skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
>If his sister died, or he's getting paid peanuts, he still has to drive respectfully and safely to avoid causing any OTHER people on the road to die.

Very much this. A few weeks back I had to deal with a truck carrying a portion of a pre-built house, driving 75mph+ with traffic, switching lanes occasionally without using a blinker but mainly staying in the left lane of a two-lane highway. The paved service was minimal on both edges of the highway and there were times when the left tires of the trailer were nearly leaving the paved surface.

Even if he had a shitty week, that doesn't make him immune to criticism.
Sure, everything should be easy. The problem is, software development is difficult by nature. It's not the kind of thing you can pick up in a week or two and make an app with, and it probably never will be.

There are things like App Inventor that try to make it dead simple, but they all fail in that you can't make something reasonably complex with it.

It would be great if this was easy, but hundreds of people have tried and failed to make it dead simple and I think there's a reason for that.
For me personally, there is a moral code beyond money. I think that when asked "would you rather make more money if you knew you were participating in something unscrupulous?", we tend to be concerned about what it would do to other people. So are we aligned with management or labor in this case? Are we willing to stand up for what we believe in?
First GStreamer 0.11 out, GStreamer 1.0 looming on the horizon
Ajax.org Cloud9 Editor (Ace) 0.2.0 released
Actually, if you are a consumer, you did do most of that. This is the reality of market pressures at the very end of the line. We still need humans to drive trucks -- but we expect them to be superhuman.

I find this post saddening. How little we care about the people responsible for all the things we take for granted in life.
Does anyone have any suggested reading on learning about this sort of thing? It looks like a fascinating area but I can't figure out where to start.
Gotcha – very cool, and well done!
I really disagree with this.

1. Lost wages are one of the reason unions maintain a "strike fund" or start collection pools.

2. An injury to one is an injury to all. A company pulling some funny business that costs developer A $1000 could very well do the same thing to developer B. It is, then, worth developer B's temporary loss of income to defend his/her interests in the long term. ALL workers lose when SOME workers decide to trade temporary gain for long-term power.
>people are mean

yes, you made it obvious without need to state it explicitly.

Driving a fast, maneuverable and small, compare to a truck, car, i have no problem to accommodate for their much slow and less maneuverable dynamic, just pay attention to what they are doing or intend to do - they are pretty good and accurate drivers and signal their maneuvers in advance.

It isn't trucks who are menace on the road, it is flipping off jerks in cars.
<-- total newb at HN. Ah, I spent a few mins trying to find it, but couldn't, lol. I see why now..
Be pitiful, for every man is fighting a hard battle. ~John Watson, 1897
I have been tempted by that, a working vacation, but how do time zones work out? Do you not need to be available at particular hours? I work from home but have a fairly regular schedule of phone meetings during the Eastern Time Zone working day. (Those same phone meetings would also get quite expensive overseas.)
So you worked presumably 35 hrs over the period of 3 days or so and what you did actually was created a job that paid you $10/hr. Correct?
It's really quite widespread. Cracked has a great article talking about it:
http://www.cracked.com/article_14990_what-monkeysphere.html
I voted that up, but I feel the need to follow up with a more emphatic endorsement: this video is well worth twenty minutes of your time.
Am I the only one here thinking up a way to code hands-free and taking a year off as a trucker? Let's face it, it's pretty much what we do all day anyway. Plus traffic.
http://blogs.forbes.com/kurtbadenhausen/2011/06/29/the-best-...
To "do" business or to realize what you're stepping into?

If the latter, then The Fanciest Dive by Christopher M. Byron. OOP but worth getting.
Will knows when to be a pedant, and when it's necessary not to be a pedant in order to communicate more effectively. Some people don't know when not to be a pedant - I tend to be one of them - and it's interesting to see Will transcend that.
Recently, I've ignored all stories that start with the word 'Why', have the word 'myths' in it or gives advice about what I should do in the title since they are almost always linkbait.

I wish I understood the motivations behind people posting linkbait, especially when the website being posted has no ads or anything on it. Is it just to gain karma?
My Glimmerblocker proxy tells me that Google's info about me can be summed up in a 1 by 1 pixel transparent image. This makes me happy.
Philips snags LED lightbulb L-Prize (USDE)
I think it may be a regional thing. I can't count the number of times truck drivers have nearly run me off the road by swerving into my lane for no discernible reason and then braking (when there's no other truck to pass and nothing to brake for).

But while that happens all the time in Northern California, I've never had it happen elsewhere. I drive down I-5 through the Central Valley all the time, and the truck drivers there are wonderful. I'll happily brake for them; it's the SUV drivers who cause the problems around there (and who are probably the ones flipping off the truck drivers).
Who flips someone off because they had to slow down?

This was my point.

This article was written by a fleet manager protecting the reputation of his drivers, but I am trying to say that there must be more to the story and usually people get the bird because they have done something dangerous.
I wonder if more pervasive os level virtualization for windows would allow them to 'virtualize' some of the legacy APIs and provide a means for moving their apis forward/cleanup/etc while still maintaining their backwards compatibility.
Upgrading from Rails v.3.1.0rc4 v.3.1.0rc5 on Heroku
GAMES magazine usually has a few cryptic crosswords per issue, so if you want to give it a try pick up an issue. I'm sure they've also got collections out there... or you could probably look for used issues to play with. I know all of my old issues had unsolved cryptics.
> You know what? If your job is crap, quit, or demand more pay. I never bought this "I have a hard job, so you should be nice to me" crap. You get compensated for your job. If you don't get compensated well enough, that's your problem.

That's easy to say if you're skills are in high demand. If they aren't, any you have a family to feed, it can be a much harder position to take. For many people their options may be limited to putting up with a crappy job or living on the street. And often it's through no fault of their own. Not everyone has what it takes to be a rock star software engineer.
Why Google Plus Could Be a Minus for Chrome
Great post. You're right that there's a lot of data out there!
Apple's favorite make-Android-awkward patent (with videos)
Funny, they don't mention that Deep Packet Inspection can be prevented by Secure Socket Layer encryption (i.e. https). Or am I missing something?
Ask HN: I've written iOS Middleware. How to market it?
I've build PSPDFKit - solving a common problem in Apps, PDF display. Getting it fast is actually pretty hard. Now I build this awesome framework (extracted from a real world app), set up the site - how do I market it? Already tweeted and got about 1k visitors, but no sales. Is the price to high? Even made three categories for optimal customer segmentation. Suggestions?

http://pspdfkit.com/
Really, two plugs in the same post!!
"Google does not associate sensitive interest categories with your ads preferences." So I think we are pretty safe on 1) .
Everyone is affected by 'market pressures', so I don't buy that cop-out either.

I'm serious here: If you do not like your job, demand more money, better working conditions, or quit and find a better one.

The first 2 of those are what unions were designed to fix. If the truck driving industry (freight industry?) is so horrible, why haven't they unionized and fixed it? If they have unionized, why is their union so ineffective?

I do pity people who think they have dug a hole so deep they can't get out of it. Mainly because they are -wrong-. They have allowed the world to walk allover them and have stopped considering that they can better themselves.
More like impatient people in a rush focused only on getting from point A to point B as fast as possible. I've heard many stories of the ridiculous things 'four wheelers' do and are generally unaware of around trucks.

Next time you're frustrated at a truck driver, just remember, he's bigger than you, and he knows it. Treat him that way and the you'll be fine. If you forget that, don't be surprised if you end up with a missing side mirror.
It just means that the HN audience is also a subset of reddit's audience.
This always results in a redirect loop for me..
Complacency and misplaced trust is a big danger when operating any moving vehicle. Your wariness is warranted, on a sweeping highway curve, I once watched a large truck devour a compact car because it cut too much into the right lane during the turn. Similarly, all it takes is one texting teenager to trust the fact that they're going straight, while in fact they've just cross into oncoming traffic.
> "If you care more for being nice than for valid arguments"

I care for both.

Do not ignore the former simply because you feel someone else has failed at the latter. There's always room to pair valid arguments with civility; save the berserking for WoW.
>Chrome doesn't update in the background.

How do you know that? I assumed Chrome did update in the background because it uses Google's Omaha project, which supports updating when the system is idle.

"attempt to update application when the user's machine is idle"

http://omaha.googlecode.com/svn/wiki/OmahaOverview.html#Sche...
Not everyone has what it takes to be a rock star software engineer.

Everyone is in a position to improve themselves. Take a class, get a degree, network, learn a skill.

It is not easy. But this is not the same thing as impossible.
Duke TIP, 30 Years Later
>However, you -did- get in my way.

it isn't your way, it is a public way. If you see any violations in his behavior - just call Highway Police. Otherwise, learn to deal with the fact that not everybody and everything in this life is created to satisfy your every whims.

>Suck it up, buddy.

yep, suck it up, buddy.
I've had quite a few jobs in my life, and only one of them was crap. And it was for a skill that was in "high demand"!

There are better employers out there. Employees who work for bad employers are enabling them. By not quitting, they're not only ruining their own life, but other people's too.
> You can't tell by looking at him, but two hours ago he took a call informing him that his only sister was involved in a car accident, and though everything possible was done to save her, she died. They had flown her to a trauma hospital in Detroit, but it was too late.

Oh, come on. This is where I closed the tab; the story was sad enough without making it into a Christmas special.

edit: Wasn't aware that this was an actual incident. Still, picking the sappiest possible story isn't very representative.
now I want iDuino... an objective-c based open source embedded system. It's a pretty good startup idea actually, considering everything i-based product can charge more...
Upvote for that. There are a lot of brilliant people on HN but they seem to forget that to a large degree they are in the right place at the right time. You have a great career because you work in a field that is in very high demand at the moment, it isn't because you are intrinsically awesome.
Our dependence on truck drivers is artificial though, right? We should be depending more on rail. And yes, someone will drive the cargo from the train station to the walmart, but it wont be a long haul driver. It will be someone with a predictable job who gets to go to funerals and goes home every night.
>It's disgusting that we can spend as many billions of dollars a year as we do on blowing each other up, but things like "Let's see what's on the other side of that proverbial mountain" get defunded because they're "pointless".

?? The SETI institute is a California non-profit organization. The government cannot defund it, because it receives no government funding. It is financed entirely by private contributors.
Some highways are now absolutely filled with trucks, to the extent that they outnumber passenger vehicles - I80 for example. While truckers are for the most part professional, not all of them are - like the one who intentionally gave the impression of being about to smash my car between his rig and another truck north of NYC a few years back.

Passenger vehicles are not on equal terms when traveling with trucks, safety wise. As someone who travels by auto often, I would definitely prefer to see fewer trucks crowding the roads.
Diablo III and Real Money Trading - it could get you killed
how did people find a remote gig like this? I'm self motivated, an Android developer (which I only mention because there is huge demand for this so it seems like I should be able to find a good company that is interested in this), and it seems like I should be able to find a great company interested in this - but I haven't - any advice?
The Pyramids and the Colosseum were both build by slaves. With a tax rate of 100%, it's easy to believe that money was wasted.
He's asking me to be polite while failing to be polite himself. I have no tolerance for that.
Unfortunately, if you had read until the end, you would have seen that this is a true story...
How I made $1000 in 5 hours with an idea, a sales page, and a tribe
I doubt it. The United States already has the best rail infrastructure in the world for cargo. The problem is that rail is relatively slow and you still need to get your goods from the rail station to whatever store or factory they're needed at.
The US has the largest railway network in the world, in terms of total length of tracks and in tonnage of cargo. The US does not have a very extensive passenger rail network.
These days most are safe, based on personal observation. In years past, many were cranked up on amphetamines and drove like they owned the road. Mandatory DOT drug testing and enforced drive/rest time regulations cleaned a lot of this up.
Problem is there's a lot in between all your major population centers, and you can't run a rail line to (or in many cases, even close to) every mom-and-pop store. Also, many of these trucks will haul cargo for multiple locations - custom windows for three different stores and two construction sites for instance. No rail line is efficient at delivering small loads.
It's a possibility, but how many truck drivers does this emotional situation with the sister apply to? Not many specifically. I'm sure they all do miss their families, however.
If that's the case, used AdBlock. Stopping targeting is just going to drive you with mainstream ads.
During college I was on a road trip with friends and we stopped at a rest stop on the interstate. After a while a trucker came over carrying a tire iron and looking ready to use it. He was so strung out on uppers he had decided we were all laughing at him. Scary...
Exactly. We were sold "process isolation" and "virtual memory" back with the 386 chip and Windows NT. But the actual effective security was squandered for the sake of convenience and compatibility. OSes didn't really want to share the hardware in any meaningful way.

The current demand for virtualization is, to a significant degree, an attempt by admins to get control of their own hardware back from Microsoft. Putting MS back in charge of the lowest layer hypervisor seems like it could sort of defeat the purpose. Or maybe they'll play nice this time?
lately there's been a big push in the US government for an increase in teleworking. if you need specific examples, a 2010 telework report is available on this page: http://www.telework.gov/. There may be other public studies too with some hard data in them.

There's also a white paper linked on this page http://www.lifesize.com/Industry_Solutions/Government_Soluti... (but you have to register for it.)

full disclosure: i work at www.lifesize.com and we do eat our own dog food. One of my team members has been working remotely in another state for several months and many of our team often work from home.
IE9 Pinning Analytics Results
i hear what you're saying, but lots of the targets in the press would be of interest to a lot of people who are just in it for the money, etc.
Ask HN: Why does the Ask section show such old content?
Sometimes when I am in the ask section everything is from 20+ days ago and there are no new comments on those posts. Is there a reason for this? Does anyone else notice this?
That is because Deep Packet Inspection can not be prevented with SSL:

http://www.sonicwall.com/downloads/SonicOS_Enhanced_5.6_DPI-...
With this information, I have to wonder how I ever get mis-appropriate ads on sites (using adsense) these days? There have been some far misses (feminine products) that should easily be eliminated with the information on this page.

Wonder if adverstisers don't use this option?
Actually, I've read bad things about that particular adapter, but I did have an alternative in mind. But thanks!

I didn't fully understand the ATMega bit, but I'm assuming it means I can even use the same C++ program and not have to rewrite it for a new chip? That would be an amazing way to go, if so. I had assumed I'd at least have to recompile for a different chip.

Edit: Looks like http://www.arduino.cc/playground/Learning/AtmegaStandalone explains it for me. Thanks for the tip! That's exactly what I needed to push me further.
The unions exist to do things like limit how much they drive in a day -- before truck driving unions and such, drivers were basically expected to drive whatever it took to get their load where it was going. This was, obviously, horribly unsafe.

But unions aren't a magic fix for everything.

Also, how quickly we of the first world are to assume that you can just up and change jobs. It's easy when you sit at a desk. It's not easy when all you've ever done is drive a truck, or work at a factory, or done construction.

Your intolerance disgusts me, honestly.
>Does it matter?

That's a good question. I think it should because it will influence policy and determine the appropriate response.

I wonder if we're getting to the point where we declare an electronic war, create an IP range embargo, or some other type of virtual action.

As the world becomes more connected, there are going new phenomena in peace, treaties, sanctions, and war.
>> Is there some kind of widespread anger at truck drivers?

I'm just one data point, but I've driven the I-5 in California between the bay area and southern CA a lot (about 180,000 miles on my 2005 Tacoma truck) as well as Hwy. 99 in the same vicinity.

I'd say that I've become apathetic towards truck drivers in general. I've been nearly run off the road twice (once where I was sure I was going to wreck real bad - got lucky), been cutoff, etc. by truckers more times than I can remember. Most truckers are safe, but the ones that are not can really skew your perception. Considering, in most cases, when a 18-wheeler causes an accident (I've witnessed a few), there is little damage to their truck or to themselves...the 'regular' car on the other hand is usually destroyed with devastating injury to the occupants.

This story made me feel like a jerk for moment (I've flipped off truckers before) - but the emotional aspects of the story can be applied to everyone else on the road too. Truckers are not the only ones that have to drive for their livelihood or have personal issues to deal with.
side-projects. wish i had the guts/savings to go full time.
Earth may once have had two moons
Thank you for helping me out symptic.
If they're tracked electronically anyway and cannot fudge route-logs, it's criminal to make the driver pay for their own truck-fuel. (It would be shitty even without the electronic tracking, but now it's inexcusable.)

This is like a company making you pay for the electricity you consume while working in their offices.

(This is right up there in with paying waiters ~$2 an hour because they can make up the rest in tips.)
The truck driver and his company is also exploiting the highway "commons" and passing most of the costs on you, the auto driver. Almost all damage and wear on U.S. roads comes from heavy trucks, and the gas taxes paid by truckers come nowhere near covering the cost they inflict on the highway system. So next time you are stuck in traffic in a construction zone, you can thank the big rigs.
Well, sounds like the perfect reason to enact sensible, non-petroleum lobby fueled transportation reforms.

If you've traveled by interstate lately, you may have noticed the number of trucks on the road has reached ridiculous, to the point where the interstates now mainly exist for use by trucking companies. Unfortunately, transportation by truck is one of the least efficient methods possible. Train and barge can transport tens,if not hundreds, of times the cargo for a given amount of fuel. 80% of the thick black pollution they spray out, all that diesel fuel - the fuel they spend idling - is being expended completely stupidly. Exxon and BP like it, and they guided us here - it's time to do something else.
> However, you -did- get in my way. For a long time. 3mph?

So what? Who are you to deserve the right of way? If you don't want to get stuck behind a truck, get off the road. Suck it up.

Hell, it's your fault. You take crap from these drivers. It's your fault, your problem, not theirs. Flipping them off is the best you can do, and it's pitiful.

And yeah, I don't see any reason people should be nice to you.

> I never bought this "I have a hard job, so you should be nice to me" crap.

But you did buy into the "Be an ass" crap, didn't you?
My father's been a truck driver for nearly as long as I can remember and I can tell you, a lot of what's in this article is generally correct and a lot of it is only correct for some drivers, but none of it is total bullshit.

I've known a number of truck drivers and I've seen even more than that. Generally speaking, as a group, they are better drivers and more aware of the road than the average driver on the road. Not all of them are, and some of them do make stupid mistakes or drive dangerously. Sadly, from what I've seen, even the safest ones get flipped off and honked at just because the car driving too closely behind them apparently thinks the truck should be driving faster.

The financial information is pretty spot-on. Some truck drivers are making $40K (or even more than that!). The shabbiness of this depends on where they're based, of course, but it can be pretty comfortable. Some drivers make significantly less than $40K. It's a function of mileage and experience, for the most part. I'd say $500/wk is probably lower than average, but it's certainly not unheard of. Especially right now (I hate the phrase "in the current economic climate", but it's kind of relevant right now) loads are getting harder and harder to come by and the further ones tend to be the first that go. The miles just aren't there and this can kill the driver's family's finances.

Really, when it comes down to it, if a driver runs you off the road, call the number on the back of the truck (please, have a passenger do it if there's one in the car). But if a truck is just slowing you down a little bit, I know you in particular may know that there's no cause to flip anyone off, but this knowledge seems to be lacking in some people on the road.