skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
That's the point.

One penny pinching solution, improperly evaluated, pissed off customers, made the company less efficient (man hours working on a previously smooth process), and resulted in a direct capital expense.

All in all, they probably took a loss.
Oh this smells of desperation. Rebranding the company costs headed stationary, signs etc - not that cheap and RIMberry are the last who can realy afford it. I honestly don't think they have thought this thru, its like closing my eye's and going you can't see me now. Still have the shite middle managment to mess things up.
Thanks for your feedback... Its a shame there is no such thing as "easy" when it comes to getting a product out there.

I definitely agree with you my pitch definitely needs some work, especially when its written down and I'm not verbally delivering it! I love your summery... that's a perfect description of what we're doing.

Thanks again for those ideas, definitely helpful.
9 Most Bizarre Skin Treatments From Around the Globe
That's infinitely better than what you wrote before.

I think if you take a step back from your screen and look at the visual shape of what you just wrote, and the visual shape of the original story text, you can see how confusing the original looked just from that.

Did you write the first text in a hurry? With big things like announcing to HN, I would write one day, get friends to give brutal criticism, then submit the next day.
The point of the parable is that there is no such thing as a "simple, straightforward fix", because everything has consequences - anticipated or not.
Early morning fire at Tesla battery testing facility [Jan 2012]
What Closing Your Startup Feels Like
What was "Research in Motion" supposed to mean anyway? I never got that.
Also, C++11 adds std::u16string and std::u32string to make life a bit easier and write cross-platform code without worrying about whether wchar_t is 2 bytes (e.g. Windows) or 4 bytes (e.g. Linux).
If I were a doctor participating in a study like this, I'd have a really hard time not trying to figure out who had the drug and who didn't. It's a secret; humans love secrets, and a doctor is extremely well-suited to figure this one out.
It's because Microsoft has centralised Skype's network. Previously node discovery and other services where essentially Peer-to-peer and thus more difficult to monitor.

See: http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/05/skype-replaces-p2p-s...
Yip they were well built. Apparently if you entered the front panel (ctrl+F iirc you got a hex debugger) you could single step thru the machine code, now if your did that for the graphic panel part you could blow the screen -- luckily this did not get learned from expereience.
My proposal was that rubygems would create a simulated certificate authority that operates similarly to the PGP Global Directory, which would allow registered users to have their keys signed by an authorized RubyGems.org signing key. (This is covered on the bottom of the page on the link above.)

In addition more active developers who go to conferences and what not would do all the proper WoT stuff to ensure that the RubyGems.org key being used was indeed the authentic one, and that gems in their circle of friends/co-workers were signed by the correct keys.
Chief Executive Officer Thorsten Heins is unveiling the first phones built on the BlackBerry 10 operating system this morning in New York. The new software is designed to let users multitask more effectively than on rival devices, including the iPhone. Heins is looking to grab the attention of smartphone buyers who have dumped their aging BlackBerrys in recent years for Apple Inc. (AAPL) and Google Inc.’s Android.

Seriously? Your plan to fight iPhones and Droid devices is to tout your phone's multitasking ability?

How many consumers complain about their phone's multitasking capabilities? How many consumers even understand what that means?

[edit: If they are talking about the business meaning of "multitask", as some child comments have noted, then I agree that this would be a cool feature. I also find it annoying how hard it is to do work in multiple apps at once.]
The real question is: at what level of abstraction are you passionate about your work?

If you're passionate about writing great software that people love, the world is your oyster and there are lots of ways to make money.

But if you insist on writing software that solves problems you are passionate about, you're going to have a much harder time. Because problems that programmers are passionate about are exactly the problems that programmers solve for free with open-source.

To take another example, don't open a coffee shop because you're passionate about coffee. That's a very small part of what you'll actually be doing. Open a coffee shop because you're passionate about building a great local business.
Visual Studio Tools for Git
http://www.javelinjs.com/
That presents massive ethical issues. One would have to knowingly not give subjects a drug that we know helps them (i.e., the current standard of care).
It sounds like UEFI is over-engineered. All I want is for something to initialize the hardware and hand over for booting.
Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server will have Git support
The blog title is "Are Placebos Really Sugar Pills?". Was "Or Something Worse?" editorialized on? The thrust of the article isn't that placebos are bad, it's that they are inert and not regulated or reported on consistently.
This brings back many bad memories of Sun changing its ticker symbol from the venerable "SUNW" to "JAVA" -- may BBRY not share the same fate!

That said, let me take this moment to restate a prediction I have made a few times over the last two years: ORCL will, in the end, buy BBRY. After every customer that has a choice leaves, BBRY will be left with only those customers who can't actually leave. ORCL feasts on such wounded animals, and like a marine apex predator, can sense them from an ocean away...
I think that's a bit low. According to WA 100kcal are ~120 watt hours. The real problem is of course that us programmers hang around in chairs all day and probably need about 75kcal. Slow walking may increase that by (generous) 50kcal, of which say 75% are lost via body heat etc.

So http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=50+kcal%2Fhour+to+watt+... gives us 15 watt hours. Subtract mechanical losses etc. and we may get 8-12 watts without breaking a sweat. Enough to power an ARM board or similar, but not the display.
Nice article! Lots of deja vu there :) (I'm a tools programmer working at Treyarch)

Here is another little thing you can optimize out (probably not saving much, but still bugs me):

SoftwareOcclusionCulling/CPUT/CPUT/CPUT.h:#define SAFE_DELETE(p) {if((p)){HEAPCHECK; delete (p); (p)=NULL;HEAPCHECK; }}
SoftwareOcclusionCulling/CPUT/CPUT/CPUT.h:#define SAFE_DELETE_ARRAY(p){if((p)){HEAPCHECK; delete[](p); (p)=NULL;HEAPCHECK; }}

There is no need to check for NULL array or pointer before calling delete[] or delete, the standard allows for it.

Lots of stuff coming from Intel is just badly written for some reason. Few years ago there was the SMOKE demo using Thread Building Blocks, and there were O(N^2) and even O(N^3) things for the particles.

Intel, you are supposed to show us how to code to the metal... Or maybe their ICC compiler is specifically better if you write this way (lol, what a conspiracy).
Gold allergy.
http://rim.jobs won't work no more, :(
Is Technology Killing The Cheater?
I can't say that I blame them, if I recall correctly, putting their seal on it implies the assumption of legal liability for the fitness of the design by the PE. Under those circumstances, I would make strongly conservative decisions too.
Yes, and thanks for telling us. Really, we should have disabled gem pushes immediately. Hindsight is 20/20, and I'm not sure why I didn't think of doing so earlier. The pain of not being able to push gems would have forced us to fix it.

I'm sorry about this. I don't know what else to say. I wish we didn't have to deal with this kind of problem in the Ruby community.
Well, if nothing else it will probably make the SEO for their job-site a lot easier.
> The purpose of life, as best I can tell, is self actualization

I basically agree with you. But, do you have a definition or explanation of "self actualization"? I know Maslow talks about this (so maybe I should go read him).
My workstation setup isnt practical for a standup desk but I was wondering about a compromise solution that would at least keep my legs moving.

I'm thinking of some kind of footrest that can be placed under a desk. The footrest is weighted and has bike pedals attached. You pedal whilst in your seat. So its sort of like an exercise bike but without the bike.

Anyone seen such a device or have other compromise solutions when a standup desk/treadmill is not practical?
The other element is being cornered by suppliers. If you only have one or two suppliers who can produce a component, you are exposing yourself to risk. Those one or two suppliers can let you develop a design that relies on their technology, then greatly increase the price when you are ready to go to production. Elon Musk calls this "going Russian": http://www.esquire.com/features/americans-2012/elon-musk-int...
This is really cool. I suspect a lot of people didn't get far enough to actually try anything; it took a lot of clicks to start the first note.

A suggestion: don't vanish the instructions once the song appears! Once I saw the song loading would take a while, I switched to a different tab, and when I came back they were gone.
As much as it probably is a good idea, it's a little worrying when a company amidst a crisis takes the time to work on their brand name and make room for that announcement in a webcast that literally defines whether or not the company will survive another 18 months.
>might use

I feel like the author just provided an example how the drug companies could be exploiting the fact that they do not have to disclose the information about the placebo, not necessarily accusing them of it - I know I wouldn't think of this immediately (especially sleepy me right now).

It is, I agree, unnecessarily alarmist, but the conclusion is true regardless of whether the drug companies are doing that.
I love this parable, but here's the kicker: The company lost money, and probably, to this day, doesn't understand that it did.

Certain costs are very visible to business leadership. Like the costs of toilets. Others, not so much. Like the time lost in the shunting yard farting around with the cars. Or the costs of people that used someone else's train service because they were pissed at not finding a toilet.

Business, on a whole, is great at optimizing those visible costs, but only the good companies are good at managing those soft costs. All other things being equal, how you manage those soft costs is how you beat your competition.
It appears that a lot of participants on Hacker News are interested in the role of placebos in treatment trials. I have some recommendations for background articles on the use of placebos in clinical trials and the pitfalls sometimes encountered in interpreting results from such trials. The articles are all by expert authors who practice frequently writing on this topic for general readers.

August 2009 "The Rise of Placebo Medicine" by Steven Novella, M.D.

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/the-rise-of-pl...

December 2010 "Placebo Effects without Deception? Well, Not Exactly" by David Gorski, M.D.

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/placebo-effect...

January 2013 "Is acupuncture as effective as antidepressants? Part 2. Blinding readers who try to get an answer" by James Coyne, Ph.D.

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/is-acupuncture...

There are many more good articles about placebos and how they are used in clinical trials on the site where these articles come from. The issue the blogger whose post is kindly submitted here seems so upset about is simply an issue of making a placebo (sham) treatment indistinguishable from the treatment under investigation, so that doctors and patients are properly "blinded" during the trial. Another comment already posted here on HN has pointed out that the FDA does oversee what ingredients are put into placebos, whether or not those detailed ingredients are published in a peer-reviewed research study. The blogger's concerns are legitimate, but not proportionate to the actual problem.

Disclosure: I have been a subject of FDA-regulated medical trials. I was very impressed by thoroughness of data collection in those trials, and by my inability to distinguish whether I was receiving placebo or genuine medicine in one of those trials. My oldest son, now a hacker for a start-up, had work experience while in college at a medical device company, and he was impressed that every line of computer code he wrote during his summer job was reviewed line-by-line by FDA computer scientists as part of the review process for the medical device he worked on.
"Big Name Publications" do not get a free pass for speculation, in print or in blog. They gain credibility, so they can say things like "From talking to senior Boeing engineers, we uncovered..." but making up hypotheses out of thin air is shoddy journalism that should be criticized, regardless of the source.
It's an identity. What does Apple mean? An identity.
The trouble with learning Javascript
Ed Opperman's Digital Forensic Uncovers Secret Service Misbehavior 
Ed Opperman's Digital Forensic Investigation Uncovers Additional Secret Service Misbehavior
Goodbye Silicon, Hello DNA. The Future of Data Storage?
I read that as "multitask" in the original meaning of the word; not the technical sense. For example BB has a single inbox for all your email and messaging services. You don't need to fire up multiple apps just to check your different services.
How much of an effect does missed sleep have on you?
Hey, I'm one of the organisers.

A BIG THANKS to all those who've upvoted this.

We're really trying to get the two disciplines together. As someone who's done well in both fields, I know there's tension and I know that it can be scary to want to learn more. I'm hoping to bridge that gap with some amazing speakers and workshops :)
Then again I would avoid anything non-8 bit for asset parsing. We have tons of text files for our level maps (Quake map format), used to have (transitioninig) all models/animation in text format again. Not only this takes significant time to sync these off P4, but they take more space on the disk, later more I/O, memory, and you are the mercy of strod, atof, etc. to work fast and properly (which usually is not the case).

For assets that don't make much sense merging (polygon data) - we are moving to binary data. For the rest (level data), we might keep text files - some merging is possible there.

The only time we'll ever need UTF8, UTF16, etc. is for the localized data - game text, etc. There is absolutely no need for such encoding to be in your assets.
Yes I did, fixed.
I hate to be "that guy" and I hope this isn't unbearably naive, but why doesn't free software seem to even be mentioned in this discussion?
It's really a C++ rant, not a string processing rant, though.
I worked on two airplane programs at boeing. The first was a derivative of the 747, the 747-400. The main features of this version that differed from previous 747s were going from analog to digital avionics, a slightly longer body and new (larger) wings. The schedule from project launch to first delivery was about 4 years. We were two weeks late on first delivery.

I also worked on the 787. The difference between the 787 and every previous Boeing plane was almost everything. The schedule from project launch to first delivery was about 4 years. We were two years late.

Moral: don't bite off more than you can chew.
I think mobile-social freemium is here to stay, but it is less fashionable these days. Most of the blame is on Zynga for that, but I believe Brain Reynolds joined Zynga in good faith that they would help the gaming ecosystem.
I'm not sure we read the same article. The one I read said, and this is the whole graf:

FDA needs to review its policies on placebos and either outlaw "active placebos" or rigorously define acceptable conditions for their use.

That seems like a profoundly ignorant argument. The article doesn't account for the need to blind studies. Why does it come across as credible to you?
I remember one of my co-workers (a developer or engineer or whatever we are called these days) on a particularly frustrating day, smiling broadly and saying "I'm a guitarist. Programming was my HOBBY. I went to school for music. This was supposed to be fun."

What made the comment even funnier is that we all know he loves his work as a developer / engineer. Its almost all he talks about. He followed one passion (music), but the other, more lucrative passion (development) is the one that caught him as a career. As frustrating as that day was, the funny part is that we live for the kinds of problem solving we were facing.
The best 404 page you'll see all day
The small number of passions that most people can't earn enough from to maintain their existences tend to be those which are (i) shared by a lot of people and (ii) those in which success is least easily achieved through sheer willpower. Want to be an actor, a sport star, an author, like many people do? Chances are you'll never be good enough to earn a living at it (unless you count being a salesperson, personal trainer or author of press releases) because everybody else practises, and some of them are better and/or luckier. You can still have that self-actualization with your spare time drama group, sports team or novel that's just waiting for the right publisher, but in the mean time you'll probably need to spend the majority of your waking hours chasing an alternative source of money to put food on the table (sacrificing passion is very rarely about getting rich quick). It probably won't be in finance, because finance firms have exceptionally high standards too and you'd be surprised how many people are passionate about it. Want to be a bookkeeper or a refuse collector? No, neither do I, but someone has to do it and it's probably not their lifelong career aspiration.

I agree with your general point that focusing your attention on what earns the most money is likely to be a recipe for dissatisfaction, unless money offers you everything you want. But the article seems to be making - somewhat fluffily - the perfectly reasonable point that successfully solving others' problems barely related to your interests will usually satisfy (and earn) more than consistently failing to interest the world in personal projects the market doesn't care for, especially if that's because you simply don't have the aptitude to complete the project.
Thanks!

I'm not sure what you mean about using the front-end without the back-end, but Inky's an IMAP/POP client like any other; it just stores your settings in the cloud. (If you mean "can I use it without storing my settings in the cloud", the answer is currently no... at least, not yet.)

We are not parsing the mail and mining data from it, nor do we plan to. We're looking at various non-privacy-invading ways to make money but we need more real-world data to see what makes the most sense.
Intelligence agencies still use olde skool techniques for a very good reasons. No electronic coms method is 100% secure, Tor included. In fact, the sense of security it provides is a problem in its self. Want privacy? First strike out electronic coms.

I have to wonder if nowadays its safer to simply pick up an analogue telephone, call up your terrorist cell, gun runner, drug dealer, politician, prosecutor, whatever, and simply tell them what to do. Or just write an old fashioned letter. Would the NSA even see that coming? Yeah, I know.....
Actually, I think the most important point that may be non-obvious (and is also probably controversial) is:

Get good at doing something and making money from it, and you will become passionate about it.
Not sure. Essentially a new class of 'car' was created, twice as long and roughly twice as expensive. If the cost of dealing with the larger cars was non-zero, then maybe it was break-even. Its premature-optimization at its finest I think.
Here's a rather more ancient modem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9dpXHnJXaE
Can someone explain me why something dealing with graphics needs to read: "several megabytes worth of text files"? Why aren't these binary data?

(I'm not familiar with graphical / texture code)

But I am familiar with fast text processing. From Java the problem is even worse: it's not so much that the methods are inefficiently written in themsevles. The issue is that string processing tends to create lots of garbage which then needs to be garbage collected.

The optimization when all these strings processing methods are the bottleneck? Do not create hundreds of thousands or millions of object. Instead of doing, say, "s2 = removeLeadingAndTrailingStuff();" and then "parse(s2);" you do write your own method directly: "parseButDoNotTakeIntoAccountLeadingAndTrailingStuff()".

It's oversimplified and crazy camel case is used above to make a point ; )

It's always the same : when objects creation become the bottleneck, make it so you're not creating that many objects.

It's exactly what the LMAX Disruptor "pattern" is about: using gigantic arrays of primitives and hardly any object creation at all (to process 12 million events per second in Java on a single core!).

That said in TFA I still don't understand why several megabytes of Unicode text files have to be processed...
weren't they going to sell Boeing batteries that don't blow up?
This is so cool! There are a few issues (clock hands load before the face does; no detailed 'about' section) but it's pretty impressive as it is.

Since I'm following in your footsteps and about to start the 'build' phase, I'm curious about the tools you used: which host, stack, framework etc, and why did you choose them? Did you learn everything from scratch?

Congrats on the launch btw, it's quite a feat:)
As others have pointed out; Brian is a well known and highly respected designer. He also served as the chair of the board of the International Game Developers Association (advocates of diversity, quality of life, and giving game credits to game developers among other issues). When he joined Zynga it was seen as a major image boost for the company.

Please don't pile all of Zynga's faults on his shoulders. That blame should go to the people actually responsible (if he should have avoided participating in the company for any reason is a different issue).

Disclaimer: I have worked with Brian. I don't know what motivated him to join Zynga. If you're looking for his history check out Bug Huge Games as well; a studio he helped found which was bought by THQ and threatened with closure in 2009 when Brian left to join Zynga.
I only have quantified outcomes for studying flash cards, since that's a fixed measured thing that I do for 70 minutes per day. However I now do nearly all my work at the tread desk, and I've bought a few for some of my staff who also wanted to try them out (everyone who has tried them has liked them and stuck with them full time, so far).

Sometimes however for reading I'll go and relax on a recliner - it's nice to have a break from time to time. But if I want to really focus on what I'm reading, I'll look at it on the tread desk.
If mine is an American company, I expect the context would be American, and would expect others to be sensitive to my culture. I make every effort to be sensitive to others when I visit theirs.

Tone also matters a lot. And generally, profanity is used in a negative tone. Developers who are constantly negative are like poison and should be removed from a team as quickly as possible.