skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
To be fair, the author is a fresh law school graduate. What does he know about whether legal practice is inefficient or not?

I was a summer associate at a large New York law firm, and the level of technology was fairly typical for corporate America. We had a centralized document management system that integrated version control and generation of deltas. We had a centralized, searchable repository of every document generated for every client, which we could use to avoid duplicating effort when doing new work. We did everything via Blackberry e-mail and Outlook calendaring.

Beyond the generic "you can always have better document management" I'm not sure what else there was to do. The major legal research databases (Westlaw and Nexis) have god-awful interfaces, but there isn't much law firms can do about that, since there is a huge barrier to entry in that market (the proprietary databases).

The fundamental problem is that nearly everything you do for a client is a one-off. It's 90% similar to what you've done for a previous client, but that remaining 10% is not very amenable to technological automation. Can you write some software that will cross-reference an SEC disclosure against the client's big pile of haphazardly-assembled internal documentation, which are handed over in God-knows how many formats? If so, then you're going to make some serious money. If not, then well that's how that graveyard of failed legal technology companies builds up.

The big recent advance in legal technology has been software to speed up document review, which leverages document search technology that has really improved (and obsoleted a large number of discovery attorneys in the process). Law firms have been quick to embrace such software, as well as services such as "in-sourced" discovery centers in places like West Virginia. To date, legal technology hasn't advanced much beyond that, largely because computer technology for working with documents hasn't evolved much beyond search.
That reminds me a lot of this comic: http://xkcd.com/1053/
Autodesk - Maya, MotionBuilder, etc. - all based on Qt
Sony uses it, at least the tools I've seen from them.
Probably lots of other big companies do, but somehow avoid or it's too cheap for them to use it. I'm still puzzled how they were able to survive that long...
If you're actually serious about security, the answer could be simply: don't attend DEFCON.

The quality is laughable, and in my opinion it is more of an "alternative lifestyle" conference than a "hacker" conference. The joke around my friends is "Wait....DEFCON has talks?" The best (or only good in my opinion) piece of DEFCON is CTF, though, which I would highly encourage everyone to try out. It's an incredible learning experience and a lot of fun.

Infiltrate in Miami is probably the best conference. Black Hat can be very good too. Personally I'm planning on going to DerbyCon this fall.
Law firms also have a direct incentive to win. Working more efficiently doesn't necessarily mean you have to work fewer hours. It just means you can get more done in the hours you do work.
Your developers use your app more than anyone in the world
When you start defining education & learning 'objectively' you can kiss progress goodbye. That we don't directly apply most of what we learn is a bad way to look at why we learn stuff in the first place.
Is there going to be https support? When I tried https the cert was for *.herokuapp.com.

I get kinda queasy whenever I find myself on a signup/login form that's not secure.
What I think the GP is getting at is that it may not be the case that these students are really that stellar at the other subjects that are failing algebra. It's just easier to get passed along. A teacher can more easily allowing gibberish to pass for an analysis of The Great Gatsby than let pass someone's completely wrong attempt at solving a linear equation. It happens. Everyone knows it; it's not a controversial thing.
It's a tough call.

On one end of the spectrum, you have a 100% direct elimination system. No cheating there (you lose, you're out) but you don't get a good feel for who is really the best since so few games are happening (log2(n)). Somebody can win just because they had an easy draw, even when you try to be smart with how you pepper seeds.

On the other end of the spectrum, you can do a 100% pool system: everybody plays against everybody else. The winner is very likely to be the best of all, but it's obviously an organizational nightmare that would take forever to complete (n! games). Again, here, there is zero incentive to lose.

This is why most professional tournaments operate with a mix of these two: a set of small pools first that leads into a direct elimination system. The trick is to implement the transition so that you always want to win all your pool games. Seeds are supposed to take care of this problem, but it's not a guarantee.
It falls back to current behavior of just having the headlights on in the case of an error like that. There was another article on these a week or two ago on a different website that specifically mentioned something like that.
Just made my morning, thanks!
In a previous job I worked for a firm that provided services to law firms and I can say that your assumption is missing some important information.

Law firms actually do spend quite a bit on technology to improve their practices. Many cases these days include so much documentation provided during the discovery phase that it's very difficult to process.

Some of the technologies that I personally oversaw implemented at law firms include, 1) document scanning and indexing, 2) electronic document conversion, 3) native file metadata extraction and indexing, 4) document culling (filtering large document sets based on metadata and extracted keywords), 5) document review (to find document relevant to the case), 7) electronic searching of legal records (like Lexis-Nexis), 7) fax servers (true, law firms use a LOT of fax)

While I agree that there are areas in which law firm technology can be improved, there is a fairly healthy market for software solutions to improve productivity at law firms (though much is aimed more at secretaries and paralegals than attorneys).
Instead of getting all riled up, it's fair to realize that there is such a thing as free market, demand and the corresponding motivation to supply. Folks write all sort of controversial opinions (there was this essay a few months back from a UCSD professor in Bloomberg about how CS education is overrated and the folks in CS don't make enough money).

My response to these kind of articles is: everything is fair game. If someone or some community thinks CS or math is not for them, it's their right. It's just that the demand will be filled up by folks who do believe in it (like folks from outside US which constitute a significant portion of most CS/tech firms inside US). Ultimately, if some folks in US realize they are losing too much potential out there by refusing to raise their bar, they might re-orient towards the demand. If they don't realize this/stuck in their stubbornness/incompetence, then they didn't probably deserve it anyway (or don't care).

Agreed that there is short term pain for folks who get effected by these kind of policies outside their choice.
What do pizza delivery drivers get paid? And that's for working after-hours.

I swear a friend of mine years ago was getting under $4/delivery? Might've misremembered.
I really think you should check out iDoneThis, and emulate their once a day email system. Parsing the responses would be a bit harder than what they do, but not a huge challenge.
Oh my god, NSValueTransformer. Why has this not been in my life the past two weeks. Same goes for performSelectorOnMainThread. Thankyou.
It is not surprising that people turn to exaggeration in order to stand out amongst the hundreds of other basically identical posts. For example all the $1 price and keyword spam in the forsale section.
Horses may be the source of humans’ oldest social stratifications
Not sure if the market is big enough, but there could also be an opportunity for servicing foreigners in those countries fearful of being quoted a 'tourist price'. e.g., you're in Xian and are going hiking at Huashan the next day. You'd like to have a package of supplies (drinks, snacks, packed lunch) delivered in the evening so you're ready to go in the morning. Some of things would be trivial to organise with a walk around the block, but others might be difficult because of the potential language barrier.
Plan a unique science convention
I always thought science have a very unique and tempting sort of charm. No matter if you are a nerd or not, science always has a very catchy nature. But if you would ask me then the best combination that science has ever made, is with fiction.
The value of the round-robin stage is to establish team rankings before the single-elimination stage.

You have some alternatives, but no silver bullets:

* Establish rank before the tournament (in which case you're just moving the problem)

* Eliminate rank and seed teams randomly (which makes it much less likely to see the best teams medal)

* Use random seeding and a double-elimination structure (as a fan, I dislike double-elimination, but I'm not sure what the consensus is on this)

* Try to mitigate the problem by playing matches consecutively (you'll need lots of courts), hiding the actual seeding until the single-elimination round (people will assume you're corrupt), or other creative methods (you probably won't catch all the edge cases, so throw in a rule that says "you must try your hardest")
"In economic terms, the worst outcome (forever making $40,000 while trying to “fight the good fight” while trying to stay on top any of various loan forgiveness programs) can be pretty brutal."

Interesting - when did making 40k a year become "brutal" ? There's people doing fine on much less. Sounds more like a case of "hey I made a big scary decision - so now I'm going to blog about it so that people can validate my decision for me. In the process I'm also going to point out how even in the worst case I'd be better off than 75% of the worlds population is. ".. come on...
Most people forget this, but you can put whatever you want in the ToS. Just because they put this in the Terms of Use, doesn't mean it will stand up in a court of law.
HOWTO: deploy a Flask-FlatPages website on OpenShift for free in 30 minutes.
It's not just not liking the name. Language influences thought and the phrase 'Homeland' rings up a range of Orwellian associations that are at risk of becoming reality, because of the name. People and institutions are always at risk of slowly conforming to the image others have of them. Names are not magical, but still powerful.
>It's not OK to take advantage of a naive person.

Let's not insult Dalton. Let's assume Dalton is a smart guy and not a naive guy, but that he's in an unfamiliar situation and that THIS SHIT IS HARD. It's easy to sit on the sidelines and judge. It's quite another thing to figure out what to do when: you're a VP at FB who wants to talk with Dalton about an aqui-hire (seriously, how do you do this?); and when you're Dalton and you receive an email from said VP asking for an audience [what kind of audience?!?! who knows.].

>They could simply have explained their position in a way more
>appropriate for the kind of meeting they had portrayed.

My original comment suggested that they couldn't. You haven't provided any evidence to the contrary (in fact, you've suggested my "dumb" route without saying why it's not dumb). Let's assume everyone is a decent person [AFAICT this is a reasonable assumption]: this is not a soap opera; this is trying to figure out how to have a tense conversation with someone you respect.

>Heck, that they kind of throw offers around like this is
>kind of a lesson for future targets simply to triple their ask.
>"Sure, $50MM all cash." Screw those jerks.

This is a very dangerous comment. Of course, there are anecdotes to the contrary, but, by and large, few think the way you suggest they do and I'd warn fellow readers to take this as an anti-pattern. Those playing the game who get to the aqui-hire level are very high performers, not sell-outs. To suggest that the aqui-hirers are fools from whom to part money or that aqui-hires are sell-outs is to demonstrate extreme naivete. Google's top line really can benefit by adding high performance teams and Google is willing to pay for it. This is rational. At the same time, an acquired CEO, such as Kevin Systrom, can be happy that his biggest, in fact existential, competitor is now his partner. This, too, is rational.

Above all, this stuff is both hard and subjective. Let's look at how to use it to be more effective, rather than how to tabloid-ize it.
There's something interesting about these cards - they're helping DEFCON people adopt a usable vocabulary for talking about harassment, an addition to our jargon.

Here's an example. A few days ago I was part of a Rio elevator full of DEFCON people when it stopped at a floor where a non-attendee woman was looking to get in. There was obviously no room inside, but one of the guys hollered at her to "get in anyway - you're a cute woman - we love women - this ratio needs to be improved!" She instantly disappeared. As the elevator door closed, another guy looked at him and said "dude, yellow card." Silence the rest of the way down.

It's a small thing, but I was the one DEFCON woman in the elevator, and I appreciated that verbal yellow card - in other words, while I was in the middle of mentally processing what had just happened and whether creepy attention would shift to me, a fellow attendee had quickly and effectively reset the tone of the elevator to basic civility. This is good.
This needs more visibility, the money quote is this :

"By my observations, there is a series A crunch. There are too many startups all clamoring for series A; it is impossible for everyone to get their next round done - there are many more seed stage startups being formed but the number of series A funding sources has not increased by the same amount."

I've seen this in the valley too. It feels like it is getting harder to step across from seed to series A.
Vic Gundotra: "I'm not interested in screwing over developers"
My experience is that tech conferences are mostly comprised of socially competent people. In a group of 20 people, for example, I might find that one person in a group is truly inept. So, to do the arithmetic for everyone, that's 5%. Unfortunately, that's often about the same percentage as the number of women present. :/

I won't lay out all of the problems with identification, getting the "socially inept" into one room and educating them, making sure that whoever is teaching this (as yet undefined) social skills curriculum is a good teacher, making sure the education sticks, etc... Instead, I'm just going to share that I don't think education of socially incompetent people will significantly improve my conference experience.

Things that help include:

* An assumption on the part of conference staff, speakers and attendees that women are there to participate, not just observe or tag along

* Swift, friendly, supportive responses from staff if verbal or physical harassment is reported - often made possible by staff who are aware of an anti-harassment policy, and are trained in what to do (LCA did a great job of this in 2012)

* Allies who help stop hostile, harassing and inappropriate comments if they occur

And there's other stuff that helps too. There's some good stuff in the "what can allies do" section of the Geek Feminism wiki.

Anyway, I appreciate your willingness to converse about this issue and hope I've shed some light on why people might be down-voting your comment.
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domai.nr is an excellent domain search alternative.
In Virtual Play, Sex Harassment Is All Too Real
Can't tell if this is a poem or not...
Magic Xylophone — HTML5 real-time motion tracking through the webcam
YUP.

And then, if you hit the domain at all in the next year, they will renew it and add it to their domain auction program, whereby you can bid (* (amount they've spent) 2) to win!

Not that I've, uh, had this happen, of course...
Not working with Windows 7 / Chrome 22.0.1221.0 dev-m.
It's fair enough, really: the US wanted exclusive spying rights.
How to Convert AVI to MP4 on Mac
This is an article to teach you how to convert AVI to MP4 with video converter for Mac with high quality and fast speed.
Explaining iOS and Android users' Wi-Fi browsing disparity
But you can get next day delivery if you pay for it, to anywhere in Canada. So... it's just as good.
What are you implying? If GoDaddy purchased every domain searched through their site, they'd go bankrupt. It's not a very sustainable business model.

Isn't the more likely explanation that someone else also thought of your excellent name and purchased it?
And I certainly don't disagree. I was simply clarifying how the players weren't being completely rational game theorists. If the tournament is viewed as immutable (as it should be by the players) then the players misjudged, misunderstood, or completely ignored the possibility of disqualification.
FNO 2012: Fendi Bag 2 Jours
I think his problem was that Facebook were negotiating from a position of strength (and were honest about that), and he didn't like it.

It really is odd how ecosystem developers always seem to act so shocked when they realize that the prime developer (the one who wrote the API agreement) turns out to hold all the power and control.
I am not a JS guy, but many in my org swear by ExtJS, especially because of widgets. Would be helpful to know whats bad about ExtJS.
Any particular location you have seen this in NYC? Haven't seen it yet
Game Development: The Engine (game loop)
Olympics 2012 – The most antiviral thing in the world.
Not every domain... but yes, that's what he's implying, and this is not the first time the claim has been made. I've had it happen personally, and so have others I know.
It's not a case of some chips though. To be sure, you would have to do it to every chip you used - and even then it'd be quite possible you've missed something.

Realistically this is about power rather than espionage. In a similar way to how the booming US displaced Britain of a lot of the major international cables around the turn of the 1900s, so China will want to try it.
Top Bitcoin Statistics
I don't think the author's suggesting GoDaddy purchase every domain, but it'd be reasonable to think they might determine the relative value of domains to purchase based on search volumes. Dubiously ethical, but technically straightforward and a simple enough numbers game on the business side.
Network Solutions and (I think) Register.com used to do this (probably still do), and claimed it was a "service" to prevent your domain from being snatched up by someone else before you got a chance to buy it. Of course, the fact that it meant you'd have to buy it from them was obviously just an unfortunate coincidence that they would avoid if they possibly could. I'm sure.

If I recall correctly, what they are actually doing is taking advantage of the grace period that is built in to domain name registration. They buy the domain, and will resell it to you if you want it within those 5 days, but if you don't want it, they will release it (at which point their own fees are refunded). So all you have to do if this happens to you is wait 5 days, and then you can buy it from whoever you like.

But yeah, it's a shitty practice, and you definitely should do your business through a registrar that doesn't do it.
Judge sides with HP, rules that Oracle must continue porting software to Itanium
Seriously? Are you so delusional? So, what's bothering this guy is that Facebook wants to pay him to buy what he's built? AND he can walk away from it? Spending an hour of his life in that meeting? That really gives raises the bubble to a new level. The one that this guy and a lot of the valley lives in.

_K
I think 40K could be pretty brutal when you've given up years of potential wages for law school to take on 150-200k of debt. And then most of your classmates are making at least 4-5x your income.

A lot of studies have found people's perception of wealth is relative, right? Making 25% what your pee/friends make would really suck.
You'd better become a carpenter!
Then, there is always a chance your son will become a prophet.
Just because its "Registered Through" doesnt mean that Godaddy owns the domain. Someone could easily just purchased it during that time and could be using Godaddy (they are the worlds largest registrar).

My dad's domain is registered through Godaddy. It says the same thing "You can view the WHOIS listing or use Domain Buy Service to get this name" when you search for it on their website. Also he is using their privacy service and the whois says this:

Registered through: GoDaddy.com, LLC (http://www.godaddy.com)

Domain Name: XMYDADSDOMAINX.COM
Created on: 01-Oct-03
Expires on: 01-Oct-13
Last Updated on: 02-Aug-11

Administrative Contact:
Private, Registration XMYDADSDOMAINX.COM@domainsbyproxy.com
Domains By Proxy, LLC
DomainsByProxy.com
14747 N Northsight Blvd Suite 111, PMB 309
Scottsdale, Arizona 85260
United States
(480) 624-2599 Fax -- (480) 624-2598
What are some good examples of successful large framework mergers? I can't think of any off the bat. It all sounds good in theory until you try to look at it in practice. 2 different languages, 2 different ways of doing everything -- graphics, networking, logging, etc. I like Qt and I like Android API but not sure how they two can live side by side without stepping on each other's toes or detracting attention.
Indeed. That's why equating pay to ability is pretty silly.
There can still be issues even with that. I watched an international youth tournament (CONCACAF u20 championships, I think) where the US and Canada? could each guarantee advancement with a tie, but could be eliminated if they lost. The first half had both teams trying a bit, but not being willing to push enough men forward to have a real chance. The second half was a joke, with the US midfield and defense kicking the ball around their own half for 20+ minutes at the end of the game, while the opponent stayed in their own half.
>They can tell him that they're interested in an aqui-hire before hand.

I thought that I covered this in my comment under the "dumb" option. I don't mean to be disparaging, but I'm not sure how else to take the suggestion, so switching to a not-great analogy:

Your suggestion is sorta like saying that people should walk into a car dealership and say "I want to buy this car. No, not that one. THIS car." It's a classic negotiating fail. If you know they're going to buy the car/company, you're going to milk them.

Of course, FB may think that THIS car/startup is absolutely perfect to acquire, but it's unrealistic to expect them to reveal that bit of info.
?!?!
Didn't this happend already last year or so. They sold it to Digia iirc.
Nope. There's a five-day grace period on domain registrations. They snatch the domain to encourage you to buy it from them, and if you don't, they delete the registration and get their money refunded. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_tasting
Someone should post this on the Defcon forums.
Netsol got busted doing this in 2008[1]; they stopped after receiving a great deal of backlash. It stands to reason GoDaddy would also stop once discovered, but then they've never been a company to back down from controversy.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Solutions#Controversy_o...