skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Perhaps UI design and hardware design are not directly comparable on this basis? You can't run automated testing or user analytics on a handset.

What's more to the point, testing is for increasing a specific outcome or make sure it happens. It's not about what Christopher Alexander would call "the quality without a name."
Generally the kind of people who act on fatwahs to kill people like that are not super ninja assassin masters, but actually fairly incompetent. Being alert (which is one of the main things taught in self defense classes) would be a huge advantage, but in a place like the home, being armed would improve one's chances substantially.
>How many open source projects did you contribute to where you DIDN'T have to assign your rights?

The Linux kernel doesn't require copyright transfers. Most open source projects don't either (though many require a contributor license agreement).
Definitely, those people exist. I would not advise those people to pick fights with terrorists.
I've noticed the polar opposite in my field (enterprise security): major open source providers pulling back on source code rights because of rampant abuse.
Of course you can't give up ability to use your name/trademark without making sure that it maintains it's integrity. Why is John surprised or find it remarkable?

I'm surprised Google hasn't gone much further then they have. Looking at the crap AT&T is pulling with their "Android" phones must make Google disgusted but it's the price of free & open source.

Trademark is the only point of control and I'm glad they are exercising their rights. Carriers almost never care about their users. At least with Google their interests are at least semi-aligned with making the users (me) like their experience with Android phones.
Good funny post, that was the best laugh I've had all day. Thanks!
3. That the design of the API makes sense to the user of that new code.

If you practice TDD (Test Driven Development), you first write the test(s), then code to make those tests pass.

You're much less likely to end up with SomeClass.some_reference.a_really_bad_name(with,lots,of,required,arguments) when you first think of the caller, rather than of the method itself.
They're only really different in that Woot sells a physical product (they don't promote a business), they ship it themselves, and make a profit on it like a regular store.

The only way that they're at all similar is one possible thing to purchase per day. Otherwise they're completely different.
Another solution is for Microsoft to create a version of IE that is an application rather than an operating system extension. One should be able to install multiple versions of IE on the same machine without them conflicting and without it breaking features like Windows Update that depend on tight integration with the browser, even if it means installing as a different user.

The advantages would be twofold. First off, people who need to use a 10 year old version of Internet Explorer because of crappy internal apps could continue to do so, and they could install and use a new version of Internet Explorer for using the real world, modern Internet. Secondly, we'd avoid having to hear about the (legitimate) woes of developers who need to run multiple copies of Windows virtually to do testing, or use third-party hacks to get multiple versions of IE to run on a single copy of Windows.

And I'm suggesting that the above be done for new versions of IE. But it's just as possible for Microsoft to release an application version of IE6 that users more recent versions of Windows could install in order to run those ancient internal web applications. There's benefit here too in terms of showing people that they need to use an old-and-busted version of a program to access their internal stuff vs the new-hotness they'd have to use to access the public Internet. Even rebranding Internet Explorer with a different name would help toward that somewhat (if you could install it along side the ancient version of IE6).
Antioxidants For Your Heart
> I meant that some people are innovating, but that the overall trend has been towards sameness and value extraction. Many superficially novel offerings are only stylistically different.

I think you're half-right, but the most exciting thing happening right now in technology are some of the expensive cool technologies turning into commodities. This doesn't have the "wow!" factor of new breakthroughs, but is an important step. Soon-ish (10 years?) everyone will own a smartphone, which means a computer in your pocket. That's pretty cool. Also, the mobile web stuff is pretty cool, and the ability to get high end scalable cloud hosting for relatively cheap is cool.

These aren't major breakthroughs the way social news was, the way better search was, the way better email was, etc. I do see less of those, but new competition and collapsing prices in cool technologies is a really good thing, even though it doesn't set off the wow factor so much.
Indeed, maybe, just maybe, a 1000 freshmen will install it on their machines tonight, it will wipe those thousand laptops tomorrow and destroy a thousand career the day after, in a similar fashion to how a 1000 freshmen destroyed their careers by dropping acid on Tim leary's suggestion in 1969.

Let's think about what Richard Feynman meant when he said "what do you care what other people think?"

It's been released as pre-alpha. That's responsible. If it has a greater magnetic attraction to naive early adopters than other software, whose problem is it? Ours or the Darwin Awards?
This word "viral" is like "death tax" or "pro-choice"; it communicates a real phenomenon with an overt spin.

The reality is that this "virality" you're talking about is a perfectly reasonable authorship protection. It allows groups that want to claim firm ownership of a project to release its source code without worrying about ending up competing with a fork.

We all know, at least ever since Github made it cool, that forks are a desirable property of open source development. But it wasn't always looked on that way and sometimes it in fact isn't desirable. Perfect example: a company that wants to make a living selling a product. We're all better off if they publish their source code, but if they do it with straight GPL, it's going to end up used against them in someone's web app.

This is neither here nor there with respect to Diaspora. They may have made some claim about exactly how "open" their "openness" is intended to be. But it's simply not fair to suggest that the AGPL is an egregious license. "ALL RIGHTS RESERVED" is an egregious license, and the most popular license in the world.
Number 6 had me imagining an extreme test case. All the content of a page is in a narrow vertical column over at the right of a page. Show me a heatmap of that test page with real users still spending most all of their time looking at the big blank space at the left and... well I'll eat one of these pencils on my desk I guess, as I have no hat I wish to part with.
Confirmed: Intel says HDCP 'master key' crack is real
I'm sure theirs will look nothing like mine
"landmines" implies intent. Strongly. Landmines don't happen by accident, they're placed. The title is rather offensive, probably for linkbait reasons.

Agree with elbrodeur, it's a "duh" situation. Pre-alpha, no warranty, known security holes and bugs. They haven't advertised it as anything it isn't.
You don't have to be a super ninja assassin master, you just have to be hidden. Even walking behind the target is good enough, especially if you're happy not to escape.

John Hinckley Jr was neither particularly competent nor particularly sane, but he managed to shoot Ronald Reagan and not get shot himself despite the fact that Reagan was surrounded by quite a few armed guards at the time. And there was another president who got shot by some random bozo in a good hiding place, whom I shall refuse to mention because this is the internet and you just know it would immediately summon a horde who want to discuss their conspiracy theories.

Basically, if I had people actively trying to assassinate me, the simple act of carrying a gun would probably only increase my confidence by a few percent.
It reminds me of the Japanese salaryman's long hour at work. It's expected that he stays at work for long hour since it's part of the culture. The thing is those are unproductive hours in a lot of cases.

I wonder how much of these 12 hour days are truly productive.
Cheapest place to stay at and work out of in Bay Area?
Has anybody got any ideas beyond just watching out for good postings on Craigslist? Looking for insider tips from locals. Not interested in comfort, just needs to be inhabitable. Thanks!
I've found you don't generally get far with people by pointing out that their political principles are horrendously inconsistent.

In fact, it's only a tiny minority of people who care whether their political principles are consistent or not.
Exactly where else are they going to take their business? When it comes down to it, it has to be cheaper, or the roughly the same order of magnitude, to support an upgrade to a single application than it is to completely throw out your platform and replace it with another.
> Google does nothing to prevent anyone from creating their own "app store"

Neither does RIM.

But Google is marketing Android based on it being "open", when the truth is Android is no more open than BlackBerry or Windows Mobile.

If you're purchasing an Android device on the idea of openness, like I know a lot of people are doing, you're being swindled.

Meanwhile, in the war between carriers and users, Apple is turning out to be a much stronger advocate for their consumers than any other cell phone manufacturer or software provider, whereas with Android it's turning out to be the same old rotten business as usual.

The truth hurts, doesn't it?
I would go with git because git is what the cool kids use. At least, this is why I chose it. Herding mentality generally isn't a good reason, but herding works in figuring out who you want to work with.
Did the ancient Greeks spot Halley's Comet?
Uh,

Reasons to work on this?

Visibility, visibility, visibility, visibility, visibility, and visibility.

Did I mention visibility?
People can quibble about the definition of "unit" tests, but essentially, automated testing is an executable specification of your code's behavior.

Let's say I write a piece of code to calculate a dollar value for an investment portfolio. Then, I want to validate it. I could poke at it and see how it behaves on some examples, but this would be a one-time thing. Better for me to write some tests which set up some sample data and assert that the code calculates the right results.

Later on down the line, maybe I find a bug -- maybe it doesn't work right when you purchased a stock, then purchased some more of it. I could fix it, manually test it, and call it a day, but it would be better if I first expressed the bug as a unit test (i.e. I set up some data which causes the code to generate a result different from what I expected, and so the test fails), and then fix the code. Since I also have my original test cases, I can be sure that I didn't break some other behavior when fixing this bug.

Similar reasoning applies to adding functionality -- leave the old tests intact and add new tests.

Tests are not about configuration. It may use the word "test" but "test whether XYZ is installed" is a different question from what unit tests are about.

Tools which look for problems like XSS are not tests either. I don't know what to call them. They are a good idea.

Selenium is a testing tool for validating web apps at the application level. Purists might call it a tool for functional or integration testing rather than unit testing.
Nicely written... I don't think I've read a more reassuring outage message before. Especially since it doesn't particularly sound like it's meant to be placating, it's just informing.
The Diaspora crew came to my company and gave a talk. It was pretty boring actually. They ARE NOT interested in cryptography in the first place. The only crypto going on is SSL. Whoopy-doo-dah.

If they wanted to actually solve a problem they could have tried to make this system pseudonymous, with all social graphs, user data and messages encrypted. Oh well.
Hmmm... maybe the opposite should be pointed out.
Don't know why your at -3. Although you did it in a smart-ass way, you are explaining the phenom.
When is your book release Patrick? ;-)
That's true, but are those colleagues allowed to talk about the work that the person did? At a lot of places, the only thing the manager can confirm is that the person worked there during the dates given on the resumé. Further questions are to be directed to HR, which will filter any genuine feedback the manager can give.
80% of all income. They could do adsense themselves, so the assumption is that we'd do more for them.
I've found that once I install chrome, IE8 gets very messed up causing similar symptoms, but if I go to: internet options -> advanced -> reset internet explorer settings, everything is fixed for some odd reason...
In my mind it would be a combination of recruiter, product manager, and maybe architect
I've seen too much total idiocy on long term, "real" software projects to sneer at anything even barely working produced in these circumstances.

A code review by frickin entire world???

This will help them WHEN THEY DO THEIR ALPHA RELEASE. Thanks...

Reading all this actually is the first moment I imagined that diaspora wouldn't be the total disaster it threatened to be.
Japan's Robot made to replace ageing workers
That's slick. Having dealt with twilio, I know it can be a PITA. During testing, I would just output buffer the entire thing then dump a copy to /tmp/twilio
That is the way it should work at least. This gives credence to the companies defense that they did it to allow cross company cooperation without poaching. But do all of these companies really have engineers meeting and working on the same projects? Sounds pretty flimsy to me. I can't figure out what the goal of it was because none of the explanations really sound all that useful.
Update:
-------

-- PowerDNS as authoritative server is almost laughably easy. They have a pipe backend and example which would take just a few minutes to rework in python to pull records from CouchDB. A few minutes more and it could check memcached to see which server is loaded and re-order results appropriately. Geo wouldn't even be that hard to add.

-- Twisted and Tornado might work to replace node.js. It is kinda shocking how many people are investing in node.js, though.

-- If anyone can recommend a caching proxy server that will also work as a sort of template engine and auth engine in front of couchDB, that would be great. I can write this in any number of tools, but if it already exists, great. Remember, it needs to take multiple CouchDB shows/lists and run them thru a template to produce a final resulting html page.

-- CouchDB caches the trees in memory so can quickly tell me if the etag is different, but for commonly used data, I do want to cache it to save time on disk seeks given how dramatic the latency of disks are vs. memory. But only for the most commonly used things.

-- as I originally mentioned, I don't want to reinvent the wheel, I'd rather rent wheels by the hour. Unfortunately, none of the app hosting options offer the kind of wheels I need. The app we're building will involve some heavy lifting, in the 10s of gigabytes of data a day range, with a fair bit of custom processing, and even app engine doesn't provide the kind of indexing we really need (But that CouchDB does well, and incrementally.)

-- I think this might work as an open source project, an open stack for people to use and build upon.
The people who sell these internal app systems are kind of weird. I've been part of a number of rollouts where they say things like "Well, this internal system is going to have 1000 users across your entire company, so this is going to need to be a pretty beefy, expensive system of machines" and I'm like "Dude, you're talking to someone who deals with a website that gets millions of hits a day, your crap should be able to run off my laptop."
Indeed a mirror image, and possibly causally related. In the U.S. at least, the big union-organization frenzy was, perhaps not coincidentally, mostly in industries dominated by large industrial trusts that colluded with each other. It seems like a reasonable defensive reaction, even if not ideal: if your counterparts are all colluding with each other, so you have no real choice of employers, you pretty much have to collude as well if you want any chance of negotiating a decent deal.

(And, often, the industrialists were colluding with local governments in addition to each other, making it even worse; especially during the period of the "mine wars".)

I don't really like unions, but collusion like this is an understandable reason to form them: if the companies are all agreeing behind closed doors to do X and not do Y, the only real ways to force them (since they've removed the ability of market competition to do so) are to either: 1) pass a law banning the objectionable practice, e.g. California's prohibition of non-compete agreements; or 2) get a large enough group of people to all agree not to work for any company unless certain terms are met.
Just an FYI, I had problems with "Rizal al Mashoor‘s MicroISV on a Shoestring Reader" after several posts (I want to say ~20-40 it's been a month or so). I'm not complaining by any means, I just googled for the article it broke on and continued from there.
Lake Meritt area in Oakland is pretty cheap and livable. I had an ok one bedroom over there for 750 ish a few years back. It's also pretty near BART so it's easy to get to sf.

http://www.oaklandnet.com/parks/parks/lakemerritt.asp

Inner Richmond in sf is also cheaper (for sf) and sunnier than the sunset area.
And people were breaking skulls when roller blades got hip back in the day.

If the roller manufacturer put a big warning on their packing, whose fault is the accident?
From experience $250-$700 should get you a nice logo with 2-3 sets of changes.
I really hate the browser-as-embedded, in part because of this reason. And because it has always struck me as a massive security time-bomb, because they're rarely segregated properly. My blood ran cold the first time I discovered I could open a web page via Windows Explorer.

Similarly, I hate that Chrome only allows one installation, with the exception of Canary (windows only). What's the point? Give them a unique ID, and namespace everything! Get clever with hardlinking binaries if nothing's different, but sheesh.

</rant>

That's likely the best solution, yes. I guess we can hope it goes that way eventually, right?
1. It's okay to fail; if you never fail, you probably never try.

2. If I were you, I'd probably try to resolve the problems instead of closing the project. Things like facebook login not working on subdomains should not be show-stoppers, really. Find a workaround, I dunno, proxy login or anything.

3. Early releases are good, but you have to provide minimum viable product.

4. I didn't know a thing about newstilt till today which means you had some marketing problems.

5. Don't listen to the guys counting other people's money :) There's always some risk involved in startups, every investor knows that.

6. Probably you had to do some better research before launch. This way you'd know all about your readers.

7. As a developer I'm not with ya on those "should work at sunday" parts.

My 2 c.
"Android is no more open the BlackBerry or Windows Mobile"

Huh??? There are hundreds of thousands of phones out in the wild running Android builds not blessed by Google. If you design a new phone you can install Android on it and sell it. You can download the source. If you try to do any of that with BB or Windows Mobile you'll be sued and/or imprisoned.
Totally agree. I started my company 4 years ago. We have been pretty successful so far (several millions in revenue and big customers). There are times that people need to work a lot but there is no way you can work 7 or even 6 days a week in a sustainable fashion, not even at the beginning. I never expected people to work on the weekends although sometimes they do. Of course, I never expected people to work more than me either. Most of them are extremely productive during normal working hours. I don't think having a life means you are not motivated.

Also, hours that somebody appears to be working is definitely the wrong metric for developers.
There's no objective method, but many experienced programmers are capable of using subjective measures. Indeed, such skills are a huge competitive advantage to established dev. shops with talent (hire the best, keep hiring the best).
The real proof in the pudding is if somebody opens an app store with Apple-style curating and rules and search quality, and if that outperforms the more open store Google runs.

(jeez, by some of the comments in this thread, you'd think everybody lives in a town with only one place to shop).
I agree with you, but the kind of insecure this is isn't just an 'oops, we screwed up, it's alpha!' kind of insecure. It's a colossal, "I don't know how to build a web app" systemic issue.
Good Job! I'm looking into ditching my iPhone 3G and go iPod + 4G wireless router (hack-tastic) in my car.
Implicit collusion is easy to maintain, even without explicit agreements.

Unless the settlement or ultimate ruling has some enforcement teeth to it, it's unlikely that anything will change very much.
>Does a human being have the right to contract with whomever he wants to sell his labor to?

Yes, a person does, but I don't think that question really gets to crux of the matter. I think the question is whether these companies were forming a cartel of sorts. Not a cartel of widget or oil production, but a cartel of jobs production. Its actually not clear to me that existing anti-trust law covers this case, and, from the DoJ's actions, it isn't clear to them either.

If the Justice Department was confident of its case, we'd be seeing a lot more publicity in order to put pressure on the companies involved. The fact that DoJ isn't raising a ruckus over this means they think they have enough to go to trial, but not necessarily win. In circumstances like these, where the law isn't exactly clear on the topic, both sides seek to settle because neither wants to be proven wrong in open court.
To put this succinctly, we need the "HTTP" of social media, not the "Apache" of social media.

That is very deep and it applies to a LOT of different "markets," not just social networking. A truly open standard API for interoperability is a very different thing from a truly open standard implementation.
Yes and no. It got a lot of press outside of regular tech circles, and it's also attracting a lot of people who don't even know Ruby. Earlier today I fixed someone's bug report by showing them which half of "<<<" "===" ">>>" to remove from their Rakefile because of a bad merge. Many of the people who've subscribed to the list are incredibly inexperienced.
And the carriers are gladly taking advantage of that "openness". But to the end user it means nothing, because virtually everyone purchases their Android devices through their carrier, locked to whatever software that carrier has approved. What you end up with is a device that's no more open than a BlackBerry, except that at least RIM can exercise a modicum of control over what the carriers can and cannot do to their devices.

Meanwhile, nobody has to Jailbreak their iPhone to prevent their carrier from pushing garbage onto their device.
As a business owner, you need to recognize all the costs of your marketing campaigns. It is not Groupon's fault if you fail to manage your business.
don't reinvent the wheel - hack a Scheme. ^_^
Don't forget that in the U.S. legal system, a company is obligated to protect its trademark or loose it.
Would that it were true that there was no crypto going on in Diaspora, but no:

diaspora/lib/encryptor.rb