skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Do you have any empirical evidence to back up your theory, or is it all supposition?

If it's the latter, and I assume it is, why do you present your hypothesis as if it's already fact?

Second, why do you assume that 50% less work is such a big deal? Even assuming you're right, productivity depends on many other factors that influence the result, and I'd claim by a heck of a lot more than 50%.

The theory I personally subscribe to is that the single most important factor for any software company is getting the right people. There is some empirical evidence[1] to support this hypothesis. If I'm correct, then what a company should care about is attracting and retaining talent.

So even if you assume people can work long hours without burning out, and that there's no productivity loss in doing so (and I'm pretty sure I've seen evidence to suggest otherwise), the numbers aren't on your side if your competition has all the talent because they offer a better work-week.

And even if your team is more productive, it doesn't help you if your competition builds a simpler, but more commercially successful product, because they're smarter. Just because something is harder to build doesn't automatically mean it's more profitable.

[1]: http://forums.construx.com/blogs/stevemcc/archive/2011/01/09...
Err the intel chip is usually among the 2nd and 3rd best and it has 2 fewer cores. And far from "50%" slower. Its rather close to them.
I find that pretty good. In fact, Anandtech found that pretty good as well.

You seem to be looking mostly at the GPU scores, and intel doesn't make those GPUs.
Switching to a faster GPU in the future would solve that. Not that the current GPU they use is any slow anyway, there will not be a single Android app lagging on this.

And all this with a crappy assembler as you said.
It's also running GB vs ICS. ICS makes some of the benchmarks a lot faster (specially your favorite, the webkit bench ;-)

I'm also surprised by the exposure time setting. I've no idea how useable it is on a phone but I always wanted that, at least to be able to try it.
I see a bunch of CPUs. I predict some upgrades on the iMac line.

Also Rounded Rects are everywhere, http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Round_Rects_Are_E...
can't stop laughing!
Growth of Consumer Comfort with Technology
What would happen in the situation that a browser has developed a non-prefixed property, which later becomes a standard, but with different functionality?
"hardware emulation" that's kinda cool tho.
I wonder how fast it is. I also wonder how many parts of the benchmark software uses some ARM EABI binaries (JNI or NDK).
Interesting history of the browser user-agent string
I have no experience with X or Y but X seems better than Z.
What rule did he break? What advice did he give?
Making our irc bot talk
SalesPortal Will be Featured at the ICMI ACCE Conference and Expo
Opening tickets at 5:30 PST is a huge dick move. I woke up to 3 text messages about WWDC tickets, jumped on my computer and found them all sold out. Now I'm probably going to have to spend twice as much for a ticket.
The site doesn't provide much technical details but I'd be worried that aggregating data from disperate sources (potentially external) in order to identify and track users could run afoul of privacy laws and regulations. Particularly for companies operating in the EU or those in the US that have access to student, medical, financial or government data.

Also, I'm suspicious of a product that promises a seamless integration of disparate data sources. Anyone who has tried to do that within a company, and I imagine many of us have, knows just how tricky that can be.

I guess some additional details would be nice to have before I'm sold on the promise.
I never pass on my thoughts as fact. The title of that section is "What I believe." Not "This is a fact." All of the other statements you make are false choices. You can have a hard working team that also produces simple, clean, intuitive UX. Great companies do this all of the time.
5 minutes a day for exponential productivity
You are not "far from a climate change skeptic". You are a climate change skeptic. At best, your post is the vague claim that complex systems cannot be modeled or tested empirically, and is empirically wrong in its claim that no-one predicted the financial crisis.
This already exists- remember Google Goggles? Except in this implementation it's a little more hipster/artsy since it prints it out for you on receipt paper.

Honestly, as a camera, it is a step backwards. Photographs efficiently capture many times more information than a simple text description.

However, what it is a good demonstration of is the growing cognitive abilities of image-reading machines.
From countering radicalization to disrupting illicit networks
The reason for the drug-testing is to protect the company from liability. If you show up to work stoned out of your mind and cause some mishap that injures employees the company is most likely liable. Granted the drug screening doesn't necessarily protect against future decisions as it's only testing the past, but it can be a good indicator.

Or you can say companies started doing it years ago to get us accustomed to the drug testing so that one day they can start doing DNA screening and we'll just shrug our shoulders.

I've held a number of jobs (in the US) over the years and I only had to do a drug screening twice.
Currency bot - open exchange rate data, updated every hour
DevOps Engineer, London
We are looking for a DevOps Engineer to join our growing agile development team. We see this position as a development role so you will be working closely with the rest of the team to build tools and processes that support and optimise development operations and influence architectural discussions and decisions, as well as manage our infrastructure and environments.

Responsibilities:

- Automating as much as possible of our existing AWS infrastructure, using tools such as Puppet, Ruby, Capistrano.
- Continuing our move towards Continuous Deployment by building tools that automate our testing and deployment processes.
- Improving our production monitoring and alerting systems.
- Working closely with the development team on application tuning and influencing architectural discussion topics such as fail-over, redundancy, coupling.

Requirements:

- UNIX administration experience.
- Familiarity with cloud computing platforms such as AWS.
- Full software development lifecycle experience in an agile environment.
- Excellent knowledge of programming and shell scripting. Java and Ruby are a significant advantage.
- Configuration management experience with either Chef or preferably Puppet.
- Self-starter and excellent communicator, both written and verbal.

Bonus points for:

- Being able to explain properly the difference between development, systems administration and DevOps!!
- A Computer Science degree.
- Working knowledge of databases and data management; SQL and/or NoSQL.
- An interest in the startup community and the DevOps movement in particular.

And what you can expect:

- A brand new 27" iMac and investment in the best tools and people we can find.
- No hierarchy, titles or Project Managers. Or hiding places for that matter ;o)
- No legacy code or infrastructure. We have a very clean codebase with good metrics and awareness of technical debt.
- Total focus on the code; even the CTO spends 90% of his time coding!
- Oh, and Team Fortress on a Friday ;o)

This is a permanent role based in the City of London. A very competitive salary is on offer but will be dependent on experience & ability.

To find out more, please send your CV to careers@qmetric.co.uk.
I don't disagree with you that Psychology is not science, but F=ma is a model as well.
Klout Launches OFFICIAL iPhone App
The most effective manner I ever used was some variation on the "due on or before but not after" deadline. This could be used with extra points (reward) if turned in anytime in the "before" range and no reward (but acceptance) if turned in "on".
you are referencing flexible work hours, which is very different then what I am discussing. I couldn't care less when my developers work. if they want to leave at 4 pm and work late in the evenings, all good.
Ask HN: Payment services for non-US companies
Stripe and BrainTree (to name two) seem amazing, but as always, they're only for US companies. How about we list all the (good) e-payment companies available to non-US companies? I'm personally interested in companies that let you charge customers several times (different amounts) once they put their credit card number (not just recurring payments, but at any time), but it would still be interesting to find out any good payment company, you never know.
McDonald's wouldn't fire you if a client asked you "why is the quarter pounder tastier", and you said "it's because it has a different sauce". Especially if the client was a professional chef, and you were fired because you may have given them potentially misleading advice.

The rant isn't about why he was fired. He got a "final warning" for giving useful information to a savvy client. He got fired because he restarted his blogging, taunting them to fire him.

His rant isn't about why he was unjustly fired - he obviously didn't give a shit at that stage. The rant is about how restrictive the compliance is, and how it hurts everybody.

The compliance rules are there for a reason, but the author clearly doesn't think it's worth the cost. I like eating at McDonalds, but I'd also like the option of going somewhere that's a bit sloppier, and a bit more creative. Yes, I might get food poisoning, but as they say - Caveat Emptor.
This article would be more effective if it was in something which requires creative thinking as opposed to something that can be accomplished through rote memorization.

Great point, but in an industry requiring creative thinking, this issue might never come up. The point has been made in this thread: working in a call center requires strict compliance because it's an unskilled job with severe (legal, financial) consequences for deviating from the provided script.

It's likely a generalization, but a company demanding creative work may not exercise the same level of control as a call center or McDonald's, for instance.
The terms are standard, but that doesn't make them appropriate for this type of service.

This is not the first time people have squawked, other companies have received blowback for using similar terms of service. Google really should have known better.
Only if they can prove the Kaiser spokesperson was lying.
I really like the ascii art you found. reading through those it makes me wonder how many were hand done and how many people rendered.

I remembered that VLC has an ASCII video output.

[1] http://wiki.videolan.org/Video_output
That only works for his database of username:password combinations due to how he stores them. It won't protect you from someone else's database of password combinations.

Since he collects only publicly available username/password combinations, you're already screwed and avoiding his list is slamming the door after the horse is gone.
Ask HN: Is there a "Business for Hackers" book?
If O'Reilly made one, I'd buy it.
Hey SparknLaunch12,

"How important is it"

Learning from your users is really important for start-ups. It's how you know when you hit MVP, it's how you know what your key values are.

But your userbase isn't one big mesh of people. There are active users, premium users, people who signed up once after clicking a HN link and never returned.

Being able to break your users down into groups (such as "ActiveMonthly") or "Enterprise" helps you get targetted feedback.

On a single user level, if you intend to talk with customers, it's massively useful to know exactly who you're talking to. You'll give a different pitch or response if you know the user has never created an invoice (filed a bug / uploaded a photo/ whatever).

As always, the best way is to give it a try. We find it incredibly useful.
What are you willing to pay for mobile data?
You're not going to be able to buy a ticket at all. For the first time, tickets aren't transferable.
Interestingly, fans are particularity important while sleeping in space. Otherwise a pocket of CO2 will form around your head until you wake up gasping.
Prior art of vendor features that were introduced sans prefix: innerHTML, XMLHttpRequest, <canvas>, querySelectorAll, innerText...

We've done this before and handled it fine. In JavaScript you can test the features, in CSS you end up duplicating a few lines of CSS-- see the gradients example: http://paulirish.com/2012/vendor-prefixes-are-not-developer-...
Look up the remez algorithm
I have quite some experience with Lua scripting and embedding. Honestly, I can't see any other language taking that throne any time soon. For all its quirks, Lua is an amazingly powerful language that was designed from the ground up for embeddability.

You know, you can replace Lua's memory allocator with your own by overwriting one simple function. Your platform does not support double? Lua has you covered: Change one define, and Lua uses short as its numeric data type. Since it is all ANSI C, this enables you to run Lua on a fixed-point signal processor if you must.

And then there is memory consumption and execution speed. Can you fit Ruby in 150k? Lua fits just fine, including its (small) standard library. Also, it is insanely easy to embed into your C codebase. Basically, it is one include and one struct you have to carry around and you are all set.

For embedding, Lua is just awesome!
I'll start with one that I know well, as I've been using it for over a year. CommerceGate.com

I've used them for an adult business so for anyone out there interested, they accept those (although with a commission way higher than usual). They let you use your own template/design for the order page, take international orders (of course) and overall I have no complains about them.
Architecting for Failure at the Guardian.co.uk
Maybe I'm confused, but are they saying that you do use independent 2-factor authentication? If so, then that does reduce the risks associated with a weak password, even if it would be better to use a strong password in combination.
That was very smart. Too bad it wouldn't work in a real "prisoner's dilemma". If one prisoner promises to tell everything about what the other guy did, the other guy is just supposed to keep quiet? Keep in mind that he wouldn't know that the first guy actually intends to keep quiet as well.
Austerity's Greatest Failure, UK-Edition
I tried to write a library to calculate vectorized trig functions. Minimax or least-squares polynomials are much much better than Taylor series. But here's the thing: The majority of the computation required is not in the calculation of the kernel (i.e. f(x) for -pi/2<x<pi/2) but getting accurate reduction to this range for all possible floating point values. If you're using single precision numbers, you really only need the first 9 terms of the minimax polynomial (=x+x^3+x^5+x^7+x^9) to get within two ulps of accuracy. But doing extremely precise division of large numbers is not so quick.

If you're interested, I have the test code here: https://github.com/jeremysalwen/vectrig
Oh god, PIN codes... Two years ago my girlfriend and I had to go to our banks and get cash. Luckily they're right across the street from each other, so we walk in to mine first. I go to the ATM, tap in my pin, do my thing and we move across the street. I'm standing by the door while my girlfriend goes to the machine. I'm still fiddling with the receipts in my pocket and whatever when I hear something. The ATM, plastered in signs to cover your screen, not let anyone see you putting in your pin, etc.– was calling the tones on the speaker. Anyone who cared to listen could hear her pin. I've yet to encounter another machine that does that, but man– if I ever got a hold of the who decided that a 4-digit pin was a good idea for security there would be quite an unpleasant exchange...
I think it is interesting how teachers tend to teach to the kind of student they are. I am a timely student. One thing I really appreciate is timely feedback. I took a course once where we often didn't get our homework assignments back for several weeks. By the time you got the corrections, the feedback was basically meaningless. When I have taught, I have always tried to give feedback by the next class period. I also find this helpful in steering what to focus on during class time. If many people missed a particular question, then it deserves more attention during class. For these reasons, I have usually had weekly assignments, so that students are required to practice their new-found knowledge shortly after learning it, and then get feedback quickly. This will of course vary from subject to subject. I have also experimented with having different days of the week for deadlines. I tried Fridays, and students complained that they were too busy during the week. I tried Mondays, and I got a bunch of last-minute e-mails on Sunday, and I usually don't work on the weekends. So I decided Tuesday or Wednesday is best. This gives the students time to work on the weekend if they want to, and time for me to answer their questions the day before the assignment is due.
Sure; calling someone a modern-day Neanderthal isn't suggest they are "modern", either.
Do you have any evidence to support them being especially ethical, or is this just a gut reaction?

The facts are that we don't have enough facts, we have an unsubstantiated accusation that should be treated as such.
Harvard University to become a beacon for open access
i use it all the time. mostly to loop over n things at the same time:

for a, b in zip(list_a, list_b):
print a + b
Hey Jeff,

I understand where you're coming from. Your recent post on Privacy was very good.

It's up to each customer to choose what information they're comfortable sharing. On top of that business data we include communications, and usage data and we source publicly available profile data (though you can disable this if you wish).

In terms of seamless, the screenshots aren't faked. It's all there. It all works.

Send me a mail (des at intercom dot io) and I'll happily provide any extra details you want. You might find answers in the docs alternatively. http://docs.intercom.io/

Regards,
Des
A "Hollywood thriller" movie where P = NP has been solved
This is the same technology that is used by the webgrepper tool [http://blekko.com/webgrep] (a grep for the web pages' sources).

Disclaimer: I work at blekko and I developed the webgrepper.

As a side note, we have used this for various other purposes - some fun ones being, store a big music collection (to extract meta data via mapjob), citizenship test q&a (to pick random questions), the 'joke of the day' (of course, this is our "hello world" example internally to new employees) ..etc.
My fair physicist? Feminine math, science role models do not motivate girls
> As a Desktop Linux user myself I am not too concerned
> with "market share" , to an extent I couldn't care less
> if I am the only the person that uses it.

That's rather shortsighted. After all, you being able to "just apt-get" depends on a large number of people sacrificing a lot of time.

> Will "Steam for Linux" be something that you can just
> apt-get into your free as in freedom Distro and start
> running AAA games

Obviously not going to happen.
"After months of trial and error, Shaw hit on the idea of surrounding the tip of the syringe with six petal-like flanges, which could flare open to make way for the catheter port. Unlike some of the solutions floated by big medical device makers, such as coating the ports with silver, Shaw’s innovation added only a few pennies to the cost of production. And it seemed to be remarkably effective: a 2007 clinical study funded by Shaw’s company and conducted by the independent SGS Laboratories found the device prevented germs from being transferred to catheters nearly 100 percent of the time. "

As someone who is trying to finish his Master's thesis relating to prostate cancer, claims like this make me cringe. It's like paying a marketing group to conduct a survey for you. Of course the results will be positive.

I didn't read the whole article since it's pretty long, but I bookmarked it for later. But this guy managed to burn through $42 million dollars and still hasn't achieved wide adoption?

If this was really about getting his superior technology to market, he would attempt to strike a licensing deal with these companies instead of trying to supplant them.

Fact is, many people in medical device and healthcare industry claim to be conducting research and ground-breaking work in the name of making people's lives better. But in reality, they're looking to get rich off of it. I respect that, but at a certain point, you need to decide what's more important: your personal profits, or the lives of the people you claim to be dying from this issue.

The guy who invented/discovered/extracted insulin didn't patent it/the process, even though he could've made tons of money. Again, if you want to make money, I respect that. But in that case, don't go whining about lives being lost.

I wish this guy luck, because it sounds like he has something new and novel. He just needs to realize that he has to pivot, not persevere.
I would add "The Heart of Research is Sick" to that list. The problems it outlines closely match my own experience.

http://www.labtimes.org/labtimes/issues/lt2011/lt02/lt_2011_...
Support for ODF from the Hungarian government
The problem is that you may also erase the entire database of the server you're trying to log into: http://xkcd.com/327/

I guess that's one way of protecting your accounts from being hacked, though... you can't hack an account that no longer exists!
Quickly make a dict:

>>> keys = ["foo", "bar", "spam", "egg"]
>>> values = [1, 2, 3, 4]
>>> dict(zip(keys, values))
{'egg': 4, 'foo': 1, 'bar': 2, 'spam': 3}

Quite useful when you MGET from Redis.
This is obviously syntactically incorrect. Although most browsers will ignore and auto-correct these errors, relying on such behavior feels a little shaky to me.
blogging is a very productive use of time for a founder.
How to Teach Programming on the Playground
I'd agree with you, albeit grudgingly, when we talk about work hours, breaks and recorded (and checked) calls.

But taking down a private website is already a crap idea, this 'I got a peek on your Facebook site' thing way over the top. At that point they crossed the line and something like 'I overheard you giving financial advice to your wife in your bedroom' is on _this_ side of the fence. While not on call, outside of office hours, the employer has no rights whatsoever to check on his employees in my world.
Show HN: Top VC builds platform for entrepreneurs to support each other
Thanks! This was 96-97, applications were all free, except for the postage. There may have been some higher-end schools that required money, I probably didn't even consider those. My algorithm was to go through Kaplan's (or one of those) catalog of all US colleges and universities, request an info package from each college where it seemed I can get a full-ride, receive it a few weeks later, fill out the enclosed application, send it out.

I did some prior research into scholarships and didn't even consider top schools (Harvard, Stanford, etc.), as I knew there was no chance to get a full-ride with my credentials. I mostly focused on smaller regional colleges.