skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This is very common, perhaps even the norm for web development shops. Not sure about start-ups. Probably almost never happens with big corps.

I don't see a problem with it. I don't care what my employment status is as long as I'm getting paid. The only difference between contractor and employee is the forms that the employer needs to fill out and that's not my problem. However, if I'm working as a contractor then I'm not going to change anything for the employer. I'm still going to charge my contractor rates and I'm still going to take in new contract work. It's too much of a risk to throw my business cycle out of whack while the employer tries to make a decision.
Why'd you find it exasperating?
saurik, thank you so much for responding in this thread. Your answers are very insightful. In regards to 4, I've always assumed that to an extent, Apple tolerates jailbreakers and doesn't put as much effort as they could into fixing the exploits (unless they're critical, like the PDF one.) What do you think?
It's an appealing idea but I don't believe we're wired for it. "Busybody" and "judgmental" and "heretic" have been in the lexicon for many centuries. We evolved in tribes and villages which were too hierarchical and interdependent to tolerate freethinkers and too small (below Dunbar's number) for eccentrics to escape notice. It's the relative anonymity of cities, and the opportunity to reinvent oneself, that unleashed the rate of progress we see today.
Rather not talk about it on this thread.
One of the things we don't see often, and I wonder about are situations where the Angel funds 40% of the company at a seed round at one valuation, and then contributes half their interest in exchange for cash in the series A.

From a practical standpoint this means that the company needs to raise n + A where the "+ A" part pays back a return to the angel. But it allows the Angels to shoulder risk early to weed out the non-viable players and still make money at it.

So imagine this scenario. Alice wants to start Woohoo and Bob funds 40% at a $250K valuation (since Alice is the only person so far, that is $100K invested. Alice works hard and gets out an MVP and goes for a Series A where she wants to raise $1.5M at a post raise valuation of $5M. Bob sells into the round half his shares (its taking money off the table for him) with a contractual net return of xx% (probably anywhere from 20 - 100, that being the negotiating rub) and does not participate in future rounds, he retains y% at the end of the series A (optionally converted to Common stock) and dilutes going forward. (remember he's got 'free' stock at this point, he's made his bit with the angel round)

The two negotiation points on Bobs term sheet are the net return and the retained interest portion. The people coming in after Bob are Ok with it because Bob is out now and paid his 'finders fee' or however ever you want to describe his return. The net return will affect the series A amount needed by the founder, the retained interest would be a function of how many rounds the founders think they will need to exit.

Given the seed to series A or bust cycle is usually at most 24months, Bob has a good idea of his risk profile, and by stepping out from an equity point at the Series A he's not an obstruction to new partners coming in, more of an adviser at that point.
My main complaint was your implication that large numbers of JS developers ("many") would benefit from this low-level crypto API in the browser. I think it will have the opposite effect, leading to a million differently-broken encrypted message protocols, encouraged by the browser offering just enough rope to shoot the users in the foot.

You don't really address this issue, but point to what you claim is the greater good: more freedom to implement any protocol the dev pleases. In your opinion, the gain from this is worth the cost of a few million compromised users (story out yesterday: Pandora doesn't manage keys for encrypting cookies properly due to a developer choice).

The only problem with this argument is that there is no limit on browser JS developers' freedom today. They can implement anything they want, plugging in AES ECB blocks wherever they want.

For example, consider Meebo, which sent a JS RSA implementation plus the key itself as a substitute for SSL. There was nothing wrong with their JS implementation of raw RSA (as far as I remember), but the whole problem was that crypto doesn't work if the key and cipher implementation are both modifiable by an attacker.

I find it funny that you agree with me in the end:

You can't escape from the fact that crypto is hard, and
that there is always going to be a segment of developers
who will simply not get it right.

The goal is not to prevent every failure, but reduce the number of devs who will fail. The way to do this is to offer high-level APIs that reduce the number of such victims.

Currently, the W3 API will victimize millions of users via any clever developer who has read Applied Cryptography. With a high-level API, you reduce that set of devs to those who are determined to get it wrong (e.g., post private keys on their website today). I think you agree that's a smaller set (though how much, I don't know).

The W3 low-level API will encourage more flaws while offering no improvement over the current JS security model. The fact that you can do things like Meebo (but with higher performance and cred with managers that "it's the standard"), is a net loss of security, not gain. Too bad.
So Twitter blocked your API access? Get Recent Tweets as JSON using APIfy
The reason I gave was incorrect (I was confused with what happens when you install a .deb file without installing its dependencies), but the point of apt-get being better than dpkg for this still stands.
"Apple TV" is a 5.5 year old product, currently in its third generation. If this was something that could be won by an "idea" then it would have succeeded by now. The current product looks good, basically "almost as nice as cable for less money" for most users. But I wouldn't pin any long term hopes on a set top box.
I feel sorry for everyone involved in this complex industry, no arena of which is aligned with the goal of people's long term health.

The common sense suggestions in this article are a good step towards improving things by increasing transparency and accountability via documentation but may not address the root problems.
With zero Market makers, the exchange cannot guarantee I can walk in and sell at a reasonable price in a reasonable time.

With one Market maker the exchange can do so and so it benefits from being a effective place to trade - this is a huge advantage over any other exchange
With a second Market maker, the exchnage gain is I believe orders of magnitude lower. Almost any Market maker is forced to maintain sensible spreads (else it is worth trading without them) so just one Market maker will offer expensive but not outrageous spreads. A second one brings only the benefit of slightly cheaper, which coma red to the benefits from the first are negligible
Even worse, he had a relatively rare form of pancreatic cancer that is easier to treat.

http://www.webmd.com/cancer/pancreatic-cancer/news/20110825/...
Actually, I think a less harmful solution would be if everyone simply answered "Yes".
You can do the same thing with an iPhone 3G and iOS 4, let alone iPhone 5 and iOS 6!
I wish Google would share the process post submission and how they analyze and respond to feedback. I find a process like this to capture feedback over <or disproportionately> solving the easy part of a feedback loop.

I have to imagine that Google has a pretty automated process to understand the feedback - i'd rather see that. That's the problem I've always had with applications with millions of users.
> Why was Apple so hell-bent to jettison Google?

It goes both ways. There's a possibility that this is a gambit from Google, either to cripple iOS in favor of Android or to simply extort higher fees for Google Maps.

I think the software user experience of iOS Maps is actually better than Google Maps, from the visual design of the maps to the 3D flyover mode to the turn-by-turn directions. The problem is the data. We've seen Apple underestimate how hard some problem are before--MobileMe was Apple underestimating how hard cloud stuff is, Ping was Apple underestimating social. I think Apple just underestimated the problem of map data.

The good news is, the data problem actually can be solved with cash. Design and software problems can't.
> Are they technical founders or business based?

Both. I trust the technical guy I talked to. We'll see.
Thanks for this tip. It's very helpful.
Certainly. Gadget sites have it as headline news every time a new phone is faster than all previous phones. It only happens several times every year. The iPhone 5 will probably be dethroned by the Optimus G in November.

It's big news for gadget sites, but it apparently only warrants 4 upvotes on Hacker News. That feels about right.
Some minor training might be needed to stay relevant - that's true in any job.

But if you find yourself in need of almost continuous training, like the guy described in the article, you have a problem

Leaving aside the medical problems (memory problems, attention issues):

1) Maybe you have badly invested your time, ie. in knowledge with a negative interest rate (ie a fad - the technology du-jour which will be outdated tomorrow) - then you need to keep pumping knowledge. Your problem is not in the learning, but in the choice of the topic - i.e. learn something else!

2) Maybe also you are not specializing enough, i.e. carving your niche in a domain where you knowledge would create a significant barrier of entry? But that'd be another way of saying your topic has a positive interest rate and that you are just compounding interest!

In both cases, it seems to me to be a problem of a wrong choice (leaving aside the fact that you shouldn't resent what you are doing, if you really love it)

So do something else, find your where your competitive advantage is or where your passions leads you.
The post talks about sending personal emails. While that may be possible for smaller companies it doesn't really scale. At some point a company will have to use more automated email.

However, I think that you should really consider whether email is an acceptable means of supporting customers/users. If it is, why not have Reply-To: support@example.com?

It has happened on several occasions that I have questions regarding an incoming email, but it's sent from noreply (with no Reply-To) so I can't respond directly. Instead I have to look for an email address or a form on their website, requiring a long detour.
Your unsubstantiated claim still stands...
TV is fading. Yes, Baby Boomers still watch it. But those under 30 mostly watch video on phones, computers, tablets now.
Unfortunately i live in Rome, but i think could be a cool job
This question is more suitable for SO than HN.

Given a four core CPU, if each request is lasting 30 seconds without I/O, then each request is going to use 1 core. On a 4-core CPU, you would only be able to serve 4 requests within a 30 second span.
What is the request doing for 30 seconds? How much of it is actual CPU-bound work and what amount is I/O.
I knew about the law, but I didn't know its name!
It's also a focal instruction in _Style: Towards Clarity And Grace_, itself probably the most nerd-friendly guide to writing (I couldn't read any 3 pages without thinking of some new program I could write to automatically "improve" my writing).
The entire process is horribly broken.

While in theory one can switch jobs during the Green Card process, in practice it is a paperwork nightmare, with plenty of IFs and BUTS to slow you down.

It is compounded by the fact that it is not in the companies best interest to let the employee acquire a green card asap. The company lawyers are therefore never in a hurry, and may not go for the most expeditious process.

In addition, there is rampant fraud committed by H1/L1 sweat shops. And the checks created by the Govt to check fraud, place an un-necessary burden on the employee, as opposed to the Govt agencies and employers.
My initial response was, "What about companies that send email to hundreds of thousands of recipients? Surely they can't always handle such a flood of direct replies." But if you don't have the resources to handle so many replies, then you probably shouldn't be sending email blasts to that many people in the first place.
"I replied and we shared a short conversation where I learned the meaning behind the name Quibb. Fun. :) And she does this for all new users. Bravo, Sandi! As Sandi has demonstrated, the Internet doesn’t have to be faceless. We need to stop communicating with robots."

This idea doesn't scale very well. If you're a struggling little company that's trying to hold on to a handful of users (Quibb is currently "invite-only" [1]), it might be feasible. But a company that already has enough users to be successful can't afford to hire all the people it would take to personally interact with every user. Imagine how many people Facebook would need to hire to personally thank every new user for opening a Facebook account (in the hundreds of languages that Facebook users around the world speak).

[1] http://quibb.com/about
it's worth mentioning that a samsung galaxy s3 on jellybean (4.1) is A LOT faster than the the s3 running on 4.03 tested here.
FWIW I also do work on Django :)
So I guess my next step is to try very hard for the next two weeks? :)
Theoretically the EU privacy laws do not apply to you, the scope of the law concerns EU territory only.
But of course I don't know how Facebook will handle its compliance, so maybe changing your country to an EU state might work.
Beginners Guide: How to Create an AJAX Drop Down Menu with PHP and MySQL
Apple, yahoo, microsoft, google, thats "hacker news" ???? WTF!!
> It is our intent to prohibit capture of mutable local variables. The reason is that idioms like this:

int sum = 0;
list.forEach(e -> { sum += e.size(); });

> are fundamentally serial

An unfortunate decision. Yes, updating such a variable from multiple threads can cause race conditions. But there are many ways to run into race conditions when writing multithreaded code, and this doesn't really add a new one.

Furthermore, most code is mostly serial, and the ability to modify captured variables is a very useful one in serial code. (I've written code like that in Lisp for decades.) And finally, the restriction is, of course, easily worked around -- just store the value you want to update in a 1-element array.

So the restriction doesn't really protect anyone from anything -- it just forces them to use an ugly workaround in order to write their algorithms in a natural way.
The request is harvesting data from Facebook. For users with a tremendous amount of data, batch requests must be made, so it can take a while sometimes.
You still use one app (Maps.app), and it gives you directions inside the app when you use drive/walk mode, but it takes you to the 3rd party app when you select public transport. So you don't have to open this app ever. (Just wanted to clear that put in case you didn't know)
Your line of reasoning follows from the assumption that Apple dropped Google, and not vice versa. It's entirely possible that Google declined to renew their licensing agreement with Apple after the initial X years were up. Google had Apple by the balls and decided to squeeze, for lack of a better analogy.

Ultimately, moving away from Google data was a given - it would be a strategic mistake to have a competitor control one of the key elements of your platform. It appears that for one reason or another, this changeover occured too early.

I'm also curious why Apple didn't source more of their data from OSM. In my experience and use cases, the data there is significantly more detailed than Google's (YMMV).
It's the number of neighbors each boid considers to calculate its velocity. There's also an option that defines the maximum distance for collision detection, but it's not accessible through the UI.
Malware Analysis: The Danger of Connecting the Dots
I actually ran through the intellij version 12 EAP "LEDA" which has Groovy 2 in it for most of the tests.

The @compilestatic stuff should work regardless, but you do need to import the compilestatic transform.

import groovy.transform.CompileStatic
Just wanted to say that I use sleepyti.me a few times a week to decide my alarm time. It's really great and the only reason I use it lesser now is because I can just calculate the sleep cycles in my head (yeah programmers/math people aren't your target audience :P). But hey! Thanks for a brilliant tool and an eye opening insight into sleep patterns.
We are talking about a remote village in india's most corrupt region. He was lucky no government official asked for bribe.
Better partner with Lenovo, Linux runs really almost perfectly on Thinkpads.
How many times do people need to talk about SQL injection before people writing web apps get it? This isn't news and this isn't hard to completely avoid. Just do it and stop being amazed every time someone puts a tick mark in an URL parameter (or any parameter for that matter).

EDIT: I looked around this detectify website and found this gem: http://blog.detectify.com/post/22258359654/zerg-rush-how-to-...

"326 exploits found"

I have so much faith that this company will do well. If you're interested in others like it that might fair better, you can try WhiteHat Security or Tinfoil Security, both of which do web security scanning as a service.

https://www.whitehatsec.com/

https://www.tinfoilsecurity.com/
Ryan, Brian, David:

You guys are working on something important, for better or worse.

Have you ever arranged to sit down with people who have spent time breaking cryptosystems? You're talking to a couple here (Nate is far more qualified than I am), and I saw on the mailing list you bounced the ball back and forth with Zooko --- who, while more a builder than a breaker, is at least pretty cognizant of real-world attacks.

You also had the RUB critique of the API, which saw no response on the mailing list.

Is this API something that is likely to ACTUALLY HAPPEN? If it is, why can't we just arrange to get people into a room to talk to them about what goes wrong when devs get tools like this?

The most dispiriting thing I see happening here is parties talking past each other. Let's force the issue.
What - really double taxed ? Do you mean dividends are paid out of post tax cash, then taxed as income for the stockholder?

Just wondering
In other nations paper ballots are routinely classed invalid if they have anything on it that isn't a simple "X" mark. The reasoning is that that would make the ballot paper identifiable.

A fancy mark: invalid.
Rude words: invalid.

This is firmly in the bailiwick of the legislative power.
A few thoughts:

1. This is a superb essay delineating the attributes of a fast-growth, all-or-nothing type of startup. No surprise here. Who besides pg has had the depth and breadth of quality first-hand experience with such ventures over such a sustained period and in such an explosive context as that of recent years? He has here given us a classic analysis of the prototypical, Google-style startup.

2. I think the idea of a startup should not be so narrowly defined, however, and the big reason is this: many founders set out to build ventures that are tech-based, innovative, aimed at winning key niches via hoped-for rapid growth and scaling, positioned for outside funding as suited to their needs, and aimed at liquidity via capital gains as the primary ROI for their efforts . . . but who also place a huge premium on minimizing dilution and maximizing founder control. These are the independents. The ones who, by design, want to defer or even avoid VC funding so as to build their ventures on their own timing and on their own terms. Now this is not the Google startup model. It is, in a sense, its opposite. But it is not the model of a small business either. It is just a different type of startup.

3. The trend over this past decade has moved decidedly toward greater founder independence in the startup world. Back in the bubble days, as a founder, you had very little information available to learn how startups worked, you often had heavy capital needs (e.g., $2M to $4M) right up front to do such things as build your own server banks, and you would almost certainly have little leverage by which to minimize dilution or loss of control at the time of first funding. Today, this has completely flipped. Vast resources are extant teaching founders how startups work. Initial capital needs are often minimal. And it is relatively easy to get reasonable funding on founder-friendly terms. What this means is that, today more than ever, the independent-style startup is more open to founders than ever before.

4. Given the above, it seems to me that this is not the time to say that the only style of startup worthy of the name is that of the super-rapid-growth type. The rapid-growth type may be more glamorous by far but it really defines only the tip of the startup world. Beneath it is a vast world offering incredible opportunities to founders who want more control over the timing, scale, and management of their ventures and who seek to realize gains and manage risks accordingly.
Yea, I honestly wouldn't have a problem doing something like this if I felt good about the people. I think it just all depends on your impression.

Most of us probably feel pretty confident in our skills so proving we can do the job is just part of the fun and challenge.

Good Luck!
Apple's diluting and commoditizing SBB'a brand. It's not about iPhone being confused with Swiss train station clocks. It's about Swiss train station clocks being confused with iPhone's clock app.
Forgive me if I'm mistaken, but this is how I see this whole ordeal.

Craigslist, a website that built up its user base and functionality by itself (lots of persistent hard work over the years) has listings.

3TAPS believes this information is public and should be freely accessible by anyone.

How does that make any sense at all? If I work for years to build a website, I will use and lease MY damn data however I please. A 3rd party has no right to claim that the website I have created that people use is "public property". I built the house. Now you're going to tell me it's a shelter?
DC Taxi Commission Proposes New Rules to Shut Down Uber
YMMV by region. Perhaps they ought to have rolled it out only in countries w/ good map data. iOS 6 Maps has been OK so far in LA, Chicago, and NYC for me so far. Portugal...maybe not so much.
IPhone 5 & iPhone 4S top 10 Cydia Sources for jailbreak apps of 2012
>Numbers can be manipulated as easily as opinions.

Not Quarterly results and SEC fillings.

>Note the recurring statistic in which Apple's (continuously dropping) market share is compared to that of 15 handset manufacturers who run Android as though that is a reasonable comparison.

"Continuously dropping"? They sell more units with each new device up to now (and the 5's preorders see that trend continuing). So, if their "market share" also drops, then that just means the market is expanding at a faster rate.

>Note the recurring statistic in which Apple's (continuously dropping) market share is compared to that of 15 handset manufacturers who run Android as though that is a reasonable comparison.

In what way is it not?
Any plans on making this a web service?