skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This is moving the goalposts.

Due to rampant ageism, most people in this field are afraid of becoming irrelevant in their forties due to the rapid evolution of the industry, therefore staying relevant is of concern.

But if we are going to talk about what drives the success and failure of projects, the "stakeholder interactions" are only one part of the problem.

I've worked with 3 startups already and have heard stories from many others ...

For startups that die, usually the blame lies with not finding the "product/market fit" however the reality is that startups only have a small window of time in which they can present their product and win customers and if your MVP has bugs or is underfeatured, it can kill your business, irregardless of how well connected you are to your stakeholders and your clients.

Going further than startups, in software companies developers do have to talk with stakeholders in order to understand the requirements.

Asking the right questions however is a matter of technical skill and no discipline will teach you how to better dissect a problem in smaller problems than math and a scientist will always be better at asking questions than non-technical folks ;-)
Then suppose you get a job that requires you to write React.

I had a job interview where the interviewer asked, "What framework would you install to accomplish x?"

My response was along the lines of, "I wouldn't use a framework. It's a simple problem, so you just write a function to do it. You don't need to throw yet another framework on the fire."

We had a brief discussion where he couldn't wrap his brain around the concept of just programming something, and not loading a bunch of frameworks to accomplish each task.

I didn't get the job. Later, I found out more about the company and realized that was a good thing.
I saw many software engineers, with several different study paths, not knowing anything about how a computer and a network work. Apparently this doesn't affect significantly their efficiency at work but it's kind of stunning.

On the other side, I started from logic gates, registries, network packets and ended up with their same skills, with some 20 extra years at my disposal (I couldn't learn React before it came into existence but I know JavaScript since day 1.)

An exam on the second year of CS required us to write a simulator for a toy CPU, with the microcode to implement some simple machine code instructions. I remember the curses interface on a VT100 and the professor testing the program.

I wonder if I could have studied my books and those other books before I was 25. Why not? But I think that it's much harder to "know" software quality, software design, software testing, deployment, software life cycle than it is to learn the fundamentals. Anything that somewhat deals with people is messier and more difficult than something that deals only with machines.
One of the most exciting and transformative things about the world wide web at first was the concept of "disintermediation", i.e. that small independent shops could reach out directly to customers via their web site, or (using the example in the article) artists could reach out directly to their audience. What has happened of course is in many ways the exact opposite of this, the "re-intermediation" of even bigger and even more dominant organisations than in the pre-internet era. Not sure what the solution to this is though. Even if there were a standard easy to use open source set of tools for users to build their own sites/apps and ecommerce facilities with very little effort (little enough to compete with near-zero effort), which integrated with a variety of low cost hosting providers so they could deploy and run at little cost (little enough to compete with zero cost), you'd still face the problem of how users would find these sites/apps - via an internet search or an app store?
That's the remaining 10%...
GraphQL API for cryptocurrency market data
I know what a framework is, having been building with a handful of them for more than a decade. That a framework is used to deliver a web-based frontend has no bearing on intentionally designing and building a framework-agnostic backend.

For instance, auth happens via a library that is not Flask. Same for database models and persistence (that’s SQLAlchemy for the models, and a mix of ORM and straight SQL queries for db operations—again, not Flask/framework). This is starting to feel like splitting hairs, though. One of the great benefits of a microframework like Flask is that you get the freedom to design and write application code that ignores the fact that there’s a framework handling the request lifecycle. It makes for better code.

For an example of a non-microframework example, Phoenix takes this approach as well—that Phoenix isn’t your application, it’s just a web layer, and your application should be independent.
Re: There is no situation in which PHP is the appropriate tool for the job...

While clunky as a language, PHP's "environment" is better if you are doing web apps. Easier to install, including a test setup, more web-oriented libraries and functions, and a built-in HTML templating language for "view" pages (per MVC).

If your stack is designed right, you'll be spending most your time plugging in parameters to API's such that the language itself won't make a whole lot of difference. You should be mostly gluing libraries, not writing an OS from scratch. If I were doing the second, then Python would be the better choice.
This is about more than just Patreon.

It took a couple of days for SubscribeStar to have their paypal access removed once the loonies began their next witch hunt.

How far do we take the witch hunts before we decide enough is enough?

If everyone in the world decided not to trade with people they didn't agree with on everything, there would exist no trade.
edit: how the hell does markdown/code-snippet work on hackernews?! Nicely formatted pic of the below text soup:

https://i.imgur.com/fvEeaJA.png

My library function is:

import sys
def writeToTerminal(txt, line_len=79):
# line_len is the max num of characters that can fit onto a terminal line without overflowing to a newline

# overwrite the line with blank spaces
# this takes care of the case where len(txt) is fewer than the [ len(txt) when this function was last called ]
sys.stdout.write( "\r" + " "*line_len )
sys.stdout.flush()

# write the txt, trimming to line_len
sys.stdout.write( "\r" + txt.replace("\t", " ")[:line_len] )
sys.stdout.flush()

Example usage:

from time import sleep
L = list(range(10))
for c, i in enumerate(L, start=1):
writeToTerminal("%i / %i" %(c, len(L)))
sleep(1)
This is not that. The Intellectual Dark Web is starkly opposed to the alt-right (and any that consider group identity as paramount). The defining feature of the IDW is about open, honest discussion and debate of ideas. That is incompatible with identity politics.

Although whatever they do is often miscast as alt-right in part because the IDW defends free speech even when they don't agree with the content. Indeed Sam Harris deleted his Patreon account to protest the censoring of those he does not agree with. It's a principled stance and an important one.

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Ebay will report your sales if you reach a certain threshold.
I've taken a look and found https://edicl.github.io/hunchentoot/#easy-handlers
Where is it a felony to have a CCTV?
Electron is a tiny rocket and the market for large launchers is already overstacked. Electron will stay in the microlaunch market for a long time.
I would upvote you a billion times if I could. I’ve seen so many good ideas getting lost because of overcomplicated approaches to the implementation, and so many “boringly simple” systems delivering immense value. I am guilty of this too. It’s a variation on Knuth’s famous “premature optimization” mantra, and is still as actual as ever.
Asking the crowd: does anyone know of an in-depth comparison of rating systems (thumbs, 3 stars, 5 stars, 1-10, etc)?

Also obligatory Black Mirror reference: Nosedive S3E1
Shortcuts JS
same for PHP. Still not great but there is in 2018 essentially a "good parts" set of best practices, which combined w/ v7 is not a horrible language/platform. I feel you if you just don't like it, but I see so many people just quoting that old "fractal of bad design" post that's really not relevant any more.
People that work at Facebook here, does it make you uncomfortable about the future, and make you question what you are doing, when things like this happen?
The NAI opt out system is entirely worthless, though.
Yeah it really depends on where petty theft falls in the spectrum of criminal activity in that area.

In a quiet small town it might get a detective assigned. In a lower-class urban neighborhood, well the cops have bigger fish to fry.
Ask HN: Has your startup taken on strategic investors and how did it turn out?
I'm looking at different investor profiles, and I'm curious if anyone in the HN community has worked with strategic investors. If you have, can you share what the experience was like (what was the strategy, how did it play out)?
That was for the first one though, where all he had was a random persons face, way harder to actually track that person down. For the later ones like the car and even more so the apartment/house it's a much easier case so they might have actually bothered because they can directly link the theft to an actual ID through the plates/address. Even with that the chances they'd bother is medium to low but it's much more likely given the amount of data Mark could hand over.
> And the reason for that is essentially all modern languages make copies of something when passing argument parameters.

Then of course someone turns on whole program optimization for C++, half the code gets inlined into one terrifying large function, nothing is copied anywhere, and the code runs 2x faster.

Then some poor SOB has to debug the assembly code for all of this and has nightmares for years after.

Not like I'd know or anything. :)`
> The result will be the National Archives clamping down on researcher access.

Or maybe the National Archives will stop making deals where free distribution of the material is unlikely to happen for decades and will instead open up greater access to researchers.

Or they could make the same deals but put a deadline on them to prevent the exclusivity from sitting in limbo forever. That would at least give Amazon an incentive to distribute the material rather than just squatting on its monopoly.
Liberalism in Theory and Practice
My enthusiasm isn't curbed either, but this stuff doesn't stick for everyone, especially if the wrong behavior is rewarded. The use of the term "soft skills" to cover a swathe of topics that technical people want to avoid is a real problem that I observe regularly. In a way usage has become derisory rather than a just bucket for a range of topics like leadership, strategy, empathy, marketing etc.

These are clearly hard skills for the individuals that complain the most, or suggest they aren't important. It's much more comforting to work on technical skills which you believe can be measured objectively, but at some point you need to focus on the human side which is messier.

I attempt to be more specific with resources I point people to if they ask for help, or I need to steer someone in a particular direction. Just telling people to read a soft skills book can be chore and they won't necessarily identify the right lessons to learn. People also need to understand that you aren't trying to turn them into a manager, or one of the people they don't admire. It sometimes help to point out that the role models obvious technical skills aren't the ones that got them to that point.
I smell financial regulation. The secondary market is generally only available to accredited investors. If you're investing in a fund, that's one thing, but if a product is unwinding all of that to allow unsophisticated investors to essentially buy secondary stock in private companies, the SEC is going to have something to say about that.
Industry Predictions: AI, Machine Learning, Analytics and Data Science Trends
This is a thief skill. You need to act casually not to look suspicious.
For me the Internet as Television is most noticeable in how the gatekeepers enforce their content preferences.

Remember how the TV media pretended Ron Paul didn't exist whenever he ran for president and was doing well in polls? (Daily Show clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWet2SbU07c)

Similar windows of premeditated thought are being applied to the internet all the time; but the Jon Stewarts of the world that would point them out don't get to leverage the legitimacy of Viacom to avoid being called an old coot.
You're just wrong. The CSS box model as specified by the standards was totally unusable for making a website where you want boxes to have certain sizes with certain margins and paddings, especially in the days before you could use calc(), so you couldn't mix pixels with percentages. It's true that it was the standard, and so MS should have implemented the standard, but it's also true that what MS shipped made way more sense and every frontend dev turns on their box model when it box-model: border-box became part of the standard.
I agree.

I think the key fact of my landing-the-plane story was that there was a hell of a lot of technical knowledge used in landing the plane. They just didn't do barrel rolls on the way in.

It's not the lack of technical skill. The broader and deeper your range of skills, the generally more-useful you can be to people. It's putting the problem first instead of your own (perhaps) boredom.

Putting the problem first is what's creating all those "soft skills" books the OP mentions. When we put the problem first, suddenly we realize that we're bad at code standards, or negotiation, or interviewing, or any of a dozen or two other skills that we may never have wanted to learn.

That sucks, but that's life. That's the job for most of us. When you truly put the problem first, it dictates to you what skills or knowledge you might need. You are no longer taking an active role, choosing from a big closet of cool-looking weapons to go do battle. Instead, you're taking a reactionary role, carefully looking at both the people-systems and the technical-systems to feel your way through an engagement that will deliver the maximum value for the least amount of work, ie, putting your client's interests ahead of yours.

We don't teach people to think that way, so you'll see a lot of this soft skill stuff out in the industry that's an effort to correct the training they should have gotten in school.

But yes, absolutely, pick up more CS skills. I love that stuff. Starting in on Category Theory myself next year, probably Haskell too. I plan on having a blast.

But my fun or enthusiasm is not at all important to consider when I'm trying to help folks. Then I put their needs ahead of my own.

I'd also add that it's not just soft skills and deeper CS skills. A good liberal arts education pays off every day. I think tech folks look at these books and think there's nothing there -- then go off and make the same freaking mistakes over and over again. For those folks, trust me, there's something there. You missed it.
Quit asking about my pain points
I would, if doing so was actually effective.
The "correct" side is defined by the principles espoused. It's impossible to honestly not conflate the two. This is not about political fairness as though every political party is entitled to rule equally independent of what their platform is.

Deceit is the Republican Party's brand. Of course there will be an outcry if they win under that banner. Nobody would care if they lost under it.
Good luck with that considering most if not all of the other investments would be private investments that would be difficult, if not impossible to replicate in public markets.
In your account page (https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=bobwaycott) you have the "showdead" option, which lets you see dead comments. You can then look a user's comment history by clicking on their nickname and on "comments". Shadowbanned users are those for whom all comments are automatically dead.
Why we decided to run another version of our SaaS before we got customers.
How to make GitHub one of the top project management tools
I know it is really hard to believe that if fusion power was possible we as a society would just not choose to develop it, but that is the case. This philosophy/issue is discussed by many people, in many contexts and can be summarized by Peter Thiel's quote, "We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters"[1]. The world had been on a runaway upward trajectory of technological improvements that peaked with the atomic bomb, nuclear power, and the Apollo program and then basically stopped.

In the 1970's a huge demographic block started coming into power, the baby boomers, and for many different reasons they questioned all of this ever increasing "improvements". Humans seemed not to have enough wisdom to wield wisely the new levels of power tech improvements were giving them. The Vietnam "war" against a country that never attacked the USA, DDT and other pesticides were killing all the bugs and destroying natural ecosystems, Russia and the US were building up an arsenal of nuclear weapons that numbered in the tens of thousands and could destroy humanity in 15 minutes, nuclear power was getting started and promised to give us electricity too cheap to meter to fuck up the planet even quicker, we kept tearing down and cutting apart beautiful cities with more and more interstate freeways, modern architecture with its anti-human scale and design, Agent Orange, etc. It was probably a good idea for humanity to take a breather on improving tech. The geeks were denied the power to keep implementing more powerful tech and nuclear powered rockets and airplane research were shut down. Denied working with real world, geeks turned to computers and no one cared. How could one do anything scary with pure calculations?

Well, whole libraries full of books have been written on the subject. For power generation just look at how it is priced for residential costumers. In California the price per kWh goes up the more you use, unlike almost any product. Our philosophy on power generation in the "tech capital of the world" is that we should do less of it, not more. Cheap power is a negative thing. It takes a strong sense of purpose to invest large amounts of money into a project that your peer group is going to say is a bad thing.

As the boomers fade from power, I see some hope of humanity too gain back some of its dreams for a better future using more powerful tools but with more balance on keeping things good for humans. Elon Musk is a good example for a third way, I hope.

Big power plants are a problem. The US generating capacity is about 1,000 Gigawatts [2] so if fusion power plants are huge at 20 Gigawatts, that is only 50 plants. One per state. You can see how one of those going down is going to be a problem. The average plant size is only 0.06 Gigawatts if your 8000 power plant number is correct. (All calculations liable to correction as this is just a quick web comment.)

[1]Thiel's view expanded on his founders fund website:https://foundersfund.com/the-future/#

[2]https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.ph...
So it doesn't autodetect the terminal width, and thus doesn't do the same as the library?
What we learned from the most performing remote tech teams
Barring sleeping on the airplane and Haskell, your comment makes a lot of sense. Especially last paragraph.

And, this is a good example of a soft skill. People didn't see the value in your comment because they were triggered by completely unnecessary statements. Like love for Haskell - it should be kept private. Like color of your underwear.
It makes me wonder what the most practical sorting algorithm for sorting things by hand is- like, if someone tossed a 1000-page hand-written (but numbered) manuscript in the air, which algorithm would be fastest to sort them by hand? Card sorters used radix sort, but if you don't have a card sorting machine, maybe mergesort.
I think you are asking about what is called "vehicle-to-vehicle" communication (v2v). I'm new to this data too, but here is what I've found.

> https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2017/01/12/2016-31...

> https://www.nhtsa.gov/technology-innovation/vehicle-vehicle-...

> http://web.stanford.edu/~cliuliu/files/acc18-1.pdf

> https://www.zdnet.com/article/the-x-factor-in-our-driverless...

> https://jalopnik.com/heres-why-v2v-is-so-enormously-importan...
>
This is the perfect place to recommend "History of the Space Shuttle, Volume Two: Development of the Space Shuttle, 1972-1981" by T. A. Heppenheimer. An excellent account of a nation-scale engineering project and all the myriad engineering, economic, infrastructure, political, and project management pieces that go into it. Eye opening if you've never been involved in true mega-scale projects.

There's also "Space Shuttle Decision, 1965-1972 (History of the Space Shuttle, Volume 1", but I think Volume 2 is far more interesting from an engineering point of view.
Where is he a proponent of "race science"? Citation needed.

And being an opponent of some of the more ludicrous off-shoots of modern feminism is not "alt-right", it's just common sense (and mainstream: for example only 9% of women in the UK consider themselves feminist[1]). And science, etc. Now I don't necessarily agree with his stances, but they are nothing if not well-reasoned and supported by data.

Which is probably why he gets so much hate.

[1] https://metro.co.uk/2016/10/18/we-asked-women-why-they-refus...
Often times the best resources for learning something in programming is a book. I don't buy or believe in physical books, but the digital editions are very much worth reading.

It's not about the physicality of a book, it's that guides are typically of lower quality and less in-depth than a book is.

Rarely, you get a "guide" so good it's a book (for JavaScript: Mozilla Developer Network). For many languages and tools, something like this does not exist.

What C++ guide online is going to teach me as well as The C++ Programming Language, 4th Edition? What Rust guide online is going to teach me as well as The Rust Programming Language?
Dang, I had the opposite experience with Blue Apron. Never saved time.

Expensive and the recipes took 2-3x longer than it says on the box.

Delicious food, but there was no leftovers. We finished the food and were still hungry. Cannot fathom using them as a meal provider.

The only thing I learned is that roasted beats and carrots are delicious. Don't need Blue Apron anymore.
Coal power plants produce a product consisting of electric power and atmospheric CO2 emissions. Those CO2 emissions will cause major climate change resulting in many major cities being underwater within 100 years, more frequent dangerous weather events like hurricanes, and disruption of a wide variety of ecosystems possibly causing food shortages.

Fusion plants, on the other hand, produce only electric power.

If fusion could be figured out, we could use 10x as much energy as we do now with no long-term environmental consequences. That would do a great deal to improve the human condition.
Glad you took the time to write that. I stopped reading the article after his beef with imports...