skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I worked for a similar company (affiliated banking) that was trying to put a fresh perspective on personal banking. For hardcore technologist, I think the finance industry is extremely frustrating industry to work in. The amount of legislation (necessary or otherwise) seems to create an atmosphere of bureaucracy; not to dissimilar from you local government office. It's like the keepers of all-things-compliclated in finance, likes to keep it that way and compounds the problem of progressing positive ideas and methodologies. On the flip side, the amount of risk and fraud that faces these companies is mindblowing. We've lost tens of thousands of dollars to fraud in the blink of an eye. It's a tough world, and people don't get excited about "change" because it brings uncertainty to an industry that needs to be pretty damn certain. You can't make like Facebook, "ship fast and break things."

I have a ton of respect for what Simple is trying to accomplish. When I joined a competitive service about 2 years ago, BankSimple was the benchmark for comparing the "new guard" vs. the "old guard". Unfortunately, the old guard progressed faster due to established relationship of 10+ years. But, what really turned me away were falling market caps for major prepaid providers as more and more big banks returned to their core product offering (personal banking, not high risk investment banking) and explored alternative vehicles like GPR cards.

In any event, Simple is something the consumer market needs and hat-tip to Al3x.
Between the clipboard register ("+y "+p) and tmux's copy mode, I can move text from pretty much anywhere to/from the command line.
HWAAS Human workers as a service
I can connect, I just can't send messages, people appear to be offline, etc.
I know this sounds harsh, but from my own experience with friends and family (2 family members, 6 friends gone) committing suicide this was MANY years in the making; far before he had kids. That makes it a real shame; like many (most!) people, he shouldn't have had kids in the first place. I feel very sorry for them and his wife, this shouldn't have happened. And most likely could've been prevented. Especially with the kids in mind, this is a tough one.

Edit: changed wording out of respect
WS-* is big because it solves many, many problems. It's also big in the chatty sense because it's XML-based.

That does not make it a mess.

WS-Trust, WS-Federation etc. have already solved problems that OAuth 2.0 attempts to solve, which doesn't make it bad, as Eran states. Bad is subjective.

Whether someone chooses to use it or not depends entirely on the requirement. Choice is good.
same in china
Re your first point - this is a problem for PostgreSQL also.
"They're all down, Dave"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyKF2qd0-iQ
Inspect the source for both sites. I have to admit, I felt a little nauseous when I first read HN's markup & styling.
No, my point is that all the office employees I have known did master nested folders. For some assets a hierarchical structure is not ideal, I agree with that, but I don't agree with this "users are geeks or stupid" claim I see flourishing more and more here and there. In reality, users are either very clever or not interested. I have seen once a non geek do incredible tweaking to his Windows box in order to play CS. On the opposite, I know of very clever geeks who can't even fill a sign-up form, or cook eggs, because they aren't interested.
Oh man, you're right. Reminds me of when I wrote an essay about something by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and I kept calling him Martinez.
“We ran into these huge problems, and didn’t have generalists who could go up and down the stack,”

I'm sure this is a cherry picked quote, but it surprises me that he thought the technologists he hired had to do with any of their problems other then performance. Sites like Reddit/Digg/HN live and die by the community they frame. The communities seem to accept an unusually high down time. As Reddit started becoming more mainstream it benefited from segmentation. HN, has benefited from a foundation of considerate users, which are given more privileges then newer users. Digg allowed bad users to dilute good users until good users broke down and decided to seek refuge outside of the site.
There are "tons" of free apps on the App Store. Either completely, honest to God free, or ad-supported (usually from Google, so they're not paid by Apple)...
Wow. This is a big idea. I wish them success.
China donw
Cops shut down hundreds of Internet cafes in Beijing to save the generation
From what I've seen on the computers I've used, non-technical people seem to have far better filing systems in general. My mum and dad both organise their files and emails impeccably, whereas my file structure is so badly organised I can literally lose files for years before rediscovering them like an archeologist on a dig.
Huh, strange then, I really didn't find it that hard. Then again, the EC2 docs are pretty good.

Just decided with my boss we're going to roll with a hybrid approach. Spent too much time reading through all these standards and not enough time thinking and coding.
Your thought process is precisely how vendors like Apple are arriving at this conclusion. The problem with it is that you are assuming that your users are blithering idiots without any actual work to do.

The oh-so-quaint folder metaphor directly correlates to how humans do things in the physical world. I put my winter coat in a closet. My winter scarf, boots, hat and gloves are also in the closet, but in a box on a shelf.

My system may not be the same as yours, but it works for me. Dumping my winter stuff with all of my clothing on a pile, and affixing a blue tag on it to represent "winter stuff" isn't improving things. Installing a database-backed clothing management system like you would find at a dry cleaner in my house solves my organizational problem, but introduces alot of complexity and overhead.

Let's be real here. The reason that Apple is doing this is that have had success in delivering a dumbed-down API that makes their life much easier on phones, and prevents pesky third party software developers from doing dangerous things like allowing applications to talk to each other. They've decided to bring this innovation to the general purpose computer.
China down
I'm very glad to realise the two of you have never fought hard depression. Rest assured that he considered his children. It's not a rational decision.
I am a man and when I first had to do the laundry with our new washing machine I read the manual supplied by the manufacturer. I did the same with a lot of kitchen and household appliances.

So why in hell people whose daily jobs consist of interacting with Word and the computer and managing files are exempted of reading their computer's manual ?!
Nobody is asking them to learn a programming language (well, that fad died last week) or compute binary soustraction. Just use some folders (and learn a shortcut or two like ctrl+v, ctrl+c).

I admit good introduction material to "the computer" are a rare thing nowadays (there is a market!) and I remember the win95/98 introduction to the mouse was something good and an interactive learning software should be made available on every platform (I believe ubuntu would grasp billions of users if they provided something like that).

Not getting hierarchical storage is like... I don't know... not getting the subway schedule ? Or how to operate a tv remote ?
Are there misconceptions with what a CTO actually entails? I've not heard of a CTO that does any physical programming with respect to their job. This might be different in a small startup but my understanding of a CTO's role is to guide architectural and development goals of the company as a whole - and to hire great people to implement that vision. It sucks he would have to leave but part of me wonders why he thought the CTO role involved a fair amount of programming and why he wouldn't just move into a lead developer role as opposed to leaving entirely?
Get Free Intraday Tips for Stock Market
I could have been clearer. It's not the crypto primitives that are tricky - as people say, HMAC is a library. It's the need to assemble a irritating number of parameters and build a signature of the correct ones for each call, and provide nonces, and I don't know what else but it depends on me not to screw it up and its too big for me to be confident of that, and I'm not sure I trust library authors. Granted, it's not rocket surgery and there are libraries, but OAuth 2 for a client is literally 25 lines of code – look at https://developers.facebook.com/docs/authentication/server-s... – so I don't care if someone can implement HMAC in 12 lines of code.

My point was that OAuth 2 improved in a number of ways for clients and is at least as flexible for the issuer as OAuth 1, so I think the author is just disturbed by the trust of SSL for security, and the crappy, slow standardisation process, and ended up going overboard.
Dumping my winter stuff with all of my clothing on a pile, and affixing a blue tag on it to represent "winter stuff" isn't improving things.

It's a strict improvement (in the mathematical sense) if the tagging system allows you to view items with no tags.
Many agencies build their sites to work without JavaScript.
OAuth 1 is fine
Why Do Startups Do This?
Low price is correct, cheap price is wrong. Price is implied in the word cheap.
Portugal seems down as well.
I can't get on via the mobile client or on Google Plus, but I can sign in with an XMPP client or the web client on GMail.

If I send a message through XMPP, it appears in the chat window in GMail, so there's at least some actual connectivity happening. Messages aren't getting through or appearing in my logs though.

Edit: Messages are appearing in logs. My clients don't agree on who is online, though.
Referring specifically to something like iPhoto or iTunes, the general purpose or intended paradigm is that users don't have to manage file folders or folder structures themselves.

The whole idea is that users can't do it, especially when complexity increases (it's not a given that power users are great at this either) and that everything you have should just work (when you upload photos, it's organized by location date, etc., on import, automatically or music is automatically there).
GNU grep 2.12 changes behavior of recursion options, breaks existing scripts
And just because two files are in different folders you can't still tag them and make them part of the bigger concept?

In fact with folders and tagging you are getting the best of both worlds.
This depends on the company and stage it is in.

At HelloWallet, our CTO does indeed do some programming some of the time. Since we are still somewhat a bootstrapped startup, everyone that has the ability to help out does at some point. Is it the overwhelming amount of time? Well, no, but still...

In regard to architectural and developmental goals, that job is the responsibility of our Chief Architect...who also does a very substantial amount of programming as well.

TLDR; Titles are not always one-to-one with roles.
I know it isn't. That's not what i'm saying. He decided to have kids so he has to do anything he can, including any help from any medical office in the world to go on and be there for his kids. If that all fails, sure. But I bet he didn't do that. Like I said; I know kind of a lot of people who did the same thing; you didn't notice anything and most of them NEVER went to a doctor even once about it. I don't know the details of course, maybe he did. One of the suicides I know was a mother of my then girlfriend; she went in and out of clinics (lock up!) and couldn't be cured; she had everything from electroshocks to all anti-depressants; that was understandable. If you cannot live you cannot live. But at least 6 of the 8 I knew intimate NEVER sought help, asked a doctor or showed ANY signs; they were 'happy and smiling' one day, next day hanging from the ceiling. You cannot tell me that's ok if you have kids (or a mother). It's not rational, but it takes YEARS to form a 'tumor' like that and there are definitely enough rational times during that period you could seek help. And not have kids, because you do know you have this tendency.

Edit: I am pro euthanasia, but it should be discussed; most cases are fixable, the ones which aren't well aren't.

@erre below (I cannot reply): we agree, the moment itself definitely not rational (that's probably why so many people actually change their minds during the fall from the Golden Gate; there is a good documentary about that), however during the years and years of getting to that point there are rational moments. Your friend went to seek help ; that was rational. It does not have to be continues; it's just sad to see how many people do this without ANYONE actually knowing they even had anything like that on their minds. My cousin was an upbeat, happy guy; he was always the most cheerful and nicest person you could have around. He had tons of girls around him and a steady girlfriend. He went for a drive, cheerful as ever, from his house, left a note + a tape for the funeral. No-one had a clue. A forest ranger found him in his car. That's just weak, really, especially considering his note explained the years he spent coping with this and that he couldn't take it. The moment itself was not rational by any means, however the YEARS before and the show he put up was.
The 'Relativity' one is also quite nice: http://www.andrewlipson.com/escher/relativity.html
Dragon PC software now lets your voice control Gmail and Hotmail
I'm going to disagree with a sibling of my comment and suggest that you're not going to be able to "bang through this" at 4 hours a week over the course of a month or two. That comes out to 16-32 hours total, which is just a pitiful amount of time, less than a full time week of work. I just don't think so, unless you really are above-average. After all, it was the basis for many first semesters of CS at MIT, and most (even introductory) CS classes require more dedication than 4 hours a week, and are usually more like 10-12 weeks long.

It does depend a lot on your background, because there are large sections of the book that rely on examples taken from electrical engineering and mathematics. These could be tough going if you aren't that familiar with calculus, complex arithmetic, or simple digital circuits. I think it's the biggest flaw in the book, and others have criticized this as well.

That said, I really hope not to scare anyone off! You can skip things you struggle with and come back to them, but I do think at least reading the whole thing and attempting all of the exercises is really valuable (there are over 350 exercises, of varying difficulty).

So I would try it out, read through the first chapter and see what you think. You may not find it as magical and wonderful as others have, but you might. And you have to ask yourself why you're reading it. You might find that you don't want to bang through it as fast as you can, just so you can tell your colleagues you read it. You might find that it opens up a whole world of alternative programming languages, interpreters and compilers, and it might just be the opening of the rabbit hole, that you won't find the bottom of for years. If that's the case, the great Lisp books: PAIP, LiSP, EOPL, AMOP ... they're all waiting for you. At least, that's what's happened to me.
I'd still like to know the exact figure. its easy to find out how much was put in, but not so easy how much was generated. I'd love to know the total yc bottom line.
You're assuming the database is tied to each application; that's only one possible approach.

NEPOMUK (currently a KDE project) is an example of a database which is independent of any particular application. It stores RDF metadata about each file (and about other things too, like contacts, events, etc) and provides a common ground for any application that connects to it.

In the end, the filesystem is just a key-value database too...
Denmark is up.
How to Justify a Vacation When You’re Self-Employed
> Steam in my opinion is geared towards the PC desktop gamer not the (ARM) tablet* user, so Valve has nothing to worry about.

The problem is that the PC desktop-gamer market is shrinking, and may shrink further if a large population adopts WinRT tablets. I'm sure there are many edge-case customers out there that would rather pay <$500 for a PC in exchange for not having access to the few indie games they or their children purchased on Steam.

While most avid PC gamers will keep with the desktop model, this sort of fork in the road for PC buyers is in essence also a narrowing of accessibility for future generations of would-be PC gamers.
when closed systems collide, platforms change...
Air-Pumped Mascot Costumes Turn Autistic Kids Into Outgoing Entertainers
"Redundant" is not the same as "wrong".

(To pick a nit on a nit.)
Google’s Gmail SMS for Africa, a case of coming too late with too little
When last week I read on the internet that Google had launched Gmail SMS in Africa, I mostly ignored the news. I remembered reading something along the same lines some several months ago so I assumed Google PR was repurposing the ‘news’ or some international news organization had happened upon the old news and had decided to take it global with a “People in Africa can now…” angle.
How change makes a monkey of us all
Yes, a tablet doesn't work very well for writing if you don't connect a keyboard to it. Neither does a workstation.
Great interview, lots of good stuff in there. Another interesting point (regarding Amazon's cloud strategy):

You have IBM and HP and a whole bunch of other companies saying, "Ooh, wow, let's hang out with Morgan Stanley and sell them a computing cloud." Wrong answer. Now you have nine months of a procurement process, three months with the security department, four months with the IT group that's in charge of making the decision -- and Amazon just got another 200,000 customers.
Jeff Atwood got some, doesn't look like it worked out well:

"two of the 27" Korean $350 s-ips monitors arrived. They are amazing panels, but lack of hardware brightness control may be a showstopper." https://twitter.com/codinghorror/status/224213213649190913

"beautiful S-IPS panels but no hardware LED backlight brightness control times 3 is untenable. Oh well, experiment over." https://twitter.com/codinghorror/status/224217599746117632
"1% of apps were making 36% of the revenue."
Occupy the App Store.
Trees are so yesterday. I think we should move to cyclic graphs for our filesystems.
I've never seen anyone having trouble with putting little boxes inside bigger boxes.
Wait a few days and you will see the official post
Having fun with Guava’s String Helpers
He's been throwing his employees under the bus for over a year now. The site was written in PHP by PHP developers. Somehow that wasn't good enough so he pivoted and replaced them with C++ developers.

Anyway, I liked Digg. Then then newer users got involved and stories they didn't like got buried. The first time I used it the articles were technical and really interesting. Then it got political, stupid memes, etc. In its default state I think it was better than Reddit. Reddit is great but you have to work on it. Clean your browser cache and look at reddit like you're going their for the first time. What do you see? Crap from r/AWW, r/atheism, and r/politics take up all or most of the frontpage.
Ask HN: What are app developers buisness models?
Hello everyone!

I am not an app developer, and I have no plans of becoming one anytime soon. This question is just for my personal curiosity. I was just downloading yet another series of apps (read: addiction) from the App store and I was wondering - can someone who runs an iPhone app company give me a snapshot of their business?

How many downloads do you get for your apps each month, and how many paid developers do you have on your team? Do you outsource most of your work or design in-house? Are the margins on apps enough to allow you to run a business?

And, I guess most of all: do you enjoy your work?
Changing My Mind On Microsoft
The whys of religion vs. evolution
Honestly, if someone wants to sell me a database, I'd prefer they spend money on database engineers rather than on designers. To each his own, I guess.
Show HN: Music for Geeks and Nerds
Not for me, connecting using a 3rd party client isin't working.
Again, you're being rational. I completely agree with you.

Except that I have close contact with someone who suffers from depression, and I know it's very hard. She sought help, and is much better. But, during crises, none of this matters. You cannot argue with them, try to get them to see reason. Cause and effect just don't get through to them.

I know it's exasperating. My initial reaction was to get angry, to tell her the same "you know this and that", until I realised it was completely beyond her control. I'm very, very happy she got better, but I fully realise that if she had jumped out of a window at some point, it would not have been a rational decision; it would not have been "irresponsible" (the concept wouldn't even apply); and she would have sees absolutely no other course of action she would have been capable of having taken. It's very sad, and very hard to deal with.
Done, I wish you good luck
It does. Read the linked study. These are all non-free games.
10 Application Performance Tuning Tips
Your two examples are both forms of media that require content management to be manageable at scale. In many ways, for photos, audio and video, rich metadata is more important than the actual data. People use iTunes, iPhoto, Picasa, etc. Enterprises use SharePoint and Filenet.

My guess is that at least 80% of that kind of media is managed via applications using specialized apps using metadata.

The "other stuff" that you speak of isn't equipped with rich and consistent metadata.

Think of it this way. Your iTunes folders are exactly the same as mine, there is just a variance in the music that you have. Your photo application is very similar to mine -- the variance will be the degree to which you organize events and add metadata.

Other stuff is different. Look at a folder that you use for a specific project. The chances are, you have documents in there created by multiple people. You probably have scanned documents with no metadata. Maybe even spreadsheets with financial data or some code examples. Whatever you have, there is a high chance that it looks completely different from my directory in key ways. Even the metadata may be inconsistent -- I tag some files for searching and add spotlight comments on the Mac. Most of my colleagues do not. The ones that do don't use the same conventions as I do.

In the real world, I need to look through the documents about Project X, which was implemented in 2009 to plan for a refresh of the project. The people who were here then are mostly gone. If I'm relying on metadata, how in the hell am I going to find Project X documents? How do I find things when I don't know what I'm looking for.

In the physical world, we have drawers, boxes and folders. In the digital world, we have filesystems. That isn't going anywhere, even if Apple decides to drag many people backwards.
Pakistan also down.
Then unsubscribe from those subreddits and subscribe to those that appeal to your interests. Manicure your own content a little bit.
WOW your feedback is great, thank you all so much!
i experience with these types of people has been tht they're not failing to understand folders, they're going 'i dont like new things, therefore i refuse to understand this'
Article mentions that on 3rd page:

http://techreport.com/articles.x/23291/3

tl;dr; buttons work, just no OSD.

"Armed with a sense of how the buttons worked, I was soon adjusting the display brightness up and down, as well. I was able to dim the display to an acceptable level for the cave-like Damage Labs, and it wasn't even at the lowest possible setting."