skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
While I am disappointed, I understand completely because I too had a co-founder die and it completely stops everything.

Most companies under the startup gun that lose a key member to death don't recover.

They did exactly what we did when we lost Brandt Canicci, they buried themselves in another unrelated project.

You're not sure why you're doing it, but it's all consuming. You're grieving, although you don't know it, and you just can't wrap your mind around anything but the only life preserver you have until you come to your senses and let yourself move on.

Kudos Diaspora, it was a valiant effort.
If you have a large code base with lots of UI then CSS becomes very brittle to change. Nest some UI elements that have never been nested before and something will break. One tiny change in one place affects something somewhere else. You have start making exceptions, a duplicate a rule here or maybe an !important there. Eventually you're got nothing but exceptions.

Personally, I think the concept of declarative styling is brilliant but the implementation in CSS leaves a lot to be desired. It's far more error-prone than necessary.
Periodontal Disease Causes Heart Disease
More importantly, there's a subset of diets which cater to the "I'm a lard-ass, how can I lose 200 pounds quick" crowd.

Other people are more worried about general health than getting their calorie consumption under 3000 a day.
That's the art of science. :)
It's portable to almost all languages and runtimes. :)
I had no idea about any of these, thanks for sharing!
2012-Election Poll
Poll on the 2012 Election
Having only limited experience in this department, the guess I would hazard (for non-huge companies, at least) is that the costs (marketing, distribution in some cases, infrastructure, customer support, legal, compliance) for operating a business that serves the Canadian market just aren't offset by the market size, which is only about a 10th of the United States.

What I understand from my Canadian friends is that all things internet- and IP-related exist under a drastically different legal framework, so the legal and compliance cost issues are non-trivial. Also, I could see some of these differences having an impact on the actual business models of some companies listed.
Is there something like that for jailbroken iOS devices?
Find Big Mail: Find Large Emails in Gmail and Free Up Space.
For Android, I use the Chainfire 3D driver + CF.lumen plugin. You need to have root though.
You can use "layout asm" to see the dissassembly as you step through your program. "layout reg" will then split the view and show you the registers at the same time.
Probably because the group of marketers using technology wants a name for themselves to convey the meaning that they're not normal marketers, but marketers that use and create advanced technology to make better decisions.
'screen filter' works great on phones with OLED screens.
Awesome list. While I know I'm not the only one who also does these things, it's good to see these sorts of things brought out in the public from this perspective. Yes, we're all human, and we all know we can do better. Thanks for being honest in public.
Certificated private pilots like myself use iPads on an increasing basis in the cockpit. There is no issue with interference, nor is there any empirical evidence to indicate so. The ban is and always has been ludicrous.
How about a pair of sunglasses? Simple, easy, you probably already own a pair.
Really your choice for an introduction to monads puts this in an intro paragraph?

Before we begin, it is important to brieﬂy talk about the λ-
calculus in the context of termination. In short, the λ-calculus
is strongly normalizing and thus non-termination is impossible
as a general rule.
I'm not quite done with it yet. I may post source after I've used it for awhile and worked out any kinks. Honestly doing it in Erlang was not a great idea. I had to do a lot of micro optimization to make it run at reasonable speeds. I hope to rewrite it in D one day and maybe make a NIF plugin.
Craigslist begins testing listings with embedded OpenStreetMap maps
13-year-old Udacity studen completed six Udacity courses
Author here.

I was a PM for a great part of my 21 years at Microsoft. I'm quite sure I am "spectacularly" oversimplifying things. That was intentional.

Here's the problem, related to this specific post, which is about mediocre reviews:

A SDE's job can be measured far more objectively than most other roles in a software company. PM's, specifically, have an additional challenge in that what they do is extremely hard to measure.

But don't get me wrong, I was not trying to diminish the importance of the other roles in creating great products.
I was literally looking for flux on linux just before coming to HN to read this, so i can tell you flux is available for linux[1], although there can be issues; which prompted the creation of redshift.

1. see http://stereopsis.com/flux/linux.html
Two years ago I came from non-technical background. The only reason why I am on Hacker News now is because of this guide that taught me Ruby on Rails.
Author here.

In my experience what this post discusses is completely irrelevant to contract employees.
Best of luck with the project. I think the really good idea is the open-source spectral library.

You need to educate your readers a bit more, though. They need to be aware of the kind of spectroscopy the machine does, i.e UV-Vis, and what information it provides.

I might try DIYing it, but what would be really interesting is an IR spectrometer, under 250$. Tough.
The Internet as a political issue, is it stronger among party neutrals?
I think these are all variants of what we call 'pre mature optimization'.

Start. Starting and finishing is very important. Even if what the first iteration of that produces is actually horribly bad. By the time first iteration ends, you will be in enough momentum to make next iterations awesome.
I don't think I've ever heard of pipes to be able to have forgotten about it. However, after browsing the website for about 3 seconds I closed the window out of disgust with no idea what the product did. Compare this to IFTTT (which is fairly well known in this sphere) or zapier (which I had never heard of, but could figure it out after a few seconds on the website). It really might be all about presentation. Unfortunately I'm not willing to evaluate evaluate this statement in regard to pipes because I'm not willing to look at their website any longer to see if they actually do what the article claims.
There is too much talk about titles and too little talk about how to get a product development process in place that allows for great product design that also achieves key metrics.

This post doesn't go very far in furthering the discussion. The answers come not from anti-[job title] posts, but something more positive, like describing how things get done at Facebook, Dropbox, LinkedIn, Zynga, and other orgs that are good at shipping product.

I talk to a lot of companies, and it is pretty easy for them to think they want to focus on growth. The interesting problems appear when (as always) there is more to do than you have the resources to get done. How as an organization do you deal with that? Driving towards growth is pretty simple, but doing it in parallel to building and selling a compelling product is harder.

By the way, Dropbox had a referral program before I got there. I just helped turn the dial up a bit, in addition to separate product changes.
http://www.tor.com/blogs/2012/04/torforge-e-book-titles-to-g...

The magic phrase "At the publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied." is usually added to the product description.
Indeed, f.lux is available for jailbroken iOS devices (and free). http://stereopsis.com/flux/ios.html.
Hiding complexity is almost the whole point of most programming languages and a big reason why most of the popular library and frameworks exist. Computer programs are fiendishly complex things, and they're only getting more so as time goes on (now we have several independent processors doing complex things simultaneously in the service of even larger complex things). A lot of software is so big that even most of its components are too much to fit in your head at once. So I think hiding complexity is a pretty sensible goal.
I experience this argument all the time for being both an atheist and a libertarian, except replace "archetype" with "stereotype". People assume all atheists fit into some stereotype they saw on TV, and therefore I must be exactly like that. Likewise, they assume all libertarians are like the stereotype they saw on TV, and I must be exactly like that. Since I'm not like the stereotypes, it's frustrating.
Sorry, where did they host the Beta?
Pipes was way ahead of the curve but is also targeted at a moderately more sophisticated audience than the task triggers IFTTT and Zapier. Pipes focus is more about data collection, filtering and transformation -- like Unix pipes vs cron.

BTW, both Pipes and YQL are powered by the same engine and serve billions of requests per day (for both O&O and 3rd parties).
That's not undefined, it's simply the bitwise representation of a 32 bits integer.
I doubt it - anyone can add new ones any time.
I uses Yahoo Pipes for a project of mine—I depend on it, in fact. It's really useful if you're doing something service-based, say, if you need to make an RSS feed out of a website, or otherwise manipulate data. YQL (Yahoo Query Language) is more than a gimmick; it's useful.

It does seem to be under active development, and I hope it lives.

EDIT: here's an example Pipe that fetches a web page (Pinterest) and turns it into XPath, and then uses XPath queries to construct an RSS feed. Interesting stuff you can do!
Google appoints Punit Soni as new VP of product at Motorola Mobility
Twitter Joins the Linux Foundation
This is not an image. It's an HTML table.
The problem with Yahoo Pipes was that it was over-optimized for complex dataflows. It was possible to do things like "find all Flickr photos from user, filter by tag and display on a map by location taken". The result was this crazy programming GUI that resembled Labview.

In practice, few people needed such complex querying and chaining. I think IFTT has a better metaphor ("if this, then that") which is much simpler but covers 80% of useful things.
Too bad they didn't name it something that made sense, like AirBnB.
Investors are investing in the company, not buying it from you. That's why the company is worth more post-money. Taking money from the company and quitting is called embezzlement.
For many people feature removal in wallets is risky because much in them is insurance against low frequency events. Same reason why handbags are a mess.
Nike Zoom Soldier VI Bamboo Sandtrap Bright Crimson cheap
They have like 11 happily employee people, and millions of happy users on that "shameful" site.
I use the lowest brightness setting for the iPad, doesn't mess up too much with my sleep that way. But I'm still thinking about getting a Kindle for that reason.
Slighty more reasonable, but perhaps more insidious is the "slippery slope" argument. So the first example, about Martin Luther King being a criminal - could be more subtly argued by saying something like "well obviously he doesn't count, but where do we draw the line between 'good' criminals and 'bad' criminals, and invoking slippery slopes. Then the argument ends up basically being the same, but seems on the surface to be less dogmatic.
Does anyone know of an extension for firefox (or chrome) that replaces white backgrounds (or even better all light colours) with darker shades?

Flux and co are all well and good, but large areas of white (even when orange-ish) are still a strain, and it seems fairly simple issue to solve (at least in the most simple case; replace #ffffff backgrounds).

Also as a tip for anyone with a windows laptop; you may find, like me, that linux allows your screen to be set much darker than the sparse intervals in windows allow (maybe there is a windows program that allows fine brightness setting?). Macbooks seem to have a very low brigtness setting, although i can't say i've used one in the dark.
I disagree with this article. A "Growth Hacker" is an engineer that applies himself in the field of marketing. This means coming up with interesting and innovative ways of lowering the cost of user acquisition. The distinction is important since Marketing itself is a very loaded term.

Companies like Zynga thrived because they found cheap ways of getting users: early un-managed FB platform, and app referrals. Same with AirBnB and their craigslist post automation.

Growth hacking isn't going to make your product better, but more people will be aware of it.
Absolutely. The term has a definite meaning. It refers to a software engineer with enough market awareness, copywriting savvy, and statistical ability to run a campaign full stack. There aren't that many people with this skillset, but they are valuable. By contrast, the typical person listing "marketing" on LinkedIn is just not that technical.

A good growth hacker can conceptualize and code the AirBnB/Craiglist integration; most of the people listing marketing on LinkedIn can't do that, skilled as they may be in other respects.
I don't care about the 140 character limit, but I do dislike Facebook strongly. Twitter relationships are asymmetrical. I can follow Wil Shipley or Joss Whedon without them having to approve it. Facebook Pages aren't the same either, as they're more of a platform for people to talk about brands, rather than a stream of updates.

Maybe the elite who are willing to pay will migrate to app.net, but even if they do they're going to be set apart from people who don't want to pay $50, which means that even if I do sign up for app.net, I'm also going to have to keep my Twitter account.
There really is some really cool tech "locked up" in these big tech companies. Yahoo Pipes, Google Fusion Tables...

I think startups are, in a way, almost required to unlock the full potential of novel tech ideas. A startup can apply an awesome idea to a niche, gain traction, and expand whereas the defacto launch of a tech product at BigCo X or Y applies the tech across a broad segment of their user base. Broad launches are a good way to make your product generally available, but a bad way to ensure it truly solves some core need your customers have.
I used xflux when I used linux a while back, it worked very well.
No. Context is very important here, and it's actually quite apt with regard to hiring and being hired.

Data-driven marketing (DDM) is a huge thing now because it reliably magnifies revenue streams. However, the skill set to execute on such strategies is a bit non-traditional for marketing. If you want to hire someone to help build your DDM team, you don't necessarily want a business grad or a top salesman. What you want is an math or engineering transplant, someone with the statistical and technical skills necessary but who knows or is interested in learning the business and marketing aspects.

"Growth hacker" moonlights as a buzzword, but it's actually a great way to spin a job opening to appeal to the audience you need to attract: tech-to-business transplants. Ergo, it can also be effective self-branding if you're a tech-to-business transplant looking to make $$$ for helping to create well-documented X% to XX% revenue improvements.
You mean like welfare? We have that. Or TVA, CCC, and "shovel ready construction projects"? The rock thing was not a proposal, it was just an academic example to show that the value of stimulus is not only found in the government buying something from recipients, it is also found in the recipient's private spending.
Reports Persist of Apple Store Budget Cuts, Emphasis on Revenue
Author here.

This is the point where I have my biggest beef with the Microsoft system. I was fortunate to have worked in and managed several groups that were CLEARLY exceptional. One team I built was built from the ground up and EVERYONE I hired (about 30 people) had previously had 3.5 or better reviews.

In the end, I did those people a dis-service by hiring them. Some of them got 3.0s the following year. If I had been 'smarter', I would have 'padded' the team with a few poor-performers to ensure that I could meet the curve.

However, earlier in my career, someone I worked with, and whom I thought I respected, confided in me that he did this; he padded this team with "3.0s" intentionally. This felt completely and morally bankrupt to me. So I vowed to never do it myself.

The way this is supposed to be dealt with is that the stack ranking is supposed to balanced up to groups of ~250 people.
The VPs or GMs of these larger groups are supposed to 'break ties' and deal with outliers by using their larger population. At a certain scale (and I believe this) it is realistic to believe that there can be a 20%, 20%, 40%, 13%, 7% bucketing. However, this system requires managers to be ready & willing to fight all the way up the chain. And, to a certain extent ALL managers at MS think their groups are better than others (due to the competitive nature induced by the stack ranking we're talking about also applying with even more dire consequences).

There is a related issue that the Microsoft system causes that is directly related to this: Even though groups must put 7% of their people in the "5" bucket, and are expected to "manage those people out" they are not rewarded for doing it, at all. In fact, it is in those managers best interests to keep those "5s" around.

Sad. And Frustrating.
Pray tell: Why's that a pity?

There are very few downsides to jailbreaking, these days; it's not fair to characterize software that requires a jailbreak negatively for that reason.
U.S accused of intercepting trillions of emails and phone calls from citizens
>If a study must monitor behavior that the subjects choose for themselves, the study loses all value

You'll almost never find medical studies over long periods of time like this, and you'll never find a truly causal study on complex human behavior; there literally is no medical research that can properly do this. This is an epidemiological study, and these kinds of studies DO have value and certainly are scientific. This is the field that "proved" cigarettes are bad for us and that red meat increases the chances of heart disease.

I agree with you that a causal result would be great, but I think we both agree it's not possible for something like this. My point is that they make a very convincing case that shouldn't be dismissed so easily - correlations should be considered for what they are, not thrown out without thought. Your principled view on this works for some sciences but is too conservative for the kinds of things epidemiology studies.
Mankind brilliantly went to the moon, and then wasn't sure what to do next
I'm sure several commenters will soon note, the LG Prada was not multitouch, the Prada II was multitouch, but it came out after the iPhone. The Prada's "touch" was a really fake touch... like it would show buttons but you would have to press elsewhere to act on it. The iPhone was the first multitouch phone according to Wikipedia.
Although nothing has been directly mentioned, it's obvious this is Google sticking up for Android device makers like Samsung and sending a message straight to Apple HQ. A message that quite clearly reads: "If you're going to sue our third party vendors that support Android and abuse the patent system against them, we're going to show you what it feels to be sued"

I doubt this move is about money, but definitely just sending a message to Apple. Each and every day Apple is starting to become more like a mid-nineties Microsoft and we all know how that worked out...
Yeah but Zuck and Page and Brin all had working products and users, and most importantly, perhaps, a nearly perfect guarantee of success in a fallback career, before they got their startup ideas funded. They walked away from top schools and cushy jobs, not ramen.
When reading patents, only the claims matter. In this case, anything that matches claim 19, which is anything that does bounce-back scrolling the way iOS does it, is infringing.
Hipvite, quick and easy way to organize meetups - Plea for TechCrunch coverage
It's not a pity for f.lux; it's a pity for iOS.
23 and Me sells subscriptions to future information about your genes.
Taubes shows those simple rules don't work (so many people have difficulty loosing weight) because the causality is backwards.
The dumps of Wikipedia come as big bzip2ed XML files containing all articles, templates, etc., each in a "page" tag. The templates have titles starting with "Template:", so they are easy to detect:

<page>
<title>Template:Convert</title>
...
</page>

It's these page tags that need to be copied to a new XML file, along with the header and footer from the original.

From what I gather from your message, you are proposing using MediaWiki itself to process the templates and output more of a plain text (within the HTML output).

Correct. The MediaWiki parser outputs HTML containing all the text to be displayed, including that generated by templates.
Then you might miss out on the wonderful experience of working through a 10 year tunnel to accomplish something amazing. Like, say, a successful startup.
Yeah that's why the mandate exists. Health insurance should shard risk pools that compete on quality of service, not odds of filing claims.
Ahh, yes. I'm not the world's worst programmer after all.
This is one of the reasons i want OLED screens on everything. I would find it very hard to go back to a non-oled phone, too.

If you need darker-than-minimum setting then check out 'screen filter'.
Is that the point of the design patent though? Fashion designers always apply for design patents. The other day I saw that Philip Morris has a patent for rounded corners on their cigarette boxes. Gucci has a patent for the shape of their handbag handles. If form can be patented, why can't Apple be allowed to do the same? If we reform the patent system and disallow all design patents, then I'm sure the fashion industry would be pretty mad, since there would be nothing preventing a competitor from creating an equivalent "ugg boots".

China is one of those places where you can't patent design, and I suppose it kind of works in a strange free-market-way. The winners are those who can copy the fastest, and have enough money to bribe politicians to shutdown the competition.