skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Heh -- stick around, kid. :) Those shiny new greenfield codebases, so full of promise, perfect architectures and unfettered extensibility, can turn into slow-moving, spaghetti-code Leviathans in a matter of weeks. It's not just the decades-old, massive LOC codbases that provoke this dichotomy: chances are very good that the code you're working on right now, that gorgeous, sleek, sexy code -- will be staring at you with its cold, incomprehensible dead eyes within the year, asking you how, how did it come to this, how did you neglect me so, and why do you hate me now?

OK, or maybe not. But it can happen, and it does, all the time, in really good shops with very experienced coders using all the right techniques and best intentions. I know. Dear God, I know.

Of course anyone would rather bootstrap new code and feel the thrill of new object models, shiny, hip new libraries breezing through their editors. But until you've experienced both sides of the equation, the long-term consequences of technical debt growing through a codebase like some kind of...virus...you'll not know how important the second-order effects of refactoring, TDD, and truly clean code really are.
> BareTail ... Free demo.

One BareTail version is a 'Free Version' (free as in free beer) not just a demo.
http://www.baremetalsoft.com/baretail/
Agreed. I often stumble across some project written in the 80's and think, "wow, that's so much clearer than my code".

We have a lot more tools than programmers did back then, but tools are incapable of long term thinking.
> turn over personal responsibilities to the the government

Sounds like the modern states are doing a much poorer job caring for their members than a prehistoric tribes used to. At least the tribes provided their members with 4 basic benefits like to hunt together (defense), resolve disputes (justice/law), care of elderly (pensions) and wounded (healthcare).

It absolutely blows my mind that someone would consider any of the 4 to be "personal responsibility". Frankly, I find it absurd to pay money for a lawyer to win in court. In my mind that's an equivalent of out-spending your opponent on a personal army and just taking what you need by force.

Pensions are not personal responsibility. And California state workers are happy to agree with me, that's why they tax pensionless private sector workers to help themselves with a "state pension". And nobody is protesting against this outrageous behavior... Weird. Where are the burning cars and shattered storefronts?
>>>Being cool has never been about begging to be liked.

>>>It turns out I’ve got a startup that happens to be a business. You know what that means? We make money.

That second part. That is what is cool.
Heh I'm stoked someone called us an API for social games. Usually people call us wildly less accurate things. YAY!

We are technically a suite of tools (which you know depending on your executional ability is an API, or a set of SDKs, or us hand holding you through using them) for brand managers and marketers to build applications and games with their own data. Layer up content + actions and out pops your very own custom THING.

We have found that there is a huge demand for brand creative, as digital marketing requires more marketing, not less, with newer storylines & media format being demanded w/ever more frequent turns.The advertising agencies are struggling to deliver quality, timely results, and brand managers struggle to afford the associated cost of traditional, all original (or custom) marketing.

We believe that if brands could rapidly create compelling new campaign media by leveraging a standing (and hopefully ever improving) body of component elements with their own brand data and concepts this is a powerful

Obviously this approach is well accepted today in software creation and the good news in we have worked with host of brands to try this theory out in practice- aka in client paid efforts.

Essentially what we're seeing, is if the tools allow quality brand marketing results, that reflect the brand’s story telling objective, then the brand manager is satisfied.

If the creative cost & delivery are both materially lower, this is a winning path—and the birth of a potentially formidable new cloud based SaaS business
I also have the Lumina 920 and I agree with some of your points for sure. Good list of suggestions. One thing I think is weird is how the phone and Windows 8 desktop UX is a little different. Would be nice to be a little more consistent in things like how text selection is done, settings, live tiles, etc. The little things.
I'm reminded of the library of babel in Louis Borges fiction. If you generated every possible iambic meter poem and then sifted through them with some mechanism (like crowdsourcing), you could probably find some winners.
While that's true, it is also interesting how badly hash tables perform if you can fill them with NaNs.

A quick prod tells me that g++'s unordered hash tables have the same bug.. interesting.
The Most Reliable San Diego Airport Limo service 858-224-5474
The prerequisite being a 'Maps' site with <weekly aerial updates. While relatively plausible today (a few styrofoam drones, camera arrays, pay fer acre for 'crowdsourcing', ...)[1], the legal woes are frightening.

[1] 'relatively plausible' in relation to 'cubesats' and other aerospace driven monitoring.
Someone has PMS...
>obscuring your login service via non-standard ports or even a requirement to try several ports in sequence really only buys you security equivalent to lengthening your password by two characters per port.

Not even that. It's like a separate two-byte password because you get to guess and confirm the port separately from the password.

Lengthening your password by N bits multiplies the number of necessary guesses by 2^N. Having a separate N bit password adds 2^N to the number of of necessary guesses. So if your real password's effective key length is more than 16 bits, using a random port effectively adds less than 1 bit of entropy.

Also, rate-limiting port scans is way harder to do than rate-limiting authentication.
... and dozens of other logfile viewers.
Michael Lewis' book, The New New Thing, probably offers a good insight to this. Jim Clark is probably the character that all the choreographers of pretty faces seek to emulate.
First I was surprised that this was on the svtble network. (Then I looked again.)
Ugh. With tiny 12px text, the blog has zooming disabled for Webkit browsers, even desktop ones, by specifying:

-webkit-text-size-adjust: none;

That's a horrible bug and makes it practically unreadable.

EDIT: never mind, apparently it was fixed in the meantime.
The text on playapi.com says "PLAYAPI IS A PLATFORM FOR CREATING SOCIAL GAMES AND APPLICATIONS." in a big font.
Ask HN: Rate my OCW math curriculum for comp sci
I've been programming professionally for 5 years - mostly java. The prospect of doing the same thing in 10 years is less than attractive and a PM position doesn't appeal to me. What I really want is to further my technical knowledge, dig deeper. Machine learning is something that springs to mind, as I really enjoyed the coursera course. But above all I just want options.

I have no math above college level and I think this is my main achilles heel. I actually started with an algebra refresher via ALEKS and have now commenced Calculus I on MIT Open Course Ware. Two Exams in and I'm actually performing well. This has removed a long standing irrational fear I had with math.

My emboldend plan is now to continue with the following courses (all on OCW) : http://i.imgur.com/nHFoQip.png

My questions are:

1) These are all MIT courses, any graduates care to comment on the experience, perhaps weigh in on which are more and less useful in your day to day work.

2) Am I overstating the importance of math in comp sci, will I be dissapointed?

3) Any addendums or modifications to the plan are welcome.
didn't know that. one of my customers mentioned one day we should shorten our email to f19n.com, we thought it was a great idea, since then we use f19n.com as our email domain.
Why Aaron Swartz is a casualty of a false government
I did not know Aaron Swartz but feel like if had I, we would have been friends. We live in a world that is increasingly embracing transparency in our business lives, accepting responsibility in our personal lives but in the political world...the will to control has superseded the power granted to govern.

I had an opportunity to drive across the country this week, yeah 4 days in a U-Haul with nothing but the radio. I listened to the state of the union address and the comments that followed over the next several days.

I heard something that irritated me, even made me angry. Nancy Pelosi made a comment about cuts stating, "We have to recognize that, which cuts really help us and which cuts hurt our future? And cuts in education, scientific research and the rest are harmful...". She later points out the need to get this research into the public's hands.

Aaron gave his life to this cause, he was persecuted, charged and in the eyes of the system was guilty of theft. Our tax dollars paid for this "education, scientific research and the rest". A kid, with the heart of 1000 men, gave his life to make it available to we the people. The double speak in Washington is at best appalling and at worst catastrophic.

We lost a young man who had a significant role in that future. I do not condone criminal behavior, but it is time we stand up for our rights in this country and reclaim the powers given us by the constitution and the natural will afforded to every man and woman on this earth.
We make money. In the reality markets people pay us. And they pay us more for the product than it costs to create it.

I understand you were venting here, but in this paragraph it sounds like you still care deeply about how the It crowd perceives you.
> Node does not multithread requests, but it surely can process many requests simultaneously if these requests are waiting for async operations: database, external APIs or other types of I/O usually. That's the very core idea of evented servers.

Within a single request, Node can async its dealing with outside services (databases, api's, etc), but it is still only processing one request at a time. There is no 'synchronized' keyword in javascript. ;-)

Check this out:

https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/http-routing#heroku-he...

There is an interesting header in there: X-Heroku-Dynos-In-Use. From what I understand, this header is the number of dynos that a router is communicating with. For us, this is always around 2-3.

I suspect that the router is just a dumb nginx process sitting in front of my app. It is setup to communicate with 2-3 of my dyno's in a round robin fashion. If any one of those dyno's doesn't process the request fast enough, then requests start to back up. Once requests start to back up past 30s worth of execution, the router starts just killing those queued requests instead of just leaving them in a queue or sending the requests to another set of dyno's. Even worse is if you have a dyno that crashes (nodejs likes to crash at the first sign of an exception). I suspect that is why we see 2 or 3 in that header.

I think that part of the problem is that the routers don't just start talking to more dyno's if you have them available. So, it doesn't matter if you have 50, 200, 500 dyno's because the router is always only talking to a small subset of them. Even if you add more dyno's in the middle of heavy requests, you are still stuck with H12 for the existing dyno's. A full system restart is necessary then.
I like this idea. It make s alot of sense in the 'app' world, where one doesn't want to type much, where they just want to 'check it out', and where they don't constantly log in anyway. No email address needed either.
I'm oversimplifying and muddying things by referring to funding, so let's bring this back to what it's supposed to be about: I believe, from what I know, that this is a company with strong fundamentals. (You can inquire more if you are interested, but I don't feel at liberty to provide specifics for a private firm) But you're right: "No Silicon Valley VC" will support an idea that fails to appeal to their biases. And I question where their biases lie. And I question the effect that their activities have on the stability of the industry.

It's true that I have other friends who have very well-funded companies and who I believe have businesses with strong fundamentals. (One of them: a social gaming company) But I also can't deny that all of the friends who have received significant support in this industry have really similar backgrounds and attributes to them, and that the homogenous nature of the industry - in diversity and in thought - is disturbing. I think it discourages healthy growth of the industry from the sort of people who would disrupt the homogenous nature of the industry. The disruptors hate being disrupted!
If you believe that the current VC crowd is playing favorites and passing over highly profitable investments, it would be heavily in your best interests to become a small-time VC and help fund these projects. There is a lot of money in backing the winner.

And there is always Kickstarter.
The same way I do about voting in such places. Not good.
Fascinating that there are air craft relics near the charts. I can only imagine that is part of the calibrating: so they can tell how large an aircraft is and what resolution they get for the size.
Was that you trying to make an ironically chauvinistic joke, or are you just a sexist ass?
Premium products almost never dominate in global markets.
The point is, not everyone listening to a broadcast is an adult. I mean, the laws are completely obsolete, but there's a logic to them.
Pivotal is an agile planning tool; JIRA is an issue tracking and classical project management tool. While each can be coerced to the other's function, it's really comparing apples and oranges. I'll admit that JIRA and Pivotal continue to muddy the differentiation with afterthought additions like JIRA's Greenhopper and Pivotal's time tracking. But JIRA is a good tool for issue tracking and Pivotal is a good tool for agile planning. If you're trying to use either tool for the other's purpose, you'll hate it.
"We make marketing software for big brands"

You might want to put that front and center in your home page message.

Also your "playapi" logo is totally unreadable in both Firefox as well as Safari (v-latest).
How does it drive you nuts?
Thanks for the correction. I should have verified the HN username for Mike; not sure where I pulled `mikep` out of since I always enjoy reading his comments here and elsewhere. It's too late for me to correct it in my original comment, so thanks again.
Thanks for the blog post and valid point of view. Couple of suggestions on your business:
- I couldn't find your site by googling play api. I think that's a pretty bad situation for prospective investors
- your logo is one of the most unreadable ones I've come across
- your title is very broad and not sure who its targeted at. How about something simpler like "create multiplatform branded games in seconds"

Good luck.
Nice! I enjoyed this... Thanks!
Silicon Valley - American Experience: Full Documentary
Does anybody recommend a similar mail client for Mac? I've just been using Mail's flags to maintain inbox zero but am always looking out for a better alternative.
The GitHub web interface is SO much better than running your own repository. Pull requests are awesome for code reviews, the code browsing interface is best of breed, and if you use their issue tracker and/or wiki everything links together fantastically well.
Peer review may exist for a reason but there's no evidence it helps to advance science. There is evidence however that peer review has blocked valid works. It may be throwing the babies out with the bath water.
Culture isn't the only thing that separates people. We aren't blank slates and this means we are not "equal" in the sense of being "exactly the same". That's what he means by "created different". I think you mean we are born with equal moral value / rights.
Thank you for making me aware of this! This is very handy and indeed more comfortable than pure tail.
SideProjectors – For the maker in you
That would certainly form a more palatable acronym.
I'm in the industry so I get what you're saying here - but I'm pretty sure most VCs and your customers are going to be mighty confused. You should try and simplify a 'what we do' message that is easier to understand.

The first 30 seconds of introduction to your concept is the most important - make sure people can understand it!
I think it depends a lot on what you want to do.

For any kind of machine learning or data processing, linear algebra is definitely a good thing to have. Basic calculus is good too, but I'd say may be less important if you're applying methods and approaches as opposed to developing them too. Differential equations, while providing an important set of mathematic tools which may open some doors you didn't even know existed, may not be the "highest yield" material from a programmers point of view.

In my opinion, probability and statistics is a big yes for anything data related, doubly so for algorithms. I'd also consider some graph theory, as it's amazing how many problems can be projected as networks and then approached from that perspective.
It's unclear if the world will move towards native apps or stay on the open web. Preventing anyone from having a DRM solution for the web makes it more likely the world will move to native apps. That would be a bad outcome in my opinion.

I also fail to understand your ideology. Anyone who creates content should have the ability to decide how they wish to sell and distribute that content. I think DRM is futile, but I don't think it is bad as you seem to believe.
Well this makes sense to me in a way that the post didn't. I didn't identify 'tech' as meaning 'VC ruling class'. I guess I'm just obtuse.
Indeed it is what says! Which is kind of the lost point I should make in all of this in that we've in the past positioned the company to appeal to certain things we thought the industry would find appealing not necessarily our customers.

Who really don't find us through our website but through word of mouth with ad agencies, brand managers and media partners. But nevertheless we say PLATFORMS! SOCIAL GAMES! SHIT WE THINK WILL PLAY WELL BUT OUR CUSTOMER BASE DOESN'T CARE ABOUT REALLY.

And well I suppose this is all true. But also framing.
Lame attempt to derail a civilized discussion to yet another (imaginary) minority exploitation brouhaha is lame.
I'd just prefer to see medical benefits untie from employers (not for moral, but for reducing worker overhead reasons).

Additionally, under the current sphere 'part time' workers don't usually get company benefits.
That sounds like what happens with poets and collected culture now--a poet looking to create a poem searches their memory for experience, chooses a form, and after some revisions produces a work. That work is then shopped around, sometimes in formal ways like a publisher, or informal through friends, and through time civilization filters and canonized certain poems, forever adding to, updating, and removing works from the list.

It seems possible, though certainly not easy, to mechanize some or all of that.
Pratphall - A typed language targeting PHP
Should we just take your word for that?
Lets assume for a moment you are using the browser on your phone when a notification pops up alerting you to a new email. Clicking on the notification brings up your mail app and displays the email you just recieved.

At this point if you click the back button you will be returned to the browser session you were previously viewing. If, however, you were to click the up button instead you would remain inside your mail app and go “up” from your message to the inbox.
I'm in the category you're describing. (Switched from Jira/Greenhopper to Pivotal and happy about it).

I think the divisive bit may, in part, be that Pivotal is a strongly opinionated tool while Jira is a fairly customizable and open ended tool.

For projects & teams committed to the process Pivotal champions, it's highly optimized. For teams using a different process, or who need to customize views for different people etc, Jira can provide more options, and be a better fit.

For me personally... at the moment, I really appreciate Pivotal's relative simplicity and the way it encourages folks to focus on the somewhat nearer term.
So basically, you have reasons other than ethical ones now to become a vegetarian.

(Sorry to have opened this can of worms :-).
Well now that I've just managed to out myself to the entire world (well the world here, wasn't expecting that). We probably will!

No VC we've talked to has ever wanted to hear we make marketing software for brands. But if I'm not caring anymore then yeah how we speak to our clients will be how we speak to everyone now. How very liberating.
http://arkhip.livejournal.com/341078.html
This is where I took this from
(You can use some translation service)
And it states that most of Pol Pot's cabinet were graduates of universities, more than half of them Sorbonne.

And then it tells about previous ruler investing in education heavily without then caring about employment of graduates, all this on top of population surge.
"3. On the Tesla, only the rear wheels have regenerative braking, the front wheels have disc brakes. Factor 0.5, so we are now at 0.32."

I would hope that the on board software wouldn't use those front brakes during light deceleration. Anybody know more about this?
Here[1] is an example of said ammunition. The corrolary, of course, is that if something won't go through an inch wall material (most of walls are hollow, after all), penetrating inches of skin, fat, and muscle are also unlikely. I've read of some people who put the first couple of rounds using the safety slugs and then hollow-points for the rest, figuring if somebody isn't going to stop with a couple, fairly large, relatively surface wounds, then they aren't going to stop without something more serious and house mates are in danger in that situation anyway.

Regardless, before I would ever keep a gun for personal protection[2], I would make sure I have enough experience shooting it and hitting my target that my likelihood of missing at short range is exceedingly low. Stress and all that will impact your abilities, of course, but enough training can significantly reduce that risk.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glaser_Safety_Slug

2. I love shooting and have a couple, small caliber rifles locked up in the basement, but I don't currently own a gun for "personal protection".
I wish the designer in my company could be interested in these kind of articles. Is quite frustrating to receive time and again all the wireframes focused on an iPhone-like look, no matter what.
Go through everything. If you do not use it more than 1x a year (or is safety equipment), either donate it, sell it, or display it in a cherished manner.

Strongly consider moving to ebooks for almost everything

Empty out closets (after eating a meal). Force yourself to throw out most of it.

Stop waiting to file. Throw it all in a drawer, go through said drawer infrequently at scheduled times.
5 Entrepreneurial Myths Busted
How breaking into companies' computer and subverting them into serving botnet herders has anything to do with IP? Most of them don't even have a single thing to do with IP. It's like justifying robbery by saying "well, you have big banks in your country so it's ok if we rob you".
Understood, and thanks for backfilling me on the progress of our c8y. See you next week.