skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Yes, Vega is trying to serve multiple goals. A primary goal is indeed to make it easier for programs to make visualizations. Doing so also creates the opportunity to write new higher-level (and perhaps more user-friendly) generation tools. Possible examples include higher-level grammars like ggplot2 (Vega is lower-level but more expressive) or using Vega as a file format for visual, interactive design tools (an ongoing project in our group at Stanford).

In talks with journalism school instructors and others we've also learned that many novice programmers found models like Protovis easier for students to learn and use than D3, and JavaScript issues often dominated toolkit-specific issues. Our hope is that Vega proves simpler for a variety of tasks; that has certainly been our own experience so far.

That said, your post points out that the messaging on our website may be miscalibrated. We'll consider and revise appropriately.

For more about the specific motivations for Vega, read https://github.com/trifacta/vega/wiki/Vega-and-D3

Thanks for the feedback!
I take issue with the term "abuse." The implication is that people are unfairly taking advantage of the service, and that the companies are justified in altering obfuscating their pricing structures in a way that is at best disingenuous and at worst illegal. If companies agree to provide a free service to their customers, said customers can only be expected to maximize their value from the service. The companies have an obligation to offer their services at the marketed or contractually-guaranteed price, and aren't justified in misleading customers. No "abuse" happened. These companies made poor choices and consumers acted in their best interest (as they are inclined to do). That doesn't justify that choices that Instacart made.
This just hit engadget.
Scout introduces server roles: easily configure monitoring across many servers.
Cartoon - Vegan/Social Media
But that's just it -- the various existing implementations of the Grammar of Graphics have solid, proven implementations, tutorials, documentation, and Q/A collections on Stack Overflow. From my admittedly brief impressions of Vega, the procedural implementations also seem to be more concise. Tack on the benefits of a procedural REPL when you're doing exploratory data analysis or nontrivial manipulations and it becomes very hard to justify the switch.

Like most everyone here I think Vega would be much better suited to the role of an intermediate target format for higher-level tools.
JavaScript is extremely poor at expressing OOP, it requires so much un-intuitive boilerplate to express your intent that many don't bother and will just hack together the simplest thing that works. Which causes the current situation of having so many different libraries to declare classes and they all do it their own unique way which are not compatible with each other.

It's the same for iteration, the hasOwnProperty is mostly omitted because it works most of the time without it and specifying it adds un-necessary boiler plate.

Same with async, there's a zillion async libraries that try to manage async in different ways and they aren't interchangable either. By standardizing on Futures/Streams it means all libraries can build on consistent and composable foundations and build higher-level functionality.
If you really wanted to pursue it, you could probably force them to explicitly define what the mean by 'compete' (thereby narrowing what they can come after you for), or else give you compensation for the period that they want you to be excluded from working. It might take some legal maneuvering though.
Show HN:Tablet Ready Android App to Access, Share and Stream Personal Media
It’s time to grow up. Fuck no
>Is there something like this for Clojure?

Probably Incanter which uses the Parallel Colt Java library - http://incanter.org/ | https://sites.google.com/site/piotrwendykier/software/parall...
Sweet :) I wasn't doing it over lan though, totally different subnets here. It's easy to quickly open the port I want to use for netcat on a remote machine and copy files quickly that way.

If you're interested in completely saturating all your resources for the maximum possible transfer speed, check out Tsunami: http://tsunami-udp.sourceforge.net/ -- It's a UDP protocol designed for raw throughput. Also no security or checking, but it does support throttling which is nice. I've tested and it actually does exceed netcat's rate by a few percent, but it's a little less reliable (client and server have to agree on a lot of things). Pretty cool to experiment with though :)
To me, "cloud" is the growing phenomenon of removing the need for individuals and organizations to own their own hardware. That's quite different from the existing network of networks.
Honestly, the pricing structure of this company is so convoluted and their fees seem so usuriously high, I just can't see how this is preferable to simply walking to the nearest store in 99% of circumstances.
This to me was an example of too many pivots. First a FourSquare clone, then a Groupon clone, now a Square clone. Seth seems like an interesting guy, but it's hard to feel the company doesn't have the right focus, always hopping to the next thing without perfecting the last one.

I remember I went to a bar that actually had LevelUp when it first launched in Philadelphia, and no one there had any idea what it was. Finally they got the manager on the phone and he had a vague recollection of talking to some rep about signing up. That just showed me how the marketing/education aspect was completely missing, despite their slow thorough rollout.
New Pricing with a Bigger Free Plan
This is correct. The switch will continue to work if the x86 hardware fails. In this case the other controllers will take over management of the servers that are plugged in to the controller with the failed x86 hardware.
well one declares variables:

- given a pan
- given 3 eggs
- given a little of olive oil

then one executes orders :

- add the oil in the pan
- break the eggs and add them in the pan
- cook the eggs fo 5 mins
- serve the food hot

so i guess one is never really doing either pure declarative of imperative cooking/programming ?

I like the cookbook metaphore for programming.
Yes, you point another issue. In high school, I had the option to learn about other subjects aside from the standard math, English, Spanish, and science. There was a program that taught students about business (and had them run one from their classroom), one for music (which had them build a band), and wood shop (which had people building furniture). All of those programs are gone these days. All of them. Why? Budget cuts. But here is the real impact of such programs: All of the older people in the barrio that did not sell drugs, and were mechanics or construction workers, had learned their trade in school. This generation does not have that anymore.
I have mixed feelings about posts like this. I understand the point -- public shaming to resolve a service/pricing issue, but I don't like the way its handled. It's the same sort of things reviewers do on Yelp (and why I find most Yelp reviews to be essentially worthless) -- "I have a specific, personal customer service issue with this business, so I'm going to make it as public as possible in an effort to drum up support"

On the one hand, this will (or at least should) generate a response from Instacart, and perhaps will have its intended effect - a policy change / refund / etc.

But on the other hand, I don't like the feel of how these things play out. Customer has issue. Customer makes contact with company and receives response. Customer not satisfied with response so instead of escalating within company, customer decides to "go public" and shame company.

And now this thread has turned into a piling-on of everyone's personal Instacart issues. Is this productive? Is this helping Instacart improve or is it just a cathartic airing of grievances?

I just feel like these sorts of things hurt the company more than help them, and it feels vindictive.

I could be totally off-base here, but such is the way of gut responses...
What US city? What are the tax and housing expenses?
I think it's pretty widely accepted that Dropbox is used for personal stuff a lot. I know at least a dozen people who use it, including people who don't work anywhere near tech.

In fact, remote storing of business data is a huge red flag for a lot of people, so many businesses do not use the service.
> My intuitive, immediate response is that it has something to do with (most?) privilege being an unfair, oppressive institution: one that is self replicating unless it's actively fought.

You should be careful how you consider this though. We wouldn't hack a tall person's legs off at the knee to force them to be equally as tall as the rest of us, nor do we give geniuses lobotomies to try and equal out intelligence within the population.

It is no one's moral imperative to punish themselves for being placed in a good situation. If life was inherently fair we'd all still be a soup of completely equal unicellular organisms. Our differences and our circumstances conspire to make it so that not everyone has the exact same shot at success, but that's not the worst possible thing that could happen either.

If you want to reduce unfair privilege I would recommend starting by helping those without it, instead of obligating those with it.
How do you bug track on personal projects?
I'm working on a couple personal projects now, and I find that I'll forget bugs/ features I want to work on if I don't record them somewhere. I've tried using a few bug tracking systems, but a lot of them had too many features designed for teams for my needs. What application, or recording system do you use to keep track of bugs/features in personal projects?
We upped the number available by 10% after it sold out, but then it sold out again in a few minutes. It's sold out for good now, I promise.
Same thing here, no scroll bar, arrows and page up/down don't work.

At an office PC, Windows / Chrome v. 26.0.1410.43
I don't think the thats even the issue. There are two issues. First the issue is the company authorizing charges without first notifying the user that they made changes and will be charging their card without notification. Second not following through on the original agreement. Why would anyone want to continue to work with this company knowing they will just do this in the future and hope to get away with it ?
I agree. I don't recognize the examples here as declarative programming.

SQL and Prolog are both examples of declarative programming, so is Make to an extent. Using a map function doesn't make JavaScript a declarative programming language - it's a functional programming concept, not a declarative one.
10 Job Skills Startups Will Kill For
One of my servers has Webmin on it, which I rarely use. I'm not sure if deleting it would break anything on the backend so if I were to block the port it uses with SELinux, would that pretty much alleviate the problem until I was sure that removing it would not break anything?

I've already checked the server for any rogue Apache modules and nothing appears out of place.

Never mind. There is a stop script.
I think this is one of those tech bubble things- everyone we know uses Gmail. But outside of tech circles a great many people still use Hotmail and Yahoo mail. Like my parents.

At least they're not using AOL.
How to become a (better) designer
I would disagree that you can escape from all data mining companies. For instance, I would be willing to bet a lot on the fact that a company like Acxiom knows a hell of a lot about you that you don't know yourself. And they are not that well known.Facebook uses Acxiom, but you would never know that. You would really only look at Facebook's privacy policy where Axiom would just be listed as a "third party" in there.

It is very difficult not to be tracked at all, unless you are using Tor or other anonymizer.

Edit:misspelled Acxiom
3 Lessons Every Startup Can Learn From Fisker
The Problem with Business School Today
"Sorry, we are sold out of this item." Aw.
Me, too, making iOS apps. And continuing to wonder if Windows 8 is really a turd for development.

Probably not the effect MS wanted here.
How to Model Viral Growth: Retention and Virality Curves
How to get better at designing?
If anyone is curious, this is the first step to monetizing email beyond ads. Fast forward a few years and the store as much content as you want (Gmail model) will be an exception not the rule.
YES! That is so true. How many times have you not heard "we should not invent the wheel again". To this I always thought to myself (but seldom said) - but the wheel is invented over and over again. New wheels for new purposes, better working for their purpose, whether F1 cars, Jumbo Jets, trains, trolleys, carts etc etc. However it is so true - the wheel is not reinvented, it is improved, iterated over again. And it is just like it should be
Lean In should be read by everyone, including men
Introduction to Haskell (Real World Software)
Having attachments available across computers/mobile devices can in some cases be a huge win.

I can see it being a disaster in some cases, but I see it as a huge plus in another section.

Dropbox is just about ubiquitous enough for this to be useful.
How is sending a person to the moon a whole world problem? what "problem" did it solve in the world?
My understanding is that people continue to use jQuery because it makes DOM manipulation that much easier. The Dart authors kept this in mind and said jokingly on http://www.dartlang.org/articles/improving-the-dom/ One area where the DOM has a bunch of baggage is finding elements. Today’s DOM has a pile of methods for finding stuff. All of this piled up before jQuery appeared on a mountaintop to give us the revelation that Thou Shalt Find Nodes By Using CSS Selectors. With the One True Way in hand, we’ve stripped it down to just two (!) methods: query() and queryAll().
It really is nice to use proprietary protocols for every form of communication. /s
True, I thought of it as "cute" and used it to send big WAV files and such between artist friends when collaborating on a project. Really made it easier than walking someone on how to FTP onto my colo webhost.

Then the entire Corp Comms department at my old work used it almost exclusively with all their vendors for PSDs, PPT Slidedecks, TIFFs... Basically any deliverable.
yeah. they have the difficult decision now of either keeping the policy and losing customers, or removing the policy and losing money on every order.

I really think you'll be disappointed though. The company can hardly be trusted or taken seriously.
A simple call to the card-issuing bank is likely all it takes to get your money back. Not receiving the service described is a valid chargeback reason.
This is really neat...what would I want to use the SDK for though...?
I am always complaining on HN about Show HNs not working in IE8. This one is refreshing!!
I think you're mistaking the program for the implementation. A program can be purely declarative; the fact that we need to create an imperative representation of it to run it on a computer doesn't change that.
A night in the life of a cabbie
What is it like to drive a taxi? This map replays one cab driver’s shift.
out of curiosity - how did you contribute to these, through your work? open-source contribution? consulting.
Write something to put moustaches on everyone you see. This would be particularly useful if you happen to have nervousness about public speaking. For that matter, a good teleprompter would probably be pretty sweet.
SF / LA / NYC / Vegas - Originate

Originate is a unique Venture Software firm that builds startup technology in exchange for equity.

We’re working on 8-10 different startups at any given time and 20% of the equity that Originate takes in any new venture is shared with the engineers working on the projects. Everyone shares in the upside by building a portfolio of equity based holdings. We offer a start-up atmosphere and equity upside without the end-game failure (and 100% of your eggs in one basket) that is so likely at most new ventures.

Tech stacks are primarily RoR, Scala, Android and iOS.

Engineering team is outstanding and we are 85 people (60 engineers) across 5 offices.

http://www.originate.com
It is??

Great, how do I do this on my Windows Surface (ARM) device?
Exactly, and no matter how desperate businesses claim to be for skilled staff they're hardly going to start training them up themselves either. On-the-job training is dead or dying basically everywhere.
Within `run`, you still can use nice syntactic sugar such as `|` for pipes. BTW, almost correct rendering of my name in Devanagari! :-)
Will these kits be sold anywhere else? It's a bit of a shame for those of us that just got a bunch of timeouts before it was sold out completely.
Many companies' TOS say the company (but not the customer) is allowed to change the terms at any time.

IMHO this ought to be illegal, but in USA it's called "the free market" and worshipped as an idol. Whoever is richer is more powerful and sets the terms of the contract (this is called "bargaining power"). The prevailing ideology deems all this perfectly just and fair, because everyone has the option to refuse to deal. The fact that trying to negotiate better terms means living as a hermit in the wilderness is unmentionable.
today everybody is on "cloud", it sounds cool not to be there.
I did not know that. Now I am sad how people downvoted my comment like that.
Show HN: We're simplifying personal cloud storage for apps
It is actually even more interesting in some respects. You consider "break the eggs and add them in the pan" as an imperative command; yet it has to be learned. Just going off of that there are so many ways it can go wrong it is frightening. Consider, how do you break the eggs, and do you add the entirety to the pan? (yes, I just watched my 3 year old try this recently.)

So, don't get me wrong. I'm all for declarative actions. I just think the "purely declarative" approach that many languages try and impose is a useful aberration when you consider how the vast majority of "programming" is done.
It's a pretty big point of attraction. Blogger and Twitter are a pretty good track record.
Sad, I use it all the time since most of my favorite places use it and they don't support Square Wallet.
>“Go to the store and buy an iPad now — Mosaic just made it worth more than my $1000 TV.”

I feel sorry for that person.
Good freelancers are surprisingly easy to reach (hint: see profile) :p
Litecoin, the Silver to Bitcoin over $4
There need to be more of these. Thanks for sharing.
Instant floor planner project by an architect on HTML5
Multi-phone board games. Swipe-based file transfer. Multi-screen movie watching, video streaming, web browsing.
I think maybe my point wasn't clear enough, I agree with you. I was trying to point out that with experience you know where to start testing so you can focus on fixing the pain points that will have the biggest impact.

A/B testing is an important tool to aid optimization, but knowing where to focus your efforts is key. I have over a decade's worth of experience improving e-commerce conversion so generally my first step isn't introducing testing, but fixing the obvious things I know will have an impact because they always have an impact, e.g. fixing a confusing checkout; improving search and navigation; embarking on a data cleanup and improving product content, etc..
Ask HN: Would you find an industry career fair useful?
Please respond with the percentage chance that you'd go. (I'll tally up the results and post the results at the end of the day)
I've heard bankers making 7 figures complain about their compensation model. I think there's no way to turn the knobs so that nobody complains. But indeed, service-oriented companies should absorb the flak and not leave the customer feeling vaguely guilty.
As others have commented, the Linux incident involved an actual dereferencing of the pointer.

The way I read http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg14/www/docs/n1570.pdf top of page 89 and footnote 102 on that page is that this is NOT undefined behavior in C, and though I haven’t checked the corresponding language in the C++ standard, I would think it’s not undefined in C++ either.
Software destined for Valve’s Steam Box appears on SteamPowered.com
It's not nearly as bad as you make it sound. As the consumer you have a very powerful tool at your disposal when using a credit card: the chargeback.

If you ever feel like someone has charged you incorrectly, you can call your CC company and file a claim (or, if you use AMEX, you can file a claim completely online).

Your credit card company trusts you 100%, and it's a huge PITA for the merchant to prove otherwise.
The Junkyard Jumbotron lets you use all sorts of devices, and it's web based. You arrange the screens in the positions you want, and each one displays a QR code. You take a picture of them all together, and the Jumbotron breaks the image up in to the right pieces:

http://jumbotron.media.mit.edu/
Tony Hsieh Buys 100 Tesla Model S's to Rent to Downtown Vegas Residents
Nvidia VP: Next mobile chip generation will outperform Xbox 360, PS3
Another similar project I've seen is https://github.com/nachocab/clickme

Haven't played with either, just throwing it out there.
Multiple dispatch turns out to be truly awesome for mathematical code. In my opinion, the focus and careful selection of features for technical computing, while being a general purpose programming language is what differentiates julia from other dynamic languages.
Whoha... downvotes and no constructive criticism.
Although I'm sure I'm in the minority, I would love to see something like this go straight through to S3.

Services on top of services on top of...
SAT based Sudoku solver in Python
I have no information except what Google says publicly. In the absence of any information about whether Google is using it, I have to assume they are not when making a decision on that basis.
This actually reminds me of Firefox's live bookmarks and the forgotten add-on called Brief. Have you used it? Brief basically wraps a GUI and some features around FF's Live Bookmarks.

The live bookmarks have no feature other than the read item gets an un-bold. Assuming your hack provides little more than the basic feature set for feed reading, otherwise, the combination of bookmarks and feed reading is not much promising.
> Many companies' TOS say the company (but not the customer) is allowed to change the terms at any time.

Actually if the TOS says that then it voids the TOS, as it's no longer a valid contract.
Or screen resizes (less picky)
Obama Launching Massive Initiative To Map The Human Brain
I think often "escalating within the company" either (a) doesn't accomplish anything or (b) simply takes too much active time and effort for what is likely to only ultimately be an individual solution. If you really believe that you are a member of an entire class of people that are being wronged, the right thing to do is to increase general awareness that the company is behaving in a way that you believe is unethical.

Also, a company like Instacart should regard such an expression of customer frustration as something to learn from, regardless of its short-term impact to the bottom line. In the long run they have the potential to be a much stronger company by incorporating customer feedback; especially where it seems that a number of customers identify with that frustration.
What service is LevelUp providing? A loyalty club and CRM for only customers that use LevelUp? It seems that shop owners are either town between forcing a major change on customers or just having a LevelUp POS incase a customer wants to use his phone to pay for stuff. For this to be sustainable, shop owners should have incentive to go LevelUp only. Also are the reduced merchant fees contracted?