skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Even if they do someday stop using third party brands for sets, it will only be to replace them with their own brands. Take a look at the new Lego sets like Ninjago and Chima. These are as branded as the Star Wars ones, the brands simply happen to belong to lego. They also have toys and TV shows and games attached to them, as well as a whole backstory. This is arguably what they should have done in the first place to not find themselves in a position where they needed someone else's brands. The reality is that it is very difficult to sell an unbranded toy nowadays. Imagine making the same request of other toy companies "I wish they made a generic knight toy", I know these exist because you can find them in non huge toy stores, but it's hard to compete with something that has a comic book, TV show, and movie attached to it. I don't know if its necessarily a bad thing, there are pros and cons.
Full disclosure: I am the OP and work at Mailgun

This is tough for me to answer objectively, but I'll do my best.

Both services offer many of the same features and eliminate the pain of managing your own email server. Both services will achieve better deliverability at scale than managing your own server unless you know what you are doing and most people aren't interested in diving that deep into email.

Mailgun is very focused on serving developers and that guides our product roadmap. Therefore, we don't offer features like WYSYWIG newsletter creation tools. We build everything API first and we strive to make them RESTful, intuitive and well documented. Admittedly, our GUI / control panel is not the strongest part of the product. We also focus a lot on incoming email and we are pretty proud of our inbound email parsing through Routes. Mailgun is owned by Rackspace (acquired in Aug 2012).

Sendgrid is definitely the largest transactional email sender in the market. I recently read they do something like 7 billion emails monthly. They have more tools for non-developers like newsletter creators and support language wrappers that some developers prefer. They also offer inbound through their Parse App. Sendgrid is an independent, private company that has raised $27.4mm in funding according to Crunchbase [1].

My recommendation would be to try both - the docs are all online and both offer free plans to test with.

[1] http://www.crunchbase.com/company/sendgrid
Mostly for testing and the ability to reproduce the same issue/error/bug on many different platforms. Before it could be a little hard to debug if you compiled on one machine that had one interpretation of IEEE754 (most likely in when to round and what direction) for releases and the devs all had a machine that did it another way. This would mean that the values would be different and could throw off quite a few things for simulations and other areas with heavy floating point numbers.
I don't disagree. My point still stands though: kids don't urge their parents to buy generic sets.
Interview with Founder:

http://thetechblock.com/interview-mailbox-gentry-underwood/
Not available outside the US?
The fact that this code is not current is extremely surprising, actually. It's GPLV3-licensed, so my somewhat uninformed expectation is that MSNBC would be obligated to open-source any derivative works? Unless they did a complete rewrite of the codebase at some point.

I created a petition asking MSNBC to open-source the latest codebase and also release the user-generated content to the public domain:

https://www.change.org/petitions/msnbc-open-source-the-every...
I imagine Guido may be of some help here. Also, there are plenty of Google engineers with a soft spot for Python.
If I understand correctly, this finding seems consistent Elon Musk's hypothesis on how the battery is fundamentally unsafe. "Large cells without enough space between them to isolate against the cell-to-cell thermal domino effect means it is simply a matter of time before there are more incidents of this nature,"

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5137641
I downloaded it from the UK store, but I had to download it through the link in this post, as the Apple search cache probably hasn't updated yet on the App Store.
The South Korean Military produces an elaborate Les Miserables parody
Code Triage is great! I hope this gets more attention and signups.
I'm not sure if that's ultimately true. The Steam store only has several thousand apps. When you consider the % that are malware or harmful on say the android or iOS store, it's entirely likely that steam is being saved by statistics and possibly basic (automated) virus/malware detection.
To think that a company will police itself adequately in the face of losing money if rules are enforced correctly is naive in the extreme.

Since when has big business ever cared more about safety than the bottom line?
I don't understand this argument, unless you include things like gem, pip, npm, etc.

`pip install foobar-py` runs a Python setup script, which can do anything bash can. Do you inspect all of those, and comment about their insecurities on HN?
It is an interesting rant about a real problem. Cookies provide a function for their origin web site, every other use is generally not good for the consumer. The challenge implementing something like cookies that can only be consumed by the web server that baked them. Not an easy problem to solve while still supporting proxies and firewalls and things between client and the web server.

That said, would love to hear some ideas.
I feel like there's a certain point where thoughtfulness trumps speed while building something.

Why is there such a desire to do X in N minutes? How can something unique and truly useful come from 5 shell commands?
O'Reilly: Teach yourself xyz in 14 days...

Me: But...but..how does this all work? Why?

Harvard University Press: Why? That's us! Dude check us out !! The 600 page book on the top rung with no cool memes and 1980 typeface. That's us.
>You seem to be arguing that one should never seek that end.

Not at all. I am saying it is in no way necessary to load a non-standard font for the primary textual content in order to achieve the goal of a distinctive design. Loading a font to use for your branding is perfectly reasonable, users aren't there to read that anyways. Punishing the user by making the content not be there because you think distinctive design requires all your text to be unreadble_font_x just bad design.
Help me with

The Hall web app is 6 times faster than existing enterprise solutions

That's just as confusing? Can you explain that in a couple more sentences? My CTO just raved about 'We need to give Yammer a try, someone just recommended it'.

Why wouldn't we (ignoring my own 'what the hell is a social intranet' questions)? Can you give me a pitch in three sentences?
So what does that middle dot actually do before the function names? It doesn't seem to be mentioned in the linked documentation of the Plan 9 assembler, and if I have to use a character that I can't easily type with my keyboard, I'd like to at least know what it actually does. :)

Also, doesn't doing this limit your code to using gc toolchain (since the generic Go function has to get called from the arch-specific asm code which uses that Plan 9 dialect)? Does this mean that the Go standard library can't be compiled with gccgo for example?
Boeing's calculation of a battery reliability threshold would be related to cost of manufacturing vs cost of potential lawsuits related to failures. If they are highly unlikely to fail, and the cost of manufacturing them to an even higher spec is more than the accepted risk, they will not do it. Since the FAA cares less about Boeing's profits and more about the public's safety (hopefully), they would likely have a higher threshold.
I understand practical implications of all of that, but here I am interested in proving that speeding at yellow lights is not optimal strategy even in ideal (no traffic) situations in terms of reaching your destination faster.
Amazon SES is similarly easy, and it works with any language over SMTP
"I like your hypothesis about greater willingness to admit to "bad behavior" in the distant past than in the recent past. My intuition is that anonymity weakens that effect, but we'll have to measure to know for certain."

If you look at this report on the validity of self-reported drug use, it goes into the issue of how people are more likely to admit bad behavior that happened long ago. Anonymity probably does ameliorate the problem, but I'm guessing that it would still be significant.

http://archives.drugabuse.gov/pdf/monographs/monograph167/do...
Maybe they thought they could get away with it, and the magnitude of the problem comes as a surprise?
I ported Serpentine for Broderbund to the C64 and a few other games for other publishers. After I changed to being a Producer, I thought I would ever program in 6502 again.

Then years later, I was given the task to program toys, all in 6502. I did a Little People Farm, Little People Phone, a musical jumprope and a reading of Goldielocks and the three bears.

I think the 6502 will never die.
I have zero intention of putting my tax information into the cloud with UFile, Simpletax or any other vendor. If I cannot keep my data locally, then I am not interested.
Mojang release Minecraft snooping data
To our awesome customers: a shout-out
For now we're focusing on the in-process use case, which we think is underserved and allows the simplicity of Graph to really shine. That said, distributed Graphs (and possibly, integration with frameworks like Storm) are on the horizon. If this is something you're interested in working with us on, please let us know.
NightHacking Nordic Tour[video]
I've been looking to compile a list of non-coding resources that are AS important as learning to code for founders. Essentially, things for non-technical co-founders to master before they start the process of learning to code.

See, you're a non-technical co-founder with a technical co-founder, learning to code can really help your business. But what's better is to first master everything BUT coding that can actually have a huge impact on the early development of the business, to take that 100% off the technical co-founders plate.

This belongs on that list (I hope)
iTunes preview link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mailbox/id576502633?mt=8
Simple. Airbus gets to do the design reviews at Boeing, and vice versa. The FAA is just the referee. :-P
Woah, the photos of the charred battery are fairly dramatic:

http://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/2013/boeing_787/boeing_78...
Short-term PR and benefits: these are much more important than they may seem to be. And also do not forget "keeping my job for these last two years". After all, "we know we do the battery thing right at Boeing, so there can be nothing wrong with them."

Imagine employee A delaying the trials of the "most modern aircraft in the world" because some batteries are "malfunctioning", HE SAYS SO AND IS STILL WORKING FOR US?

It is not just Boeing having a conflict of interests, it is its employees as well.
True, they are definitely very different mediums. However, no one says a video game to movie adaptation has to duplicate exactly the experience of playing the game. Many games have incredibly deep mythology, stories, and characters all of which lends itself great towards movies.

I think video game "worlds" could be a great source for movies but maybe not necessarily any direct adaptation of a specific game to film. For example, I think a movie based on the overall storyline of assassin's creed would be good, but I don't think it would be successful to just copy one of the games and create scenes that are shot for shot from the game.
So why not control the discussion for the role luck plays for white males born in the U.S. between 1950 and 2010? It's obvious that factors outside our control are major factors in what we can accomplish in our lives, but that doesn't mean that within a controlled group the question of luck vs agency shouldn't be examined.
The government. You can sue them only if they give you permission to do so.
Was writing in general.
No, I said a designer who chooses to make their website less usable for the user by forcing a download of a non-standard font (something that hasn't existed for hundreds of years, incidentally) is prioritizing their self-obsessed wankery over what is best for the user.

The difference between that and telling people what they can and can't include is absolutely massive. I am telling web designers (people whose job is to make web content accessible to users) that making content inaccessible is bad design. I am not saying "you can not be a bad designer". You are still allowed to do a bad job. And the rest of the world is allowed to point out that you are doing a bad job. Calling someone a nazi for pointing out that bad design is bad design is not constructive, or productive.
Brilliant list, fogus.

I would highly recommend adding Richard K. Morgan's work to the 2000s. Very very well written stuff.
In terms of why I submitted this it's hard to put into words what makes it new and interesting, but I think it's notable as using the Internet in an attempt to appeal to the crowd and also the fact that it reads almost like an appeal for Kickstarter funding.
Thanks for the feedback Mankhool. We're also exploring a version that would just make use of HTML5's local storage. Is that something you would consider?
Gas prices surge as economy shows growth
About time! Besides the hype & price of Yammer, it really sucks at real-time comms for teams smaller than 5-6.

I have never had a chance to use it with a bigger team but at that size they have abysmal state management - if you have more than 1 conversation && use more than 1 device = notification_hell. Its just silly how badly they manage this stuff.

Just discovered Hall earlier today and so far, so good! Good job @bretthellman & team.
Thanks!

If by 'handle cycles', you mean 'throw an exception', then yes :). Graph models single-pass data flows, which must be acyclic, and the (graph) constructer and (*-compile) methods throw if you give them cyclic specifications. Do you have a particular use case in mind where cycles are desirable?
Don't these generally do some sort of cursory signature check?
This method makes you vulnerable to attacks that change the script being run. DNS spoofing, HTTP proxy hacking or hacking of the source server itself.

Good package management systems use digital signatures to ensure that the original package wasn't tampered with. Not that hacking of the central repositories never happened, but it's a major (and thus infrequent) event.
It's absolutely modifying code.

But it's modifying code that your support team is allowed to modify in the field. By contrast, depending on the business policies in place any code that has to go through a compiler might also have to go through meetings, reviews, QA testing, a release cycle, IT department scheduling, acceptance testing, blah blah blah.
You may have a finer-grain definition of "execute Ruby" than someone else.
Normally this would be totally true, but given that every airliner crash is worldwide headlines, safety IS their bottom line.
Survata is a YC company that uses those spammy "survey walls", forcing users to answer a survey to get content they want. This data is garbage.
They go into detail on this in their screen casts and online documentation.
even if it's just enough knowledge to know whether the dev they hire is snowing them over!

I'll give you that. As long as it doesn't convince them they never need to hire developers.
Oh, it is very political and related to very long term thinking, if I disclose here the result will be a crazy flamewar (because it is a sensitive topic, that I know lots of people support, and lots of people think it is horribly wrong).

So, it is better not :)
You probably didn't read my whole post. I don't speed up at yellow light like most people do and I don't ever intend to. What I am interested in is a theoretical insight into proving using graphs/probability theories with most simplified assumptions. I don't intend to do the field work, it could be better done with computer simulation but I am not sure if thats the better way to approach the problem.
This is a theoretical question only, no MSF involvement necessary.
This is a bit off-topic, but since you posted here - the "hall" logo in header could use tighter kerning between the "a" and the first "l".

Also, I personally found the landing page pretty useful in terms of explaining the core user stories (group chat, 1v1, file sharing), so kudos from me.
Interesting detail about why less-than-or-equal is as fast as less-than (x86)
Interesting bits:

> the majority of evidence from the flight data recorder and both thermal and mechanical damage pointed to an initiating event in a single cell. That cell showed multiple signs of short circuiting, leading to a thermal runaway condition, which then cascaded to other cells.

> Boeing ... determined that the likelihood of a smoke emission event from a 787 battery would occur less than once in every 10 million flight hours ... there have been two critical battery events on the 787 fleet with fewer than 100,000 flight hours.

Seems like Musk was right in his guess after all (http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/elon-musk-boeing-7...), but it is shocking how badly Boeing got its estimates wrong. Does anyone know exactly how they came up with these numbers?
Steve Wozniak believes Apple has fallen 'somewhat behind' in smartphones
It's called sovereign immunity.

Basically you can only sue the US government over things where it has agreed to let you, like things covered by The Federal Tort Claims Act.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_immunity_in_the_Unite...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Tort_Claims_Act
Nice to see the old maxim still holds true: "Every title phrased as a question can be answered with: no."
You appear to be looking for a rational explanation for why users of Snapchat are using Snapchat for what they claim to be using it for, when such an explanation might not exist.

Maybe it doesn't make a lot of sense to use Snapchat just for sending goofy pictures, but that doesn't mean it can't become popular for just that.
From GPLV3: "One of the fundamental requirements of the GPL is that when you distribute object code to users, you must also provide them with a way to get the source."

Presumably MSNBC didn't distribute object code to users, in which case they have no obligation to open-source any derivative work.
Serving Your Binaries
"I see how many times as as developer I've either not cared about decisions that directly affect me. Or maybe I've just rolled over and accepted the things I don't like. It's the nature of (most) developers. Don't stir the pot. Don't dissent. Just get in and get my work done."

Exactly. If you live with the attitude of a cog, you'll be treated (and paid!) like a cog. You get what you ask for.

And, thanks for the "thanks." You're welcome. It's always nice to hear that I'm not just pissing into the wind.
A kickstarter appeal written by a massively disjoined mind, perhaps.
Until very recently (2010, maybe?) there was virtually no Mac malware in the wild.
Yeah, I feel the sentiment. When I read this I was like "really? 5 minutes? Are we really learning anything other than how to follow instructions here?". But I'm in a bad mood so I have to admit I'm being unfair. There's a part of me that's getting a little tired of these kinds of posts because they're often disingenuous. You're really not going to learn or build anything of real use in under 5 minutes. It's definitely a cool marketing ploy for both Meteor, who get some exposure, and Mailgun who may get some new paying customers.

But again, I'm being unfair. While what I said before still stands, there is the fact that I doubt anyone expects you to truly learn the framework in 5 minutes. It's just supposed to be an example of how easy it is to get started. And it works I guess. I personally have never gotten much out of the whole "X in Y time" genre of tutorials but I'm sure others do. Because I'm not new to programming I prefer to take my time and build out my own ideas as I follow these things. So while I read them I'm not actually following each step. I'm just understanding how you get from A to B, translating that to other tasks, and using pieces of the articles as I need them to suit my purposes if that makes sense.
I haven't accused them of malice, though there may have been malice at some level. But, malice isn't needed for Boeing to have something like this occur. Hubris and a lack of objectivity on the engineering team's part can do it. So can merely getting into too big of a rush.
In Tech We Trust: Why it's the most trusted sector
I gave them my number a while back but never heard anything. Now there are 250k people in front of me. I guess it doesn't matter too much since my gmail accounts aren't the ones I primarily use.
Much smaller than I would have expected. That thing can start an engine that large?
Here's a cool presentation on Graph that I watched a couple of days back.

http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Graph-Clojure-Prismatic
It doesn't defeat the point necessarily, it's just a design point for an allocation of labor that involves various trade-offs. Boeing doesn't just give the FAA a single sheet of paper saying "we've signed off on it, it's all good!" At the same time, the FAA doesn't take delivery of a 787 and do all the tests from scratch by itself. Instead, the FAA specifies process, and Boeing does tests and gives the results to the FAA, and the two sides iterate until the FAA is happy.
There are videos on the submitted link? I don't see any... I don't think there are supposed to be any.
The way I understand it, the FAA checks to see if the software design was designed and tested according to documented procedure, which was approved beforehand. The procedure must follow some published guidelines, mainly [DO-178B](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DO-178B). The FAA person probably doesn't need a CS degree to check this. They just need to be competent enough to review the documents generated during the DO-178B process, and see that they did what they said they did. The civil liability I think would come in if a company forged their documentation. And if the documentation is not good, then the software won't get approved by the FAA audit. At least that's how it's supposed to work.

Edit: There are third party or FAA technical experts involved, so I guess your point still stands. But I don't think certification can replace this kind of following engineering procedure. And yes, I consider software engineering for safety-critical applications an engineering discipline.
Why all my iOS Apps are on hold - Core Data and iCloud sync are still a joke
Safety is always a compromise. The more you spend on safety, the less money you will make. Having the company itself decide when something is "safe enough" is a recipe for disaster, quite literally.
When did they start shipping? I ordered mine last May and haven't heard a word from them since then.
Oh, of course, cluttering the code with explicit conversion from one data-structure into another is a much better way, much more lines of code, bigger self-esteem, better salary. Java world.

There is an example (very clever, no doubts)

(defn keywordize-map
"Recursively convert maps in m (including itself)
to have keyword keys instead of string"
[x]
(condp instance? x
clojure.lang.IPersistentMap
(for-map [[k v] x]
(if (string? k) (keyword k) k) (keywordize-map v))
clojure.lang.IPersistentList
(map keywordize-map x)
clojure.lang.IPersistentVector
(into [] (map keywordize-map x))
x))

btw, this code is really clever, while in typical clojure project there are tons of meaningless conversions.
I usually read it as: "this is a tool that will provide quick results at the expense of other factors". Usually, the other factors are:

1. Flexibility: The tool has limited scope and has used this limited scope to make decisions for you; or

2. Maintenance: The tool uses code generation. Maintenance cost grows with the amount of code, indifferent to its origin (generated vs manual).

Rails, in particular, suffers from problem 2.