skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
At my current company we all eat lunch together (some bring their lunch, others eat out). It's not really a policy per-se but everyone seems to do it.

The only policy we have is of no eating lunch at desks so this gets us all in the same room.

We also have a "Results Only Work Environment" (http://www.gorowe.com) so you're free to do whatever you want, whenever you want, so if you want to get dry cleaning, walk the dog, catch a movie, etc. - you needn't do it over lunch. You can do it whenever.

With folks often out various parts of the day due to ROWE group lunch is sort of an encouragement for everyone to come together and socialize at least once a day.
If you don't want to mess with iptables, ClearOS (CentOS derivative) [1] has built-in multi-WAN support [2], including auto-failover and load balancing. There's a GUI, but you can always SSH in and configure things manually.

My home router/server is a MicroATX box with an Atom D525, 4GB RAM, 2 x 1TB RAID-1, and 2 x Gigabit NIC. Cost a few hundred dollars to build, draws ~16W idle, and is almost silent. DNS, SSH, FTP, SMB, POP/IMAP, SMTP, QoS, PPTP/OpenVPN/IPsec, and dmcrypt are included. The Atom chip is fine for home use, move up to an Athlon if you're pushing a lot of SSH traffic.

[1] http://www.clearfoundation.com/Software/overview.html
[2] http://www.clearcenter.com/support/documentation/clearos_ent...
Doctors work like entrepreneurs
But if it comes down to typing a long ass url in my phone, or pushing a button to scan a code, guess which one I'll pick. Don't impede technological progress just because "not everybody has it"
I can't believe you hardcoded this for MySQL instead of using PDOs, and I can't believe the 10k line count for this. Gosh. Is "de-engineering" a proper term for this?
I don't understand all of the hate either.

ComScore releases a lot of stats about QR code usage and people actually do use them quite a bit. I find them useful, especially when the alternative is typing in a URL that's 100 characters long.
Between 1582 and 1752 England had two different New Year's Days, January 1 and March 25, used for different purposes. The same day had different years depending on who you were talking to. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_dating.
Well if you learn one language enough to get a job in Silicon Valley you will be fine learning other languages. The learnpythonthehardway is for total beginners. Im opinionated for python(favorite) and not so much expert to tell you if it is the best for beginners but you can search quora / stackoverflow and see this: http://udacity.blogspot.com/2012/05/learning-to-program-why-... (Udacity’s courses so far have been using Python because it is overall, the most convenient language for teaching and learning. The natural syntax means students spend less time grokking code than with terser languages.)
Japan has been using QR codes respectfully, and usefully, for years now.

People don't scan them in the US because most people don't seem to have a clue what they are. If we spend any freaking time educating the public about what they are and how to use them ( and stopped using those damn proprietary variants) then we'd see a lot of value come out of them.

You don't like QR codes? Fine, then give me some %#$%@$ alternative that allows me to get people from the print version of my stuff to the online version without them having to type in some long string of characters on a weeeee little phone keyboard that everyone makes typos on constantly.

Until someone comes up with a better alternative, maybe we should stop railing against them and start learning how to use them intelligently and respectfully, while making it easy for our audience to consume them.

Telling a spectacular story, as the comic suggests, wouldn't get people to my site nearly as well as a button on the paper that they could reach down and push.

QR codes aren't doing a great job of getting people their either, because instead of educating people about how useful they are and what to do with them, we're letting marketers use them without a freaking clue, while the clueful sit around bitching about them without offering any good alternative.
What moskie explained, but got me thinking - if somehow your laptop always synchronizes with the current zone, and you are in a airplane flying east->west, or west->east?
39. If you create two date objects right beside each other, they'll represent the same time. (a fantastic Heisenbug generator)

40. You can wait for the clock to reach exactly HH:MM:SS by sampling once a second.
Meetings may be more efficient when strict policies are enforced, but I think some forgiveness could be provided by allowing the user to edit/sort Agenda items after the meeting has been created.

The common use case right now is time-shifted decision making, but this would kick ass if it were real-time.

Good job with the design. Nice legible type, unambiguous form layout. I think the landing page could bring forward some content from the Learn More and Features subpages.
That will stress it a bit, but to really torture it, see if it accepts
2012 June 30 23:59:60
Just to point out, infiltrations don't have to happen in a certain order. i.e. ex-NSA employee, goes job hunting at Microsoft. Infiltrations like this can happen when NSA, for example, approaches, an existing MS employee and offers money or other rewards in return for cooperation.

If this story is true that would be the easiest and fastest way. It always helps to first find someone who has done something illegal or shameful in their past. Then in addition to a reward there could be a veiled threat of exposure to ensure loyalty and co-operation.

Hate to talk about tin-foil crap like this, but unfortunately I don't think I would be too surprised if this was true.
Clickable URL : http://www.windowsphone.com/en-US/apps/a5275a3f-6611-48f6-bd...
Where I work the company will occasionally treat everybody to a meal (dinner or lunch) and it is quite nice. It typically counts towards your time (if it is a lunch) and it is optional.

I think the difference lies in who has to pay. If the employee is bringing their lunch or having to pay out of pocket then it may not as go well as if it is paid for by the company. In my eyes, the former is equatable to what you called "mandated 'happy hour'" while the latter is more a way to show appreciation for the work that the employees do.
And it doesn't even mention all the bizarre things that have been done (for reasons good and bad) to time by various governments. Like adjusting from local solar time to standard GMT offset timezones (which involves skipping a given number of minutes and seconds or having them twice). Or introducing/abolishing/moving around daylight savings time. Or "super daylight savings time" with a 2 hour offset. Or moving from one side of the international date line to the other. And of course the real biggie: the Gregorian calendar reform that various countries adopted at different times between 1582 and the 1920s, skipping between 10 and 13 days depending on when they adopted it.
39. The next day after 3 Sep 1752 is 4 Sep 1752.
From the implementation:

* TreeBins use a special form of comparison for search and
* related operations (which is the main reason we cannot use
* existing collections such as TreeMaps). TreeBins contain
* Comparable elements, but may contain others, as well as
* elements that are Comparable but not necessarily Comparable<T>
* for the same T, so we cannot invoke compareTo among them. To
* handle this, the tree is ordered primarily by hash value, then
* by getClass().getName() order, and then by Comparator order
* among elements of the same class. On lookup at a node, if
* non-Comparable, both left and right children may need to be
* searched in the case of tied hash values. (This corresponds to
* the full list search that would be necessary if all elements
* were non-Comparable and had tied hashes.)
I can't believe you hardcoded this for MySQL instead of using PHP's excellent and versatile PDOs, and I can't believe the 10k line count. Gosh. Is "de-engineering" a suitable term here? Thumbs up for open sourcing your work, though.
JQuery.PercentageLoader a better progress indicator
Facebook doesn't have R&D anywhere, not even in the US
Yeah, that one even made it into the EXIF standard...
This is one of my favorite tumblrs:
http://picturesofpeoplescanningqrcodes.tumblr.com/
For a few months I had the ability for users to sign up for a paid account, but I never pushed it. After that, I just disabled the feature altogether.

The most advertising I did do was a 125x125 ad on a website used by web developers (DavidWalsh.name) for one month. I didn't get a single user through that ad though.

The biggest lesson learned is that an app like this really needs someone who is good at marketing. I'm just a programmer, but if I had found a marketer and pursued the development of the app, I'm pretty sure it could have been successful.

Another take away is to research competitors. I never looked them up since I actually built this mostly for myself at first, and just kept adding new features as it got bigger. It turned out the market was very crowded (This page has a list of 17 competitors: http://thomashunter.name/blog/shutting-down-and-open-sourcin...).

Also, "piss or get off the pot". I spent a lot of time developing this but I didn't devote enough of my time to it for it to be successful.
I both agree and disagree. I sometimes wish there were two words for "respect", one that expresses the idea that you shouldn't piss on someone else, that you should be decent to them just because they happen to be human. The other to express the kind of respect that one earns.

I have toyed with the idea of writing a post about that concept. I was thinking along the lines of quoting Riddick -- "There is one speed: My speed. Keep up or get left behind." My experience has been that competent men do not necessarily treat me worse than other men. They sometimes are talking "down" to me because they talk that way to everyone. When you are far more competent than average, it becomes difficult to assume or behave as if others are your equal. I am at times guilty of the same faux pas. In my experience, if you can keep up, some of the most competent men will genuinely respect you. What is tricky is pulling it off in a social situation where other people will interfere or where a man will become uncomfortable with a woman challenging the status quo. Her description sounds like it was fairly one on one, which is part of why I think I would have been inclined to quietly call him on it.

I can fairly confidently admit to being a significant statistical outlier for a woman. Even one of the female big wigs at my former job remarked on me sitting up front (edit: at the time she made the remark, I was sitting closer to the front than she was and she was the highest ranking woman in the department -- however, she was sitting next to a very high ranking male) which other people routinely interpret as Type A behavior, somewhat to my bafflement. I do that for reasons like I have terrible eyesight. But I am aware that other women also have issues like terrible eyesight and still do not sit up front. I have speculated that if I come across like an alpha female it is due in part to having a yawning disinterest in pecking order, not because I am trying to be at the top of the heap.

Anyway, have an upvote. And have a great day.
Hakin9 Magazine Extra June Issue Timing Attacks Released
So you only have 60 minutes to inspire young people to learn more about programming and you want to do something game related? Why not teach them something that achieves this but which they can also take home and continue working on?

How about showing them one or various aspects of game development by using a mod/map dev toolkit that's widespread and free (maybe even your own)? It's fun, practical and gives a basic understanding of how games are actually made. You could set up a site where you have shared all the resources (graphics, sounds, tools, the presentation itself) needed to that the kids can create their own game when the presentation is over (not the same game as you've demo'd as that would be boring. A tutorial would be nice).

DO NOT talk about various languages, technical aspects of platforms, etc, as none of this will inspire kids. Show them visions, dreams and what great stuff they can build by mastering code.

Oh, if you're going to talk about yourself and your company, try to keep it personal and give your audience a glimpse of how it's actually like to be a game developer. This is the kind of story that people want to hear, not stuff about your customers, financial figures, your organization, etc.
Norwegian Developers Conference videos are out
I don't buy that. I go out of my way to be polite because I'm a bit old-fashioned that way, and sometimes I think I should be more assertive. But there's a difference between asserting your will and simply communicating information, such as 'oh it's OK, I play a lot of shooters actually.' Frankly, it sounds like the writer was spaced out and didn't give the guy any conversational material to work with, beyond the single syllable of 'yes...'
In my experience, it's usually a cargo-culted management technique. One thing to keep in mind is that with all the startups of the last whatever-years, there is a shortage of experienced management, so someone who has gone from Developer at one company to Director of Engineering at another has only these stories to cull company strategy.

Furthermore, Forbes.com is the perfect venue for extroverts to circle the wagons.
Most doctors are entrepreneurs. They basically operate consultancy firms, either through some kind of partnership or independently.

They may not be innovators, but innovation isn't necessary for entrepreneurship.
It's not just you. But I think that's the whole idea. It's about fooling people. And I think some of the profits will be flowing back to Oracle, though that is not stated upfront.
The marketing power of the acronym "SQL" should not be underestimated.

But that's only a query language. Not a db architecture.

Let's see the source code. That's the only way to verify the approach that is being taken.

Given the source the first thing I'd do is search for "mmap".

They already get one demerit for using a row store.

And another for disk access.

SnakeOilSQL.
A lot of the comments are based on the expectation that nothing personally worthwhile could happen during lunch with co-workers. I'm sure that's an accurate description of some workplaces. I read the interesting submitted article as suggesting that for a small start-up, focused on successful teamwork to launch new products, making part of the team interaction happen over a tasty, unhurried meal is a change of context that makes the teamwork more effective and enjoyable. I'm sure that's an accurate description of some workplaces too.

What each of us has to find out, wherever we work, is what works for us (you and me individually) and what works for the team. If the company makes more money for all employees (reflected in higher pay and better benefits that you desire) and reduces the number of tedious meetings that are not over lunch, it could be a win-win to have lunch together with everyone else on staff. Last summer I had a contract to do a remote job where everyone ate together, and I liked that very well, as some of my colleagues there were people I've known online for years but rarely see in person. I'm already looking forward to a longer contract stint with more program responsibilities at the same place this summer. Conversations over meals will be on the plus side of the ledger for me as I evaluate whether or not I go back in future years.
Here in Chile, Nike put a QR code in an ad for a 10k run. It took you to a site with some information... unfortunately it was in flash so iPhones couldn't view it.
I've played games that asked me this, but I never realized the connection was being made between toggling inverted y axis for the player. Cool!
N. The offsets between two time zones will remain constant.

N+1. OK, historical oddities aside, the offsets between two time zones won't change in the future.

N+2. Changes in the offsets between time zones will occur with plenty of advance notice.

N+3. Daylight savings time happens at the same time every year.

N+4. Daylight savings time happens at the same time in every time zone.

N+5. Daylight savings time always adjusts by an hour.

N+6. Months have either 28, 29, 30, or 31 days.

N+7. The day of the month always advances contiguously from N to either N+1 or 1, with no discontinuities.

Explanations:

(N)-(N+2): There exist enough jurisdictions in the world that time zone changes occur often enough to require regular updates to the time zone database, more frequently than many distribution release schedules occur.

(N+3)-(N+5): Jurisdictions change DST policies even more frequently than they change time zones.

(N+6)-(N+7): September 1752 had 19 days: 1, 2, 14, 15, ..., 29, 30.
No I'm serious here, renownedmedia. Don't disregard my rant with a silly downvote, but do instead indulge yourself in the PDO methods instead of painting yourself and your projects into corners: http://php.net/manual/en/book.pdo.php
Can you give some examples of Gnome extensions you find useful? I tried perusing the list a few times but nothing really jumped out at me as a huge improvement.

It seems it's not really a popular opinion, but I also like Gnome Shell a fair bit. It just gets out of the way for the most part.
I agree with your top point, and would also hazard a guess that these agencies hire lots of ex MSFT people as well. Also, when you are the federal government, you can always "suggest" Microsoft do certain things, and give them an offer too good to refuse.

I think the biggest thought this article left out is that I wouldn't be surprised at all if microsoft and the NSA were in bed together, and in a perfectly "legal" manner, with both parties full aware. And working together. I'd bet microsoft even does a little consulting/contracting work for them.
1) its was a rhetorical comment, and 2) Word, and Excel are trademarks, not copyrighted... same with Outlook for that matter...
With what Face.com is capable of, they could even figure out people's emotional profiles... combine that with age estimation and they can see how that profile changes over time. I wonder when Facebook will start offering therapeutic services.
I built it using CodeIgniter, and wasn't as proficient in PHP as I am now. CI is a beginner framework and doesn't teach a lot of good practices (e.g. it loads external classes as singletons and uses a class loading script developed during the PHP4 days).

Here is the suggested CI method for executing database queries:
http://codeigniter.com/user_guide/database/examples.html

Nowadays, I prefer (PHP) frameworks with real autoloaders and better OOP usage (like Zend or Kohana).
That change is not that hard
Companies benefit when there is a breakdown in work/life separation.
It wasn't me who downvoted you, I promise! I love PDO; please read my other comment.
You can't downvote comments that are a reply to your own item, the person that downvoted you is not the OP -- unless he used an alternative account. I would suspect someone else did, the tone of your comment isn't one that really fits with the HN environment even if your point is valid.
facebook still considered a startup?
The entire article is set up to emphasize the way that anyone should be able to tell she's a gamer from the way she holds her hands on the keyboard

That's kind of egotistical. I have played computer games since I was a kid and WASD is natural for me too, but I don't think of myself as 'a gamer' because I probably devote less than 1 hour/week to games.
It's Like Google Maps, But For Azeroth
How is this URL different from the one submitted 15 minutes earlier https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4128351 ?
Or June 1st 1905 00:02:00 in Singapore.
Here's how the future will be:

Long home button press.

<beep>

"Siri (or Android version, or WP12 version) , search for <whatever the thing is>"

<beep>

<Here are your search results>
chronoline.js a library for making a chronology timeline
Those are called "hanging bullets"[1] -- It's a very old typographic convention that was up-ended by the default behavior of the web.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanging_punctuation
Number one missed opportunity for QR-codes: "For Sale/Rent" signs. It actively annoys me that I don't have a super-low-friction way to take a closer look at a for-sale house I'm walking by.
Having just converted an app to use Postgres from MySQL, I can tell you that the PDO drivers only get you so far. You're still ultimately going to be writing SQL, and then you have to get into the differences between MySQL's `key`="val" and Postgres' "key"='val' quoting differences.
What would you do different based on what you know now?
You aren't "defining" companies, you are /classifying/ them and you're classifying them into arbitrary boxes based on your strange, subjective and clearly disputed perceptions.

Let's move on from your inability to admit the silliness of classifying a large company with many different divisions as a "software company" and go back to your original contention: that Microsoft were unable to bring a new hardware device to market because they did not have a enough "supply chain dominance". Whatever "supply chain dominance means", you're wrong --- Microsoft have, in the past, released hardware products. The Xbox is an obvious example. So is Microsoft Surface. There is nothing more "whitelabel" about these products than there is about the MacBookPro.
What exactly did you dislike about CodeIgniter? For me CodeIgniter is probably what I'd use if I had to go back to making PHP applications so I'd like to hear any reasons you had against it.
I agree with you. But I think the majority of fb users would disagree.
IPad - please don’t ding while you and I are asleep
You probably got down voted because you seem like a dick, rather than a helpful, nice, encouraging person.
I find them quite convenient, and prefer using my smartphone to photograph a QR code than trying to tap out some arbitrary URL.
What makes you think he was the one who downvoted you? You could easily have asked him about his technical decisions without being a jerk.

Besides, this was a personal project, probably created without the intention of eventually open sourcing it. If he only ever intended to use MySQL, and portability across RDBMS systems wasn't a goal, then it's fine as it is.
Theory Explains the Quantum Weirdness of Exotic Materials
We did this too. Even if you know nothing about cooking it's easy to find simple and tasty ideas for lunches (as I found out), it's much cheaper than eating out, and it's good for the team. But growing from 6 to 12 people made it too much of a chore to shop and cook for so many.
When RMS Titanic turned, too late to avoid the iceberg, the glancing collision breached 5 of 16 watertight compartments, and she could only survive at most 4 flooded compartments. Some speculate if she had reversed her engines and only struck the iceberg head-on, she would have remained afloat, though crippled.

I don't know that Nokia could have executed such a "head-on" for their crises, though the "burning platform" memo is regarded as a mistake by many. Would you take your analogy that far - Nokia could have faced the problem head-on?
I'm not sure I'd agree he was arguing for the irrelevance of anecdotal evidence, only that it has a disproportionate impact when considered with statistical evidence. Rather than censoring the anecodotes, the better solution is to simply point out the danger of overweighting them.

The purpose of a site like HN is not to arrive at some kind of imaginary consensus, it's to inform and engage people in meaningful discussion. There is no winning side to be on, and no ultimate arbiter of truth. By downvoting as you do, you rob the site of content in exchange for an illusory sense of victory.
Also, I can't believe the top post for this article is by someone who, a little further down one of the threads, basically said "eh, actually I take it all back".