skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
From the entrepreneur's side, or from society's, who cares?

(I agree Sequoia, Benchmark, Accel, and a few others are ballers, and I'd love to someday be an LP in a few, but that's not really what we're discussing.)

If a fund has a way to raise money steadily based on past reputation, market irrationality, a large collection of compromising photographs of leaders of oil producing countries, or whatever, and invests that money in a bunch of bad-investment startups but also my going-to-be-successful startup, it's a win for me and my users.

And those "bad investment startups" might actually be amazing companies, producing wonderful products which make the world better -- just at a really high valuation. There is surely some price at which a good company is a bad investment.

Maybe there's an argument for sustainability, but that's more over the long term. In 1999, or if you believe 2007 or now is an overpriced period for startup valuations, it still makes sense to raise VC if it will help your business, even if it doesn't make a risk-weighted great return for the VC. I don't believe this is the case now, but it's irrelevant to the argument of whether a startup should take VC.
At work we have a VCS that is obviously trying to compete with git while adding in the buckets of functionality people who actually pay for a VCS demand. Its OK, nicer to use than git, but not as powerful either.

I think git-improved is only going to come from the open source space. The vcs we use is bloated enterprise-y nonsense that is packed with bells and whistles and is a resource hog, you're not going to get regular developers interested in it, but you're never going to sell many copies of a vcs without that nonsense so you have to have it to satisfy purchase requirements.

If a git-improved turned up tomorrow and showed everyone how to do it and cost $1, someone would just nick those features and toss them into git proper before git-improved could get any traction.

What git needs is some fresh porcelain. We started with just git plumbing, then got the porcelain, but I think that the porcelain should be rebuilt knowing what we know from years of using git.
Tethered iOS 5.1 Jailbreak For Non-A5 Devices Released By iPhone Dev-Team
My first thought on that is "people will just install a keylogger?"

Then I read their privacy policy and it makes specific note of "we don't log keys, just keystrokes". It must be the truth, they repeated that entire paragraph twice in their privacy policy.
New iPad? Nah. I'll Stick With My Android Tablet For Now.
Thanks for the feedback.

1. You have to build an endpoint and process the inbound requests, that takes a good deal more engineering time than making an api call to check for them.

2. This gets complex when you're sending messages to users in the context of groups an individuals. it's not a big problem but you'd still have to code it.

3. That sounds simple but doesn't account for things like timezones.
Does Apple legally have to give credit? I thought facts couldn't be copyrighted (from the MLB vs fantasy baseball case - http://www.patentarcade.com/2007/11/case-cbc-v-major-league-...) and wouldn't map data qualify as facts?
They're allowed to say that. The media is allowed (encouraged; morally obliged, perhaps) to ignore them. Whether he's right or wrong (and I'm sure he's right), the bureaucracy would prefer to continue working towards their quarterly MBOs than to address another controversy. This is a non-story.
Why would you even consider this question? I know why you would, but on a deeper level, spending time on this is not healthy or constructive.

Maybe you can't ever be at your best. Maybe you'll always improve, no matter how long you train. Idealistic? You bet your ass. It's taken me further in life than I ever thought possible--and it will continue to carry me.

Don't forget: they don't know who you are. You don't know fully who you are.
They're operating on the age-old wisdom of, "If you don't know where you're going, you're never lost."
Attacker then puts the smuggled payload on the inner thigh, where the leg itself blocks it from the sides.
So Warby Parker might be jerks and Classic Specs definitely are jerks?
Apple is a publically held company. Disposing of profits by giving it all to employees would be a wonderful way to create an instant shareholder lawsuit.

The cash held by Apple is built in to its share price. If a stock holder wants some of that all they have to do is sell some shares. Undoubtably there are some tax considerations regarding capital gains vs. dividends but the fact remains that if Apple distributed a significant amount of its cash to shareholders, then the share price would inevitably drop by the same amount.
#Python hacker
<function omitted>
sys.stdout.write(str(fact(6)) + '\n')

The call to str is unneeded. For consistency, it should be

sys.stdout.write(fact(6).__str__() + "\n")

And if that example want's to be really "hacker"ish, then every function call should actually be a call to the __call__ method of each object.
I'd actually be interested in running the numbers on this data, but I don't really want to grab actual numbers from at the DOL.

Tangentially, I also also find it interesting that yours is the only comment that calls the numbers into question and doesn't imply that women actually deserve 5% less pay (controlling for experience, cost to employers, negotiating tactics). Though, to be fair, guan does mention that it might be statistically insignificant as an aside.
No. It's not "coming to that". We're well past the security theater stage, and into the nightmare stage.

Even hinting that any media not cover this or ANY story is so, so far beyond the purview of TSA that it is shocking (or should be shocking—it has become rather hard to be shocked by TSA) that they would even consider pulling this.

The Supreme Court should slap them so hard that their acronym gets mixed up. This is an outrage.

(edited to add snark)
I thought of the perfect new acronym! STA: Security Theater Administration.
GigaOM published a "quad-core" headline and I'm sure they weren't the only reporters who were confused.
no surprise apple is just pulling marketing stunts like always
How is your luck surface area?
Really? The same Jobs who asked Stallman personally about whether or not Next's modifications to Objective C would need to be contributed back, and who then made sure they were contributed?
Is there a rule of thumb or generally accepted thought on the performance increase that would be gained SPDY vs legacy?
Be careful what you wish for. The capital-P people are just peachy with those machines. I traveled last week and saw nobody (other than myself) opting out. The people --- in the aggregate --- do not care about this issue.

Left to "democracy in the United States", a referendum that requested the elimination of the "opt-out" process in favor of 0.5s of wait time at the security lines would probably pass in a landslide. Thankfully, we're governed not just by a legislature but by a Constitution interpreted by a panel of judges with lifetime tenure.
Pinterest drives more referral traffic then Twitter
Wow, I can't believe saying something similar to edw519, and the OP, got downvoted.

At least, kind of explain, maybe why. I don't think there's anything inflammatory here.

Thanks!
Income Mobility Means Some People Have to Lose Everything
I think it is actually pretty common for authorities not to cover a story if it is in the public interest. For example, a kidnapping case in progress and so on.

The question then, is it in the public interest not to cover this story. I'd say it would probably not matter so much from a security standpoint, but more so for the amount of mayhem that could ensue at airport security if this was public knowledge.
Nope. If the payload is attached to the inner thigh, the smuggler's leg will shield it from the side scan.
What really has my interest is not the TSA's request/threat. That part is unsurprising. Instead, my mind ran through a few ideas about what a news story on this topic would entail. From the last time I bothered to watch CNN, I recall they've acquired a penchant for saying "And a viral video of [topic] is hot on the Twitters today!", showing the video, getting someone in-house to do surface analysis, reading off some Facebook posts, and cutting to commercial. Ideally, a reporter does their own investigation on the topic, either by contacting the TSA and arranging to film while testing the scenario depicted here, or by doing a more undercover verification ala the video itself.

I don't wish to be specifically judgmental of CNN, and I don't wish to over-analyze my mock-scenario. Instead I'm using the thought experiment of a news report on this topic to express frustrations with journalistic practices I have already seen elsewhere. It seems to me there isn't as much motivation on behalf of larger news organizations to put together a verified report, when you can replay something from YouTube and people will believe it much the same.

But maybe there are positive aspects? Crowdsourcing the genesis of news topics allows for a better breadth of topics, clearly. And I recognize there is a need for it in situations such as the Syrian unrest, Tibet, or any place that foreign journalists can't easily access. I get the feeling though, when I go to 'old' media, that I expect old media standards and practices. When I go to 'old' media and get a replay of internet videos followed by an equally-long segment of internet comments, I wonder why I'm not just browsing the internet for myself.
IANAL but from what I understand "facts" can't be copyrighted, but a collection of facts can be.

eg. A business' address/phone number can't be copyrighted on its own, but a specific collection of them into a Yellow Pages can be.
Completely absurd. The TSA is allowed to vaguely intimidate the media? I call bullshit. I know from reading hundreds of your comments that you are a reasonable man, so please explain where you are coming from on this.
A New Era for TechStars?
I hope nobody reads this, is irritated by the listed criticisms of other C-like languages, and decides to avoid Go. Go is a very well-designed language. Instead of piling on features, they have optimized for practicality and productivity. After reading "The Practice of Programming", so much of the language is obvious.
Yes, this is exactly right.

I've covered TSA and edit a blog that just covered this very story. http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/bodyscanner-video/

Sometimes a flak can save you embarrassment and other times you disregard them because you know its a story.
Probably depends on the request. I got a pretty quick turnaround (or at least it exceeded my expectations) on my request to the FBI for whatever they knew about my grandfather: About 3 weeks.

Sidenote: if you're interested in doing the same just go to http://www.getgrandpasfbifile.com/
Diann_Daniel Telecommuting Creates Happier and More Productive Employees 
In honor of National Telecommuting Week, this article looks at just a few reasons why giving employees the chance to work at home is a good thing.
Adding to that:

If he makes a bundle of money in the course of defending our freedoms, then my hat is off to him. Bravo!

From an economics perspective, the fact that someone has turned a profit (in a free market) is prima facie evidence that he has delivered something of value.
"Quad-core" is a term very well established in the CPU market, and well understood by the public in that context. Using it to refer to a GPU feature is non-standard and just asking for confusion. Doing it as they did in that presentation, next to "A5X" (which the public understands to be the "CPU", only geeks know what a SoC is) IMHO borders on deliberate disinformation.
What does the TSA care about people looking stupid? Boing Boing took down their TSA post.
Very hacker-like attitude indeed. /s
My pet peeve has always been the staging area. It encourages partial commits which couldn't have been tested because they never actually existed in the filesystem.

I like rewriting history, though. If I commit A then B, then realize A was wrong, I test and commit a fix then autosquash it so my history goes A' then B. Historical commits which didn't work are worse than useless, and if someone branched from them, the sooner we all figure it out and fix it the better. And the ugly truth will still be there in the reflog for a month.
I disagree. Open letters let customers know what is going on behind the scenes. No way am I going to buy from a company with this kind of attitude/culture.
I really appreciated your thoughts in the interview. I'm studying marketing right now, and it's interesting to see how the marketing world wants to start teaching design thinking.

I agree with the sentiment that we can do without the term "marketing" as it carries far too much baggage. The new consumer doesn't want to be seen as a part of a market (they want to be seen as a person, imagine that), so why should we "market" to them.

It's tough changing the culture of these business schools to make the whole process of conducting business more human. I'm trying to do my part, and I hope that the honest, transparent, and personal culture of silicon valley company changes the way that undergraduate students are shaped for the workplace.

But I'll be graduating in May, and hopefully I can avoid becoming a cog in sterilized, personality-free workplace.
Is C++ usage on the decline? I've used a lot of different languages, but I've never had the occasion to learn C++. I work in web search and we tend to use interpreted languages. The argument is that Java or C# is much easier to write/maintain and that we can make up for performance shortcomings by scaling out.
Just when I thought they couldn't get any more evil.
Twitter Adopts SPDY
In this case, it does need an open letter.

This was CS's way of laying out their case. Apparently there are others who think Classic Specs pulled shenanigans, and CS need to make their position clear to those people. Note that sending a letter to them directly doesn't expose the story to the rest of the world.
I am also an apple investor. If they have $50B of cash they have no use for, then they are forcing me to be invested in government bonds. I'd rather have the money myself, and invest it in something that gets better than a .5% annual return. Using the dividend to buy more Apple stock would be better than the current situation.
Yeah, but up here we're more likely to slip on ice and drop ourselves.
Chilean game developers showcasing at GDC 2012
This whole thing makes me so glad I got LASIK a few years ago.
The premise of your outrage is that the TSA has some authority over the media that they are abusing. The TSA has no authority over the media. The media routinely publishes terrifyingly sensitive government secrets over the direct and strident objections of the DoJ and gets hauled into court to defend itself. That the media has a pretty excellent track record in those courts is not so much my point as that the media has so much experience building that track record that only the dumbest reporter would give half a shit whether some TSA functionary "strongly cautioned" them not to run a story.

Since this observation isn't so much "insightful" as it is "completely obvious on its face", to me, Occam's Razor suggests that what the TSA was implying was that the guy was wrong, and that his story was going to make the media look dumb.

Since I have never once seen anyone from the TSA land on the right side of an argument, from airport security to spelling and grammar, we don't have to argue about which one of us is more vehemently contemptuous of it, or, in this case, its argument.
TF2 is probably the last video game I'll ever put significant time into. For being a multiplayer, non-story driven game, it is still one of the best games I've ever played.

I am a little miffed that they never upgraded the console versions and I've never really played it on PC. But I'm glad they're still able to get life out of the game, considering they've been upgrading it (the PC/Mac versions) well past its shelf life. It's an inspiring example for other developers with games that aren't commercially viable yet still have a well-knit community.
Far from my area of expertise, but I always considered the reason to try the brute force approach was to uncover the non-obvious things that "everyone knows won't work".
What kind of psychotic, suicidal investors group would kick out the board that has secured the kinds of returns this board has? I mean, I understand what you're saying but it seems like it would go against common sense to do something like that.
Yes it's good for testing but if you want a host name and a background task it gets uncheap pretty quickly. Time for some creative engineering perhaps.
"Core" is a very well established term in the GPU market as well. I thought the way the spoke of it in their presentation was pretty clear.

http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=...
Why does Apple NEED to do anything with its cash reserves?

Because the board members have a fiduciary duty towards their shareholders. If the company literally has more cash than it knows what to do with, then it is imposing the opportunity cost of that non-use upon its shareholders. Either invest it in something with a high risk/reward potential (and accept the consequences if that investment fails), or return it to shareholders in the form of dividends or a share buyback. If the cash is just sitting in the bank doing nothing then you're paying Apple's management a fat fee for something you could equally well be doing yourself. Large, unused piles of cash are a drag upon the economy.
I dropped my iPhone 4 the day after I got it, at 25 mph from a bicycle, on an industrial concrete road, and the phone survived without a scratch. I got the Apple bumper the next day.

I have two kids, 10 and 7. Can't tell you how many times that phone has been dropped since. A lot. I took it mountain biking one too many times, took one too many jumps, shattered the front glass. Apple immediately replaced it for free despite being a month out of warranty, but it was still a 3 hour ordeal since the store I went to didn't have my model in stock, so I had to go to another store. Considering my take home is around $75 an hour, Unless you're rich and have a lot of time to deal with the hassle (a rare combination), I think your vanity is getting in the way of good sense, thus I question your judgement.
"And numerous compilers"

Like for instance, C compilers. Cripes that 10k figure is so absurd...
Um, the math module already has a factorial function which performs faster than the gamma function. Why use gamma?
it's all about the lobbyists, period.

Don't the politicians and bureaucrats -- the ones we're trusting to look out for our interests -- bear some responsibility?
1) no it doesn't - i've done it plenty of times with twilio - very simple
2) ok...
3) WATCH OUT - TIMEZONES!!!!!!!!! TIME = SERVER_TIMEZONE + (USER_OFFSET)... or you can locally change the time zone of the whole account to their local one... come on... easy.
RIM Tries Being Funny
How'd you do with the 3GS? I've had mine for 2.5 years, dropped it about 8 times, still fine with it, never replaced a part.
> Why does Apple NEED to do anything with its cash reserves?

A companies goal is to maximize shareholder value. If they aren't using the cash it's not maximizing shareholder value.
"they did switch to C++, which makes absolutely minimal usage of the language features"

This is true of almost every C++ project I've ever worked on. Unfortunately they all used a slightly different minimal set of language features...
Writing and grammar aside, I think the buddy-buddy way in which the TSA blog is written is condescending. There is a difference between trying to put a friendly face on the TSA and addressing the public in a tone of familiar conversation with pre-teens (no-offense to the youth as they probably see through this BS too). It is arguably worse than the McCarthyisms spewed by Napolitano, Pistole and countless Senators in defense of the tactics.
Startup Coursera to Deliver Cloud Course Content
If by chuckling you mean, "Ensuring I never do business with this company in the future." The open letter makes them come across as jerks. The P.S. makes them look like assholes.
Hinting that media cover or not cover any story is so far beyond the purview of the TSA that no competent journalist would consider taking them seriously, making this a comparatively mild nightmare.

The Supreme Court can't "slap them" for anything; someone with standing would have to bring a case, and for that case to have merit, some journalistic outlet would have had to have its discretion actually impinged by the TSA.
Is Onlive pirating Windows, and what will it cost them?
Narrow the Gapp Challenges Developers to Narrow the Gender Pay Gap
Which one, WP or CS?
The new iPad: how Apple is training us to understand the half-life of a tablet
How's the build quality? I love the SALT glasses I've seen online but the one place in NYC that stocks them don't have many styles in stock. I'm leaning toward the Dumonts
Agency Facing Backlash over Charging Bloggers
> Go has no exceptions.

I'm not a fan of the verbosity of error handling with exceptions either. It is particularly bad for fine grained error handling.

However, I do like that the default state of a non-handled error is to propagate and eventually crash the thing rather than continue with errors that may subtly corrupt things. I haven't used Go, but from the explanation of error handling Go seems to do the latter rather than the former (please correct me if I'm wrong).

In most languages, exception handling doesn't seem designed for fine grained error handling, which makes one not want to use it for that. Rather than complain about the verbosity of their methods, why not try to fix the issue with a less verbose method?

E.g. something like: handle := openSomeFile() catch err

Or ignore it if you want, letting it automatically propagate: handle := openSomeFile()
...in the short term. Maybe that's the problem with investing these days.
Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien. -- The perfect is the enemy of the good. (Volataire)

What product is going to solve every corner case you can throw at it?

FWIW my example string contained symbols, upper, lower and digits:

password@FB85C2F638706D4BE4192391387C2879
Why Sprint Got Shut Out of Apple's iPad Party
I forgot the link http://blog.devartis.com/2012/01/05/scraping-websites-having... :S
DOJ targets Apple and publishers for e-book price fixing
How is it "shoving" anything into "people's faces"? It says "We're not getting revenue value out of it." Are you offended to find out that being on the front page is nearly economically valueless?

37s is attacked all the time by a tiny, but very loud minority. I'm sure that they wrote this not because they personally care, but because if nobody demonstrates that this loud, tiny minority is wrong, that loud, tiny minority has the only voice that people will hear.

It's valuable for the quiet majority to understand that A) traffic may be nice, but B) that doesn't mean being on the front page of HN is a good plan for revenue growth.
[Infographic] How to Write the Best Call to Action Emails
Is this why ebooks in general are so expensive? I always wondered why digital copies cost as much as the physical ones, and I always thought the publishers were just being greedy.