skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
just for the record and to please the prospective downvoting mob, here are my experimental observations consistent with the cern experimental domain in order to warn any non-westerners:

"The cost [...] has been evaluated, taking into account realistic labor prices in different countries. The total cost is X (with a western equivalent value of Y) [where Y>X]

source: LHCb calorimeters : Technical Design Report

ISBN: 9290831693 http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/494264

about integrity:

http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1127343?ln=en
Rehuddle - Super simple conference calling
Personally I don't get the argument that you can either have speed or well architected systems.

Yes, if you build features outside the scope of the system to meet unforeseen features it's just scope creep and a waste of time but if you take a few minutes to actually think before you code the actual implementation time is usually on par (assuming you're not working in system that has allowed bad programming practices to take place; isn't DRY, etc.).

I've worked with people that copy and pasted half of their code base on a few occasions. Whenever a change needed to be made to a few of the more complicated systems you had to give it to the original 'rockstar' developer because he was the only one who knew every location it was used in the system.

To me it's just a sign of laziness. The effort to introduce design patterns and keep your code DRY is trivial. Just keep scope in mind and don't build systems to anticipate unforeseen features.

I do get the whole MVP we need to get it out the door argument but usually if you hire people who know what they're doing and aren't just an inflated ego (we all know those sorts of developers) it's really not a problem because they'll take the few minutes to think before they implement.
Competitor analysis with simple Excel tools. Hm.. I like that ! I wonder if you could build a whole Excel application for social media tracking. There are companies out there that are very successful in this space. Perhaps with your superior technology you could outdo them!
My step-mom charges about $5000 a room (depending on a few factors) in Arkansas. I would expect that to be a bit higher elsewhere.

That said, that involves her coming out and taking measurements, looking at the house, and really spending quite a bit of time with the customer. As stuff arrives she'll show back up and actually make sure it is installed correctly and make necessary adjustments.

This process is a bit less hands-on, and as such it can ONLY compete on price. You're paying less because you're getting less really.
As a commenter on Engadget pointed out:

Engadget - You linked to an article at CNET, but there I only read:
'Microsoft may consider maintaining a price gap for its Surface products to give hardware partners some competitive breathing room' [..] "Wang said that a Surface tablet priced at $199 would have a big impact" [..] Indeed, Surface pricing is a mystery.

You see, they said quite the opposite of what you mentioned in your article. CNET says:
MS considers selling the Surface tablet at a normal price, (maybe $400-$600) so Acer, Lenovo, ... have a chance to compete against it. They won't subsidize it, else they only hurt themself, and in the end MS will be the only Windows RT tablet manufacturers, because Acer, Lenovo will ditch Windows RT because they can't compete with subisidized prices.
Next time check out apartmenttherapy.com and curbed.com. They both do an awesome job of showcasing homes with great design, I've used both for ideas in designing mine.
It looks like most of the folks in the Haskell reddit community are taking it with good humor; I read that comment as a wry tweaking rather than as outright dismissal. Language nerds at play, fun to watch.
>However, newspapers typically lose money on these subscriptions since the cost of producing and delivering paper outstrips the revenue.

That just seems like a silly definition of "lose money" though. Like you get income from the subscriber, and income from the advertisers to show ads to that subscriber, but only one is counted against the costs? Doesn't make sense.
Garbage and blog spam.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-57491529-92/dont-price-surf...
Microsoft Surface RT to cost $199.99
I'm on an internship through my University, writing a report for my current employer (as a requirement of said internship program) about their current centralized version control solution (Perforce) and comparing it to a distributed one (Git). Finding sources explaining why Git is "better" is easy, but finding any one arguing the other side is proving to be incredibly difficult.

Are there simply no benefits to using a centralized system, or is no one bragging about them like all of these Git fans?
And that's the type of reaction extremetech is going for as well with their headline, photo, and all. I wonder if the author was actually as angry as he wants his readers to be.
$200 seems low, but that might would it take to build marketshare today. Plus, Microsoft has experience selling their hardware at a loss with the XBox. I wonder how Apple would react to this.
I find it fascinating that people think Crowdfunding isn't working, and that the only way to 'make it work' is to stick with the people who are already doing it on a big scale.

Crowdfunding will work on two levels: one, because legitimate companies and investors will find each other, regardless of size, history or 'accreditation'. two, because of retail investors. Some retail investors will take a bath. There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth. But that hasn't stopped stock market investing or real estate investing.
It looks like it would be easier to bruteforce fixed RC4 key than 10000 iterations of MD5, especially due to known weaknesses of RC4 key schedule.

Name of target software in Program Files is interesting nevertheless. Probably it's mentioned in the encrypted code/data.
Paypal, Amazon and WePay are the only solutions I've found for marketplace-style payments.
Depends on the court ruling on the matter. Here's a case where a single comma cost $2 million.

http://heideas.blogspot.ca/2006/08/case-of-2000000-comma-and...

Here's a choice paragraph:

The CRTC lawyers, "armed with the rules of grammar and punctuation" decided
that a comma setting off an adjunct clause from a conjoined structure
necessarily gives it matrix scope, and if Rogers' contract lawyers didn't know
that, too bad for them.

From a court's point of view, I'm sympathetic to the idea that contracts should be read as they are written as much as possible. The shear erosion of contract law if psychological intent delivered by testimony overruled the written word of a contract, not to mention the cost to the court system of hearing all that out, makes me cringe.
I feel like there are some people who go overboard on the formalities of commenting (specific format, etc.), but in general I can't think of one instance where I've thought "man, I wish I (or someone else) hadn't spent time explaining what this does".

I even find that when I write comments to explain what a specific method is intended for, it helps me avoid violating the single-responsibility principle. If I clearly spell out what I'm trying to accomplish, it helps keep me focused.

To those who say that the code should be elegant enough to be read on its own, there are some cases where the business logic involved is really what needs to be explained. At the same time, what is elegant and concise for you may appear obfuscated and confusing for someone else. You may argue that they should know all the techniques that you know, but that's just the reality of working with others sometimes.
None of our front-end developer positions require knowledge of any server-side languages. I suppose it would be an advantage, but it's certainly not something we look or advertise for (example of a recent front-end role we recruited for http://goo.gl/ZP6ZL [howareyou.com])

Interesting question though and I look forward to seeing some of the responses.

[Edit] I just asked one of our front-end contractors and she said it's not usually a requirement but most job advertisements she has replied to have said it would be desirable to at least know one (depending on their stack). So, I stand corrected.
How to make sure it doesn't fall apart later.
It is written so beautifully that the "code" part of these thoughts can be substituted for many other things: design, engineering, life etc.
Ask HN: Developers: How do you explain to people what it is you do?
I try to explain what I do to people in a way they can understand. Rather than go into rote jargon about writing code and making objects extensible, I tell them that I have puzzles and tell a computer how to solve them as efficiently as possible. I think that sometimes gets through, but I feel like it still misses the mark.<p>So how do you guys do it?
I took it as more of a nod to the old emacs joke (probably told by a vim user): “Emacs is a great operating system; too bad it doesn’t have a decent editor”
You're attacking a strawman. OP never said that any new syntax is bad.
Coursera just started their algorithms course, Its well organized and practical. They use Java.
Obviously one can make too much of bad grammar and spelling and misjudge an applicant, but there's another angle to this -- good grammar and spelling send a clear signal that the applicant probably reads a lot.

One cannot easily learn good English grammar and spelling by rote, because there are too many pitfalls and exceptions. My favorite example is "I before E except after C". It turns out that more words in a typical dictionary violate this rule than obey it. My next favorite example are those who, over the years, have written me to comment on my ... choose one ... Web site|sight|cite. (This specific example shows the risk of relying on audio media rather than print.)

I recently visited a bookstore and saw this poster: "The Tragedy of Illiteracy -- now available as an audiobook."

By reading, one grasps the subtleties of grammar and spelling through example. More reading, more lexical seasoning.
>Always back up before tidying up.
I liked this piece of advice, it's a lesson we all hate to learn.
That was the idea :)
Authors get compensated when their books are lent out through the Kindle Direct Publishing system too:

2.3 KDP Select Fund. We will establish a fund on a monthly basis and you will earn a share of that fund for each of your Digital Books included in the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library Program.

https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/help?ie=UTF8&topi...
Blind mice gain vision with retina ‘encoder’
Certainly. But it does ensure that access to your server does not entail access to historical numbers.
Mobi Lens: Universal photography tool for mobile phones, tablets, and more
I tend to get a bit upset if code has comments that basically just describe what code is doing rather than why. Stuff along the lines of:

// Increment the total
total++;
// Execute our SQL query
var result = query.execute();

Seems to happen a lot with developers who use comments to "sketch out" code (not a bad thing) and then leave the comments in place when the actual code is written.
This attack actually wouldn't work against Google if you are using Chrome due to its built-in hard-coded HSTS list.

http://dev.chromium.org/sts

http://www.rodneybeede.com/Protecting_against_MITM_and_sslst...
It's important that rapid, even numerous, security updates are never seen as a bad thing, because that would provide incentive to choose the obvious alternative for the sake of appearance, despite the actual reduction in security.
In a valley of VC clones, Google Ventures does more than just write checks
Cool idea, it will be interesting if they can make their process scale while maintaining quality.

Another route they can go down is making the service very cheap and instead making money on partnerships with furnishing manufacturers. It would be awesome to just upload your floor plans and be able to "visualize" how products will actually look in your living room.
Fellow HN-ers, this is my close friends personal project that he is trying to get funded with his sister. This is their first time trying to do anything of this sort, invent anything, or get funding, and we would really appreciate your help. Only if you like the product and want to give it a try, of course! :)

Thank you for listening!
There is technology behind it, Amazon only lets you lend book once and only to one person. You can't read the book while the person you lent it to is reading it. The lend period expires in 14 days. So the lending is pretty limited compared to a physical book. About the only thing good about it is that you automatically get the book back in 14 days. I'm still waiting on some physical books I have lent to others to be returned...
"It's happened before. A college education used to be a rare thing. It was so rare that having one guaranteed you a job. But as incomes rose, more and more people started going to college. A bachelor's degree isn't exceptional anymore; it's expected."

This is a pretty common notion among those who have gone to college or are planning to. It's also definitely not true. While the latter part is, college degrees are often expected, I don't think anyone can frame ~30% of the adult population as any sort of overwhelming majority.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/03/Education...

That said, the relative effects of the consistent increase in supply of college educated adults has clearly had an effect on the job market, and Bachelor's degrees are increasingly used as filters in hiring where they may not have been before, but it's fairly common to take this data point and extrapolate into unwarranted places, like arbitrarily reducing the number of people who go to college to enforce scarcity.
In some jurisdictions it isn't possible for creators to disclaim all their rights. In those cases something like WTFPL (or, in a more tasteful manner, CC0) is necessary.
What I'm asking is for documentation that authors get a commission on a one-time lend between Kindle users (the type of lend facilitated by LendInk). I have learned that KDP Select authors get a commission per lend but that may be limited to lends from Amazon to Amazon Prime members.

Edit: Specifically, it sounds like LendInk facilitated "Lending for Kindle" loans https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/help?topicId=A2JGI9S4...

> Will I receive royalties when customers choose to lend my book?
>
> Loans of digital books through the Kindle Book Lending program
> are not purchases and thus are not eligible to receive royalty payments.
Are women being left out in the startup world?
Suddenly regular expressions felt so readable.
You will pry the flash plugin on my transformer from my cold dead hands. (At least until the websites I use move away from it, which hasn't happened yet)
Those are great books, but I can't help feel that the title should read "These books will [indirectly] save our startup [through referral fees]".
Saved it with affiliate links, apparently.
Charge back from credit cards works just fine, too. And using it with either banking system gets you in rather serious trouble if you're found to abuse the charge back mechanism.

Safe payment methods are advance payment (since there's no reason to allow someone to charge back an order they've explicitely placed at their bank) and cash on delivery (though that's expensive). Which is why some large merchants (eg. Neckermann) restrict payment options to these two for the first transaction.
Small point: Zach assumes that Facebook's current conversion rate properly estimates App.net's prospective conversion rate. Incorrect.

App.net's users have /already/ paid $50 for membership, so their userbase will be more likely to (1) have expendable income, (2) feel comfortable buying digital products, and (3) feel comfortable buying products over the Web.

As such, you can expect App.net's prospective conversion rate to be (much) higher (cf. iPhone vs. Android).
Since the host was getting hundreds of take down notices I suspect that somewhere on the not disclosed list were in fact publishers. I'm willing to take that assumption on faith unless you have a copy of the list and there are no publishers on it?
What I mean to say is that as a newspaper subscriber, you've never really paid the full cost of what it cost to write, research, produce, package, and deliver a paper to your door.

It's a loss leader with the assumption that print ads would make up the difference and then some.
In the article they say that a typical interior designer can cost between 5k-10k. Although, a typical interior designer probably does a number of in person visits and oversees the actual installation. It looks like at this point, the website is just providing detailed plans.

Regardless, this is pretty genius. I can see this working really well with the bachelor crowd. They may have a little extra money, but don't necessarily care for high end and expensive interior design. Additionally, they are more than capable of painting some walls and moving some furniture, they just need advice on how it should look.
> Hopefully the next Android release will complete the built in account switching.

This is definitely coming up: http://phandroid.com/2012/08/02/androids-multiple-user-accou...

Although, that means a 6 month wait at best :-(
JustGage - JS plugin for generating SVG gauges
> I've met a few senior level programmers who frown on detailed commenting (or commenting at all).

If they express those views, I wouldn't call them senior.

Commenting is necessary to express invariants, and to summarize complexity that would otherwise require each reader of the code to understand the code itself in depth.

Those are actually closely related things.

Very few languages are capable of succinctly expressing sufficiently detailed invariants. Some are better than others -- maybe they support Maybe monads instead instead of possibly-NULLs. However, it's rarely possible to express -- purely in code -- what the code is supposed to do, what the input is supposed to be, and what the output is supposed to be.

Failing to express those things means that any future reader/maintainer will be forced to trace your code, in its entirety, to reverse-engineer how it is probably supposed to work. In many cases said maintainer can never know for sure without tracing your code and ALL code that calls your code -- otherwise, any change to that code could break undocumented behavior that other code relies upon.

Anyone who advocates against comments is justifying laziness, and they're wrong. The only supportable argument for not commenting is if a language is sufficiently powerful and succinct enough to express all the invariants normally expressed through comments, as well as being readable enough to permit a future maintainer to understand the design of the code without requiring them to spend an undue amount of time studying its inner mechanics.

I'm not aware of such a programming language.
Virgin America Flights Now Let You Register To Vote
I do agree that that's the true vision of the flying car, but I think there's still room for something that is more car-like than the vehicle in the article. Something that functions more or less like a car for short trips but could replace freeway travel with air travel. And which requires considerably less training/certification than an aircraft.

Still not an easy problem. Closest is probably the doomed Moller Skycar. Once we have self-driving land-based cars (and widespread mainstream acceptance of them), a lot will open up since we could relieve the burden of human control.
On a german keyboard \ is not just "a single keystroke". What a pain -_-
Is Paypal considered a marketplace-style payment system?

Two other newcomers are BalancedPayments.com (Gittip.com which has been getting some attention on HN is using them now) and BancBox.com . I have not used either but they are on a shortlist for a project I'm working on.
Sure, there are tons of benefits to a central repository. I think that's actually what most people want from a VCS (IMHO). And you can set up policies that make Git act more like Perforce (but not so much the other way around).

The primary reason I switched my last employer from SVN to Git is because we frequently found ourselves in merge-conflict hell. Our workflow under Git was really very similar to our workflow under SVN.
The more Scala code I write, the more readable the Scala code of others becomes. I don't think that Scala is intrinsically any less grokkable than historically-mainstream languages, it's simply that most devs have not been exposed to FP in any significant way (that describes me) and it takes some time to get your head around it.

It always strikes me that the IDE/tools complaints have a high degree of FUD-spread to them. I've had good luck with both Intellij+Scala plugin and with the Eclipse plugin. And yes, my code is in production and is substantially more complicated than "hello world".

I -love- SBT and I detest the XML-hell at the heart of Maven projects. As you say, to each their own.

Scala is a gateway drug to FP, which, given my newly-acquired prejudices is a good thing. But that said, you still have the vast universe of Java libraries at your disposal, and if you really want to, you can use Scala in an imperative fashion and still get a Java-with-fewer-warts experience. I've not been following the Java 8 roadmap very closely, but with each new release the language seems to get more complicated and uglier, with patch upon patch, a list of which, if stacked end-to-end, would stretch from Chicago to New York and would fill three Library of Congresses and many other Standard Metaphors. It's been a joy to work with a language without all that legacy rolled into it.

You're right about the compiler, though for me it's not a huge issue. My builds take a minute or two, not tens of minutes. You're also right about the docs being weak at this time. There are definitely trade-offs either way in the Java vs Scala decision. For my purposes and my skillset, Scala is a sweet spot with Python a close second.
Hi enjo,

Our decorators typically charge between $600 and $2250 per room, vs $5,000 - $10,000 for traditional decorators. We do want to offer affordable prices to our users, but we're not trying to compete only on price. We also give users the ability to work with top decorators from all over the country (and soon, the world). We've talked to a lot of users who want to work with great decorators outside their local area and don't have an easy way to do that. So while users will get less time with our decorators, they still get fantastic results.
Multi-touch being used before the iPhone
I prefer code where I can skim the comments and see the major plot points, at a glance.
The Standing Desk
Right.

You did a great job of noisily pointing out that the parent is noisy, without generating much if any signal yourself.

You don't have to provide a conclusion, just presenting a theory about how to apply those data points that you keep rattling off would be something constructive, a starting point.

Thing is, that would be hard and expose something you created to criticism. It's much easier to simply sit back and poke holes in someone else's flawed theory while alluding to an ability to construct a better one yet demonstrating absolutely nothing.
"I work with venture-backed startups to develop new technologies".

Then, there are usually questions about some or all portions of that, "What's a startup?", "What do you mean by venture-backed", etc.
I am surprised IKEA doesn't do this actually. Considering how ubiquitous there furniture is becoming, and that a significant portion of people pretty much use them exclusively for their furniture needs, seems like it would be a great thing for them to do.
Anyone trying to use this on a device with its own keyboard? eg. http://www.androidauthority.com/best-keyboard-qwerty-android...

Be interested to hear how usable you can make it. Whether you can remap keys or buttons to all the major modifiers.

Emacs 23 on the Nokia N900 is the reason I recently bought that phone even though Nokia is so uncool now and everything (works excellently, BTW).