skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> people who say "Micro$oft" are idiots. the existence of people who are humorless and lame enough to say it in the year 2013 -- that's what's offensive. it's not that people give a shit about microsoft or whatever

This sentence contradicts itself through its sheer uninspired humorlessness.
I thought he switched to self hosted, open source alternatives. What a silly article.
I was about to respond with a knee-jerk "Try it in Dallas around 5:30pm, or in Austin any time between 3pm and 6pm", but I guess it's all subjective.

I'd rather spend 45 minutes standing up in the subway, free to zone out or read a book, rather than 30 minutes stuck in stop-and-go traffic. (And definitely rather than 2 hours stuck in the same traffic.)
How do we know that this "brief but important update" is related to the security fix?
How about "weBad" as a way of bolstering the self confidence?
I wonder whether it would be permissible to have a system that deduplicates only a fraction of the content. Based on the rulings, it seems like 100% deduplication would be considered infringement while 0% is acceptable. If I shaved off 1 byte from each copy into deduplicated storage (and had an efficient way to reconstitute the complete content), would that be infringing?
Maybe you don't agree with his motivations, but explain to me how using DuckDuckGo (a startup with a fresh approach to search that only hired its first employee in 2011) as opposed to Google (which has been around since the previous millennium) is analogous to giving up one's computer and going back to the stone age?
I use Dovecot. I can't tell you much about it though because all I've ever had to do was point it my own SSL cert and turn off not non-encrypted connections. I use it with BlackBerry, Android, iOS and Thunderbird.
According to ancient Chinese wisdom, a day is divided into twelve 2-hours slices, and one is supposed to be:

- falling asleep during the slice from 9pm to 11pm

- remaining sound asleep during the slices from 11pm to 1pm and from 1am to 3am

- waking up during the slice from 3am to 5am
In your future, why do we still have to move?
Mmm, given my (limited!) experience with AWS, I think Dropbox has a pretty solid advantage in the "Making a sane, user-friendly UI" department.
April Fools: Round up of best tech gags of 2013
Using "Micro$oft" is like having a popped collar -- it is exceptionally useful tool for identifying yourself as an out of touch douche-bag.
mpex.co
I learned PR so I'd never have people with this attitude representing my products to the press. It is a great case for working with someone dedicated and in-house as soon as you can afford it, or making it a portion of your community manager or CEO's job description.
As Prenda's Next Big Day Approaches, What Could Judge Wright Do?
That's rather unfortunate.

I'm not sure if it's now a hirers' market or not; I'm not out for a new job at the moment, but I would never, ever send an email without tailoring it specifically for the place I'm writing to. At the least I'd go to their site, see their products/services, look at the demos and look into their history.

>"Hi, saw your listing on HN, here is my LinkedIn. Call me."
>...just BCC all the emails in the Who's Hiring thread.

This is just plain rude! It shows not only a lack of respect to the company they're applying to, it's just a lack of manners altogether. Even if someone isn't serious about applying (and by the looks of the emails you got, they weren't) there should be some basic etiquette at play when communicating professionally.

Email isn't Twitter with more chars.
The limits to growth
That is why you should spend $15/yr for a domain name for yourself or your family.
Facebook Timeline Lawsuit
Proof that Bitcoin is worthless:

I set up camp over the Golden Gate Bridge. I ask people if they'd be willing to throw their lunch into the water (use their computer's time/energy/money to mine Bitcoin), with no possibility of retrieving it, and in return I offer to give them a certificate stating that they've thrown their lunch away (a Bitcoin).

Now, I see no reason why anyone would expect why these certificates would have any value. But let's suppose they do have value, and people can trade their certificates, say, for a lunch (or perhaps half a lunch). NOW, suppose I have been secretly stashing away those lunches (really it doesn't need to be in secret - you don't care what happens to your lunch after you throw it away). Then there is now objectively more value in the world than there was before I set up shop - there are the same amount of lunches in the world, but there are also now certificates that have some positive value. We've made a free lunch!

This is a contradiction. If we could create value by this silly game, we could easily make as much value as we want, and we would have solved all the world's problem.

But this should be obvious in the first place! Why on earth would you expect to be rewarded with something of value (a Bitcoin) for doing something fundamentally useless to society (mining Bitcoin). Even though mining Bitcoin comes at a cost to you, this doesn't matter - it just means you're throwing your lunch away.

Now why does the US Dollar have value? Instead of throwing away our lunches for a certificate, we basically asked the government to store our lunches in Fort Knox. Today, lots of gold and other items of value are held there. Why are they held there? There is an implicit assumption that these items of value support the US Dollar. The government knows it could not start "eating those lunches" that it's got in its reserve! It would not yield society a free lunch - it would crash the US Dollar.
If one of his intentions was to inspire tinkering, then it worked. I tweaked the game to include an extra 6 ghosts and speed up pacman. More fun, but still hard. Had to randomize their leave box time to make them not appear as one.
>"In fact we see deflation in specific markets like housing which helps to clear out the bad decisions and mistakes and set the base for future expansion."

Periods of asset deflation after over-investment/economic distortions may act as a balance, but it isn't "good". Having your net worth halved is crippling.

>"The simple fact is that no economy and social order has ever imploded due to deflation"

No economy implodes due to deflation or inflation alone. Countries like Germany or Zimbabwe had production capacity collapse. That led to printing money (to stave off deflation), which in turn led to hyperinflation. Too much money chasing too few goods, remember? In order to have too few goods, the country's production has to go into the toilet.

Saying deflation isn't bad flies in the face of many of the greatest economic minds we know, with tons of research and theory to back it up.
"Don't put all your eggs in one basket" seems appropriate.

Of course, the counter to that is that taking a dump in a thousand baskets also leads to no eggs.
I should have said 'then I'm infringing,' obviously.
Why is it a ripoff? It just shows that (at least some) people are willing to pay more for a well designed product.
Why would you compare gold to one mediocre and one bad investment? It seems that few people here understand opportunity costs.
Remember that the names of the authors should be linked to the S.O. profiles:
http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/06/attribution-required/
I don't know what to make of the debate, but I do want one of those answering machines he linked:

http://ccdc11.wordpress.com/2011/02/15/durrell-bishops-marbl...

Not because it is a better UI, but just because it seems so cool.
To be clear, I was not referring to you in any way. I was just positing why the above poster may have concluded that those who speak out in support of the 2nd amendment are marching to the parchment.

Maybe it's polarizing, but there really are only two sides in this fight. There's no middle ground here - there is the ideal of freedom or there is "compromise". Not a compromise in the proper sense of the word, though. It is a pure loss, for you have less freedom than you started with and nothing in return. Votes cost nothing, so this compromise can be (and is) demanded over and over again. The end result is what we face in Maryland, never-ending iterations of legislation with no rational link to the real world, and thousands (like myself) who dream of moving to a state that is slightly more free.
They changed it awhile ago. Definitely not a new change. Like several months back.
they're working on it, with success.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expo_Line_(Los_Angeles_Metro)

once this is running @ 100% (currently it's at 50% operation) for a couple of years there will be a major change in mindset on the west side and the wilshire line (subway to the sea) will be accelerated.

or at least i hope so.
I am very interested of opinions on these boards for it. My intuition is there is no free lunch - if this were the optimal brain wiring, we'd be there already. Is it the inevitable crash or sleep deprivation? I haven't done any hard research on the topic, so I am interested in first hand observations. We are the target audience of the article, even if the link title doesn't suggest it.
"Dear Anthony, Thankyou 4 ure notes in LinkedIn about
contacting u - much easier to know that you're approached
all the time. U r too experienced for my role, but if you
know of any mid level Python / Linux developers happy 2
discuss referral $$if I can place them:) Happy Friday!"

(Actual recruiter message on LinkedIn - I keep it around to remind me why I don't talk to recruiters)
Do the two of you ever write, colloquially, "IANAL", and then you're like "oh, wait..."
It sounds like it was a "google divorce" and not necessarily a "facebook divorce." Are you advocating for a more broad "social networking divorce"?
Every time I'm waiting to move past a red light, I wonder what the gains would be if all the dopes in front of me (and piloting my car, and the ones behind me) accelerated more-or-less in concert. It is very, very annoying to wait for the "wave" of moving to work its way back, once you become aware of it...
It's funny, apparently two of the most major agricultural markets are not governed by capitalist principles at all. The EU is infamous for spending half of its many billion budget each year on subsidizing and aggressively controlling agriculture.

The "right thing" with agriculture seems to be a mix between socialist tight control and capitalist principles. Lenin had a lot of success with the New Economic Policy [1], until Stalin crushed it all.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Economic_Policy
People like freedom of travel? It would be depressing to spend all day at home, even if it was possible.
That is false. Copyright is not an property, and does not have property rights.

Calling copyright a property is an simplification. Copyright is an state enforced monopoly, given as a privilege by the state to the author. Privileges is not properties, and as thus have no property rights attached to them.

Copyright is not different from any other state given privilege. Some people has got permissions to sell drugs, produce weapons or export particular products to specific countries. Neither of those privileges are "rights".

Of course, we can turn this around and say that all property right is privileges given by the state (as they are the only one enforcing the law). However, this kind of thinking would then require one to accept that property, like that car parked in the house, is property owned by the state and given as an privilege to someone they define as an owner. It leads to a place where we are better off defining physical objects as different compared to privileges that we receive from the state.
That's a fascinating point. It has me wondering if this is a solution in search of a problem though. When I do business with someone online, typically I trust the third party more than I trust the counterparty. That's definitely the case when I use my American Express card to buy something from a merchant I've never used before. It's why Ebay and Amazon Marketplace succeeded. They broker the transactions and ensure you don't get screwed in exchange for a cut of the value.
Don't need rail, just rapid bus transit like Bogota. Have folks pre-pay so loading is snick-snick and give them an enforced lane to themselves.

Bogota does it right, here. NYC is starting to follow a bit with the Select bus lines, as well.

I'm really just shocked that all this time LA didn't synchronise their lights. What have they been doing?! NYC has scientists tuning our lights for a living, and cars aren't our thing.
MinoMonsters (YC W11) is looking for engineers
We’re looking for skilled and passionate engineers to join us at Minomonsters. Minomonsters is a highly profitable iPhone game hell-bent on becoming the next huge family brand. You’ll get to be part of our journey as we expand from the screen to the offline world with a range of new products, from books, to toys and even TV. We're a tiny, well-funded team backed by some of the best investors including Y Combinator, Andreessen Horowitz, SV Angel and others. ========
Technical requirements:

* Experience with iOS (Objective-C + Cocos2D)

* Experience architecting game clients

* Experience creating high performance products on iOS

* Passion for design patterns and high quality, maintainable code

========

Other requirements:

* Ability to thrive in a fast paced startup environment

* A love for the social & mobile games industry

* Meticulous attention to detail in code and user experience

* Able to connect and empathize with our players

* Undying passion for games

========

Responsibilities:

* Frontend game client development on exciting new features

* Contribute to the design and direction of the product

* Bring features to life by paying close attention to user experience

* Work closely with artists and designers

========

Bonus points:

* Multiplayer/networking

* Experience with Ruby/EventMachine

* A history of building games

========

We offer generous equity and a highly competitive compensation package with great perks.

Interested? jobs@minomonsters.com

Make sure you include something you’ve built that you’re proud of.
Exactly. What's next? Going after makers of antennas that allow you to receive broadcasts from too far away?
Fact Check: "the first major metropolis in the world to do so"
N.S.W. Australia has had a coordinated traffic system since the 60's, lights have been coordinated across Sydney for decades. They may not be synchronized to the extreme that LA's system could be, since Sydney doesn't have such as massive grid of streets, but there is a system wi view of state.
http://www.scats.com.au/product_history.html
Invalid analogy. Siasto does not sell or distribute its source code. Quite the opposite: our code is locked away on a privately-owned server.

Not at all. An employee of yours might decide to copy it, you might accidentally expose it in the future, or whatever. It seems you're making the argument that only what you can keep secret is yours.

But to align it more easily with reality, are you saying you'd be cool if I started copying your blog posts or the design of your site, which are published to the world?

I would have no problem whatsoever if you cloned our service and attempted to sell it to others

Assuming I wanted to do that, are you saying you'd be completely OK with it being copied down to the last degree? I find this hard to believe.

Yes, but the company in question is not making copies. Hence the separate antennae and storage for each customer.

I don't have a major issue with this particular legal decision. I'm just taking issue with your notion that being the originator of content provides you with few or no rights over it. I really don't see any similarity with your street-corner analogy.

I'm glad you got the pun though :-)
Convert and Import Kodak Video to Windows Movie Maker
5
There would still be some slack in the movement, we could just reduce it substantially. Couple auto car pilots with electric drive trains that provide dependable and fast acceleration...that slack could be very small indeed!

But then, if all your cars were controlled automatically, why would you even need to stop. They could mostly just slow down and hit the lights when they were always green! Perfect synchronization!
He/she may have just successfully communicated their passion for the craft.
Painful Things You Must Do To Grow Up
Sometimes I like to imagine what the world would be like if we could have portals. Imagine a door with a keypad, you dial the number of the door you want to connect to, the other end authorizes it and you get portals between the two. Tourism would instantly stop existing, because everyone would live everywhere. The super market would be, literally, next door. The post office would stop existing, Amazon deliveries would be next-second. You might not even need stuff, just pool them with your friends in a shared storage locker for all of you to use.

It'd be amazing.
How does one synchronize every light? Imagining a grid, I can think of how every 1-way northbound and southbound street can be individually synchronized, but then in my imagination the east and west streets are befucked. So how does it actually work? And how do you synchronize a 2-way street?
LA once had extensive rail lines--they were eventually bought by bus companies and turned into highways.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/blueprintamerica/reports/america-in-...

http://articles.latimes.com/2003/mar/23/local/me-then23
I want to stick with "reputable" and stable service providers since I plan to upload all my files. Feature wise Dropbox seems to be ahead of everyone. But want to consider Amazon as it fits my criteria mentioned above and the price is very attractive. Tried GDrive at work but not too happy with it.

Do you encrypt your files? Most of my sensitive documents are in PDF format, so I am adding passwords to them; but not sure if there is a better solution with Dropbox.
I'm thinking that leaving Google due to privacy concerns, while keeping Facebook seems... odd.
> All the positions above a certain grade need a college degree, and often an advanced degree.

And yet, some of the most wealth has been created by college dropouts - not just for themselves but also for shareholders of companies they created: Jobs, Gates, Ellison, Batista, among others.
See : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_college_dropout_billion...

In fact : "The average net worth of billionaires who dropped out of college, $9.4 billion, is approximately triple that of billionaires with Ph.D.s, $3.2 billion. Even if you remove the world's second richest man, Bill Gates, who left Harvard University and is now worth $66.0 billion, college dropouts are worth $5.3 billion on average, compared to those who finished only bachelor's degrees, who are worth $2.9 billion. According to a recent report from Cambridge, Mass.-based Forrester Research, 20% of America's millionaires never attended college."
My Story: How repeated failure can lead to growth & development
Namco shut down my Pac-Man project [0] last year on github after it was posted to Hacker News. Good luck :/

In short, it works on mobile devices, uses HTML5 Canvas, has ghost visualizations, and Braid-like rewind.

Read about it and play it here:

[0] http://pacman.shaunew.com/
QDB in chicken scheme- 488 lines with tests
I might have interviewed a very different subset of the programming world than you, but I wouldn't make the categorization in this way.

Indeed, I haven't met any programmer who couldn't understand recursion when explained in clear terms, same goes for indirect referencing.

If I had to divide the programmers who really understand algorithmic reasoning into two categories, those would be

- A: those who program because it's their job,

- B: those who program because it's their passion.

I believe this grouping is more helpful to explain differences.
You need to read The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester.
I'm not a rockstar at all (I'm barely passable) but I would never work on a project not understanding the entire tech stack, from the base language to all libraries in play. That is how you get security gotchas where you dump your passwords in plaintext or let anyone into the admin panel.

I've spent the last 3 weeks reading documentation around qt 5 in preparation for some 5.1 mobile development I plan on doing, for example.
>"I hear this argument a lot, but no nation that we know of has ever collapsed because of deflation, right?"

And which have collapsed from inflation? None, directly. Hyperinflation (and deflation) is an effect of an economy collapsing. Not a cause.

From Wiki:
"Hyperinflation is often associated with wars, their aftermath, sociopolitical upheavals, or other crises that make it difficult for the government to tax the population, as a sudden and sharp decrease in tax revenue coupled with a strong effort to maintain the status quo can be a direct trigger of hyperinflation."

Note "decrease in tax revenue". Economic crisis > deflation > country can't pay the bills > hyper-inflates currency.
As an aside, I have been using Go a lot lately, and I have come to really appreciate the clean, simple syntax. (Go isn't pretty, but it's simple and really readable.) With that in mind, I'm a bit apprehensive about the way Rust's syntax has been going, to be honest.

Some of the things I hated about earlier versions have been resolved (such as lower case type names now being mixed case), but there are a lot of lingering stuff that I think make the language needlessly gnarly, in a Perl kind of way. For example, "::" just isn't a very good separator, visually; it litters the code with dots. The semicolon issue still irks me. Overall it's the proliferation of punctuation (the pointer prefixes, -> and =>, the new lifetime-ownership syntax, etc.) I consider problematic. Using underscore_separated_identifiers instead of camelCaseIdentifiers certainly works in Ruby, but Ruby has so little punctuation that it doesn't overwhelm, whereas with Rust it's just one more point off readability.

Looking at parts of the standard lib makes me unsure of whether it's just written in an obscure way (for example, getopts.rs [1]), or this is the way that Rust code will be written. I guess I'm apprehensive because modules that should be "simple" don't look simple, but remind me of unhappy hours spent reading Boost's source code. I know Rust is supposed to be lower-level than Go, but I always hoped that it would balance itself so that high-level stuff would feel appropriately high-level, but you could always dip lower into the metal to get the C-like feel.

Please pardon my wet blanket, the right thing would obviously have been to join rust-dev years ago. I'm still looking forward to doing something in Rust when it's production-ready.

[1] https://github.com/mozilla/rust/blob/incoming/src/libstd/get...
It isn't just about the payout, it is precision too. You hit a very narrow demographic that spends money.
I don't understand how something completely unsupported by the data is repeated as truth.

Simple; it has never been conclusively and irrefutably disproven. Ergo, it must be true, or else it would have been disproven.

Religion isn't the only one with nutjobs ;)
Or have no traffic lights and the cars intersecting detect and adjust speed accordingly/create gaps/etc (would look/be scary but it'd work).
| finding good clients for Linux has been
| more challenging than I expected

What are you looking for a potential client to do? Like a Linux version of Apple's iCal.app / AddressBook.app (i.e. standalone, more or less single-purpose apps)?
First, congrats on getting the job :)

I'd think it's probably a mix of envy (we all know Google pays well, offers great perks and benefits, looks good on a CV, etc.), and maybe fear - Google controls/funnels so much of how people interact with the web today, as a start-up you have to a) stay in their good graces and b) hope they don't come in to your start-up's space and stomp on you.

Oh, and hope - to be bought by Google if your start-up's product is compelling enough ;)
Can partying help save the world?