problem was your boss cause one could easily retort "oh okay, you accepted what I had mentioned I was going to do and you later go against it, saying it was the wrong decision"? (obviously he's your boss so you're stuck and saying that wouldn't have helped much)
Mining the ocean floor is about to go mainstream
Oculus sent out an email mentioning the $15 store credit. That email mentions it might take up to 7 days to get the credit.
The looming global trade war
Make sure your number isn’t listed on the Whois information for any domains you own.

I had the same types of calls. Changed the phone number on my domains to an old number of mine and the spam calls stopped a few weeks later.
Five of the Most Badass Women in Crypto – International Women's Day
So just going to downvote and not try to engage? That's pretty anti-Hacker News. Feel free to actually, you know, present an argument if you disagree with me.
Fear, trust and PureScript
not sure if it's large but some pentesting framework went from ruby to go. devs seem to like the language enough to rewrite it all, also, performance benefits have inherent value for non small handling of lots of network events.
NSQ: http://nsq.io/
Doesn't really affect things though since there is no road through the Wakhan corridor to reach China, and no road over the mountain pass. If you want to drive it is a very long way via the karakoram highway via Gilgit in Pakistan. Travel from AF to CN is generally done by flying to Dubai, Delhi or Islamabad first.
I think that it is something imposed on us by the more aesthetically-inclined. Herd mentality, etc...

Given the anti-creative monotony that "fashion" produces in tech, I'd take the DIY geocities aesthetic and skeumorphism any day of the week
If we are being interviewed like carpenters, a carpenter's work may be a lot of effort to create and then none and it still remains created. Why is the age or spontaneity of the commits a factor? Yes I am working in a professional capacity and can't show any of that. Why not look at the table I created 2 years ago?
No, the reason we got rid of it was that it was impractical for like 90% of software. Skeuomorphism works for calendars and notepads, that's it. That's why those are always the examples you see for them.

There's no such thing as skeuomorphism for a chat app or a social media site - there's no analog comparison to take design cues from, they're inherently a digital thing. So what you end up doing is wrapping digital things in leather and wood texture as if it was some kind of physical device. It's tacky and cheap, and frankly, I think only a small subset of users get a kick out of it.

I don't like these designs at all. Sure, they are well put together. But the screen feels crowded and the buttons look hard to hit. It just looks incredibly delicate, if i flipped on large text mode, the whole design would break.

On the other hand... Skeuomorphism is fantastic for video games, where utility is not the primary motivator of design. If I'm playing a WW2 game of some kind, yeah, I'm cool with menus looking like war-torn clipboards and whatnot.
That's really not a charitable representation of the article. When the HN guidelines say: "please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize", it applies to authors as well as commenters.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Machine learning can be colorful and less boring
>Is it not your responsibility as a developer to keep an accurate portfolio of your skill set?

That's what a resume is for. It explains the what and how I performed my last jobs. GitHub is possibly how I did my own hobby projects which have different requirements.

We're not artists who can easily keep a copy of the code we produce. That's a problem with asking for more effort on my own (unpaid) time.
English is the official language used in formal context in Singapore, not Chinese, Indian or Malay. All the documents you’d sign with a company are in English.
Completely agreed, well said.
Yes matches are bi-directional, but the match is at the higher tiered user's discretion. That is, by paying more, you have the option to more finely filter matches.

Regarding ethical concerns, I'm not imagining tiers in the hundreds or thousands of dollars, but something like a one-off $1, $10, $20 payment wouldn't be segregating by social class in any significant way while still providing nominal filtering ability.
Linearly more discussions at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4158865 (2012) and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6417319 (2013).
Ask HN: Your quick and efficient growth hacking strategy in 2018 for a SaaS
Hey HN,

As a lot of new entrepreneurs, I'll launch my own SaaS product this year.
I would like to learn the proven and state of the art growth hacking strategy these days and most of all which tools should I invest my time and money to use.

I believe I won't be able to take shortcuts at a certain point and take time to read all the available books and blogs about startup development but for now I just need a condensed boilerplate.
I also expect the strategy success to be dependent on how I will implement it given my product features. But generalized advices are what I aim for.

Suggestions by amount to invest (cheap or expensive way) and product maturity stage would be greatly appreciated. B2C and B2B differenciation too.

Thanks for your help HN community!
No doubt. Failing the same way a whole bunch of times with no course correction doesn’t give me confidence.
Ask HN: How to comply with EU GDPR?
My application needs to store the user's first name, last name, and email address to customize the user's experience. Europe's new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) law requires that the application not store any data that can identify the user. Any suggestion how the application can comply with the law but also retain the customization based on an individual user?
Nobody’s saying the work is easy, only that it is consistently late over and over (and he’s the one setting his own deadlines).
Obviously in the limit every test shares something with some other test. But it's not like it's hard to find cases where practice on one task fails to generalize to another task: in fact it's the norm, and it's exactly this empirically observed lack of generalization that motivated the concept of IQ and g in the first place. For example, see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27474138
Regardless of why members may have down voted your comment above, in my experience commenting on voting will attract downvotes because it's against the guidelines:

> "Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
We've added the year above.
Agree, I'm holding off on buying because I'm not sure I'd sit down and play this on my desktop, but it looks like it would be great on iPad.
recesslabs looks very cool and I'm interested in learning more! Is there an email address that is best for reaching you?
What's missing is user testing. Many designers are still in denial that they're engineers not artists, they still mock user testing with "users don't know what they want" etc.. But how do you know if the interface does what it's supposed to do? Does it have bugs?

One of the benefits of a platform design language is that users learn the language, they know what the buttons are, how to navigate around without putting too much thought into it. If you deviate from that you really need to be sure the user will benefit from it and it's not just pretty for pretty's sake.
> There was no division of duties on the team. Everyone was responsible for the system as a whole.

The authors point is valid: It is necessary to be aligned with your team leader. :(

I think that this author has had a key misconception about their team. Regardless of what the 'official policy', it turns out that that the team is happiest (excluding the auther) so long as this author is continuously monitoring certain issues. It's less efficient for multiple persons to be doing the same monitoring.

If I were in her position, I would attempt to divest myself of the menial task of checking/monitoring and write some code to do it instead.

(And automatically deal with this "extra master")
>shows commercials even to premium users

I think this idea that businesses are only allowed to have one revenue stream seems a bit strange. Other businesses that are supported by payments and ads include: magazines, cable TV, movie theaters, newspapers, public transit, air travel, and amusement parks. If Hulu thought that people would pay twice as much for ad-free content, then I'm sure they'd offer it.
In that it conveniently masks wage stagnation or recession, sure. But I'm not sure I agree with you otherwise, can you expound? Deflationary systems are great for capitalists. (See: NYC's taxi medallions and SF real estate.)
Discussed in 2015: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10239962
I chased down the wikipedia pages for some of the unimaginably highly valued meteorites in their pie chart (e.g. 511 Davida - [1]). The high value appears to be almost entirely a function of the enormous size of the larger ones - and these are all far from earth. I love the idea of space exploration but if you look at the elements in meteorite minerals [2] (I followed the links for those that did not have a formula in the table), apparently most of that value is in iron and nickel with some chromium, cobalt, manganese, scandium and titanium thrown in. Iridium is more highly concentrated than in the earth's crust but it is not clear that it is ever in a commercially viable extractable form. On first principles the emerging deep sea mining efforts would appear to have enormous seemingly impossible to beat advantages over mining in space. Not just in terms of distance etc logistics, but because deep sea vents have done such a great job of concentrating a much wider range of different more valuable elements in different places - and someone please correct me if I am wrong -
there is no evidence of comparable processes separating out elements during the formation of the asteroids. (In this comparison I am admittedly not considering the hard to gauge environmental impacts of deep sea mining.)

1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/511_Davida
2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_meteorite_minerals
WordPress now used on 30% of the top 10M sites
Well, like I said - it doesn't matter.
For B2B the buyers are generally not the users. Therefore there are fewer incentives for a business to create user friendly software. And since making it nice to use takes time, to which there is no immediate ROI. Its a lower priority.
Ah, so consensus is actually just a codeword for mob rule? I'd say it is pretty ambiguous and if I thought Bitcoin Cash was the real bitcoin, I'd be pissed at the "Bitcoin" fuckers stealing the name...
Ask HN: Do programmers eat their young?
In some professions, such as Nursing, there is a high-level of hazing or initiation for people entering the field. Or, maybe new folks don't experience bullying, but the seasoned experts try to "toughen them up" by being hard on them.

Do you see this behavior in programmers? Do we eat our young?
The ill which inflation brings does not manifest itself in the short run. Inflation is a hidden transfer of wealth from everyone to first receivers, and first users of the new money. When the money is loaned into existance, the first recipients of the new money get to make purchases based on the old price point. By the time the money spreads throughout the system to everyone else, it manifests as mere (generalized) price increase. This is a slow and steady siphon which in practical effect takes wealth from the "have nots" and gives it to the "haves".

To argue pro inflation based only on the short run view is missing the point.
> there's a staunch C++ defender thinking the whole world should be using their language?

That's in no way a fair characterization of the parent poster.
How this investor bought into Uber, Spotify, Alibaba, and other tech giants