skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
WARNING: negative feedback ahead.

Disclaimer: I'm a pro photographer (as in I get paid for taking photos), and I had a few exhibitions.

A few important points, if you want to become a good photographer:

1) My philosophy with most art teachers/book writers is - unless your art makes me say "wow", you can't teach me much. There are many truly great photographers out there. Dan Nguyen is not one of them.

I look at his photos, and most of them are properly exposed, somewhat properly framed, sometimes they have something interesting, but most of the time they are mind-numbingly boring and mediocre.

2) His idea of posting technical details next to a photo is not new, but, most importantly, it's completely useless. I remember when I just got into photography, I was looking at all the cool photos and I really wanted to know the f-stop, the exposure, the ISO that the author used. It took me about a year to figure out it didn't matter. Main reason being - you will never encounter that exact scene with that exact lighting.

Even if you magically come to that same exact spot, same time, same date of the year, magically frame the shot the same way, set all the exact settings, you will NOT end up with the same picture.

3) Photography is art - don't be a fucking robot. Play with the camera settings, they are really trivial. It shouldn't take you more than a day to figure out how aperture, exposure and ISO work.

4) Trying to replicate some cool photo online is a good learning technique, but you don't simply do it by replicating the camera settings.

5) Now the most important point of learning how to photograph well: STOP READING TECHNICAL GARBAGE. Sites like dpreview are full of "photographers" who endlessly discuss their gear, their camera settings, and then you look at their photographs, and they are fucking boring and lack any taste (just to be fair, there are good photographers on dpreview).

Stop it, and look at photos instead. You should look at hundreds of photos a day, that's the only way to develop your photographic taste. And try not to get stuck on user-submitted websites like photo.net or flickr, there's a ton of crap there. Instead seek the best photographers in whatever area interests you - street, portraiture, landscape, etc.

Go to your local store and look at the photo books (not the technical ones, art ones). You will be pleasantly surprised with the quality of photos.
Your argument works only if those who patent stuff are (i) better stuffers than most, and (ii) wouldn't have stuffed without patents. This is difficult to measure, because patents hinder those who want to build on your stuff (you want a cut, so it's more expensive to them). For instance, if ARM didn't have the monopoly over its designs, maybe people would step up and do the same work for free. The best analogy I can think of is free software, most notably GNU and Linux.

On the other hand, maybe ARM wouldn't have designed any chip at all. I don't think that would be a problem however. Technology tends to happen no matter what. Independent inventions of non-obvious stuff at roughly the same time are common. I don't know why, but it seems that when an idea is "ready", it just pops out of some earthling's head. (Citation badly needed, please.)

The idea to directly reward innovators is seductive, but I think it puts too much focus on the individual. Society as a whole doesn't need to reward something that would happen anyway. That would be a waste of resources. Not to mention the hoops you have to jump through to maintain an artificial reward system (the legal side of patents an copyright is quite expensive).
I worry that this sentence: "I freely admit that I've tried to "make lemonade" from what otherwise was a bad situation for Gittip, by publishing this piece and submitting it to Hacker News." is perhaps the most important here. It wouldn't be such a big deal if this was a rant against an established brand like a large technology company. But to target individuals and name names - only to then do essentially a complete 180 after one phone call - is problematic and perhaps everything that's wrong with the power of forums like this and twitter.
> Wow cit...I've been wondering if this exists for a year now

Then marvel at vim-surround: cs"', cs)(, or cst<foo>, or (Shift-)v select visually S <mytag>, and argtextobj: cia and daa. Those are the two plugins that I really miss on a stock vim.

[0] https://github.com/tpope/vim-surround.git
[1] https://github.com/vim-scripts/argtextobj.vim
Got A Theory, Build A "5-Ton" Prototype to Prove It
Have you ever invited someone to apply based on their HN presence?
Why women (or men) still can't have it all
A Fiddle World: Online Development Sandboxes
Any documentation on the restrictions? Commands like :set nu to display line numbers are not available...
Hackers Offer Free Porn to Beat Security Checks
Had no idea. Thanks for this.
Cool Sparklines and more!
> and some insist that it's all in the light and any camera
> will do.

This is really simple: given favourable conditions pretty much any camera will give you decent results.
The point of having decent camere is that it expands the boundaries of "favourable conditions" immensely.
Payoff for Efficient Cars Takes Years
Because almost every single widget is that way. I don't know what it is about Android, but it seems to encourage absolutely awful design. Maybe it's because Metro is very specific and sparse that WP is less visually offensive. Maybe it's the design tools available. I have no idea. But the number of Android widgets I've found that look even moderately good can be counted on one hand.
A bit ironic that he sarcastically referees to HN as "Hacker Noise" but then at the end invites people to discuss the post on it.
I don't know how things work in the USA, but in the UK, your references don't get contacted until after you're hired, usually on a probation period.

If the wage you're being paid is high enough, it could be worthwhile taking someone to court to claim it back, as they're effectively defrauding your company.
Because he's talking about the capabilities (what app developers are able to do to your home screen) of each platform.
Not at the moment. It supports most of the standard unix vi commands but not the enhanced vim ones as of yet.
Show HN: TapChat is mobile IRC done right
You've got to be kidding me. Catering to one demographic does not inherently disenfranchise the other. Its not sexist that I've never seen a woman in a Gillette Fusion ad (eta: save for at the end when oh MAN is her honey smooth!). It is not "reverse sexist" that there is a site addressing women's issues and experience in tech.
Reto Meier's tips for answering developers on the Play Store:

https://plus.google.com/u/0/111169963967137030210/posts/ZCku...
I think he/she is talking about the screenshots of the new start screen that accompanied the announcement. Personally, I love the current WP7 and I thought that the new screen ditched a lot of the simplicity and looked very busy and unattractive.
Hey, thanks for checking this out! I wrote this because it's the app I've always wanted, and would love to hear your feedback.
Right now 10-year T-Bills are pulling about 1.65, and inflation is having a nice bounce between 1.7 and 3. Let's even it out at 2 - either way, yes, you're losing money on ultra-low-risk investments. All you can hope for is to reduce the wages of inflation on your balance sheet.

BH annuity is not a bad deal, but losing 2% of your income a year will sound tolerable until about year 5... =)

If you retire mid-twenties on $5M, there's no way you'd make it through 70 on that, if you did nothing else active (read: risky) to increase your income.
Any chance for iPhone support? I am kind of tired of my weird znc + colloquy setup.
I don't think anyone is arguing that it's impossible to create anything worthwhile on an iPad, it is however obvious from the design of the product that whenever there was a conflict between power/features for creators and convenience for consumers that convenience won hands down every time. There's nothing wrong with that, there's clearly a big market for that.

On the other hand , describing the iPad as a good computer for application development because you can SSH to a remote server and run VIM seems a little stretched, by that standard the Nokia that I had in 2002 was a dev machine.

There's a reason that Apple continues to support and develop OSX.
But you did not cover the critical issue; you have not distinguished between www.sex and www.sex.com:

"the problem. And it extends to words and concepts that weren't created by anyone living today. Sex, love, laughter, babies, books, songs, cars, poetry, etc. These things shouldn't be TLDs, they're too important, too basic to life. Not the kinds of things any company, for crying out loud, should be able to claim to own."

Why is it such a tragedy if poetry is a TLD but poetry.com is no problem? Why is unthinkable that a company could own .poetry but no problem if the same company owns poetry.com?
Back in 2000, I finally switched from Netscape to Internet Explorer because DoubleClick's JS hung Netscape. When a decent number of sites work in one browser but not the other, I go look for another browser.
IOS-ification is Coming. Why It’ll be Good For Us
There's a mobile-ready web interface that's not quite finished, but if you'd like to try it just visit https://your.tapchat:8067/chat in your phone's browser.
JavaScript Closures Demystified
Ability to edit files off Box / DropBox is a big plus. Is there a mailing list or something like that (some RSS feed for a development blog) where I will be able to see when updates are made? I would like to start using this as soon as features like vertical column selection / yanking and pasting as well as line numbers are put in (the nature of the files I have on DropBox call for those features :|)
Microsoft Is the Most Exciting Company in Tech, Hands Down
If startups want to be acquired, they'd never make such a policy anyway, because that makes them less attractive to the acquirer (who, after all, may only acquire them to prevent competition).
Then you can try ROX (rox-filer) which try to recreate in a modern way, the Risc-OS experience. And it's a damn fine file manager, anyhow.
Software patents exist only in the US, those business will do exactly what they've always done in the 90% of the world that doesn't have them.
Even saying it is about the average valuation doesn't take into account the age of the accelerator. This is the real problem I see.

What is the average valuation of each class after the same time period? For example, the first class of YC vs. TS vs. SC vs. etc. after 1, 3 and 5 years?

This would show us the speed of growth of each accelerator compared to other accelerators when they were the same age. Even if YC has a higher average valuation now there might be an accelerator out there that has better valuation growth, but it is hidden because we are comparing baby apples to apples almost ready to harvest (sneaky apples to apples reference).

So yes average, but average comparing apples to apples.

Oooo... time for an apple :)
Thanks for sharing - wonderfully insightful post

>> I've changed from the "anything goes" type boss to the "I'm going to be the asshole" over the past six months.

Is this really, absolutely necessary? I'm not sure I could/would.. but that might change once I get on with my start-up? I'm always for doing things differenly -- there are enough companies that "thrive" on a-hole management.
well, that would be stupid
What are they? I've heard nothing from Microsoft aside from the fact that it's a cosmetic update on the start screen. Big deal.
Is Nvidia abandoning OpenCL?
Darpa's new 50 gigapixel camera
Mmmmm..... as someone who works for a huge school district with hundreds of schools with students running the gamut from poorest of the poor to richest of the rich, I can tell you they didn't LEARN this behavior from their parents. Rather, they have never been taught to NOT behave like that. Even those with decent parents will sometimes act like horrid little turds. The natural state of the 12-13 year old Middle School Child is that of a vicious, immoral monster. Most will eventually mature into normal, empathetic humans, but at that age, they're ALL terrible.

I neither feel compassion nor hate for them. I detest them for their behavior, and think what they need is some sort of long, unpleasant punishment (e.g. grounded for 4 weeks, during which they clean out the Augean stable) but this is not worthy of any permanent judgement.
Bad comparison on my part at some level.

Yes, I am a terrible VIM user. I have far more important things to do than to get good at using modem-age text editors. My efficiency comes from planning, not counting keystrokes.
Juliet Marine's "Ghost" Ship Emerges from Stealth Startup, Gears Up for War
also: http://omnipotent.net/jquery.sparkline/#s-about
My advice would be the flip side of the advice that I give to people who downplay their skills, which is "focus on telling concrete meaningful stories".

So, you could, when interviewing, focus on bringing out discrete meaningful stories. Ask for those kinds of examples. Ask what they're proud of. Create a space in which they feel comfortable saying positive things about themselves. Maybe lead by example by talking about part of the organization that you think is awesome.

Instead of asking "what are you good at?" you could ask for things like "what do you most love doing?" Also, asking for numeric ranking "1-5" of technical skills might be a little too aggro/macho.

Don't downplay the plural "we built this" as less important as the singular "I built this" Some people are just better at sharing the credit than others. If in doubt, ask for clarity.
In emacs, we do the same with C-s (search-forward) and C-r (search-backward). It is highly recommended to "jump" to the exact text you want, rather than fiddling around guessing and correcting numerical character and line jumps. Just a bit of support from the dark side!
You understand what the fraud being perpetrated is right?

Citi passed fraudulent mortgages on to investors. That is, either homeowners or third party mortgage brokers fraudulently obtained loans to which they otherwise would not have been able to get. The victim of this fraud is not the homeowner, but the lender.

Citi became culpable only when they bought loans that a prudent man would have recognized as obtained through fraud and packaged and sold them as securities.

Now if you're willing to send officers of Citi to jail for complicity in a fraud perpetrated by and large by home owners and small time mortgage brokers, who also were the primary beneficiaries, you've got to be willing to send them to jail as well.
So what to do? Design for failure. (Politically, technically, economically, can be applied everywhere.)

Yup.

On a similar note, the French response to Fukushima Daichi is rather interesting (France relies on nuclear generation for over 80% of its electricity):

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v481/n7380/full/481113a...

"The ASN has also come up with an elegant technical solution to get around the (universal) dilemma of how to protect a plant from external threats, such as natural disasters. The report recommends that all reactors, irrespective of their perceived vulnerability, should add a 'hard core' layer of safety systems, with control rooms, generators and pumps housed in bunkers able to withstand physical threats far beyond those that the plants themselves are designed to resist."

(And a mobile emergency force who can move in and stabilize a reactor after an unforseen catastrophic disaster that kills everyone on-site and destroys most of the safety systems.)

In other words, they now expect unpredictable Bad Things to happen and are trying to build a flexible framework for dealing with it, rather than simply relying on procedures for addressing the known problems.
I worked on a similar satellite, the nanosat-5 (1m3 size), which also used magnetotorque for orientation. Odd choice using arduino, I guess for buzzwords? Also it looks like they are using very little shielding. We used several layers of shielding and a very thick hull- close to a centimeter, and each module in the device had a separate hull. We also had a lot more sensors, including some pretty complex equipment (an electron spectrmeter, an auroral imager, a plasma probe...).

I really hope that commercializing space doesn't kill off the ridealong programs- I think there is a ton of potential in crowdsourcing this sort of thing.
Median is arbitrary. Why not 90th percentiles? Profit pays the bills.
Maybe "I'm going to be the asshole" is too strong. I meant to say that I'm the guy that says "no" to things. I'm going to be tough on people about code quality and process because that is what we are selling our clients. I would hope that my employees don't think I'm an asshole but at times I realize I get annoyed and just say "this is how we're doing it"
This shouldn't be in the least bit controversial; it's well known that a great many human characteristics are extremely heritable, and it would be absolutely shocking if none of these characteristics turned out to be helpful or harmful in becoming rich or poor.

But since you want sources, here we go:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21826061 "Genome-wide association studies establish that human intelligence is highly heritable and polygenic."

The other half, that intelligence is correlated with income, should be fairly obvious from everyday experience, but nonetheless here's a nice graph

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-yzQUAtWS_U4/TZYCh68KW8I/AAAAAAAAAd...

Next up I will provide citations for the fact that the sky is blue, since we seem to be on a prove-the-bloody-obvious kick today:

"Human color vision and the unsaturated blue color of the daytime sky", Glenn S. Smith, American Journal of Physics, Volume 73, Issue 7, pp. 590-597 (2005).
My first 'real' program was drawing a house in LOGO when I just turned four. I still remember my dad explaining me the concept of angles because I really wanted to draw a roof.

When I tried to rewrite that program 25 years later and downloaded a LOGO interpreter for OS-X; when it came to clearing the screen somewhere out of the vague recesses of my muscle memory the 'CLEAR' command just popped out.

It was still magical.
Regarding emacs pinky, many people find remapping CAPSLOCK to CONTROL helps quite a bit. Here is one popular xmodmapping:

remove lock = Caps_Lock
remove Control = Control_L
keysym Caps_Lock = Control_L
add lock = Caps_Lock
add Control = Control_L
Sublime Text looks interesting. I am going to check it out. Thanks.
I've said it on the previous Dave Winer's article about it. I really don't get what's the big deal as long as the all the previous TLDs continue to exist and operate just like they have been operating.

Some enterprises will have the new fancy TLDs, good for them. The rest of us will have to keep going as we have been going (we might even get access some of the new TLDs.) I really doubt that, for example, having my.book will be a significant competitive advantage versus having mybook.com

What am I missing? (Yes, greedy ICANN is evil, but what else?)
Simple hacks are the best hacks.
A mixed portfolio can provide both a solid annual income and a hedge against inflation. $6M well-invested in your 20s means you don't have to worry about money again.
Life is a series of scenarios, each leaving the person slightly better equipped to deal with future scenarios or slightly worse equipped.

Small disadvantages multiply, as to small advantages.
And they don't all feel victimized by some oppressive system of sexism

I wonder, is there a non-patronizing way to be positive and supportive of the women who DO feel, if not victimized, at least frustrated by "some oppressive system of sexism"?
We'll find out tomorrow. :-)

https://www.gittip.com/about/stats.html

And thanks!
so cool. super awesome as-is. if you add evernote support i will go crazy w/ happiness.
But almost all assumed and accepted that they would have to make compromises that the men in their lives were far less likely to have to make.

What decisions is she talking about here?
Most people will never make $6M in their lifetime. The average college graduate will make less than $3M when it is all said and done.

If you can earn more, great. But the chances are exceedingly low to begin with.
I used Authorize.net at a previous employer, and don't remember the API being too terrible. We wrote a wrapper for it, and forgot all about it until we needed to add features.
It's worse than that; Google said that if they get .blog it will only be available to Blogger users.
Truly defeating spam in all its guises (SEO, commercials, daily offers, junk mail) is a pretty difficult problem. How do you recognize cleverly concealed data? Spammers constantly adapt to spam filters and new/pristine communications channels which catch on precisely because they are relatively spam free. Of course, spam filters also evolve, this kind of runaway adversarial co-evolution is what leads to systems which can effectively lie/manipulate perception, or detect such.
Classic Lachy.
": you need to be able to face a situation where _all_ you smart emergency systems fail. "

Totally agree with you here - Until recently, no nuclear power plan was designed such that it could survive failure of all their emergency systems. Hopefully, with the negative repercussions of Fukushima on the industry, engineers are rethinking their approach to Nuclear Power.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_nuclear_safety
Not sure I agree, unless the parents are doing something harmful like indoctrinating their kids into a cult I think it's good for parents to impart skills and knowledge that they have.

After all, if the kid is interested in something else instead they have plenty of time to develop other interests. As a general rule though kids usually do pick up interests from their parents, pretty much every friend I know has some hobby that one of their parents introduced them too (Music , Computers , Cars , Photography etc).

If a parent doesn't create opportunities for the kid to learn about things that they might not get to do at school then they risk having a kid who marches through life with no passions or direction.
Earlier in the year, you could get a 12 month CD in Australia for almost 6%.
I think if you want to make something for the web, put up a video of the talk, or write and article as well.

I hate slides being put up, it makes people put stupid crap that doesn't belong in slides, in slides.
Why Women Still Can't Have It All
Live login required? Pffffft.
How Trip Adler Found His Idea For Scribd After Hanging Up On 1-800-ASKTRIP
I remember reading an article at one point about a study done on high school students. I can't remember exact details, but there was a program where students in areas with bad high schools could apply to be sent to better high schools. If I remember correctly, admission to the program wasn't merit based, but first-come, first-serve. The study compared the students who got into the program, and the students who applied but didn't get it. The kicker? Their performance in school (I don't remember the metrics, though I agree its a relevant difference whether its GPA or standardized test scores or something else) was about the same.

The takeaway point? The ones applying were the ones who were motivated to learn (or had family who encouraged them to take education more seriously). Those that want to learn, will learn.

Not to be discouraging, (as I read this article and found it incredibly inspiring), but the students in these classes are the exceptionally motivated, who stuck through this education despite the difficulties. The hurdle that must be overcome for this to have widespread implication is how we get more people to find that motivation.