skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I've been following your blog, podcasts, comments here, etc and learn a lot from you. I've gotta say you hit a big need with the email course, and though I wish the price was $99 I know you're delivering based on value and the course is probably worth more than the $300 price to me. So, I'll probably get it. I think a sample video from the course (ie., 5 minutes would help a lot) to help people take the leap. Or a 2 minute intro video to the course. There's something about video (especially when the author's face comes and he starts talking) that adds more legitimacy and seriousness to the offer.
the issue msft is trying to address is the scarcity of tech people in general. They could certainly pay more and fill their positions, but paying more wouldn't create 10k new engineers (or however many positions they need filled).
Back when everyone was using NCSA Mosaic to look at your website, it was reasonable to expect most users to understand the word "FAQ". However, it's 2012.
A problem is that a number of users also instinctively look for FAQs to answer any questions. However, in theory your solution is far more elegant and correct.

Fortunately, any well-designed (from a back-end perspective) site should have no problem presenting the relevant information both on the relevant page and on a catch-all FAQ document. This would allow the site to elegantly handle everything properly.
> If someone can't think about their code, no amount of visualizations is going to help.

Most of the article tries to make the point that if someone can't visualize what their code is doing, they can't think; they can't reason about it.
Fun with social engineering: Tricking Best Buy out of customer data
The distinction of malware is about who is being deceived. If a user willing installs on their own computer A some software to attack someone else's computer B, that's not malware.

If a user installs something on their computer that allows someone else, without their knowledge, to gain control of their computer, then that's malware.

If someone breaks into a computer which they are not supposed to access and installs a rootkit that is designed to hide itself, that is malware.

Obviously, this leaves some gray areas if a user is to go out and intentionally copy some botnet worm on their own computer -- since that software is primarily propagates surreptitiously, we'd still call it malware, regardless of whether someone once happened to install it intentionally.

To your specific question, it depends entirely on whether the user is informed of what the software will do. If the user is aware that it's going to participate in a DDOS, or show pop-ups when browsing the web, or send their browsing history to Alexa, that's not malware. If, on the other hand, the user is told that they are installing a "nature photos screensaver" and its doing any of the above, then that's malware. And here we get into the debates about things like browser toolbars that were not very good at communicating what sort of spying they do when the user installed them. And it's clear to me that people rarely agree on where exactly to draw the line (and worse, usually argue adamantly that some borderline case either definitely is or definitely isn't malware).

But nowhere in any evaluation of whether something is malware do I consider the effect on other people relevant, which was the original claim -- that this software was malware because it was abusive towards the web site owners who were having their ads blocked. Malware is entirely about software that intentionally causes the computer to do something other than what the owner or user intended it to do.
No, it was a false-positive (few people think he should be banned for using Pirate Bay LEGALLY for distribution), but not a "bad" false-positive. Google's initial banning was reasonable. But providing no effective way to contest this (other than getting noticed on HackerNews or TechDirt) is the REAL problem.
Navegar no Canal do Midi - França
There's a "report issue" button if you hit the bottom right corner of the map. It allows you to drop pins where issues are and gives free text fields to enter information.
That is true, although I can't fathom the point of discussing it with "you" only to follow up with that.
Seconds Rolls Out New Video, “Welcome To The Good Life”
Ask HN:What will you make if you got two months off from work?
If you get two months off from your regular job or business, and if you decide to spend it coding instead of a vacation, what will you make? Is there any good pending projects you would like to work on?
Patrick, I'd be interested in how you decided on your pricing. With all the pre-selling and your friendship with Amy Hoy I was honestly expecting prices to be about 10-12 times as high, or 5-6 times based on the full price starting next week. What makes you think you will sell 10 times as much at $249 than at $2490?
It makes more sense for vim than zsh though. What color your prompt is has a lot less bearing on your productivity than your editor configuration. (Though I don't do much of that either).
Well, I guess if you are going to question my credibility I will back it up for you. I'm the senior UI/UX designer at Angie's List (a major US company), so we actually do countless usability tests through the abundant site visits we get. So, that can easily back up my claims.

I understand you may be defending the author but maybe think twice before you try to discredit someone so quickly, without any knowledge of their background?
Little-Known Awesome Algorithms: Adversary Discovery
Honestly I do not understand the purpose of oh-my-zsh. I've been using zsh without it for years, if I want something for it I just take 5 minutes on google to figure it out. No sense in having a lot of stuff turned on by default that I don't know how to use.

I feel the same way about Vim, but for some reason more people in the Vim community seem to agree with me.
Okay, Maps are bad, but this type of overreaction is from people who secretly think that Apple is doomed now that Jobs is gone.

>The fact that such a public letter had to be issued means that there's a lot of push-back. Apple just doesn't do that. In fact, I don't remember any software company doing this. I could be wrong. This feels unprecedented.

This is a gross overreaction and just a few examples from the comments below indicate Apple not only did this with earlier computing products, but did with the original iPhone, the antennae issue a while back. Netflix did too with their Quickster debacle.

Calm down. Maps is bad, but it will be fixed. Apple is still the most valuable company in the world. The iPhone 5 is still in the top 95% of devices on the market. Things will be okay.
We've been using python Baker[1] to achieve the similar thing with a little bit of extra flexibility. Occasionally we call out to bash but most scripts are written in python.

The sub-commands are handled simply by having a primary baker that calls the execute method on the children: 'b git' => 'import git; git.execute(['b git'] + argv)'

[1] http://pypi.python.org/pypi/Baker/1.1
I agree about many companies using Python, but I've heard from former Googlers that most of their code is written in Java or C++.
I use prezto (https://github.com/sorin-ionescu/prezto -- initially a fork of oh-my-zsh).
Some are easy, some are research level. They're all "open source"-style programming : i.e. add real features to real projects on a real time frame.

You could expect to apply to do these in the Summer of Code Haskell projects.

Challenging, yes, but not unrealistic for competent systems / language people.
The Nexus Q wikipedia page [1] says that its launch was postponed due to "feedback from users that the device had too few features for its price", not due to quality defects. It seems to me that Google made an honest effort to develop a product, and decided not to ship it for equally good reasons.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nexus_Q
I think it was a good thing. No, the maps aren't perfect, but neither were gmaps( though way more polished). I can remember a the times where gmaps sent me to some random location. 3D generation is HARD, compare it with the google earth or maps and apple's shows more resolution,less artifacts. 3D was always a cool side feature despite the glitches in other programs and maybe the bad idea was integrating this into the main experience of one of the most used apps. They added some awesome features but in the end people just want maps that work, and eye candy doesn't trump that. They could have taken the typical route trying to brainwash customers with ads or PR releases, the CEO talking about the best product ever w/o believing, instead I admire that they took the rout of "We did a great effort, you didn't like it, sorry and we'll make a bigger effort until you do".

In the end all the effort ,features, and niceties doesn't matter if people simply doesn't like it.
I think a decent way to think of it is in terms of customer LTV. "If I get N customers out of this, I break even." For a lot of B2B SaaS products, N is something like 1 or 2. For that reason alone, I think the price is a bit low.
Yes, by 2 accounts created about 20 minutes ago for the purpose. https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=leopy and https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=darmon
It likely would, just not immediately. But salary certainly influences career paths for those still in a position to choose a new career.
Android Exploit: Force Factory Reset remotely
Similar issue with cell reception ... I still somewhat believe this is all purposeful. Their cult following wants them to succeed, and they will want to support them - so when a crappy product turns into gold (future release) they will cheer and all will forget --- except everyone's talking about Apple now, and Maps. Is all publicity good publicity? It's possible with the right factors at play IMHO.
This is an interesting post (the required-field point in particular), but I think I'll make the opposite of the usual HN page-usability complaint. Unlike a lot of blog posts I've looked at today, this design is clean, readable, and doesn't try to give me a headache with low-contrast text.

It's a pleasure not to have to hit Readable for once.
> this introduction video of him makes me cringe

This is true. The video is poor quality - washed out. And despite wearing a bulky headset with an enormous microphone, there are weird feedback(?) "booms" every few seconds.

I personally couldn't get past the gimmick with the $100 bill. It was really tacky and is such a cliched TV informercial ploy for attention.

The red tracksuit doesn't help convey a sense of authority either. He didn't properly comb his hair (though this is an understandable issue for many people, get some hair gel). And there are distracting reflections on his glasses - an easy solution for this is contacts. The background of the room, all Japanese-y, is distracting as well.

Summary: if you're going to be a salesman on video, you need to look the part. Patrick most definitely does not look the part.
Google has account reps. They have "Adsense in your city." You can meet them.

The problem is, when they kick you off, they don't tell you why.

We had an issue with a project I was helping someone on. Google waited until the very end of the month to terminate the account, leaving that business associate out a mid five-figure amount of $$$. It was really jarring because the traffic was legitimate. I know, because I could see good conversions coming through ad campaigns I was running.

We spent months trying to figure out why the hell the account was terminated. Finally we got a pretty good guess over what caused the termination -- something the Google account rep said was "ok." This was in writing.

The best solution right now is to personally know people who work or worked there. That's an unrealistic "fix" for 99.9% of customers.

I'm not sure if a human or a machine making the decisions is worse. What scares me most is having competitors bribe Google employees to do things that put me in an unfair position. Alternatively, Google employees who are "entrepreneurs" running stuff with inside information and power. I know from a friend that the first has happened, and we know from court cases the latter has occurred as well. Google's traffic is worth an incredible amount of money, and as long as it is this is going to be a problem.
Facebook as well.
Hi JTxt, This is a fantastic idea for resource saving. Also streaming all the data to the clients, while possible with PubNub slows down the clients as they are busy downloading the streams from all player movements on the screen. Would you be able to work with us and coordinate a way to work this? Here is the starting line to segregate channel data - https://github.com/pubnub/pubnub-xkcd/blob/master/network.js... see the "xkcd2" at the end. This is the CHANNEL ID. You can take that and change it based on the Region of the world. You can even use the names of the world splices such as http://www.pubnub.com/static/pubnub-xkcd/images/1n1e.png - 1n1e "1 north 1 east". So the channel name would be "1n1e".
That's the opposite of what I expect but, since it is entirely possible that video + text does outperform text, there's A/B tests running to that effect.
It depends on which completion type you want to use. Zsh can do either.
This is a tough question, because I would generally prefer to allow the market to set employment and wage levels. The problem here is that employers in high tech are asking for special consideration - granting green cards specifically to STEM degrees. Unfortunately, this puts us in the position of playing favorites through government - we're deciding that there "should" be more engineers than we're getting at current wage levels.

It feels a little strange to me, since I don't really think "should" is a useful question. But I can see why/how the government would want to get involved - markets aren't perfect, and engineers are particularly valuable, as they tend to create wealth rather than just shuffle it around.

I'm probably not the greatest guy to ask, because I have an MS in engineering and I've seen how brutal the PhD programs are. I see that the nine of the top ten professions ranked by pay are medical specialties, with CEO as the only non-health related one there. I understand that law isn't as great at the middle and low level, but at the elite level, I do think it pays very well with more career stability than engineering - and with a degree program that has a vastly higher completion rate than almost any form of graduate study in STEM fields (and much easier undergraduate preparation as well).

So how high should wages be? I guess I'd say that wages should go high enough that getting a grad degree in engineering is a good way to get on that top ten list.

But of course I'd say that, that's my degree. You shouldn't be asking me, but you shouldn't be asking the people who want to hire engineers either. Ideally, we'd butt out and try to let the market handle this.

I'm not fundamentalist about it - truth is, I would support a general skilled emphasis in our immigration system. But specifically targeting a narrow band of the workforce, under the notion that there is a "shortage"? That smells. And after digging into the evidence, I think the "shortage" is really just a rational response to market signals.
>but the scientific usage includes the fact that lots of facts have already been evaluated, and even that the new predictions by the theory have already been evaluated and found to be true.

It's been evaluated and found to be true...for now. Almost every major scientific discovery upends some form of thinking or fact that we had accepted up until new information is found.
According to my friend who is a junior high school teacher the kids nowadays are using Instagram and Kik to communicate with each other. They all "maintain" FB profiles for their parents to see but the real action is happening on those two social media platforms.
Disagree with the "never" highlight rows in a table. If you have a number-heavy table with lots of rows and columns, it's the perfect way to help users read the data shown.

Of course, this sort of thing is more common on intranet sites, not exposed to the general public, so it's simply "Know Your Audience", as usual.
Steve Jobs wouldn't have apologized for Apple Maps, and Tim shouldn't either
I consider myself a competent, intelligent, relatively professional 'tech worker.'

I just don't really want to move across the country for a job, especially one that I probably wont have for the next 20 years.
hahaha probably
Is the difference here that it's the same piecework existence, but in office rather than remote?
Equity Compensation Calculator (Video)
>a proposed explanation whose status is still conjectural and subject to experimentation

I don't see how anyone would object to this definition of a theory.
I prefer reading too but most people will pay more for a video than they will for an ebook regardless of the value contained within because they've been trained repeatedly that books are cheap.
They can hardly be blamed for not wanting to go live in rainy Seattle, work under someone as uninspiring as Steve Ballmer, and put up with awful stack ranking BS.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding this product. Please let me know if I am.

$10/month for 5 users on IRC?

This service is very poorly branded. IRC is a protocol that is easy to set up, free, and low maintenance. Whatever value there is to outsourcing IRC server setup, it isn't $10/mo. But that isn't even what their main service is. Their platform is just built on IRC--their other features (Archiving, workflow integration, etc) are much much much more value-adding. Its like advertising heroku as "rails hosting, and more!". It doesn't point to the real value of the service.

I can get easy IRC hosting for much cheaper than $10/month. Don't charge someone $10/month for an IRC server. Charge them $10/month for a developer-oriented integrated messaging platform or something.
That works well :)
How about these companies told to start offering training programs?

The US has no shortage of eager workers, some quite creative (which is good for such jobs). The crux of this is companies are devaluing people in general, and don't really give much care about it.
They don't even dodge, which is the staple movement in UT games.
I use zsh and write all my ~/bin/ scripts in bash.. what problems did you encounter? I don't see how issues could possibly even occur.
I would definitely like to work on something that can provide me some passive income later. I don't have any good idea for that. If not that I may work on some design projects of other startups to sharpen my skills or may be some Wordpress themes. Interested in knowing what cool ideas other people have.
There's a double standard here. You want developers to contribute to your project despite the lack of documentation but you require that libraries you contribute to are well documented.
Oberon, Squeak and Forth.
Long live Python.
It actually might be underpriced, to be totally honest, but not that underpriced I don't think.

To justify prices in the > $2k region I think I would need to add some sort of interactive component (webinar or what have you), and I have no time on the schedule for that in the next couple of months, so I went with something which was totally self-guided for my first try. I might revisit that eventually, if there's lots of demand for it and if it makes sense for the business.
According to this:

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/ocwage.htm

Developer-related positions(both research and development), are some of the highest paid STEM-related positions available.
There's no indication they'll ever have something like Street View -- or rather, what's "like" it is the 3D flyover mode.

In practice the back end is really the main thing that they need to worry about. I'd argue, in fact, that the first order of business is straightening out the point of interest database, which seems to be where the majority of genuine problems are coming from. The second order of business is ensuring cartographic completeness and correctness, i.e., making sure that roads (and even the occasional town) are actually present and in the right place. Things like fuzzy terrain tiles or bad 3D meshes may be the most fun to take screen captures of for point-and-laugh purposes, but it's far more important to me that the maps application can tell me how to get to the Brooklyn Bridge than whether it can render a pretty 3D model of it.
This is a good preliminary test, but more customer development needs to be done. You need to have problem and then solution interviews. Don't just show them your solution and ask "Will this help?" Of course it will to some extent.

You want to get a really good understanding why these people have this problem and how they've tried going on without your product. Ask them how much they would be willing to pay to get their problem solved. Then ask if your solution is helpful and show them a demo.

Steve Blank is the Godfather of customer development. I highly suggest the Startup Owner's Manual. But if you don't have time to read that all right now, just realize you need some in-depth interviews (preferably in person interviews) and then use the Google Adwords landing page test as a mass scale test.

Good luck.
Absolutely. Some of the more notable include:

"The ability to set your outbound Caller ID to any number" - This is an attribute in our <Dial> element which allows developers to build systems that initiate calls from the phone number of their choosing. E.g. I can initiate a call to Bob from phone number (555) 555-5555. I.e. it doesn't have to be from my TelAPI number.

"Reverse carrier lookups on phone numbers"- TelAPI provides a way to look up the carrier of a phone number via the REST API.

"Flat-rate unlimited inbound calling to your TelAPI phone numbers" - For businesses/users racking up the voice mins per month, they can opt to buy an unlimited inbound channel for $27/mo instead of paying min/mo rates.

"Voice and audio effects on your phone calls" - These allow developers to modify the pitch and tone of a caller's voice (and basically make their voice sound like anyone they want). We also offer an ambient noise feature to add background noise to calls (e.g. city traffic, poor reception, etc).

"Private number Caller ID unblocking" - Upon receiving calls from blocked numbers, users are able to ascertain the callerID. Our parent company TelTech developed an application called TrapCall which takes advantage of this.

"Premium transcriptions with human processed dictation Speech recognition" - We offer four different transcription services (varying based on a developer's/business's needs) which allow consumers to record their calls and have the dialogues from the calls captured in text.

Thanks for the question!
Imagine if they did it for email...

"Hosted email. Just $10/month for 100 incoming emails."

As you say, you can just buy a VPS for less than $10/mo and install an irc server on it.
> What excuse is there for driving directions that direct you to drive on train tracks? [2]

Judging by all the cars parked on both sides of the track, there's probably a driveable surface there too. Not uncommon.
Who still uses Python you ask?

Easy!

This Year: https://us.pycon.org/2013/sponsors/

Last Year: https://us.pycon.org/2012/sponsors/

And I've got about 14 more pending for 2013 :)

There's some big names there. I know there are more. Almost every company listed there is hiring there, both on the site and at the on site jobs fair:

https://us.pycon.org/2013/sponsors/prospectus/

Join us.
Also, as mentioned above, it has code that we can read. Thanks!
Second minor point: A human stepping out into vacuum does not "pop like a balloon." Death comes quickly but in a more mundane fashion.

http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/970603.h...