skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This is an interesting side to to push on, but I haven't heard many people claiming this is where pharma has data woes. The real data woes are from high-throughput biological data such as gene expression and now sequencing, and that's a field that's crowded with tiny startups (and though my startup has great tools for this, surviving on pharma does not seem like a sustainable business model).

This other side of information management, clinical trials, is typically handled by Oracle's offerings in the area. However, I haven't heard many complaints about the data side of clinical trials, it's the actual patient accrual and patient handling that's typically expensive on clinical trials. That's not to say that Oracle has solved all the issues. As there are more trials with a bent towards personalized medicine, accruing the patients with the desired traits is going to get more difficult, and will require the participation and coordination of many many more different trial sites. Having additional trial sites is the real cost, as all the sites have to use exactly the same treatment and data collection protocols, and these protocols almost certainly differ from the hospital's or office's standard protocols. And trials also require the doctors to attend training sessions fro their particular data collection routines, even if they have previously learned similar techniques, which is extremely wasteful, but necessary without proper certification schemes. These are the areas that a forward thinking startup can really get ahead of Oracle, so even though I don't see much indication in this PR about it, hopefully Comprehend is thinking in that direction.

That said, typical Silicon Valley startups are woefully naive about healthcare (not necessarily a bad thing!!), and typical startups here underestimate the difficulty of working their way into long-standing relationships, and of changing practices in a field that is change-averse without proper evidence. Additionally it can be extremely difficult to see the areas that can use improvement unless you've studied the terrain carefully, and by the time you've found pain points that you can address, you may have lost the helpful parts of naivete that let you look past all the myriad hurdles in the way of making progress.
The same way it's handled on all other university computers I assume. There's no saving on the hard drive because they are wiped between uses and a new environment is setup each logon. That's the way it's handled at my university, looking from the outside I'm not part of the IT dept.
Founders are Oysters
A great idea, but the blog entry linked is from April 2012. Go to the site, click on the site title and then navigate around from there. It would be helpful if this link had gone to a page that gave a summary or a list of links to the material. It just seemed a dead end at first.
Minesweeper made with JS Canvas
"Take your time and do it right" is Big Company Thinking

You'd be surprised.

My experience with Big Companies is that it's done "the wrong way" far more often than at the startups I've worked for.

The reasons for this are many, but none of them have anything to do with being able to afford it. You still have deadlines and managers who want stuff finished yesterday. More crucial than that, in my experience, Big Companies have far less capable talent as well as projects that have been marred by outsourcing adventures.

Again, only my experience, but I thought I'd share since it runs counter to yours.
How are you submitting 1099s to the IRS this year? (Balanced, YC W11)
Not if politicians are receiving donations in bitcoins ;) Mark Warden already does. http://www.markwarden.com/page/bitcoin-donation also your 'matter of fact' attitude annoys me.
No computed goto's :-/
Intel caught with misleading marketing for its latest chips by TheVerge
Keynote -> upload to SpeakerDeck
The current generation of incubators are derived from the Y-Combinator model, YC didn't start until 2005 after all those companies were founded.

Of the 20 "billion dollar tech companies" founded since 2005, 2 were YC companies and a third was founded by a YC alumni.

So I doubt there's a directly correlation between whether you go through an accelerator and being a huge success.
But, assuming saving to HDDs aren't allowed, why handout MBPs rather than chromebooks? You can get four of them for the price of one Mac Book.
If you want to get clever to avoid touching the database --- which is why every broken password reset feature ever conceived decided to get clever --- you should have your code assessed professionally. I'm not telling you it's impossible to build a secure password reset that doesn't simply store a token in the database. I'm just saying the cost/benefit payoff is probably not there.

Personally, I have this particular bit of appsec down cold, and if I was building a new app, I wouldn't even think about it: I'd use a random token and save it in the database.
I once interviewed for a lead webdev role at a small startup. They had 10-12 people, and a product that was doing OK. (I was thoroughly unconvinced by it, but that's another story). One of the things they talked about was their upcoming plan to build a real-time analytics system to track user behaviour. A big project! That I would get to spearhead! They'd budgeted 2-3 months and 6-8 people to implement it. We talked about their plans for a bit, before I asked (what I thought was) the obvious question:

"So, what's the real-time system going to help you decide that the current system won't?"

There is a long, uncomfortable pause as the two people look at each other, each hoping the other will answer.

"Well... it's not so much the real-time element, per se..." one managed. "But we want more granular data about how people are using our app."

"Okay. But you're currently doing analytics via HTTP callbacks, right? Why not just extend that to hit some new endpoints for your more granular data? You've already got infrastructure in place on the front and back end to support that."

No answer. We moved on. I don't know if I actually saved them 1-2 man-years of work or if they plowed ahead anyway.
> My friend told me that the average wait time in Canada for an endoscopy is 9 months

Wait times for specialist visits that are not life threatening are just as long in the US as in Canada.

There is a persistent myth in Canada among people who have never had to get in depth medical care in Canada and the US that the Canadian system makes you wait until you are dying but in the US you just wave some bills and you see the specialist that day.

(US) Mother-in-Law has to schedule months (4-6) in advance for colon cancer screening because they find polyps every time, not just because of age. Cost - IIRC ~$50 with insurance.

(Canada) Father complained about shortness of breath walking to work (Wednesday), saw his doctor (Thursday), was checked in to the hospital that day, had a angioplasty. (Saturday). Why? Was life threatening. Cost - $150.

I'll take Canadian health care over the US squeeze for money every time.
"I've been in a lovely heteronormative relationship "

Are you kidding? My sarcasm detector is failing here.
People in my office hang toilet paper down like crepe streamers to cover the "gap". It's a little disconcerting sometimes, I'm not sure why that's a design choice. Perhaps to get a glimpse of whether someone's in there or not without actually seeing what's going on?
You say that as if socialised medicine is somehow novel and untested? Look at most of the Commonwealth countries, there are no shortage of students applying to study medicine and they still get paid well. Take your blinkers off - or leave them on to be honest, I'm super happy with my socialist healthcare (which I supplement with cheap private cover for faster elective procedures).
Could you provide examples of CRA Databases. ?

I'm not familiar withe the concept and google and wikipedia haven't helped.

Thanks.
Apologies if the title of the post is not clear, I should have specified that it was only about the client. You are right, one of our main goals is to prove that our security is "for real". However, we also hope that our open source client might be useful to other projects, as well as for developers to fork it and implement themselves what is out of our scope.
Great post by Alex! Some cool bits there for sure!
Neat.

I suppose this uses the 'Security Slot/K-slot' and pushes it out of the foam receptacle (via a solenoid) when a purchase has been made? Returning would be reverse, checking continuity with the lock cable when it's inserted...and maybe a RFID tag inside the case to detect the laptop ID?

I've been spending a good amount of time thinking about networked bikesharing locks, so that's my guess at how this works:
Twitter's real-time hashtag computation engine is powered by low paid humans
Senator Wyden lays out “digital freedom” agenda at CES
I'm willing to bet this hour-old user account with one post is a shill.
FYI that's a racially charged term in the US
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sambo_%28racial_term%29
Personally instead of tripping over myself trying not to make every permutation of human diversity feel uncomfortable, I think I'll let them just deal with their hurt feelings i.e the consequences of "microaggressions". Its character building. As for outright discrimination and violence we have laws for that.
If you have issues related to the syntax uniformity of certain Lisp dialects, please speak for yourself rather then linking to that troll Xah Lee.

Xah Lee recommends that developers subjugate themselves to Wolfram Research which controls the proprietary program Mathematica.

Even though some Lisp dialects have a couple of quoting operators like ' and ` at least they don't have infix operators like + and * that Mathematica has. Besides, a few quote operators is no basis to say that Lisp syntax is "not very regular."
How MySQL Kicked Oracle's A$$
Create another Skype account and merge it in, presumably.
> As it is there is a shortage of nurses and doctors. Partly because it costs a lot of money and effort to enter that profession.

In the not-so-distant-past (less than 10 years ago!) mostly because the AMA tightly controls the influx of new people to the field, in an attempt to make sure that the salaries remain high: http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/4561/does-the-am...

(Although now they are trying, so far unsuccessfully, to reverse it)

> How many people will be motivated to go that direction if they'll be slaves to government decree?

Instead of philosophizing in the void, why don't you look at other countries where, gasp, that is the case? Look at Canada, France, the UK, Israel, Hungary, and any other single payer country. Medical schools still have a 1:10 acceptance ratio, and are usually the hardest or 2nd hardest to get into. There is no "race to the bottom" in countries that had this system for over 50 years.

> Also, the profit motive is what keeps costs down and service levels high.

And yet, the US system is the most expensive system for what it gives (compared to single payer), and what it gives isn't better when you measure e.g. life expectancy. I would say you never actually looked at data if you can say that with a straight face.

> The less regulated an industry is, the better the service and products are available to consumers who now have choice.

I agree about that, but the US healthcare industry is extremely regulated in all the wrong ways. For example, they are exempt from any claim of anticompetitive or antitrust. How do you think that affects choice?
I'm teaching an introductory 12-week class on Haskell
Thank you for response ig1 for making that clear. I never knew that YC wasn't started until after the companies were founded. Thank you for the clearing that up.
I just gave django.contrib.auth.tokens a read and shared my opinion on it :)

I wouldn't roll my own password reset feature if I can just take the builtin one from Django, which is what I did.
I would have loved this when I was in college. Even though I studied mathematics, I needed my computer for everything. I got all my books in digital format (for a significantly lower price or free) and typed my homework in LaTeX. I lived 30 minutes walking from campus so by the end of my senior year my back was killing me.
"So do you think that these companies will always be the best? Always be tech giants?"

That's an odd question. If you asked it 5, 10, 15 or 20 years ago many of the names would be different. Sun, SGI, DEC, Myspace, Lotus, AOL, Palm, RIM, etc, would appear depending upon the era and of course the answer to the question of them always being tech giants was "no".

Some of those in your list will survive, others won't, and some will wax and wane (which Apple already has a few times).
I think what you mean is "any efficient engineering process will make good use of testing".

But if you already have some tests in place, the most efficient way to reduce bugs is often something other than more testing, e.g. code review, design review/improvements, or static analysis (often provided by the language/compiler).

All of those other methods can and will reduce bugs. So your statement that testing is the only way is obviously false in both a practical and theoretical sense.
Don't make your team say NO to you
How many $20 billion tech companies have been founded since 2005?
Look at most of the Commonwealth countries. Which one specifically?

>I'm super happy with my socialist healthcare

Net consumers are typically very happy in socialist environments, no shock there.
Amsterdam, The Netherlands

RIPE NCC is one of the 5 regional internet registries of the world and is looking for an experienced Java / Scala developer. The company is quite international: we have employees from over 20 countries. Applicants from RIPE NCC's service area (Europe and Middle East) are preferred but it's not a requirement. The official language at RIPE NCC is English.

You will work in the Business Applications Department in an agile team of 4 software engineers (the total headcount of the department is 14 people). Ideal candidates
- already have a few years of software development experience,
- are familiar with Java / Scala / JavaScript,
- have Clean Coding skills, and
- have strong spoken and written English.

Please read the full job description here which contains everything from requirements to compensation and benefits: http://www.ripe.net/lir-services/ncc/jobs/current-openings/s...

Full list of RIPE NCC benefits: http://www.ripe.net/lir-services/ncc/jobs/benefits

Additionally, if you're an expat, you will likely get the "30% tax ruling" applied on your salary which is a huge money-saver.

In case you are interested, please apply by following the instructions given on the job description page.
Well, I bought one for my little brother so he could use it for play programming. It's being used. So there's one.
Well, you have a choice. Skype for Windows Desktop, or Skype for Windows 8.
Yep. They have time to draw elaborate cartoons, but not elaborate documentation! Funny how that works.
I wouldn't at all feel safe walking around their campus at night carrying any expensive electronics, so this is a fantastic idea.
1M/1M Philosophy: Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later
More applications on Macbook for one. It probably includes those installed on desktop iMac that the university has (e.g., MS Office, Matlab, Strata etc.)

I'm not from Drexel but in my university, computers are configured to automatically mount network drive that I can save files in.

Chromebooks are nowhere as capable as the Macbooks.
It's opportunistic because the only reason anyone is interested in this article is because he is framing it in terms of his personal life and, unfortunately, writing about being gay is still eye-catching.

Had he used another analogy, the article would have been much less unique and remarkable. It's got whatever traction it does have because the insight supposedly comes from his experience as a gay man. Because I think that experience doesn't imply or even really relate much to the lesson he's imparting, it feels like we can infer that maybe he chose the analogy knowing it would have publicity value (rather than because it's a good analogy).
What projects are you implementing with Raspberry Pis?
How is it that referential transparency (the ability to swap a reference with it's value: no hidden inputs) and homoiconicity (both the source and the resulting syntax tree sharing the same structure) are mutually exclusive?

What homoiconicity offers is the macro system, the ability to operate on the syntax tree as a regular language data structure.

The difference is a language like Haskell enforces referential transparency where in a lisp it is up to the developer whether or not a function will be referentially transparent.
This is quite interesting. In practice though, the lags between command/query models when the datastores are different(almost always, for large data) becomes a real concern
It's a question of ownership & service contracts. The article is light on details.

If the school owns the laptops, and whoever provides the kiosk only provides kiosk (and not the laptops) you might very well be right. However, I imagine whoever runs the kiosk is also "renting" the laptops to Drexel, and Drexel pays (via a support contract) for that company to keep the machines in working order.

Plus, if it is the latter, there's no guarantee that the group that runs the computer lab even had any say in this. I The library is a separate entity from from the computer lab/help desk.
Thank you for the response georgemcbay. But yes I kind of do think that these companies will always be the best. I mean whats out there that can be Google or Facebook? Or Microsoft? Amazon, maybe not. Apple might last for a long time too.
Nope, Skype actually had a major version update (which was well overdue) for Linux relatively recently, under MS ownership.
That rate is impossible since the average interchange rate is significantly higher.
Presumably anything along the lines of the "demographics drop" you mention would be in live operational metrics if it is something that is an effective metric for monitoring the health of the system.
In 2002 I was trying to use free Lisps in production and finding it untenable due to serious bugs in fundamental areas like network sockets, and terrible support for threads. I was also surprised that implementors didn't seem to take these issues seriously.

It was very disappointing compared to my experience using commercial Lisps like Allegro Common Lisp and Macintosh Common Lisp in grad school in the mid 90s. They weren't perfect, but MCL on a machine with lots of memory was a pleasure I will always remember.
I have lived there in the past. Now prefer the much-maligned suburbs (specifically, Mountain View).

Uber and Lyft and self-driving cars will shortly solve drinking and driving and then my final complaint about the suburbs will be gone.
While I agree that the proliferation of subscription based consumer product services looks crazy, I think this post includes too many assumptions about how and why VC's are funding consumer startups.

You also seem to have a fairly negative attitude towards the teams behind these startups but I can't seem to see why this is justified.

Far from being without product innovation or branding, dollarshaveclub.com are changing the way we purchase razors and the price we pay. That video is their brand statement.

The fact that dollarshaveclub.com hasn't released a new product since receiving funding, or had another big viral video, doesn't mean all that much in itself. Perhaps they're selling so many razors that they're still fulfilling that market. Or perhaps they're working on a new launch with a longer product cycle.
Home Removals Tufnell Park
I think you raise a valid point overall, which is that a lot of VC money gets invested very quickly into businesses with unproven models. That, in and of itself, is a real problem. Ralph Lauren started his multibillion-dollar clothing empire as a door to door tie salesman. He built his business one store sale at a time. Why can't today's entrepreneurs in the clothing space start small and grow organically? Is a startup in the bra market really in need of tens of millions of dollars in order to hit necessary traction? Is rapid, overnight growth really the best way to build a clothing brand? All very reasonable inquiries.

That said -- and I say this as respectfully as possible -- you're applying 20/20 hindsight in many of your examples. Fact: many women in this country, perhaps even a majority, have bras that don't fit correctly. Fact: women's boobs are highly variable, and do not actually fit into the standard cup size / chest size system that we've been using for the last 50 years. (An algorithm may be an over-engineered way to approach this problem, but the current model is far from perfect). Fact: men's razors are ridiculously expensive, and the razor & blades model is ripe for disruption. Theory (perhaps more viable than you might think): curated boxes of goods may, indeed, drive lead-generation and discovery, opening up new markets for apparel and home furnishings businesses.

I don't think it's remotely fair to look at the present-day struggles of companies like Dollar Shave Club or Trunk Club and declare, ipso facto, that their business models are fundamentally unsound. Perhaps their business operations are unsound. Perhaps their business strategies are unsound. Perhaps even wildly so. But the addressable markets seem reasonable in both cases.

Finally, I think you're cherry picking some examples and using them to draw a larger condemnation of the whole system. If we're going to declare that the system is rotten, then we need to begin with a macro-level evaluation of the system.
Splunk? - I cant help but think that is piece of software would address most concerns this article raises.
Might want to take a look at north bay just to give yourself a good overall impression before jumping to that conclusion.
What's out there that can beat Excite or Myspace? What MMO could possible compete with the mighty Everquest?
I always thought elements was more geared towards basic level photo editing but that's just my perception. Maybe that just needs better branding and promotion.
You do realize that the video critiques gender roles in pop culture?
What HN fails to tell you is that making money, and turning a profit (big enough to make things worth it) is actually really hard.

I wish you all the best in this endeavour.
They're very alike. They both have metro service (Annandale has Dunn Loring, which I used all last winter, so I assure you it exists). The parts of Alexandria I've lived in are very similar, both the landmark mall area and the huntington area. There's a tiny portion of Alexandria up against the river with grid streets, but the bulk of it is more like Annandale than not.
Slab Serif Fonts: Most Popular Typefaces, Best for Webfonts
One of the best slab serifs used today is the Archer which is good enough for extended texts. The Officina serif also carries a robust appeal that would look well on paper.
For a slime like repl for scheme, you might want to check out geiser: http://www.nongnu.org/geiser/

It works great for guile and racket.
GIMP is not meant for Raw management, that was not a good recommendation. Try http://www.darktable.org/ or http://rawtherapee.com/ . Both free software.