skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I used to use SVN. We built control software for robots. We'd take the robots away on a field trial - no internet access - fix some bugs, write some code, add some features.

That's five to ten people, all writing code that interacts with each other's, all without any access to the SVN server. You can imagine the copy-pasta that went on. The amount of "oh fuck, I just rebuilt-all without Dave's changes". The amount of "Bags not merging this shit."

Then we'd get back to work after a weekend and have to merge all our independent branches. That could take a day or two on its own. Sometimes, sitting with five people's laptops in front of you and using the human brain's visual diff was more efficient than trying to do it properly.

---

Now, with git, we push and pull wherever the hell we like as needed. Everyone's laptop is equivalent to the server. When we get back, everyone merges their stuff into staging, all the cross-dependencies get magically resolved, we test it, and merge that into master. It takes about fifteen minutes.

(Actually, I don't work there any more, but the conclusion works better in the present tense.)
http://caius.github.io/github_id/

Doesn't show join date, but user IDs are auto-incrementing.
Ask HN: How do I obtain part-time development work?
Hi. I'm a software developer with 6-7 years of professional experience and a good resume. I get recruiter emails from decent companies from time to time and seem to be able to get interviews at most places I apply to, but they are all for full-time work.

I would love to find part-time employment so that I can spend my free time on other things than working for someone else.

I have started applying and I like to be up-front so in my cover letters I state that I am interested in working no more than 25 hours per week (3 full days). So far, all the responses I've received are rejections from people saying that they require someone who can give a full time commitment to the job.

I am not interested in using freelance type sites since I don't feel that I will get market rates (if I am incorrect, please let me know -- but I believe I will never approach Silicon Valley hourly rates doing something like that).

In the past I was able to convert one of my full-time jobs to part-time contract work but the company got acquired and I was laid off.

A few tangents:

1. My goal is to run a self-funded startup and my costs are negligible. The day I have to pay $50 a month for VPS costs because I need to scale up will be a good one.

2. I believe that there is plenty of room for useful software in the world that any skilled developer can build and support that can make a more-than-comfortable living.

3. I recently registered a domain name and am considering setting up a site which basically amounts to the Canadian Association of Independent Software Professionals. Were this thing in full swing, I could probably find work from others on the site already. Any interest in such a thing?

4. I refuse to go into debt to fund my startup. It's just not in my nature and I don't see myself looking for funding when the costs are so low.
Yes, I can, very, very slowly, but much faster than with the regular notation, and mostly because I'm not used to sightreading regardless of how it's written. I think it will never appeal to classic / professional musicians or anyone who already feels comfortable with the regular notation, but for people lbike me, that for whatever neurological reason just can get the old notation to stick, this is priceless. The Above Below C Dot Empty Full Groove is such a great wiring that I will never be able to forget it. I might not read it fast as you read regular notes, but I will at least be able to practice. Reading regular notes to me was always counting lines, always missing the global # or b, and simply giving up serious music. I recorded music, had songs on the radio, I can play anything by ear, but not being able to read notes always bothers me. Now I can.
Call it what you want; lying to a prospective employer means you no longer have any grounds to expect them to behave in an honest way. If you can't be honest with people you have no reason to expect honesty in return.
Hmm, it sounds like you're trying to argue with me, but I'm not clear on what you're saying — some quick responses — hope this helps:

① I did not claim Scheme was an "assembly language" for ML. I said that programming in, reading programs in, and compiling programs in Scheme was like programming in, reading programs in, and compiling programs in assembly language in some specific ways, and very unlike it in others. The relationship between Scheme and ML is that some of the central insights of Scheme were adopted by ML.

② ML defines evaluation order. The lambda calculus does not. Typical ML implementations compile to the assembly languages of actual processors. Can you clarify?

③ I think Scheme is sufficiently well defined for this discussion — it's a family of languages originating in some papers by Sussman and Steele in the 1970s, and continuing through the current R7RS work, including a number of compilers. Several of the standards define the semantics of the language symbolically, not just in English.
Hey is there any way I can import all of my evernote stuff into Kippt? I'm willing to try Kippt out, but not willing to copy over 100's of bookmarks or use 2 services. Thanks!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_vitro_meat
Degreed - The better way to track education
How I see it, the standard college degree is becoming outdated. They have been distributed for longer than we have known. With the evolution in MOOCs, we have seen colleges offer their courses for free to anyone who wishes to take them. Coursera and Udacity, for example, offer classes, but the only way to tell if you have completed them is through a certificate of completion.

The way I see it, education is one of the last things to change with the way technology is going. It makes sense: it's a fragile subject to mess with. However, there is not a better time to change the way you apply for a career. With the way we interact with friends, watch movies, shop, and listen to music all being fully implemented into the web, education is next in line for its turn.

Some people have asked "isn't it right that we also send my job to the web too?" No! What needs to be examined is efficiency and what is best for our daily needs. When you work a job, it is best to be in an environment with your collages surrounding you. In terms of education, that payment for room and board amongst the payment for tuition is what makes student loan debt the largest source of debt in the United States.

The way I see it, this is the next step.

I have nothing to do with these guys, I just think that they hit the nail on the head in terms of the next direction in education.
Specifically, Chinese rice contains harmful levels of lead. If there is one lesson we've learned about consumer products in the last decade, it's don't eat anything from China.
I know that we can routinely receive $X00 checks for referring (even very small) clients to ADP. I don't remember if it is just the one time bonus or if there is an ongoing fee sharing as well. I'll find my more specific numbers tomorrow and PM you.
that's true. thanks!
Please explain to me how GitHub is anything other than a communist ploy for black men to steal our white women? I know it sounds slightly far-fetched, but hear me out. With centralized systems like SVN, open source has standards: white people control access, and can ensure no inferior negro code makes it into projects. With GitHub, anyone can fork anything! There aren't even any racial restrictions. For some reason people think this is a good idea?
January 29, 2008. User id 95. :)
I'm not saying this FDR is guaranteed to work or be the best idea, but I'm pretty sure lutusp is trolling or something. He is clearly not understanding any of the issues. Repeatedly he talks of needing to create a steady reaction, and talks about needing to meet the same requirements of a fusion electric generator. Neither of these things is proposed by the FDR project. It is pulsed, and it generates only kinetic energy (much like an H-bomb, relatively old and proven technology). Further, he talks of ion thrusters as an alternative, which would take months to get to Mars, whereas this is talking about 30 days.
The Chinese invented rice, though. If you want to avoid chinky food, you shouldn't eat it at all.
GitHub rocks. I would only switch for the yet to be invented GitGrub. If you'll request is accepted, you get a free burrito.
How do you create a data-driven organization?
Can bitcoin rescue cryonics from obscurity?
That would be an incredible gift to spammers. Just keep spamming until you see your domain health go from green to yellow. Then you can calibrate just how much you can get away with.

It's a nice idea, but will just make the spam problem worse.
MOMA to Raze 11 year old Manhattan Museum Building
Meteor turned one today
I just had this conversation at work. It reinforces a very import user behavior that a few years back everyone messed up. We used to think you had to fit everything "above the fold". After running a lot of multivariate tests, watching user behavior and using websites, I learned that the fold, in most cases, is myth.

It turns out that people will scroll down, if there is a compelling reason to. Now, having elements partially off screen is a very simple way of ensuring people will continue to scroll down. And in the last few years, with the proliferation of the infinity scroll, off the screen elements are more popular than ever.
You don't have to omit the key signature.
You can get a users location based on their IP address. Companies like maxmind.com specialize in building ip/location conversion databases.
Migrating PayPal Access from OAuth 2 to OpenID
I like the idea that someone gave alternate musical notations a shot.

I looked at the sample pieces and liked that they had simple and complex pieces to look at. As I went through the simpler pieces the notation was easy and fun to pick up. When I looked through the more difficult pieces I felt like I spent more time analyzing each symbol to figure out what exactly it was saying. They were "overloaded" in a sense to me.

I feel that if I'm sight-reading music (or haven't practiced it much which is the more likely case) that this would fatigue me having to parse so many pieces of information for a note. It made me realize that one of the things I appreciate about standard notation is that you have a defined set of symbols with minimal overloading and that you're marking it ("annotating?") it up to make changes to it.

It's an interesting experiment. I just don't think I could get used to it for complex pieces.
> That is simple. The city doesn't know what it's doing. They know Google does

In either case they're "picking winners". They also "know" that Comcast, Time Warner, etc "know what they're doing", and we've all seen how that turned out. At least if they're the one commissioning it, they have any kind of power to fix things when they go wrong.
Wrong! Check the Feb PCI clarification update. iFrames don't take anything out of scope because at the end of the day the SSL session shown by the browser is that of the originating site.

https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/pdfs/PCI_DSS_v2_eCommer...
Thanks! Looking forward to hearing more!
Happy Birthday, GitHub! I use it every day to collaborate with fellow hackers that don't live anywhere close to me. It's indispensable for me. Here's to 5 more years!
Ask HN: How would I go about creating my own platform API?
It might be one of those questions where "if you have to ask, don't do it" but just curious. I'm looking to create an API that creates a platform for others to create their own apps within mine. For now, I am providing the basic functionality, but would be at some point in the future enable others to create within my platform.

Just curious as to how this is approached. I'm a frontend developer and only a beginner with Rails, so just providing basic functionality myself for now. However, it doesn't hurt to learn... even if it's too much work to bother with at this moment.
PC sales plunge, Microsoft and Windows 8 blamed
What is going on with Wave! I hadn't used Wave for a while but referred a friend to the service last spring when they needed to start keeping their books rather than just piling up receipts. Fast forward to this spring when I logged in to pull financial statements for their tax preparation, the Wave interface seems to have become less usable.

The date entry when creating a report is slightly strange and difficult to quickly enter the desired date (maybe this is a Canadian vs. American thing?).

When you view an account activity statement (a cash account for example) there is no total for the account as of the chosen date, just a running tally of debits and credits. I had to rerun a new balance sheet each time I wanted to see the cash account balance at a different date.

A quick "last fiscal year" report option or a few different common date ranges like in QB would also be helpful as it was tedious to click through the date calendar and select Jan 1 and Dec 31 every time I wanted a full year report.

I apologize if I missed some options and this is a misguided rant. I was only in the software for a couple of hours but it seemed rather difficult to obtain basic data.
One possible solution for a bad backlink profile: drop the registration on the domain then re-register with new info.

Google claims that they will "wipe" a backlink profile if they see a domain drop and later re-registration by a new owner.

That wasn't always the case. I think as recently as 3-4 years ago buying dropped domains for backlinks was a big tactic.
Rap on your app.
You trade one risk for another, and you are ignoring that post money optimizely has $28M in the bank so it's balance sheet is simply $28M fatter than it was pre-money.

A buyer would simply be buying cash and would have no problem with paying $78M.

If optimizely now spends this $78M in a way that does not contribute to the balance sheet (superbowl ads, whatever) then they have limited their future options.
How do you prevent someone else from picking it up when dropped?
I don't think he was saying use the counter offer as a raise, I think he was saying use the first raise to leverage a higher offer from a perspective new employer.

On 50k, ask for raise, now on 65k.
Ask new employer to beat current salary, offer of 80k.

Without the first raise you don't get to leverage a higher salary at the new job for the 30-50k op needs. And good luck getting 30k raise at the same job, that just doesn't happen.
Separating content from presentation matters.

For documents.

Applications are not documents.
I was referencing the fact with Bitcoin micropayments are practical because there are no transaction fees.
Wow, I always suspected that our industry was rife with narcissism (I'm a cynic by nature), but these results are astonishing.
If only it was so symmetric.
> it's payback for the annoyance of having to pitch a second time around.

I really don't see how you would make 'payback' work. If you can do a better round you should do a better round, payback doesn't enter into it. Everybody involved thought this was a good deal otherwise there would be no deal. You can't get a (sane) investor to pay a premium over and beyond what they feel the company is worth.
I would like to provide my thoughts on finding part time work.

First of all, I don't believe you will have too much success trying to find part time work with companies that expect full time. Unless you have a very niche skill set and can come in as a consultant, you will find it very hard to get part time hours.

What I would like to suggest to you is to do the following:

1) Incorporate a company.

2) Go talk to small and medium sized software consulting/services companies within your area. These are companies that do software consulting or custom development for other companies. These can include web development shops, SharePoint shops (if that is your skillset) or some of the bigger consulting firms (such as Ideaca).

These companies are more willing to take on contractors. They especially like hiring part time if its the right fit as it saves them money. Their clients usually don't know/(may not care) who does the work.

You can charge your rate (lets say in the $50-$90/hour range) or even better setup retainers for each company with a fixed number of hours a month that you will commit. If they do not use all the hours for the month, they still pay you the retainer. If they go over the hours, then they pay you your rate.

I believe you will find more success with the smaller consulting firms (firms with less than 20 employees and that serve the local market) but this does depend on your skill set.

I expect it will be hard for you to get one of these arrangements with the first company but it will be easier after the first.

It is quite possible for you to work for 3-4 of these companies and make a reasonable income.

In effect, you would be a freelancer but you would not have direct clients.

A lot of these depends on your skill set and what is needed in your area. If you are a open-source stack developer and you are surrounded by .NET shops, you will obviously have a tough time. If this is the case, you are likely to be more successful if you pickup the skill set that's relevant for your area.
Please do expound on that. What do you think is it that a coder needs to do every single day, and what do they gain from it?

Yes, there is some value to practice. But it's perfectly possible to code and manage, and still be a good coder. Once you have passed a certain threshold, you will find that most of the knowledge you need is ephemeral - no need to memorize yet another piece of info, just how to find it.

So it's not knowledge per se. The idea that you forget the basics of software engineering if you don't code every day is hopefully not what you're referring to, either - after a decade or two, those should be settled.

It can't be "typing speed" or "editor efficiency" either, because both of them only matter marginally. Most of your work as a software eng. is with your brain, not with your fingers.
Klout’s Joe Fernandez
How am I supposed to represent multiple voices in this? Something like a 4-part fugue would be much more difficult to represent in this notation than in traditional notation.
Bitcoin Is Already Making A Big Comeback
To All the White Girls Who Didn't Get into the College of their Dreams
I don't believe your analogy holds. Reasonable people understand that other humans will necessarily see the exposed-in plain-sight content of a postcard in the process of delivering postal mail.

However, reasonable people know that no humans are required in the process of delivering e-mail, and further, the average person doesn't necessarily believe that other people will read an email even if they know it is technically possible.
In this case Twitter is the only company that can secure the page containing the iFrame code:

Merchant is responsible for:
 Managing website and servers (if self-hosted),
including applicable PCI DSS requirements
 If website/server hosting is outsourced,
applicable PCI DSS requirements for
management of third parties (e.g.,
Requirement 12.8)
 Having written agreements with any third
parties and ensuring that they protect
cardholder data on behalf of the merchant, in
accordance with PCI DSS
 Securing the web page(s) containing the
iFrame code.
IRS Doesn’t Deny Snooping Emails Without A Warrant
95? Wow. I joined almost a month later (Feb 23, 2008) and got #714.
"You can work at Radio Shack and earn $22 an hour"

You can't seriously expect persons to believe any of this is grounded in reality, can you? Retail wage earners do not make 22 dollars an hour, no matter how many terrible monster cables and extended warranties they shill.
Git is like linux in... 1996 maybe. The underlying technology is pretty awesome, but it leaves a lot to be desired in terms of usability. Git is enormously powerful, but it has some key weak spots that can lead to intense frustration, and it doesn't exactly guide users into using it in the best way possible.
Kim Dotcom: ‘Eat this FBI, leading the Time100 poll with a 93% approval rating'
What Follower Ratio Should My Startup Have on Twitter?
Their specific performance-related target is to have predictable, low worst-case latencies. In throughput-style loads, they might well lose to Haskell most of the time.

For some use cases (games, web browsers, etc) the first goal is much more important than the second.
Thanks. I got pretty good insights. Bias doesn't come into my mind. So you're saying multi-document "summarization" maybe the next step of consumer automatic summarization? There are many research about multi-document summarization, and will look into it.
Microsoft later issued a statement apologizing for Orth's tweet and clarifying that he was not a company spokesperson.

Wish it could be left at that. People make mistakes sometimes.

Besides, if Microsoft's upcoming console ends up requiring always-on Internet, it's not like there's going to be a particularly delightful way for them to deliver this information.
The fact that Git can be used without a server is a big benefit. Being able to do "git init" in any directory and start versioning files is pretty nice.

And Git handles branching and merging better than Subversion.
It's great advice, but mostly for Nym's speculative hobby.
Let's not pretend bitcoin is based on "deep computer science" - it's based on fundamental macroeconomics and our understanding of how currency works.
Okay, we've tried to remove the implication that Zotero is browser-based from the website. Let us know if you have a suggestion to make things clearer. (Also, sorry stakats is a dick :)
Never said it was dead, but the promises of that project still haven't been fulfilled (see the Deliverables section of the project - a GitHub repo that developers can build in XCode isn't the .app that was promised) Note that update you linked to came a day after a pretty energetic discussion on HN:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5116601
I'm a fan of Knockout.js. Has anyone used both and can comment on their merits?
I feel ya! Did you spend your 4k on developers? Or are you a programmer?
Want to fight fraud with machine learning?
I'm not sure what sort of point you're trying to make. The major risk of lead poisoning isn't death it's the many other serious negative health effects, especially on children's development. Is there a particular reason why we should ignore lead exposure in children at levels several times higher than the current EPA limits?

Moreover, if a simplistic analysis of deaths caused by "exposure" are to be used to guide policy then we should ban water first of all, along with buckets, gravity, and food.
5 newtons won't get you there in 1 month, but according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VASIMR it will in 5 months which is still pretty good, and much better than a standard rocket.
You do realize that modern fiscal policy near zero.

Ergo, a dollar today is guaranteed, on the average, to buy just under a today's dollar worth of things next year.

Ergo, a modern dollar is about the closest thing to a guaranteed exchange value that the world has ever seen.
Yes, but that's not the totality of the project. Had it been limited to that, it would probably be ok.
It was not a DDoS: MtGox got 20k new accounts per day
Yes that acts just like purchasing an insurance policy! I guess I was imagining the case where you short and then the price doubles when you need to buy, and not considering that you could buy an option and only use it if the price falls. Thank you for taking the time to explain it.
Jeff - thanks for this. Do they do like age demo/ sex, etc. or just location info?
If the US ever had a land crunch, it could easily open up vast new tracks of land for settlement via the US Govt. It's very valuable to have that ability. The Feds are already beginning to sell off their hoard of property due to fiscal problems.
Microsoft Plans 7-inch Tablet