skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I concur with your statements, as I've seen my own GeoIP resolve to someplace 3,000 miles away from my actual physical location.

Bravo for the data center mention as well.
As someone who lives in a rural area, without access to high-speed connections, the idea of running a home based server just doesn't make sense.
I am mostly disappointed with this response. I see this as an attempt to skirt the issue, the technical problem.

Sure, developer success is important, but the issue is with server performance and efficiency. I would rather they address their problems head-on. Perhaps I'd prefer that approach for every company and every problem.
Also, you need training and you need kitchen implements.

Good food preparation equipment is far from cheap. Bad food prep equipment makes it a lot harder to do.

And learning to cook healthy food, particularly when it has to be tasty enough to compete with the draw of processed meals, isn't easy either.

I did some looking into this problem a few years ago when I was fronting a Web cooking show, and it's far more complex than it appears. Saying "They should just cook healthy food!" is a lot like saying "They should just install configure Linux to be as good as Windows" circa 2003 or so. It might make the speaker feel good, but actually the problems are more complex and more real than that.
Seems like if you haven't exited, you shouldn't be making lists of getting your idea to an exit.
What's really impressive is that he wasn't relegated to Asian or Asian-influenced films. He broke out with Sense and Sensibility, of all things.
I had some issues with my Dropbox account and slow support recently (despite having a Pro account).

I managed to expedite things a bit by emailing the CEO directly -- drew@dropbox.com.
It's a refrigerant. Boiling point is 40C at atmospheric pressure.
Yeah, I've got postfix setup so I just need to add a line to a textfile with "servicename.somerandomchars[1]@mydomain" and it's starting to route to my inbox.

When an address is "compromised" and starts to receive spam, I move the line to a "banned_recipients" file with an SMTP reject header listing the new email. That way, a human using an old address would get a bounce back with the new email.

[1] so that the argument about bruteforcing "common-service@domainname" can be avoided
Yeah, my eyes watered a bit, too. Probably the the perfume of all the hotties hanging off me while I read the article.
CareerHoot interview: Roger Lee, from Harvard to ad tech entrepreneur at PaperG
Groupon still broken (even with andrew Mason out)
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2+oranges%2C+2+kiwis%2C...

56 grams of sugar total

Total sugar/serving:

28 grams

Total sugar/serving of a 12 oz. Coca Cola:

36 grams

Would you think that drinking more than 2/3's of a can of Coca Cola every morning would be healthy, if you were to add a bunch of vitamin C and whatever nutrients are present in Kiwi/Grapefruit to go along with it?
That's a hell of a way to go out. He's not my favourite guy but this little note has more character and more genuine frankness than volumes written by other CEOs on their departure.
The Data Revolution? It's Coming to Farms Too
I suppose derivative distros like Xubuntu and Edubuntu will need to follow suit.

I've had pretty bad experiences with non-LTS versions of Xubuntu. The last time I had a go on it on my laptop, things broke unpredictably, a little at a time. When I say unpredictably, I mean totally by surprise, not even after performing an update. First, Pulse audio stopped working. Spent a few days trying to fix it, then gave up and reverted to Alsa. Then the graphical login got stuck in an endless loop cycle. So reverted to text login, starting X manually after I'd log in. When wireless stopped working, I gave up. I run the LTS Xubuntu on two other machines and neither of them have had problems like this. I put my laptop on the LTS Xubuntu and it's been good since.

I'm guessing mainstream Ubuntu gets more QA and is more stable than Xubuntu. It might be harder for derivative distros to keep up with a rolling release. Or maybe not... this might give them more flexibility to QA stuff as needed instead of trying to keep up with a new release every six months. As long as Cannonical keeps the LTS cycle going, moving to a rolling release sounds reasonable.
I am excited too, but I also wonder how much faster it's really going to be. Synthetic benchmarks are great, but I didn't see much of a speedup when I switched to PyPy for some of my real-world code.
I actually read HN for the thug tears.
They were the other cofounders, IIRC.
Every time a new version of LT playground gets released I feel like a kid in a candy store, looking for all the cool new stuff Chris and the rest of the team put in :). Awesome work, and it just keeps getting better. To be honest, since there weren't any updates in a while, I started having doubts about whether they'll be able to deliver, but I'm glad to see that the project is alive and well.

Judging by the comments I see that there's a lot of people who haven't yet heard of Light Table, which surprised me a bit because posts about LT frequently hit the front page of HN. If you're one of those people, you should take a look at their kickstarter page: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/306316578/light-table

Finally, while there's a lot of people bemoaning the fact that some more popular languages (than Clojure) aren't supported out of the box, I, for one, am glad that somebody's developing such an awesome tool with Clojure in mind.
I didn't have a problem at all – Groupon did. And the dramatic fashion with which his mask dropped was the tipoff, that's all.
I disagree, I found the Bootstrap JS code hard to read and follow because of the lack of semicolons. For a framework that is supposed to help people 'bootstrap' it would seem to me that making their code understandable and accessible is something important.
Those deck chairs would look much nicer over on the port side, no?
No, if you read other comments in this thread, he's faulting the CEO for his attitude. Not the words he used.
Why is killing people with a drone seem more creepy to people than say killing people with a manned bomber or a sniper? Are we just worried about the whole skynet thing?
Featured class: game theory
These (the dot and underscore separators) are a great solution, because when the spam-happy-marketroids try to get the webdevs to intentionally implement broken email address validation, they can point out all the corporate email addresses which are by-policy of the form "firstname.lastname@domain.tld"…
"That middle-American dad programmer using .NET, how do we respect and engage with that community"?

I live in Silicon Beach in LA. I've architected two very successful startups in .NET. I have written .NET for sites making 100's of millions like Hulu, Ticketmaster, Fandango.

I wake up in the morning thinking about software and fall asleep thinking about software. I take my craft very seriously. I am not some aberration in the .NET world, as I've worked with hundreds of guys like myself.

Sounds like you don't have a whole lot of respect for the .NET community. I've just lost a little bit more respect for Heroku.
Agreed.

My only previous exposure to him was the awkward/creepy death stare he gave in an earlier interview:

http://allthingsd.com/20110601/see-andrew-masons-amazing-dea... [video]

This letter greatly improves my impression of him. Well done.
To be fair, it worked extremely well for many years. Admittedly when the wheels fell off, they really fell off.

I'm not sure you can make a judgement about 2 CEO systems from BBRY.
He's done this rinse and repeat thing several times.

See Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Lefkofsky

Also,

* http://www.businessinsider.com/insider-selling-groupon-2011-...

* http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/06/10/groupon-eric-lefkofsk...
Learning from RIM?
Yep. It's not that they don't consider prior art at all. It's just that an exhaustive search for priort art is not possible, and all it takes is one overworked patent clerk to let something like this slip by. It's possible that this is a valid patent based on whatever criteria the patent office uses for software patents.

The problem is that the criteria is terrible for validating software patents. I don't even believe any criteria for validating software patents would actually encourage innovation in software.
The problem is, people do know [...]

No they don't. You know that and I know that, but we're reasonably well-educated, with a general grasp of economics nutrition and so forth. There are a lot of people - I'd guess up to half the country - that don't understand that stuff and have difficulty understanding the 'nutrition facts' labels on food. I do think people ought to be more responsible for their own diets, but consider the impact of poor diet upon brain development. If you grew up being fed low quality food, you're less likely to appreciate how bad for you it actually is.
Thanks. That's helpful information.
On 920 trades? This doesn't sound right. And their JSON data isn't consistent with that.
That is true, but they're going to drop the sugar from some of the products as well, since it's not as cheap as HFCS right now.

It's better to remove all subsidies though, or subsidize things like spinach and broccoli. If they want to extract something from those and add it, I guess I am fine.
Why not Google for research instead of speculating? It took me 5 seconds to find this:

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/12/05/a-high-price-for-he...

"Healthy eating really does cost more.

That’s what University of Washington researchers found when they compared the prices of 370 foods sold at supermarkets in the Seattle area. Calorie for calorie, junk foods not only cost less than fruits and vegetables, but junk food prices also are less likely to rise as a result of inflation. The findings, reported in the current issue of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, may help explain why the highest rates of obesity are seen among people in lower-income groups."
I totally agree with this. To many times developers of frameworks or other reusable components seem to try to protect developers from themselves.

I understand that there is a good argument for this but in the end it's making everything more complex and limited for developers who do understand what they're doing.
> A safe, clean, inexpensive, 100 Megawatt fusion reactor that fits on a flatbed truck, consumes lithium and sea water, and produces electricity, heat, pure water, and helium.

I'm not from Missouri, but ... show me.

From another online article (http://climateerinvest.blogspot.com/2013/02/lockheeds-skunk-...):

> Lockheed's fusion power plant uses radio energy to heat deuterium gas inside tightly controlled magnetic fields, creating a very high temperature plasma that's much more stable and well confined than you'd find in something like a tokamak ...

Note how this device is described -- "fusion power plant uses radio energy to heat deuterium gas". Not "might be able to use radio energy to heat deuterium gas in a future planned device." If this device had moved beyond theory, it would be headlines all over the world. It's a hypothesis, not a device, and certainly not a "fusion power plant". This is hype, and I call shenanigans.

In the original video, the real source for this story talks about it in realistic terms -- it's a hypothesis, an idea that might or might not actually work:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=J...!

The project is interesting, but it's not reduced to practice as suggested in the text accounts. This represents more irresponsible science journalism.
A workaround? As opposed to simply switching registrars with something decent?
Which of these use client side encryption?
Is there anything particularly interesting or useful about this keyboard design, or is it simply because it was designed by Crockford that makes it deserve mention? Aside from unsuitable for touch-typing, it looks like a common sense way to do it.
Poverty is a misleading word. You can be poor with a 20K$/y salary in one place and filthy rich in another. It's not because some people live more simple lives that they are poor. A poor person is a person who cannot meet its basic needs. You cannot help the mentally ill by giving them money either. Poverty exists because of diversity as well, trying to make someone else think like you is a form of indoctrination. Some people prefer technology other prefer nature, some prefer money other prefer fresh air, clean water and lots of time with close friends and family. It's hard to label some people as poor when they live happier and healthier lives than people with big bank accounts, big houses and fancy cars.
No, the problem was he didn't have or share a story, vision, idea, or plan on why he believed the business was sustainable.
“My biggest regrets are the moments that I let a lack of data override my intuition on what’s best for our customers.”

Are there more insights in this? What do you think are the intuition decisions Groupon took (that’s public) that probably wasn’t against data?

It might seem obvious in retrospect, but as a startup founder I’d love to learn in context.
Getting fired from something you poured your heart and soul into for close to five years, sacrificed relationships, health (+40 lbs), etc., must feel awful. I suspect he really does feel love for many of the people who were in the trenches with him during this time, as he avers in the closing line. Staring at your bulging bank account can only do so much to lessen that pain, at least in the short term.
>> Ever use a juicer? Think about how many oranges it takes to make an 8 oz. glass. (It takes several, and if you tried to eat that many, you would be full halfway through due to the fiber.)

I was replying to that quote of yours, meaning that it doesn't take an excessive amount of fruit to make 8 oz. of juice.

I admitted that I don't know about the science of sugar, but I have a hard time believing that fresh fruit juice is equivalent to Coca Cola with some vitamins added in.
TL;DR posted up the earlier-promised example Literate CoffeeScript blog engine: https://github.com/jashkenas/journo
If the govt were concerned with the health of its populace, it could enact a law to limit what govt-subsidized fruit and vegetables could be used for. Imagine it: only whole corn, kernel corn, and popcorn from subsidized corn. Doritos would suddenly be too expensive to manufacture.
Cutting American health research will harm the world
Amazon is even worse, especially for their sellers. They really don't care about their sellers at all and use bots/autoresponders for virtually all support.
I saw Andrew Mason speak at Startup School in 2010; the headline of his talk was 'Polishing your turds and GETTING SUPER RICH.'

http://www.justin.tv/startupschool/b/272030648
Reminds me of this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4284524
That's my point. What attitude would you expect from a CEO?
Their duty is to promote their business under all circumstances. Could he have acted differently? Sure. Bu that's just gossiping.
My first non-congratulating HN comment ever is to completely agree with you. Valuable insights come from all different kinds of stories. I'm glad this community recognizes that, and what a wonderful piece this is.
I'm in the process of switching to gandi.net. It's not as cheap as name.com (3 dollars difference...), but their DNS service seems really topnotch. Also, they're open to acting as a secondary DNS server and mirroring my own NS via AXFR, which is pretty nice.
u may want to delete this. it's been posted at least 50 times
Bump this to the top! Definitely more details about the situation, and more about the awesome judge.
You should complain. There is a myriad of reasons why PyPy won't go very fast, for example you're using C extensions. Usually what happens if you have code where parts go insanely fast and parts go insanely slow. Once you identify it, sometimes it is just replacing the library (like pgsql2 -> pgsql2cffi or so) and stuff flies. But it all depends on your workload and the stack a lot. R&D is typically needed to get good speedups. For most RW examples, 2-10x are to be expected.

Shameless plug - if your stuff is not open source and you can't be bothered to do the profiling yourself, there is typically an option to hire someone to do it for you. Get in touch.
Dropbox may or may not be "at fault", but they've certainly got a problem. Even if the root cause turns out to be a common rootkit/trojan/botnet has started extracting and reporting email addresses from Dropbox clients on exploited customer machines, that's still a problem for Dropbox (and their customers) even though few people would call Dropbox "at fault" in that circumstance.

And, the mods there held on to the "it must be your fault, probably just an easily guessable email address + random bad luck" line _way_ past the point of credibility.
Astonishingly real Audrey Hepburn shills chocolate in new commercial
I too enjoyed the honesty here, but how much of that is Andrew's personality and how much is facilitated by the fact that by cashing out early [1] on an 'inside' round he doesn't actually have to work if he doesn't want to?

What I'm saying is that I have observed that the honesty someone has about how their last job ended is inversely proportional to their need to get another job. If they really need another job, people position their departure in a way that makes them the victim, if they don't care if they get another job, they are more forthcoming. It may be built into the psyche for all I know.

That said, given that it doesn't matter at all if he's seen as being fired or choosing to leave, I think it was great that he was as forthright about his tenure as he chose to be.

[1] http://articles.marketwatch.com/2011-11-03/commentary/306980...
Team Collaboration with GitHub
We started drinking juice to replace cereal in the morning and to increase our vegetable intake. This morning, I just happened to only use fruit.

I'd bet that eating the fruit & vegetables would be better. But at this point, neither my wife or I will be eating kale or celery for breakfast. Juicing helps us at least some vegetables in our diet. Baby steps.
Not sure I follow. You don't have a LinkedIn, so you have no LinkedIn profile to share. There is no reason to tell someone you have no interest in sharing something that doesn't exist, is there? Maybe I am misunderstanding. If you want to be out there looking and be in touch with recruiters, it looks as though you are going to have to find them if they are unable to find you.
Being pedantic, but if EVERYONE did that surely you'd never reach the actual internet right? :-)
I hope you never find yourself in a situation where you need medical care and can't pay for it. Because the rest of us, who are in possession of at least a few scraps of human decency, would have to shell out to save your ungrateful ass.

A human life is worth more than its economic output.
"these sorts of things are virtually impossible to predict"

Respectfully - no. (And by that I mean respect++ - I learned a lot from your book!)

The company had been around awhile, and there was data to guide the decision. Growth rates, customer acquisition costs, engineering costs, etc. At the time of the offer, a lot about Groupon's financial model was well known. It could have led to a better decision.
First of all, even those articles are untrue unless your time is valued at zero.

Secondly, there are just as many - if not more - studies that show that junk food is, in fact, cheaper. Because weight is an obvious, but subtly wrong, measurement to compare by:

"Healthy eating really does cost more. That’s what University of Washington researchers found when they compared the prices of 370 foods sold at supermarkets in the Seattle area. Calorie for calorie, junk foods not only cost less than fruits and vegetables, but junk food prices also are less likely to rise as a result of inflation…"

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/12/05/a-high-price-for-he...
Would you back up your claims? This is interesting.
Ok, thanks. I was not aware.
Bradley Manning Takes "Full Responsibility" for Giving WikiLeaks Government Data
:) DH2, or DH3, at best. http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html

Market-driven vendor support of Linux is not unprecedented. Ever heard of Dell, Lenovo, Acer, Nvidia, or the Android ecosystem?
> How am I supposed to keep my stoic German personae?

Slowly pound the desk with your fist as you cry.
That is definitely another bug in this company's process. This should have been automated. It's much harder to screw up running a script!
While I agree with this sentiment... I also enjoyed and upvoted the article. :)

This might be one of those "just let go and either ignore or enjoy it" things. People complain a lot about non-tech/business articles on HN, but they're not going away... and really, does it matter?
The video and this letter are both very small snapshots of him as a person. Your impression of him is probably not representative of reality. Consider learning more if you care to have a more accurate impression?
I'm not arguing for black/white box testing, I'm arguing that for testing to have real value, your tester needs to behave in a similar manner to a real user. That way you find the gap between your own understanding and your users' understanding of the system.

Take a concrete example: a piece of medical equipment prints off reports. If your tester has no medical knowledge, he doesn't have a frame of reference to know if the numbers are correct or not. He's also more inclined to use it exactly how you specify.

A real doctor would bring his own experience of similar equipment and try to use it in ways you didn't think of. In addition, he will be able to gauge whether the reports "look right".
I'm not faulting Mason. I'm saying several non-verbal cues reflected the troubled state of his business. The sudden lack of transparency was very telling. Whatever was going on there, he did not want to talk about it. If everything were indeed hunky dory, he'd have responded differently.
My father-in-law and I had a discussion about this in relation to my company, which charges different rates for a few different roles on our projects. We've had trouble with this as people shift from project to project or work is shifted from one role to another (eg: junior to senior developer) which changes the amount of time available for the fixed budget we had planned. I was interested in his input since he has a lot of experience running large Enterprise departments.

He told me that he had tried different approaches over the years, and the best approach was to charge the maximum rate for all roles on the project. The working assumption is that senior workers will tend to do the work faster and on their own, but junior developers will require oversight from senior developers. That justifies the higher rate for juniors; it offsets the time that seniors have to spend mentoring them, which also ensures that the same quality of work is produced whether it's done by a senior or junior.

Charging the same rate for everyone greatly simplifies budgeting, especially if some parts of the project turn out to be over-estimated while others were under-estimated when the initial budget is put together. If all hours are the same price, you can shift them freely where they're needed as reality starts to beat up your plan. When hours have different prices, it's a lot more complicated to do that.
Why Game Creators Prefer iPhone to Android
For $6b, I would probably have erred on the side of caution and sold. However, maybe that's why I'm not founding multi billion dollar companies. A willingness to take on significant risk is a reasonably big part of being a founder. I respect his / their willingness to have faith in their company and business model, however flawed it may have been.

For a fairly popular example of some other founders who didn't accurately value their company :

http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/29/google-excite/
How fitting for a man that built a predatory company to be ousted by predatory executives.