skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You are wrong. Management does have output test: financials. Every executive is measured on the impact he has on the P&L and KPIs. You can say those metrics are flawed, and they can be, but the same most of the IT stuff I saw in my company is flawed (because it comes from commodity programmers).

Of course, the suits are mostly unpleasant people that do not respect your work. However, being the programmer generally a smarter guy, he could try to understand what the world vision of the suits really is (mostly: more profits, less cost) and work around that. Have you ever asked yourself why such horrible pieces of software like sharepoint are so common in companies? Because who sells them understands the world vision of the business people and he can put that into a crappy product and make god damn money...
Personally, I'm a bit freaked out about the negative reaction some people have to this. Everyone should be allowed some time off and that includes email. If you aren't ignoring work, then it isn't a real vacation.

That said, I would encourage a slightly different tone with an autoresponse email. Saying you will not even attempt to read the email is over the line in my book. Yes, skimming 5,000 emails will take time, but it isn't that difficult. Say something like:

* I'm going on vacation and will not see this email until I return on <date>

* I will make an effort to respond, but due to the volume of email I receive, it may take some time.

* Please resend your email with '[urgent]' after <date> if you would like me to respond faster.

What's so bad about that?
I've been looking for something like this for a while. Almost coded it myself but now I don't have to. Thanks!
I'm reminded of Gene Kan, but I am unsure if the circumstances are similar:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Kan

The similarities are that there was considerable press coverage of Diaspora and that they seemed, at least to me, destined to fail mostly just because it was a hard thing to do given their structure. It is a true shame that this individual took the failure personally as it wasn't at all his fault, again it was primarily structural in my opinion. Gene Kan I understand was somewhat susceptible for other reasons to depression.
Agreed. Separate but equal didn't work so well the first time. I don't know why people are so quick to want to do it again.
I think that's only within the tech-elite/tech-aware communities.

I believe this kind of strategy still piques the interest of "regular folks" - in the same way that "buying virtual goods" is kinda cliche and unappealing for most of us on HN, yet the mainstream world still does it.

This might even be an advantage for LaunchRock's customers - getting a healthy mix of early adopters, tech insiders AND passionate + well connected 'normal folks' to try out the customer's beta.
I can say with absolute certainty that other people in his place would be anxious, nervous or insecure. He seems to like it. And when you like what you do, well... it's pretty obvious.
Activating a second questionnaire doesn't seem to work. :( Good work though!
The interface could use some work. I don't want to have to press back every time I add a new question. It was unclear to me whether I should be creating multiple "questionaires" or adding new questions to one questionnaire. Is questionnaire the right word for this? Those are just my 30-second reactions.
This is really sad. My condolences to his friends and family.
At bigger companies there are often arbitrary pay limits set for non-manager employees. Nobody is going to change those pay scales without making a business case to the finance department.

The problem is that most finance people have no clue about the underlying cost dynamics of software development. Most finance analysts learned from textbook examples based on manufacturing. Many big company finance systems are still set up using software designed for manufacturing.

Guess what that means? You're basically an assembly line worker. BA's and PM's are viewed as either managers or "management track" assets.

This must change. Both for the sake of profitability and fairness to top programmers.

My recommendation, if you know anyone in the finance department try to educate them a little about the cost dynamics of software development. The sort of stuff you'd read about in Code Complete or MMM.

They'll probably ignore you. If they do, fine, whatever. If not, you may have taken the first step in getting your company to understand how to manage their most valuable asset: programming talent.
If I receive a notice from a friend of mine recommending a service which I didn't previously request/discuss with him/her, I'm likely to delete the request altogether. Receiving these types of third party requests from a friend feels like spam to me.
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What purpose do stories like this serve? People consider asking for details to be rude. Other than tabloid style storytelling drama, why else should strangers care?

This man died young, but so did the local 19 year old young woman killed just after midnight by a driver just after she rescued an injured dog from the road.

You can already see someone saying the cause of death does not matter, but why does this death announcement matter?

edit: Poster removed his admonishment regarding questions about the cause of death.

People close to this person obviously will suffer due to their loss, but his death announcement gets posted here in some sort of limbo where no one (or very few) knew him. But we must respond with condolences to people we don't know about a person we only know though his involvement in a web application.

edit2: Twitter messages directed at the deceased indicate suicide.
I usually assume that the suits are usually normal people and good programmers are usually smart people. That doesn't mean that what a smart person says will be listened.

You have to see the world like them, think like them and, especially, talk like them. You have to understand their incentives in the company. Etc. If you don't make clear for them why your proposal is beneficial (to them, not to the company), then you lose.
what a senseless death
True. And there is also the guy who does nothing but wander between cubes, chatting about nothing. More of a government thing than a startup thing, to be sure. But it puts a cramp in the system.
>It's probably more accurate to say "size" has no meaning at that scale

Not at all. Size has unambiguous meaning down to the Planck scale (10^-35 meters) and electrons simply haven't been probed at scales smaller than 10^-22 meters. They could very well have heretofore-undetected structure (e.g. preon models) on the scales of 10^-20 while still have fifteen orders of magnitude (about the relative span between an atom and the radius of the earth) over which distances are perfectly sensible.

Likewise, before the deep inelastic scattering experiments of the 60's, physicist had no direct evidence that neutrons and protons had any internal structure. All they could say is "we know that if they have internal structure, it's smaller than this length scale".

[FYI: The Planck scale is (arguably!) where the notion of size becomes murky because quantum fluctuations in the background spacetime (against which the sizes of things are measured) become substantial. Of course, no one has ever seen (even indirect) evidence of a quantum fluctuation in spacetime. And, as is well known, appling quantum mechanics to gravity and spacetime is full of difficulties. But most physicists believe there are such quantum effects because it seems damn near impossible to reconcile a classical spacetime with quantum everything else.]
Disruptions: The 3-D Printing Free-For-All
See also:

Q: Since time slows relative to the speed of light, does this mean that photons are essentially not moving through time at all?

A: yes. Precisely. Which means ----- are you seated?
Photons have no ticking time at all, which means, as far as they are concerned, they are absorbed the instant they are emitted, even if the distance traveled is across the universe itself.
I get the pitch, I don't get the $800K
There is no point to speculating. If they don't want to say just leave it at that.
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Your copy needs a bit of work.

> "Do you ever wondered why don't you reach your personal goals, although you try?"

I'm not sure where you're going with that question, but it's all over the place.

> "Do you want to know how much do you sleep on average?"

This makes somewhat better sense as:
"Do you want to know how much you sleep, on average?"

Although it's not a very gripping question. It could definitely lose "on average".
Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think by Brian Wansink
Ask HN: server I/O spike
I have an app on linode and they sent me an email letting me know of a spike in disk I/o that lasted about 2 hour ad now it's back to normal.

What should I look at when diagnosing what happened?

Weird things at first glance:

1) A spike of incoming network traffic happened at 22:00
2) A spike of outgoing network traffic between 2:00 to 4:00
3)Disk I/O between 6:00 and 8:00
He was actively engaged in trying to spur change in the tech community which makes it something that can become newsworthy, especially when you consider the lost potential.
I would think a lot depends on the demographics of your market. Impulse buyers will be deterred by a non-standard payment method, meaning you have to have the most common. An audience like ycombinator readers will be more likely to evaluate, sign up, and use something alternative, and may be more likely to refuse to use Paypal at all.

My advice is to pick on what is easiest to integrate with at first. Regardless of the payment method, you should be able to validate the idea by getting at least a few customers, and then add payment options going forward.
You can join Microsoft's TechNet program for $199 ( http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/subscriptions/bb892759.as... ) and download XP MCE 2005, along with most any Microsoft product: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/subscriptions/downloads/d... . For $349 you can access the Enterprise products as well.
Adwords is an auction. Because other people want to spend more than you doesn't make it a scam. And it doesn't matter why they want to spend more. People that purchase newspaper and traditional television advertising don't measure ROI because they can't.

I don't know how much credit Google gives out, but when a major auto insurance company has blanket $100 per click bids, that $75 voucher's impact will be measured far in to the decimal points.

The opacity behind Google's bidding system allows for fraud since they can calculate how much each bidder needs to pay differently. Thus spot #2 may actually be paying more per click than spot #1. In some instances, a fluctuating baseline bid may have the same impact as shill bidding in a traditional auction. Whether or not it is explicitly fraud, or a scam, if the outcome is the same, regulators will likely carefully review the process in any anti-trust investigation.
Ask HN: Are 'weekend projects' just a way to grab attention?
There are quite a few 'weekend project' titled submissions all the time and many of them make it to the HN homepage. With no disrespect, are these really weekend projects or just a way to grab everyone's attention and get to the homepage?

Do you think a weekend project would have a psychological edge making others upvote in awe?

Or am I getting it completely wrong and weekend projects really mean made over several weekends?
Very sad to hear. My sincere condolences.
My three hopes for these kids are:

a) they manage not to become insufferable d-bags by the time they get to university

b) their parents don't drive them completely insane

c) they still love chess when they're 30

I can only assume it's stressful to be a prodigy in anything, and I could imaging the chess scene being particularly pressure-rich.
No, you must not respond; you are not obliged to make any comment on his death. In fact, it would be nice if you specifically refrained from making a comment arguing about whether his death was important in the middle of a thread where everyone else is offering their condolences; including, I would assume, some people who knew him personally. This is a matter of being human.
Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam,  Truth is We and Our Veterans Have Been Hoodwinked
it's basic human nature to speculate

that's why the news of Michael Jackson's death caused Twitter and even Google to crash
dupe - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3231531
Oh - innuendo, and argument from...length of prose.

I looked up the "author" you cite - here are characteristic excerpts from his blog:

"Human beings have an enemy that has always sought to control the leadership of humanity to guide it into death. That enemy is the Jew...The Jews want to destroy creation. They will kill and destroy wherever and whenever they can. You are their target, and you lie still waiting for the bullet to reach you."

No, I'm not going to read any more of his or your bullshit, no matter how deep he or you pile it up.

Please go away.
Most of us know about Diaspora, and some want it to succeed . That is reason enough to care about the lives of the project founders, regardless of whether or not we know who they are.

Also, who are you to say that nobody here knew him?
It's fun to imagine that, but realistically why would Feynman write that recommendation if he didn't want to accept the position?
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I agree that more innovation needs to spread across different fields outside of computers and software. But it doesnt just take the knowledge of technology to innovate but the knowledge of that particular field. In a way you need to be an expert in both worlds.
Very sad news. My sincere condolences to his family and friends.
He has the agents reversed.

At general equilibrium (assuming open markets), a corporation's "reservation price" will be equal to the employee's "marginal product", so we don't generally use the term "reservation price" in the employer's perspective.

OTOH, an employee will have a "reservation price" that is the minimum they'd accept to force themselves to wake up at 8am everyday and go to work.

If you are the last COBOL programmer on earth, then surely many companies formerly using COBOL have switched to other languages and platforms and, most likely, there is a cross-compiler to COBOL from Python or C or something. Thus, a COBOL programmer's marginal product to any corporation would not really be that high since the company could switch to another language instead of hiring you (especially since they will have to switch eventually (assuming you, the last COBOL programmer on earth, are mortal).
If suicide does turn out to be the cause of death, it is worth talking about. I won't say that there's nothing more tragic than suicide, but it is certainly senseless/needless in almost all cases.

The more awareness of suicide, the risk factors, and how to not tread into that space, the better.
Ask HN: Degree in Computer Science vs Business?
Which is more useful, higher paying, and better to have in general?
Brazilian commercial property performing well
I'm all for this-I got rid of negatives in my professional world and productivity went up tremendously. Teams work better when there isnt a toxic person holding everyone down.

Not only are those people on that list negative, but they suck other people into their black holes.

Now to get rid of these people in our personal lives, is much harder....
I can't put my finger on it but something about the typography on this site makes it difficult on the eyes. Maybe it's a lack of line spacing, or a lack of whitespace between the content and the right column, or the lack of margins around the images.

I'm not sure, but it felt like word soup and I couldn't continue reading it comfortably after the first couple paragraphs.
Thanks for the advertising, but since the inference is negative, and especially since you are calling for me to be banned, I guess I'll have to say a few words that I have not previously had to on HN.

I am a Nazi, but I don't see myself as one of today's nazis (#1), most of whom do little more than burn books and pick useless fights. I am a scientist who aligns himself with original Nazi thought, which came from the founders of the political party, as well as from those who influenced those founders, namely German philosophers who wrote big, dense books. From this, you can take the fact that I care (and do so pretty much to the exclusion of all else) about making progress, by which I mean humans directing their evolution in a positive manner. Therefore, the only people I hate are the ones who purposely do not do the best that they can with what they have, and those who intentionally commit acts which impede progress. The latter is why I care deeply about defeating censorship, in every form.

If someone truly cares about progress, and there's something that we can do together, then I'll gladly work with them. It wouldn't matter to me if they also just happen to be a jew or a homosexual or anything else which nazis apparently hate. The bottom line is that real Nazis care about progress, and if the original ones had today's scientific knowledge, they likely would have had different attitudes towards race and sex. Think about it: They didn't even know about DNA. If Nazism had started fifty years later, Mein Kampf would have been profoundly different. By attempting to disparage me, through inference, you align yourself, accidentally, with today's nazis, because you both see Nazism only from a historical perspective, one which cannot possibly grow with new knowledge.

I have contributed positively to HN, so there is no reason for me to be banned, and you calling for that to happen is very nazi-like. If you want to know more about me, you should look at the three links answering the question of whether I am a Nazi, which are located on the first link on my website, and which I shall repeat here as #2a, #2b and #2c.

The research I was asked to do was merely to check on whether an allegation was a fact, as part of a greater effort of due diligence, an effort being conducted by others, those who would make a decision based on all of the facts obtained. I don't directly work for the university, and I dislike most universities because I see their policies as being against progress. I also have no personal opinion about that man, and that will not change, regardless of what I find out about him.

#1: Notice the lowercase "n", which I use to identify those nazis who I do not consider to be "real", which is in the sense of when I use uppercase "N".

#2a: http://comments.deviantart.com/4/2240268/532905771

#2b: http://comments.deviantart.com/4/2240268/519933389

#2c: http://djangodurango.com/?p=46
This isn't a get rich quick commune either.
Alternative viewpoints can and do exist on a community this large, neither you nor the OP speak for all of us.

That's the thing. I wasn't against profit at all. We all know that Google is doing android to protecting its bottom line. That doesn't bother me in the slightest.
i'm really wondering about conversion rates of the 'normal folks' as well. I'd think they'd be more skeptical if they just saw a random picture with a paragraph of text saying 'we'll let you know when we launch, give us your email address'.
The fuck?

This place really has become the new slashdot.
You should really try it for once its very exciting to get all the wonderful feedback from HN. You may even end up talking to the founders of some cool startups.
You will need a SLA contract for this.
Indeed. It's exactly because of the work that he was doing that his passing is a meaningful thing to find its way to HN. Honestly, even if he wasn't doing any of that work, I'm of the mind that most people have a story in their lives and most are worth hearing, even if painful.

In any case, I just donated to the project: https://www.diasporafoundation.org/donate – maybe something good can come from something so sad.
it's basic human nature to speculate

Maybe, but it remains a choice whether or not to say something.

Conventional manners tend to lean toward "not" in this context.
Is there a way to remind me everyday to fill out my questionare? A daily email will probably work.
I asked the engineer for a response: "For reference, I used -O6 because it's a historical convention (more of a joke, really) for "optimize the crap out of it". UNIX geeks have been using -O6 in this way for about 30 years."
I am seriously impressed. Thanks for sharing!

I wish there was an easy way to fit this into some of my projects. I don't mean the browser incompatibilities others have pointed out, either!

I feel like the idea of using this in a practical application is stunted by the "Ikea effect" of something looking awesome in the showroom but crappy in your actual house. Unless you take great pains to make sure that everything in a room matches thematically, it will look like a careless hodge-podge of well-intentioned designs that don't work well with each other.

The reason it looks great inside OS X is that Apple have put years of thought into how the Dock fits in with the rest of the user experience. You can't drop a dock into an application without putting real thought into whether it's the right navigation tool.

It's usually not the right navigation tool, but it sure is pretty.
I can't be the only one who clicked on this expecting some sort of VI editor.
I think we like to hold ourselves to a higher level of discussion here than your average tabloid.
Thanks for sharing. Genuine interest: Mono didn't work for you? How so?
Check your logs to find out what was going on.
Interesting to see such a radical approach; it is surprising how much you can improve the S/N by simply taking a more aggressive stand on triage and accessibility.

By focusing my online presence on one IM and one email address (dropping in the process legacy emails and inadequate IMs; MSN, Yahoo, Skype...) and enforcing some sane triage on my clients/partners to ensure that they properly address requests (personal v. professional, urgent v. low priority), my daily volume of discussions has dropped significantly.
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You mean what does Travis do in comparison to Jenkins or Gerrit? Well it runs the tests of your open source projects for free and with ease.

Is there a Jenkins or Gerrit based project that does this for you?
The founders of Diaspora were in a really unenviable position. They started off with a wave of national press as well as solid financial support from grassroot users. As time went on, it became increasingly clear that they would not be able to accomplish the goal they originally set out to do. They had failed. Publicly. This can be very devastating psychologically to someone who has always 'succeeded' in life.

I'm not saying this was the case for Ilya, or had any part in his death, but I know for me it would have been hard to swallow. There are many silent founders out there that gave up everything for an unrealized dream in the path to startup success and it has a real toll on psyches.

Best wishes to his family & friends.

EDIT: This appears to be a very controversial comment. The vote count seems to be oscillating up and down very rapidly. I don't want to make this out to be a discussion about Diaspora, so I won't comment further on that point. But the mental health of founders is a real issue and rarely discussed. Maybe there should be a more open discussion about this issue.
A Game Developer’s House of Cards
An auction house using shills to bid up auctions is indeed a scam.
That website has been built a thousand times over already, by huge companies. What makes yours different?