skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
In many ways, Excel is too flexible and yet not flexible enough for data processing: it temptingly allows people to do some analysis but can very easily build up into a crufty mess of unreadable in-cell formulas and VB macros.

Often a database, JSON or just plain CSV files, combined with R or Python+libraries, will give a far far better result (faster, maintainable, more flexible presentation, reusable, VCS-able).
Running a bank is like being a cop, the stakes are high for fucking up.
Sure. We'll probably add them at some point this week
:) glad you like it
Ordinarily I might consider this worth a loss in reputation, but given the uniquely one-sided battle that is trying to cause any disruption in the banking industry, I'd be willing to cut these guys some slack. In this area the enemy has big guns
I know I was vague, but we really are CPU-bound. We do some fairly heavy set and bitwise operations. Our smallest unit of work is about 3x-5x slower on AWS (while costing about 4x more than alternatives). This can't be further parallelized without a rewrite. The problem is compounded by the negative impact this has on concurrency - which can be solved by adding more machines, but that just makes AWS that much more expensive.

A different, less important system, does image manipulation. This is also very CPU-sensitive.
The problem is that this changes the scope of the word so much as to render it meaningless, since the arguments during meetings just shift to what exactly is "minimally viable."
I'm based in San Antonio and have never heard that of Valero employees. Culture isn't very strict there from what I've heard.
Because that investment will pay off over time as more and more people move to Android, and a platform that isn't controlled by a single company will make innovation easier for everyone.
I'm not sure if you were trying to make this point or not, but the vendor lock-in that MS gets from education must be massive: millions of students grow up using only MS software, it's what they get used to and practiced in, so they stick with it forever.
Market share? It's been shown that even though a lot of "android" devices may be out there, the majority of use and engagement from mobile platforms is still coming from iOS.

See this post on asymco:

http://www.asymco.com/2012/11/26/the-android-engagement-para...
(I wrote the article and 3 web apps on Go).

I would be much more uncomfortable running on uWSGI than on net/http. As far as I can tell (https://github.com/unbit/uwsgi/blob/master/plugins/go/src/uw...) Go's uWSGI implementation is just a small wrapper over C code inside a dll.

It's not portable (support for cgo on Windows is extremely sketchy).

It also goes against common sense. Any code you can write in C, you can write in Go, except it'll be easier (Go is garbage collected, has built-in arrays, strings, hash tables etc.) and there's drastically smaller chance Go will have a security issues due to memory over-write.

It duplicates lots of net/http functionality.

net/http is well documented, well tested, reviewed by extremely knowledgeable people.

Most importantly, it is being used in production by me and many other people.

Finally, net/http gave me everything I needed to write my web applications. Before I would even considering using uWSGI (or anything else) someone would have to explain what exactly does it provide that is so indispensable for writing web apps.
And on NYE, to make it worse.
I'm just curious: who is their transaction partner?
Really? I've seen it on HN several times throughout the last 4-5 months.
It was called BankSimple until recently, and has had a lot of coverage on HN.
They're literally disrupting banking right now. Is accepting unreliability from financial institutions the disruption banking needs?
It looks like this started around Jan 1 00:00:00 UTC 2013.

I wonder if it's related to the leap second bug discovered in July. Apparently, a some popular NTP servers incorrectly sent out leap seconds at midnight. Even if it's not that specific issue, I bet the root cause is a time-keeping bug.
> what kind of company can lose money for decades without going bankrupt?

By your argument, embezzlement and tax fraud and retail theft don't exist either. Just because a loss isn't fatal to an industry doesn't mean it has no effect.
I have a lot of friends who graduated in electrical engineering or a similar degree and got jobs in the oil field. Most of them work as rig engineers and work 6 days a week, travel constantly, on call 24/7, ready to drive 5+ hours on a whim, etc. They make a lot of money, but most of them hate it.
You may recall them from their previous, and much much much better name, BankSimple. There have been a number of stories.
awesome mom
90% of the time I wouldn't notice, but on NYE theres a significantly higher chance i'm at an ATM looking for some cash.
Simple (altough not as much as other money-related startups like Stripe or Square -hum... what's with the "S"?-) has been on HN several times, most of them through Al3x/Alex Payne, their former CTO (http://al3x.net/2012/07/25/moving-on.html) and co-founder: http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=al3...
I was hit with this, but like I'd imagine every other simple user just pulled out a credit card. I figured it was some issue with Subway's card reader on University, guess it wasn't.
Poor kid.

Looks like a set of rules in a corporate office on how to use the... microwave.
There's some legwork to do to make the claims you're making. Maybe you should step back and establish niceties like why people who are in their target demos will flock to Android "over time" and quantify how the NPV of investing now will pay off later.
How to tell a Real Programmer from the crowd (1995)
I hate to be 'that guy', but this was just on the front page 4 hours ago:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4990950
poor kid? if all parents made their kids follow at least a few of these rules, the world wouldn't be as fckd up as it is now.
I personally prefer AbiWord because of the startup time, but it failed to display Word document vector graphics at all. Open/LibreOffice did not display them correctly at first, but displayed them better in later versions. Later I managed to get some Windows systems to convert the docs to PDF so that I could read them on Linux.

I am very grateful for the work that has been put into open-source office software, and know that they face an uphill battle with the peculiarities of Microsoft's formats.
ugh. did look for it but didnt see it...anyways. I linked to the actual blog, not a post about the blog..which i guess is better for the actual blogger, no?
Aye, perhaps it's my perception then, because I've been seeing lots of awesome code out there recently. There used to be a few exciting JS projects, though many of them were redundant in some ways, and they were still fairly basic by today's standards. Today, though, it seems like a fun new project pops up monthly.

I won't argue that there isn't still a ton of education that needs to happen! I've been battling this at work, as few candidates have much JS experience at all (I think all of the good ones are involved in the hot projects).

I'd also concede that educating future coders is possibly not only more important, but more fulfilling. I've been following your blog for awhile, and though I do miss the geeky JS topics such as the precision (or lack thereof) of setInterval/setTimeout, how great documentFragment's are, etc. I've also enjoyed the posts about Kahn.
I've been reading this book about the neuroscience of magic - http://www.sleightsofmind.com/. The authors worked with magicians like Teller to understand the neuroscience behind their tricks.
Portland salaries WRT cost of living will probably never be as favorable as some other cities, that said, there are intangibles that make up the difference for many of us. A couple of links that might be useful:

http://siliconflorist.com/jobs/

http://calagator.org/
if you're going to work out, I would really suggest going first thing in the morning. It has such a dramatically different effect on your day versus working out at night. I'm not a morning person either but I'll never work out at night again.
Linkbait headline.

tldr; I realized I am more productive when not interrupted during tasks that require thinking (specifically, ignoring phone calls and emails while working).

I thought this was going to be about an actual 26 hour day, which is entirely possible (and a very interesting subject).. but don't even think about maintaining a 26 hour schedule in 24 hours of time.
Yup. Fantasy != reality. I actually think the Internet helped me learn that early.

By "safe" I mean safer than the alternatives (public indecency, teen pregnancy, unsafe or exploitive real-life situations, etc, etc), not categorically "best," or even necessarily useful for everyone. If girls are statistically put off by porn, that's OK. I want it to be OK to seek what feels right for me too, and I'm glad I was able to at a time when I was high on testosterone; the difference between a sex offender and a nice normal guy can sometimes just be whether or not a person has a "safe" outlet.

Video games provide stress relief and can be seen similarly (girls might not play the same types of video games, even though most FPS games are some of the most common), but as long as people can distinguish fantasy from reality, they can be healthy outlets. Self-moderation is also a learned skill.

I'm not trying to be prescriptive, I just hate to see a nifty tech "gift" become a point of shame (emasculation). As jlgreco said, it's biologically hardwired. IMHO, he's probably still going to look for porn, only now he may feel like it's "bad"... That he's bad. Prohibition is a land-mine of social and psychological problems. Just look at catholic priests.

I agree with your conclusion.
http://www.thebancorp.com/about/ is their partner bank so I'm guessing the issue is there.
"whenever anyone gets close, my instinct is to put my hands on my pockets."

Pickpockets love it when people do this, because it shows them which pockets your valuables are in. They also love the "WATCH FOR PICKPOCKETS" signs in tourist areas for the same reason: upon seeing those signs, people instinctively pat or check the pockets in which they store their valuables.
The selling point of the magazine is that it's not just the website, it has it's own content.
These rules are ridiculous. If you don't trust your child enough to use the phone responsibly, then you shouldn't give them the phone in the first place (or in this case, lend them the phone). These rules allow the child to use the phone for roughly four hours per day; basically only when at home. What's the point of even having one?
Eight things to think about when developing your next Rails app
The Job Market for C++ Developers (March 2012)
I usually work out at night but have always heard that working out in the morning is better.. thinking about making the switch. I'm not a morning person either.

What are the benefits? More energy/zest during the day?
With $1M they could only buy 4 PB of storage? That's $250/TB, too expensive!

For comparison, Backblaze deployed petabytes of storage at 1/5th the cost at $55/TB (including server costs): http://blog.backblaze.com/2011/07/20/petabytes-on-a-budget-v...

(In all fairness, Backblaze costs assume 3TB drives costing $120. Due to last year's Thailand floods, a 3TB drive costs $150 today. But this only puts Backblaze at $65/TB at today's prices, still a lot cheaper than $250/TB.)

It seems to me that archive.org could try harder to reduce their costs. I can't imagine their workloads being much different than Backblaze (in both cases, most of their data is being accessed/read rarely, with mostly slow continuous writing/archiving.)
Think of a programming language. It has some built-in data types, and it has so-called literals for each of those. The parser reads in some text and produces a value of some kind. In Lisp, the program itself is really one large "code literal", which happens to be run by the language environment. But there are plenty of other things you can do with programs besides just running them, and generating them is one of those things. Lisp merely provides handy facilities for performing these manipulations.
I wouldn't cut them any slack. I can't say my bank cards have ever gone down. Totally losing access to your customer's money doesn't help your reputation at all, "disruptor" or not.

EDIT: "The Bancorp Bank", the bank Simple farms out the actual banking to, has been around since 2000[0]. Simple _might_ have an excuse for screwing up like this if this was all their own system, but an established bank doesn't.

[0] http://www.thebancorp.com/about/
Does it really count as a gift if it is that locked down? I wouldn't accept it just so I could keep all those rules out of my head. Work an hour on the weekend landscaping and buy a prepaid Android phone. At least then you would have the option of not answering the phone when Mom calls. Maybe the poor kid wouldn't feel like always talking instantly whenever she wanted.
I agree, I used to get excited about just jquery plugins. But noe using node.js and ember.js makes me almost not want to code in anything else. (Except for objective-c for ios and java for android)

It is just amazing to see how much it has exploded in the last few years. Serverside js and client side mvc will keep me excited at least for another year.
New Year's Eve photos from around the world
I'm afraid of alienating customers by charging for training rather than providing it for free.

Not only are businesses not alienated by this sort of thing, many of them will either a) have explicit budgets for it or b) have explicit requirements that they cannot buy your stuff if they cannot also buy the training.

An Appointment Reminder customer wanted a quote for training. I said "Do you want me there to lead an in-person training session, a webinar, or several videos showing operation of the software which your team can review at their leisure?" She said "Quote me all of those." I think I picked $10k, $4k, and $2k. She said "Hmm -- no need to fly you out here but we can greenlight either of the other two without needing to talk to anybody."

(n.b. Assume that the yearly contract for the service itself is in the four figure region. That sometimes matters -- a few companies will just automatically assume support/training costs 20% of invoice.)
A very important difference is that 99%+ of backblazes bandwidth is inbound (people storing their files). Inbound bandwidth is free at most datacenters. Transmitting data (like archive.org does when you request to see a webpage) is not and could account for most of the price difference you see.

This also does not count that archive.org likely needs more infrastructure than BB does for serving files, caching, etc.. They are one of the most visited (top 250) websites after all.
Innovate Or Die: Nokia’s Long-Drawn-Out Decline
Exactly, this is hardly a gift - it's a leash. If I was this kid I'd prefer to keep my crappy phone or just use some combination of google voice/laptop and throw the iphone in the trash. Probably a symptom of just generally really controlling parents.
> Now you fan out your description from "developers" to "creatives."

Same boat as far as I'm concerned. I made an inexact description of the market segment in my initial comment, but I'm talking about the same herd of people.

"freelancers, consultants & and small teams" - your website

They aren't Postmen or Choir directors. They are not 6 year old girls.

> Do creatives behave like early adopters? Is there evidence for that?

Sure, I think they do. They seem like people who watch for new things and try them out. They aren't usually late to the party.

> I think you're misinterpreting my tone, because I'm just pointing out that your comment was full of ungrounded conjecture. It doesn't bother me personally, since I have over 400,000 reasons not to worry what somebody on the internet says about Freckle as a business.

Well your tone seems to suggest that you think I was criticizing something.

Once again - the description of early adopter markets has NOTHING to do with you or your business. Its a description of the general nature of that market segment and noting how you have SUCCEEDED in that area.

"400,00 reasons" seems to be a reference to your stated yearly income.

I see no reason for you to take anything I have said whatsoever as adversarial or critical. My analysis of the market segment was quite the opposite. You have the wrong end of the horse. If you make that money in a limited market then you are doing quite well and that makes me happy because I nearly walked away from that market thinking it was too limited.
NYE realtime instagram timeline
Show HN: Holiday project: Simple VNC client for Windows 8
I think the battle is lost on that one. When working in these areas I tried to distinguish between "Managed Network IPTV" and "Internet TV" when the difference mattered and tried to educate those discussing these issues. "IPTV" by itself is ambiguous and it can normally be understood by context.
You don't get a person to act a certain way over any appreciable amount of time by demanding they should. They have to understand and appreciate the reasoning.
One Game A Month
I wonder what % of their traffic is something other than /r/gonewild and /r/atheism?
It's well known that Android has overtaken iOS in terms of the base OS. A hardware advantage that Apple had is almost gone now, so the only thing missing is content. I don't think iOS buyers are fanatics or taken in by marketing because there is more marketing of Android. I think they have been choosing a better product.

So, now that hardware and the OS no-longer favor iOS, it's simply down to content providers to make the investment. Technologists bought in to Android because it's open, long before it became the best platform. Why shouldn't content producers do the same?
Wireless Power May Cut the Cord for Plug-In Devices, Including Cars
> 8:30 - HOLY HELL, FREE BLOCK

He has only 1 hour a day of "free time"? Surely that can't be in anyway normal.
Not a morning person myself, but switched to working out in the AM (especially beneficial here in Seattle where it's dark on both sides of the workday for 6 months of the year). The rush from working out will carry you powerfully into the rest of your day and for the most part get you off on a stronger start.

From a health perspective too, it's a lot easier to "refuel" your body throughout the day after a morning workout as opposed to at night.
I'm guessing any circadian rhythms would adjust with your new waking up/exercise schedule making it no different to your body to exercise that early.
Make this your New Year's resolution.
Visit the site and watch the keynote. Hope to see many of the HN readers there:)
> I think a simple invocation of Godwin's law will demonstrate how retarded this point is. HELLO! YOU ARE A HUMAN BEING! YOU HAVE A BRAIN! YOU DO NOT, EVER, HAVE THE EXCUSE OF SAYING "WELL, THAT WAS AGREED BY OTHERS".

You left out the quote where I said "[u]nless the rule is unjust." Yes, this does undermine my point somewhat because I'm asking each individual to make a judgement call. I do ask that the level be moved well above "inconvenient to me" towards "bad for society." Mass holocaust? Bad for society, probably shouldn't follow that rule. Turn off your mobile phone because it may reduce the risk of firey death for 170+ people? Good for society, probably should follow that rule.

Nothing I posit takes away your capacity to make decisions. If you can't or won't follow the just rules, as given, then don't partake of whatever requires those rules and, should you feel that passionate, campaign to change those rules. Having 85% of the people following the rules and 15% abusing the system by not following them is neither fair nor equitable. It does serve to desensitize adherence to society in the future.
I read his "Pro JavaScript Techniques", which felt rushed and was full of (minor) errors.
My new library for parsing JSON-encoded data
I needed a C library for parsing JSON-encoded data. I didn't want C++. I wanted C. And I wanted this library to be easy to use. I haven't found any. So I wrote one by myself. What do you think? If you find any bugs, please, report it at https://github.com/dexcret/jfaust/issues. Thanks
Most businesses aren't run as charities. If I can make 80 times the money from iOS as from Android I don't care if it's open or closed. Hot dog vendors are not looking to build your utopia. If there's a free place they can sell hotdogs but only bring in $10 a day and there's a highly regulated place where they can bring in $800 a day they are going to take the one where they make more money.

Android already has the bulk of the market share, if they are losing 80 to 1 there's something fundamentally broken in the ecosystem. Stop blaming the hot dog vendors.
'cause the only customers worth having use apple products!
It looks like they are trying to do good, however Banking is not like Google or Amazon cloud. Whilst the odd downtime happens with these technology companies, people forgive and move on, but banking really is different.

If my bank went down losing access to my money, I would be naked, I don't always have cash and money is our oxygen is this society, a absolute essential. Hopefully the downtime for Simple will be short, but if they had 100 million people using them as their main bank and this happened, you could expect mass exodus the next day.

The only time I have lost access to my money was a few years ago when VISA or MASTERCARD went down (or both), with them you don't have a choice and everyone lost access to their money, but if ever just one bank went down it wouldn't turn out good at all.
"""You will mess up. I will take away your phone. We will sit down and talk about it. We will start over again. You & I, we are always learning. I am on your team. We are in this together."""

Cool mom.

She is trying to be a responsible parent by guiding her son in the right direction. It is commendable that she is talking straight about issues. You might not agree with her style (in such case, I believe you are not a parent, yet ;) ) but the alternative of letting the kid learn it by experience is downright scary. The way I see it, she is just laying down the ground rules under the belief and trust that the kid will follow. She is not policing him.
John: Sorry, I just fat-fingered a down vote that was supposed to be an up vote. Thanks for checking in. I'm looking forward to the book myself.
Having the word "bank" in your name means you have to meet all the legal requirements to be a bank. Simple is not a bank.
Ah! I went to YouTube and found it!
http://youtu.be/BLuI118nhzc
The difference being that banks are (relatively) open to free market forces, while the police is not.
There never was an industrial revolution in Greece. Yet (or what is more) there is a respectable number of Greeks around the world who started from the Greek educational system.

Everyone (I hope...) is free to believe whatever they think right. However, in some respects, I feel sad about your kids.

My belief is that education should shape values, ethics and other boring things.
Not entirely related, but a fun psychological party trick. When someone is telling a story and you're standing next to them, start handing them random things to hold. You'll be surprised how many people will just start holding whatever you hand them; and by the end of their conversation they're normally confused, wondering why they're holding a bunch of random stuff, and you'll get a good laugh.
First point; Most wind turbines haven't been in place long enough to actually say they're only lasting for half as long. So… yeah I smell a bit of horse pucky there.

That said, the basic thrust of the paper seems right to me — although I need to give it a closer reading. Essentially, wind power is a poor choice for the UK. Little open land, not a heck of a lot of wind, a political environment which results in communities getting bought off with govt money.

So, context is important. If you want to see successful wind power generation, look at Germany, or a better example; South Australia.