skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The idea that you can mask learned knowledge of a company's strategy by simply not explicitly revealing sensitive information is a difficult concept to wrap my mind around.

It is not possible to unlearn the information. If you are acting as a strategic advisor, the information has to weigh in your mind and you implicitly will end up revealing information, practically subconsciously. A simple case would be where one company explains an experiment they ran (perhaps testing a feature with a small part of their customer group) and the result of the experiment. If the competitive company comes in and says they are thinking of running a similar experiment and explicitly asks the advisors what they think—what is the response given?

I have a hard time understanding how this type of accumulated information could not enter into future judgments the advisors are making. As a management consultant who faces this type of challenge frequently (and overcomes it by avoiding competitive clients and never sharing my work) I am honestly curious how one elevates themselves above this type of subconscious thinking.
When the OP stated something from nothing I think he/she meant tangible 'things' from investment and research(ie. rockets). As opposed to Instagram which is a form of communication and entertainment that will forever exist within a software context.

Instagram also stood on the shoulders of giants.
That's what they've been saying about spreadsheets[1] for my entire adult life.

[1] http://panko.shidler.hawaii.edu/ssr/Mypapers/whatknow.htm
Improved missiles are now able to shoot down the U2

This has probably been true since at least 1960.

I wouldn't be surprised if the x37 mini-spaceplane was primarily useful as a surveillance platform.

Eh. It takes an Atlas V to launch the X-37.

At 90 million a launch, and months to prep, it's not exactly something one can crank out with a frag order on a day's notice.
The thing which would really annoy me about having to use a car everyday and, in total, spending a considerable time of my life driving it, is that you're doing just that, driving.

On public transport, you can read the news, write mails, write docs, read a book, do other things as you please, while still arriving at the location you want to go to, albeit probably a little slower (as you have to wait for the train/bus/tram and possibly have to walk to/from the station etc.).

I have never been to the US, so i cannot comment on the comparative part, though.
Google execs and James Cameron to mine asteroids
Stylish[1] exists on both chrome and firefox, on all OS's with no other requirements and a gallery of nearly 50,000 styles with support for variables.

I don't really see how something limited to a single OS/Browser combo is particularly useful by comparison.

[1]http://userstyles.org/
Lthread is a multicore/multithread coroutine library written in C
Edit: I meant WP7. Thanks for pointing out my typo.
If it makes you feel any better, there's nothing new about this situation. One could just as well complain in the 1930s about the money and effort that were going into popular films instead of whatever other more virtuous project.

This case actually sounds like a fairly mild one. Instagram didn't have many employees, so only a few people were diverted from curing cancer to sending cat pictures.
> You don't even need probability to define randomness, just Turing Machines.

You don't need the integral of 1/x with respect to x to define e, but you can do it that way. Mathematical definitions are bidirectional in many cases, in that we can use A to define B or B to define A without any loss in power for defining C in terms of B and/or A. But that doesn't mean that this works for any inversion of the definitions, as in the case I outlined above.

> I don't understand why you said that random numbers are non-sense, what about Chaitin's Omega number?

As you can see, the definitions we use to construct these make all the difference! The definition of the Chaitin constant that I'm familiar with is a probability, and the probability is not random; rather, we assign a probability to a random event (or, more precisely, the outcome of a random function). If * probabilities* were themselves random, they wouldn't be very useful, would they!

> Have you read Kolmogorov axioms on probability? One of its success -not failure- is that it doesn't need a definition of randomness to build its theory

I think you misunderstood my point, which is pretty much orthogonal to Kolmogorov. I didn't say that probability requires an assumption of randomness; I said that randomness (as used by the author in this post) implicitly invokes a notion of probability ('likelihood', in the casual use of the word). And certainly as used in the 'Is 14 a random number' example.
Why do people seem to assume that open source != $$$?

One of the biggest problems I have with open source is finding help fixing problems and just getting support in general. I'm happy to pay $$$ for software as a service, key word "service". Open source is a value add to SaaS, not the other way around!
Corrugated box size design
You underestimate the power of well designed production, and how good people can get at a repetitive task they do all day.

I count about 20 components, about 40 solders. Allowing 5 seconds per bend (using jigs), 5 seconds per solder, one minute for assembly (again using jigs), one minute for finish... I'd say about 7 minutes labour per unit. Jigs, etc, could run to 100 hours all up, they seem very simple.

I'd feel comfortable budgeting 15 mins/unit for runs of 1000+.
AION RMT 最安值
zurb http://foundation.zurb.com/
Andreessen Horowitz Made $78M Off $250,000 Investment in Instagram
That is unfortunate. Could you have part of your team move out of Los Gatos to another area? Or perhaps set up a remote office in a secondary city for people to gather at? I know Facebook has one in Austin and I could bet it had to do with the talent crunch.
How to Build a Million Dollar App Like Instagram 
By Valerie Oon

Forget fairytales. With eyeballs on successful exits in mobile application ventures, building an app is the newly beaten path from rags to riches. Suddenly, “we will build an app” is a legitimate business plan for the man on the street. We laugh at their naiveté.

But the good news is, building a good app is not entirely out of reach for the average business. If you have a compelling idea or mobile strategy, here are 3 important principles to make sure your app does not suck. (Just don’t expect it to sell for $1billion tomorrow.)

Your app in one phrase

All-in-one is tempting. People love the idea of all-in-one. They think it’s value for money, convenient and efficient. But they don’t buy into all-in-ones.

When you see an ad, how many “that’s not all”s can you hear before tuning off? The reality is this: if people don’t understand what your product does, they can’t be sold on the idea. And the easiest way to make your product understandable is to do one thing well.

Here’s how Instagram positions itself in the app store: “simple way to make and share gorgeous photos on your iPhone.”

Can you summarize what your app does in one phrase? If you can’t, it’s too complicated. We can’t stress this more. That leads us to…

The 80/20 rule

The ubiquitous Pareto Principle applied in app development says you prioritize 20% of the functions used 80% of the time, or by 80% of users. Make this 20% beautiful, intuitive and formidable.

How do you know which 20% to perfect? Go back to your one phrase and make it impossible for your user to fail in that.

How to “make and share a gorgeous photo” with Instagram:

1. Launch app

2. Take a photo by tapping the middle button

3. Make it gorgeous by tapping on the bottom left button to add filter

4. Share

Made for user

It’s nice to make something you like. But if you want your product used, make something your users like.

How do you know what users like?

Transparent playing cards may be cool, but completely useless for poker.

Consumer research, though the obvious answer, is always flawed. We can’t prescribe a tried and true method except to say, be critical about the type of consumer research you choose for specific objectives and don’t believe everything you hear. The most effective research tool in many cases is mere observation.

I first heard about Facebook as this “cool Friendster thing that picks up faces in photos”. As we moved into the mobile era, this photo function stumbled clumsily along in the form of a 6-step* process today.

Instagram did not have to conduct elaborate consumer research to know photo-sharing had an important place in people’s hearts; the proof is in Facebook’s growth. Observing that, they found opportunity in its deficiency and simply created a better iteration around a function that users valued.

Any important mantra you personally follow in app development? Share with us by commenting here!

*From “Take photo” button to “Post” – excluding friends and location tag (version 4.1.1, updated 02 April 2012)
What you need to know about data centers & biogas
>In this case, your thinking appears to be, "I can accomplish the same thing in C++, so why use Erlang?" My point is that an assembly programmer might just as well say, "I can accomplish the same thing in assembly, so why use C++?" The answer is that it's a lot easier and more natural to write OO code in C++ than it is to use, say, assembler macros. The fact that something is possible is less interesting than how simple and well-supported it is.

What you seem to miss is that C++ also has some inherent value that cannot be replicated in Erlang. Namely: C++ is not assembly. You are already working on a higher level language. So the question is not "assembly or some higher level" but "how high a level should I go"?

Your response is essentially: "you should go to the highest level you can for concurrency, which (in your opinion) is Erlang".

The problem with that: you essentially reduce the whole problem domain to handling concurrency. Not what I call a good engineering analysis.

How about reusing HUGE EXISTING C++ libraries for his problem domain, instead of replicating them in Erlang?

How about reusing a ready team of C++ experts in his company, instead of retraining them in Erlang?

How about reusing existing tooling and infrastructure his company has for C++, instead of throwing it and using Erlang?

How about interfacing with external systems for which he has C++ drivers, but no Erlang ones?

You say: "The fact that something is possible is less interesting than how simple and well-supported it is". Maybe. But well supported is also not just a language attribute. How well supported it is within the industry, within his company, with his toolset, with the code he has etc?
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Imagine if other industries were this transparent.
Erlang is a CSP system, first and foremost, and not actors.

[CSP style concurrency on JVM]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37NaHRE0Sqw (Kilim, it should be noted, was benchmarked as scaling better than Erlang/OTP.)

http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/4350 (paper in top comment is worth the read.)

Disclaimer: I think Erlang/OTP rocks. But JVM has its moments, as well, and in fairness has earned the "most advanced VM" title.
> Facebook's value (cash and stock) 'flowed' to Instagram's owners because Facebook thinks Instagram will be worth even more to Facebook's owners.

Wrong. The Instagram acquisition was largely defensive, due to Instagram dominating a space (mobile photos) in a way that would've eventually hurt Facebook. Facebook snatched them up early to prevent a huge competitor, and $1B was the price they had to pay. Nobody can argue that the team or technology was worth $1B, and Facebook will not see a big return on their investment - at least not anytime soon. Instagram doesn't even have an established revenue model.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class_invariant
I don't do this often, but I want to tell you I downvoted you for passionately arguing against a strawman. I can find no evidence that nirvana ever claimed libertarianism wasn't an ideology, only that it is a minority one. Unless perhaps there was an edit?
So yeah, there's a gold rush. They're great for economic expansion but kind of suck when it comes to depth of achievement.

Right now, there's a lot of low-hanging fruit in the ability of technological innovators to positively affect the everyday lives of normal people in lots of small but personally significant ways.

If you consider that goal bullshit, then yes, I imagine the current economic environment is astoundingly depressing.

Yes, there are many amazing opportunities higher up the tree, and yeah, it seems like there aren't enough multibillionaires to take the risks to chase them, and counterbalance all the "easy stuff" people are chasing.

My point is this gold-rush-like era will pass. California got started that way, after all. I bet people were pretty frickin' sick of all the n00bs and posers moving to the West Coast with crazy/stupid dreams of getting rich. It probably seemed depressing to have every single week bring more idiots panning creeks.

But three generations later, California was manufacturing a command module to put men on the moon. The expansion that started in the gold rush led to agriculture, movies and technology.

And now things are cycling around in some ways. But if you're serious about progress, you have to be patient at times.
That pretty much flies in the face of CL's stated intent. It's for humans, transacting wth humans, locally. This is addressed in a few different aspects in the CL TOU: http://www.craigslist.org/about/terms.of.use
I had the same reaction. He would have kept his respect with me had he lobbed a few grenades in his resignation letter. However, kicking the devil in the nuts and then expecting something positive to happen was surprising.
Let's hack television by getting rid of all commercials
How to use Github Wiki's locally
You clearly don't understand risk/reward then. It seems to me like you don't like the idea of people earning more than you deem they are due to earn. Investments and the like are not a statically defined 9-5 job. That's why most people don't invest and even fewer invest profitably. It requires a combination of luck, intelligence and foresight to make good investments. Just as making ~75 million on a $250k investment is absurdly high, making $0 on $250k is absurdly bad. It would take most people 4-5+ years to save that much money. That's an insane amount of money to lose on a company that lets you put a filter on your photos.
My original OP was vague. All the points you make are good.

I wouldn't propose a system in which investments couldn't propagate future opportunities. I think they should at the very least be regulated. But my concern goes deeper into the underlying system and culture in which all of this takes place.

Facebook and Instagram didn't do anything wrong within the context which they operate. But I believe there is something wrong with the context.
I am surprised this topic did not get more tractiojn: Fred Wilson is basically saying we are playing the game of musical chair, and the whistle is coming soon (the whistle is the popping of the bubble, right?)
So our choices were: a) invest in Dalton b) invest in neither or c) invest in Kevin and violate our commitment to Dalton.

I would have thought that suggesting that Dalton and Kevin join forces would have been one of the options.
Steven Weinberg: The Crisis of Big Science
While I've got absolutely no problem with profanity, and have on the rare occasion been accused of using it a bit much, and probably will never use this... This is a great idea! Bonus points to you!
That means that our friend Jack Dorsey also pocketed another 78M - along with Adam D'angelo? When most people will never strike 10M in their entrepreneurial/investment career, these guys have pulled three already... That's really impressive.
The worst thing that could happen? I might get the job and find that all of my coworkers were the kind of people who lie whenever they think it will advance their own interests. That is, I'd be working with people like you. That would be a terrible outcome.
I'm working on one, hope to release it officially soon.

http://bedrocktheme.com

Download it here:
https://github.com/dylanized/bedrock
This reminds me of a quote:
"Democrats want the government to be their mother; republicans want the government to be their father. Libertarians just want to be treated like adults."
only a few people were diverted from curing cancer to sending cat pictures

Pre-acquisition, sure. But how many people will see the instagram acquisition and decide to give up on curing cancer to help people send cat pictures instead?
"Most people with kids and mortgages get by on less than 150k"

Phil. I will say this the nicest way I can. I'd like to know where you are getting your info from? By your resume you are 4 years out of college. I'm a bit older and have 2 children, one in college as well as obviously many friends with children in college. My wife has 200k in Medical school debt to pay off. 150k is a nice salary, no doubt. But to say "If you really can't make ends meet on 150k you've overextended yourself." doesn't take into account someone's total financial situation and what their other obligations are.
I hear you. I plan to add the comments. I just didn't have time to do so this weekend. I expect to have them there within the next few days.

If you have any suggestions for how best to place them without adding clutter, I'd be grateful.

Thanks.
What happens when the idea doesn't work out and they pivot? Do they stay together then?
Social isn't the answer
Ok, sounds like a sensible approach that prevents the editor from crashing! :-)
Politicians fear "SOPA backlash"
Google beat by Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky of Stack overflow in community support? I believe it, Stack overflow is the news.ycombinator of community programming help.

I've been listening to Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood's podcasts and frankly, they are the best podcast I've ever listened to. Insightful, funny, creative, enlightening. I've burned the mp3's to CD's for easy listening in the car. All programmers should listen to all of these.

http://blog.stackoverflow.com/category/podcasts/
If someone has a native-level of fluency in more than one language, would the decision-making bias remain?
Burned out (and homeless) in San Diego says: I am completely ready to make that (type of) switch, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with any company being acquired. Most people don't really want to get well. They want a better drug. I am currently seriously planning to burn my health site to the ground and start something shallow and hopefully profitable, like an astrology site.

Not kidding at all.
> It's a common theme when we scientific Python users talk that we don't
really use Python for the language. We use it for the community and
the libraries.

This statement doesn't make sense to me. First, I use Python for scientific/numerical work, and I definitely use it "for the language" - at least, certain aspects of it that are rare elsewhere.

Second, the language, community, and libraries are all interdependent. The design of a language strongly influences the tone of its community, as well as the libraries available (both the number and the types).
Learning Ruby on Rails Book/Tutorial Literature
I have spent some effort in learning ruby on rails. So far I only used tutorials that guide you step by step through how to build some page. I am wondering is there a book or any kind of literature out there that explains ruby on rails to programmers/engineers/coders NOT beginners?

Thanks guys for helping
> Windows 8 is a fine example. The new Metro interface displays nonstop, trivial updates from Facebook, Twitter, news sites and stock tickers. Streams of raw noise distract users from the moment they login.

There is a concept called "Give them what they want". If Windows is successful because it gives customers what they want, it is nothing but folly to criticize their product based on your own personal value set.
IMO. This is PR stunt, It's standard OP in Florida to threaten to close stuff due to budget constraints. I can't remember a single case where they actually did even if they did not get the budget increese/tax hike that they said they needed.
If Tim Ferriss wasn't obnoxious before, he sure is now.

His prescription is:

* Look for "market trends" (As opposed to building things you know about and understand, and focusing on great products)

* Treat "your programmer" like a house builder you'd contract with

* Pay rock-bottom prices

* Make everyone sign an NDA so they don't "steal" your brilliant idea

Ugh. I hope this gold rush ends soon.
I don't mind writing cython to judiciously optimize my scientific python code when needed, but efforts along these lines, as well as Travis Oliphant's Numba project (https://github.com/ContinuumIO/numba) seem like promising alternatives. It's great to see some productive conversations between the Julia and Scipy-dev folks.
You fail to address that most people time-shift television and skip commercials with their DVR.
Absolutely. I mean forget about WINE, what about SQL? Recall that SQL originally came out of IBM. It kind of makes you wonder whether Oracle's lawyers have thought this one through.
> You could re-implement erlang in C++, but then you'd end up with erlang again. Why not just use erlang in the first place?

Because rewriting or shimming the 10MM lines of code in the libraries one depends on outweighs this one particular benefit of erlang.

> I don't believe it is possible to do real concurrency on the JVM, without rewriting key parts of the JVM

Define "real concurrency".
This is precisely the reason why Linux hasn't stuck on me, even though I've tried multiple times to use it. Every time, on different systems, there was something off. Sometimes the sound card that wasn't properly supported, other times the video card (ATI at the time) had big issues with secondary monitors, other times it was my low-end, weird brand WiFi card. It's never "Just Worked" and, even though the exact same happened with Windows at one point or another, the fix is generally simple with Windows (locate the manufacturer, download the driver for your Windows, works with any decent age hardware), wheras it's harder with Linux (google it, find half a dozen possible solutions, download one driver which installs 30 dependencies and breaks your system, try another driver which completely prevents the OS from booting, give up and reinstall Windows).

And then, there's the Software & Games issues... but that's a story for another day.
I guess it's possible the machine (connected to the Internet) pulling from Amazon is also connected to a network with the machine that can decrypt (but can't access the Internet)
"so only a few people were diverted from curing cancer to sending cat pictures."

I have to be reminded of this every time I get judgmental about how people spend their time simply because it isn't the way I choose to spend my time. I don't watch or follow sports, and try to avoid religious activities to the best of my ability. But after many years I finally was able to respect in the end that those things are important to others.

Back in the day you know, people were always critical about the time I spent "playing with computers" and of all things, photography. Funny how things change.
Also keep in mind that there is a big difference between a billion dollars in the hands of someone as capable as Elon Musk (who also happens to invest all of his time and creativity), and a billion dollars in the hands of a random investor. The latter won't come close to the former in terms of returns.
What world do you come from where CEOs are these brittle, frail creatures who must be pampered and kept in protective isolation so that their companies don't collapse? You've made several comments throughout these comments referring to such a CEO. I wouldn't want to work for a guy who's this much of a prima donna. The person you're describing sounds like a wimp, to be perfectly honest with you.