skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Well, good sci-fi writers don't try. As Ursula Le Guin puts it,

Predictions are uttered by prophets (free of charge), by clairvoyants (who usually
charge a fee, and are therefore more honored in their day than prophets), and by
futurologists (salaried). Prediction is the business of prophets, clairvoyants, and
futurologists. It is not the business of novelists. A novelist’s business is lying.

https://raw.github.com/gist/4424894
A few things are important in my opinion regarding productivity:

1) Minimal lying in bed. If you're in your bed, you should be sleeping. If you can't fall asleep find out why and fix it.

2) Don't get distracted. Of course, easier said than done but you can definitely minimize any possibilites.

3) Experimentation with sleep. Try sleeping a little bit less and less until you find the minimal amount required for you to be refreshed.

4) Continuously reflect and ask yourself if there's a better or more efficient way of doing something.
Designer News
Like HN for the design community.
I've asked a similar question a year ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3308036
Let's see what we have here...a gift that can be revoked at any time and an overbearing contract on how to live your life.

No calls after 7:30pm?
Mom reading my emails?
Don't say anything to a friend that you wouldn't say in front of their parents?
No porn? Seriously?

Adolescence is a period of growth and discovery. Let the kid grow up with his generation. Encourage responsible behavior--not inane rules you yourself wouldn't follow. The bit about the music taste was especially rich. Should I apologize for preferring Lady Gaga to Bach? My playlist is unabashedly top 100.

Late night AIM convos and talking to my friends until we fell asleep were some of my fondest high school memories. They kept me going and helped me process the world as it opened up to me. I forged friendships then that are sanctuaries to me today.

To the kid: Let loose. Explore. Engage in activities that interest you. Don't be afraid to fail. Don't fear the judgment of others. Don't be different for the sake of being different. Don't be overwhelmingly goal oriented. Don't focus your life on padding your resume for some college.

You're probably not the introspective, reserved gentleman that your mother wishes you were. Learn to be comfortable with who you are.
The inverse of this is exactly why I'd cut them slack: there's no way for them to do business without partnering with the competition, in this case being solely dependent on them.

Edit: it's exactly like trying to reinvent Twitter by consuming their APIs, and we've all seen how that goes
Why Character Encoding Sucks In Your Language Part 1: Python
Sorry, Android is controlled by a single company.
It's up for me for at least a little while now, but I think it was down for me all afternoon (Eastern timezone). This supposedly only impacted "some" of the DVD customers.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-31/netflix-says-some-c...
I think their top ten posts of the year capture the essence of Reddit fairly well:

http://blog.reddit.com/2012/12/top-posts-of-year-and-best-of...

Celebrity interviews, a lot of pointless crap, some navel-gazing, and one mildly interesting thing about a videogame.

The celebrity AMAs are a new thing and a pretty big deal. Obama on Reddit was very similar to Clinton going on MTV and taking audience questions. And like MTV, like so many user-driven websites of the past, I wouldn't be surprised if Reddit quickly fades out of cultural relevance when the next thing comes along.
The ground rules are a bit oppressive. Kids need autonomy in their lives just like adults. Some of the rules are fine, but some are overreaching.

2. I will always know the password.

Really? So no privacy.

4. Hand the phone to one of your parents promptly at 7:30pm every school night & every weekend night at 9:00pm.

7:30? If the kid has a computer this is basically pointless anyway, if the kid doesn't have a computer he's missing out on a lot.

5. It does not go to school with you.

Convenient to have a phone in school to call to organize rides with parents/be contactable in emergency/ look up necessary information etc.

9. Do not text, email, or say anything to someone that you would not say out loud with their parents in the room.

Kids are not the same people with their parents and peers or parents and boy/girl friends.

10. No porn. Search the web for information you would openly share with me. If you have a question about anything, ask a person – preferably me or your father.

Not even going to bother with this one.

14. Leave your phone home sometimes and feel safe and secure in that decision.

This is one of those afraid of technology rules, a phone is a convenience not an addiction and is something there's no reason to not always have with you.
Or worse...

https://www.pcworld.com/article/2013580/researcher-finds-cri...
Not always an option but many employers support them.. If you can get a high quality 20 minute nap in the middle of the day, you could cut some time from your overnight sleep.
If I had to think of anti-virus I would trust the most it would be this.

The computer would reboot in to a maintenance mode where it would boot in to a check mode. Hopefully off the network or some other source that couldn't be altered by a virus/malware.

The check mode would checksum all executable content and update its database, reporting all changed and added files. It could also check for known out of date executable files. All files would be checked against a A/V database too. If nothing fails the computer reboots back to the OS, else it is halted until repaired.

This still has two risks I can see, one is the BIOS is altered and subverted there. The other is non-executable content runs transient programs that do not survive reboot.
Is being unforgiving to new entrants in a typically scary industry the type of behavior that will encourage new competition?
It looks like there isn't much downloads for blog-specific magazines on Android. Engadget's Distro app only has 50K+ downloads.
If course the child isnt able to use an iphone responsibly but thats not what this is about. It's an attempt to teach their child. The child is 13 and the parent is using this as another tool to continue to teach the child manners and responsibility.

Children need guidance and help while growing up. Some of these rules are ridiculous, but I like that the parent is continuing to guide the child through life changes. There's no question that having the Internet in the palm of your hand is a major life change.
I don't have anything to do with 'simple' but I'm working with a group of people on another system somewhere in the payment chain. In banking failure is not an option, a little detail that I keep having to drill into my collegues, some of who would rather have an MVP with the occasional bit of downtime than something a lot more solid. So for now we're stuck in the 'hurd' loop.

Within any start-up there are always differing opinions on the level of reliability required. My first real job in IT was with the Dutch division of the Chase Mannhattan bank, they made it pretty clear upon hiring me that they did not mind hiring me into a responsible position as young as I was but that my first fuck-up would also be my last. I'm not sure if they would actually follow through on that promise but it certainly made me a bit more wary and more responsible. The fact that I ended up leaving of my own accord means that their threat probably had its intended effect.

When you're in the payment chain, whether as an IPSP, a bank or something else that directly affects peoples income and ability to function in society you have no excuse other than 'meteor fragments took out all three of our datacenters'.

Stuff is up, check-totals are at '0', transactions are never lost. 24 hours, 365 (of 366) days per year.

If you can't do that don't bother playing.

The bank I'm with (Rabobank in nl) lost a lot of respect from me (after building that up for 2 decades) when they blamed a bunch of down time on 'hackers'. What bugged me even more than the fact that they were down was the fact that they wanted to blame another party for being down.

The one thing I'll leave a little bit of room for is capacity issues during the holiday shopping spree, but even that is pretty bad form and indicative of very bad planning.

Judging by the post the error lies with Simple's partner, unfortunately for Simple customers will likely not care about that at all. To them their simple card doesn't work when they expect it to work.

I hope for simple they'll be able to fix this very quickly.
For any kind of app or just your kind of app?
We Need More Crises: Notes on the US Federal Taxes Showdown
"It's well known that Android has overtaken iOS in terms of the base OS. "

This is not well known, although it's an opinion often voiced here.

"Why shouldn't content producers do the same?"

Because they are not utopian technologists? This article is about a content producer that invested in Android yet failed. Instead of talking about how the content producers need to do more, we should be talking about why this effort failed.

Here's a start: when you buy an iphone today the Newsstand is one of a handful of Apps you start with. It's featured and people click on it and then many of them start buying and consuming content. What is the competing experience on Android? I assume there's no equivalent to the standalone Newsstand App installed by default on the phone. I assume they hit Play, which incidentally is terribly named and many customers never click on ever because they think it only leads to pokemon. Then they have to know that Magazines on their Device are a thing now and find them on which may be easy or hard in Play but is still an order of magnitude harder than it is on iOS.
All news is good news? I had never heard of Simple before this and am now semi-interested in getting a card..
What makes Lisp great?
What makes you think the parent would allow the child to have a phone, even one he bought on his own?

This is a 13 year old child, not an adult.
I think we need to induce more crises in government to get perpetually-unsolved policy problems to finally get results. Like a mandatory 10% slash in government spending if we don't get immigration reform passed by Dec 31, 2013. Any number of other issues (education, gun control, entitlements, greenhouse gas emissions) could be addressed in this manner.
> It's well known that Android has overtaken iOS in terms of the base OS.

I wouldn't say it's "well known" at all and I certainly wouldn't say it in such definite terms--and I am an Android user.

> Why shouldn't content producers do the same?

Because they have not yet decided that their projected returns from devoting significant resources to Android outweighs the opportunity costs? They have no ties to Android unless they will realize benefits from targeting it. The purchase patterns of current Android customers doesn't make me as a user and a fan of the platform think they're going to make back their money on investment, so I certainly don't think that they're unreasonable to want to actually see some assurances of a decent return before investing in the platform.
I am not trying to be an Apple fan-boy, but does anybody run anti-virus on their Mac's? AntiVirus these days seems like snake oil.
Getting a successful web app is tough, why add unnecessary constraints to make it harder?

One example is "I can only spend $5,000 of my own money in this entire process". If you could get an awesome programmer for $6,000 to build the whole thing, would you really say no just to stick to the arbitrary rules?

I think you need to go into a startup with the idea that you need to overcome all the obstacles that get in your way, not start with some arbitrary obstacles to make a game of it.

Good luck, but I think you are making a tough task even tougher, and unnecessarily.
Traditional A/V are broken for the web.

With dynamic languages like JS and ActionScript, their approach is to fingerprint 10 different strains of the same threat. Then the 11th strain can be generated in a few seconds with new obfuscation.

So the A/V only starts working if/when eventually a native code payload reaches the target.
So put the content on the website and charge for it?
1) Which makes me curious, will all these people making decisions comparing MS solutions - other solutions will remember they had to pay this cost?

2) This is nowhere near what I said. You should better think before you speak, especially when it is about people dieing as a result of other people's decisions.

YES, there is an increasing number of people committing suicide saying in their suicide notesthat they can not live being a burden and/or without dignity (http://www.keeptalkinggreece.com/2012/11/22/greece-in-crisis...) because of a government/EU/bankers inflicted "crisis".

YES, there are a lot of disabled people who are being left to die as a result of "reduced spending" (http://www.keeptalkinggreece.com/2012/11/06/health-s-o-s-gre...)

YES, since this winter it looks like there will be even more people with health problem because of other "unforeseen consequences" I would never believe could happen (http://www.keeptalkinggreece.com/2012/12/27/athens-suffocate...).

In a situation where the government
a)is taxing people living on 0 euro per year (through a system which claims that even if you declared 0e income you need at least 3000e to survive/exist so you will be taxed for 3000e income)
b) cuts down on 280e/month pensions
c) cuts down on health spending to the extend that hospitals ask patient's relatives to buy consumables
d) people stopped turning on their heating because heating oil has been heavily taxed (4x in less than 10 years). There are already enough occasions of people died in fires (http://www.keeptalkinggreece.com/2012/12/10/freezing-and-dyi...)

Then YES, a few millions paid to microsoft annoys me A LOT and I do not want to be paying for MS skilled workers.
Which is pricelessly what you should be arguing about: what do we agree is minimally viable for what we're trying to do? If you can't decide that then you can't decide anything.
I have six invites for any adventurous HNers interested in living life on the edge.
> No calls after 7:30pm?

This one seems particularly bad to me, since it implies to me that there is also a "be home by 7:30pm" rule in place. Pretty damn extreme.
You should be unforgiving. I have no idea what the root cause behind this is but testing roll-over is obviously part & parcel of the level of reliability required in the financial world.

Allowed: scheduled downtime announced ahead of time for reporting, unscheduled downtime with localized effect due to 'acts of god'. Not allowed: customers can't access their funds when they should be able to.

When you disrupt the banking industry you especially should be doing at least as good as the established parties do in the reliability department.

Let's hope they have it fixed very quickly or it may well kill Simple.

Imagine being in a bar somewhere right now and having just bought a round finding out that you can't pay for it. You'll hear about that one for years.
Being Craftsman
From our position on the sidelines, it's easy to say that banking is an industry that needs some disruption. But it's also an industry where service interruptions are absolutely inexcusable, and none of the established players have issues like this. Maybe the only reason that simple is able to 'disrupt' is because they don't fully appreciate the requirements of the industry, and if they put as much effort into failover and redundancy as the big players they wouldn't be able to disrupt anything.
The Twitter comparison doesn't work here; Bancorp is explicitly a middleman. As long as Bancorp is getting paid, it's in their best interest (excuse the pun) for Simple to stay afloat.

Bancorp is a closer analog to EC2; they let Simple get off the ground quickly without having to build and harden their own banking systems and transaction networks. Also like EC2, Simple gets to take the heat equally if Bancorp screws up.

That said, this is pretty bad, but if Simple had built their own network and left a glaring security hole open, they'd be utter toast.
Some people do that, why should we care if they want to try selling content in a different way. I'm not here to run everyone's business for them. They invested in iOS and in Android and one failed. If you don't want to read the obvious lesson here and instead pivot to a tangent about how their whole business model is wrong feel free.
Maybe McAfee could come back and save the day. It would make a great addition to his storytale-like-blog.
Ask HN: Was Snapchat the first app of its kind?
One of my problems in developing apps is that for every idea I think of, I do a Google search and almost always find an app that already exists for such a thing. Sure, there's always the potential to create a better app that does the same thing, but at least for me, coming up with a novel ideal seems to be difficult.

So I am kind of surprised that Snapchat has taken off in the way that it has considering such an idea probably crossed my and many others' minds.

I can think of three possibilities: Snapchat was an original idea; Snapchat developed the concept of temporary photo sharing much better than any competitor; this current period in time is simply the point at which an app like this acquires popularity.

Thoughts?
In the context of Wikileaks, Visa and Amazon were explicitly middlemen. As long as Visa and Amazon were paid, it was in their best interest <snip>

No doubt you already see where I'm going with this.
David Beckham is to get a knighthood
Not at all. With the powers of reflection and self-consideration, I can think back to how I was raised and make judgement calls on the merits of various parenting techniques that I experienced.

Presumably, in the case of first children, this is what parents have been doing since the dawn of time.
Reflections on 2012
Happy New Year to you and yours too, Thomas.
you especially should be doing at least as good as the established parties do in the reliability department.

Easy to say but I think it is unreasonable to expect a company that is couple years old to have as much reliability as ones who have had decades to figure it out.

I think the Simple customers have every right be absolutely pissed. For some, they may even realize that the downside of going with Simple isn't justified by the upside. Hopefully, for the majority of Simple users the upside will make the rare downtime bearable.

My view would change if this becomes a regular occurrence with Simple. But that does not seem to be the case.
Just to contrast this a little, what you paint here is a panacea, while the reality is that even just this year 10 million accounts in the UK were out of order for a period of months due to a reliability problem: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/jun/25/how-natwest...
Thanks for the response - your advice is greatly appreciated. Do you notice that customers are more inclined to choose the in person, webinar, or prerecord option? Or is it usually different on a case by case basis?
They are dealing with people's money, and should be held to the same standard as every other business in that space.

They also don't deserve any special 'slack' just because they use other companies services. You wouldn't accept that excuse from Bank of America.
Sibling threads touting banks as paragons of reliability, with any momentary loss-of-access-to-funds as unforgivable, must have been dealing with a different banking system than me.

With major banks like BofA, Citibank, and others, I've had…

• credit cards often disabled for fraud-alert false alarms

• check deposits sometimes subject to mysterious fund-availability delays

• individual ATM clusters or whole ATM networks down for short periods

• account information and ATM withdrawals sometimes unavailable during 'system maintenance' hours (often early Sunday AM)

• a check erroneously bounced by a major bank (BofA) when both available-by-rule funds and enrolled 'overdraft protection' would have each been individually able to cover the check amount

• my ATM card unusable while traveling to the exotic third-world locale of Ottawa, Canada due to some sort of more-than-one-day network security issue

Stuff happens, to banks also. Cut Simple some slack.
On job interviews
Try explaining how less reliability is acceptable to the guy that is out of gas trying to get home.

Payment systems have an impact that is unlike any other system.

It's very well possible that lives depend on your system working. You may never know about it but you should definitely build as though they do.

You can't build financial software the same way that you build some CRUD site or the latest social fad.
Indeed. I believe that Reddit is pretty much hitting it's peak of mass appeal. Personally, I left Reddit not to long ago (after nearly five years as a highly active user) in favor of smaller, more manageable and more palatable offerings.

It's also interesting that this blogger would bring up digg.com, a site that I used in tandem with reddit till the great migration of 2009. From there, I hadn't really gone back.

However, the new digg.com is fantastic! Lots of content, high readability (on desktop and mobile) and nothing else. It's a focused tuned experience that I really enjoy.

It seems like things have come full circle (again).
The wild misuse of "26-Hour Day" here would make me question doing business with this person. So many startup folk who have made a good first impression on me have blogs full of clangers like this, which should have been a clue as to problems of comprehension and honesty I would experience with them down the line.
Iirc, it is the backstory for this comic, which I believe is still the author's full time job:

http://www.somethingpositive.net/
Here's what I thought of Reddit in 2008: "merely a collection of trivia, narrow, shallow, and sensational".

http://lists.canonical.org/pipermail/kragen-tol/2008-January...

Since then I've become a Reddit user, but my opinion hasn't changed much. The bottom line from that post:

"The pathological focus on recency in Digg and Reddit's setup, and to a
slightly less problematic extent in del's, has some benefits. It
engages people in dialogue, and it's ideal for things like organizing
political protests. It's great if you want to stay on top of things.
But I think it's more important to get to the bottom of things."
Unless you use your bank cards every hour of every day, you don't know for sure if you've ever lost access, perhaps for longer than this Simple outage. Maybe you've just been lucky enough not to try access when it was out.
> .. pointless crap

Like the whole of your HN contributions?

> I wouldn't be surprised if Reddit…

As much as you and much of HN would like it, it's not going anywhere in the immediate future. Not near enough to qualify as 'quickly,' anyway.

Until then, deal with its superiority over this little shithole.
Definitely interested in seeing the source code for this
That looks like their settlement batches were no longer accepted. They deserve to lose their customers / go bust over that. Natwest will survive because not all their customers care about such stuff to the same extent, some may not even find out. Others are bound by their mortgages to have checking accounts with Natwest.

I didn't say that those things don't happen. I said that they are not acceptable. The fact that others fuck up does not give you an excuse to fuck up.

These are exactly the kind of discussions that I was hinting at above.
I actually replied here earlier, but you have to have your "I see dead people" goggles on to see it. I'm talented like that.

Happy New Year.
Light painting with temperature - cheap thermal imaging