skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
So very, very true. With coffee I know what I'm getting and I know it will be good. An application usually ends up being a total waste of time. How many applications that you bought you really use all that often?

And there is another thing, talking contrarian: many modern investors, including Jim Rogers and Marc Faber, claim that the future is in agriculture. This is where the big money is going to be made. There are all classical signs of the boom market in the agriculture market: limited supply (weather sucks, less and less water, expensive energy, lack of land, lack of farmers) - and huge demand (6 billion people and growing rapidly). I think that IT hits the law of diminishing returns - free apps available everywhere, or ones that cost next to nothing. But a cup of coffee is 3 bucks. IT head it peak in late 1990s. It's still good, but it's not as good as being in agriculture. So just thinking aloud here - it might get much worse for IT and much better for the agriculture. I mean think about it - 3 bucks a cup of coffee? And what about the cost of other foods? It all goes one way only all the time - up, up, up. Farmers are going to make it big time. While we waste time for startups that don't even get from the ground in 90% cases.

So, what about IT startups in agriculture? Anyone works in these? Are there any?
Google Inspired Datepicker
But.. you know, Europe is not a country, he could live in hawaii for that matter. Netflix is unfortunately not available in the majority of european countries.
A little history shows anybody can make any mistake.

You should read about the pseudorandom number generators used ubiquitously in the 1970s and 1980s, for example. Or the Patriot missile bug. The second one cost lives and really, it was kind of obvious.

So: no, impoliteness is useless, unhelpful and a waate of time. Humor is difficult (just pouring a list of swear words and admiration marks is not funny).

We all have bad days and Mike is not an exception.

Hence: thanks for the bug report, keep your (meaning the OP's) shit to yourself.
Interviewees are never representative of the people working in the field: you're selecting for the people who don't have a job (that they're satisfied with).

People with CS degrees who can't code are more likely to be out of work, or to be in low-paying jobs, and therefore more likely to be applying for jobs.
Let me take a different tack on this response.

If what you say is true, then why is this not an explicit part of our criminal justice system? Why are there no laws and regulations which spell out the brutalities that prisoners should be exposed to? Why is the process not formalized, institutionalized, documented, and routine?

Why has there been no public campaign to repeal or modify the 8th amendment to the US constitution (banning cruel and unusual punishments)? Or to set new legal precedent in the UK to invalidate the equivalent protections in the English/British constitutions? If it is such a foundationally important part of a well-functioning society then why is it not being talked about and debated above board?
> You will find this behaviour in all Apple provided applications as well.

not on my machine. As I said, I used ~/Library/KeyBindings/DefaultKeyBinding.dict to change it. If the OS provides a way to change defaults, I expect applications to respect that too - no matter the historical reasons.

> >in the new Gmail compose window, not even Command-Left/Right works

> cntrl-a and cntrl-e work.

Yes, but Command-Left/Right is something that worked on the Mac even since before OSX. I, again, see no reason why it wouldn't work here.
Basically just running 'make' will produce all the needed files in output/. Then you can use 'python -m SimpleHTTPServer' from the output server, and open http://localhost:8000/ in your favorite browser.

For make to run correctly you'll need the haml, sass, and juicer gems installed and in your path.
You know what, you're right. I shouldn't have used "be a human" there. Haven't thought of it that way.

Even so, I still stand by the message even if the wording was wrong - one should be a human first in the sense that one should be empathetic and strive to be good. And yes, I still stand by the quote from Chazal which, even as an atheist, I appreciate as a part of my cultural heritage. All it's saying is that being a good person is more important than anything (even studying the Torah) and that one should not humiliate others. I think those are important and valid messages.
i just ordered it, will review it on amazon as soon as it arrives.
Yeah. It just doesn't work in Gmail's new compose window in Firefox. No idea why.
The clue is "Like slavery in the 18th century, prisons are a necessary evil..." It is a very good piece of satire.
"I wouldn't say that with such disdain if not for the fact that you clearly think the world of your coffee, yet can't bother to think for the extra two seconds it takes to realize that there is definitively something in your life you buy regularly, that is of no use to you, that you get more because it's simply there."

Then it is very stupid to buy it, so the "less than your latte" argument becomes "make a small stupid decision because you made a large one". Not very appealing.
> If the prisons were focused on fixing the root problem in the criminals, as if they were some sort of refuge for edification, conditioning and correction then a large body of the homeless would commit a strategic crime in order to get there so they can at least get three meals and an opportunity to move up in the world from rock-bottom.

1. Prisons as correctional center far outweighs some homeless guy pick-pocketing so that he doesn't have to die tired, hungry, cold, alone on pavement.

2. A homeless guy not dying on the pavement is a benefit in itself.

> prisons are a necessary evil to punish people who do not deserve rehabilitation, correction or edification.

People go to prison for a variety of reasons. Not paying your parking ticket or possessing 5gm of Marijuana do not qualify as "do not deserve rehabilitation".

> Like slavery in the 18th century, prisons are a necessary evil

Slavery was a necessary evil?

> It's my belief that jails are full of criminals because we don't understand the mental illnesses that brought them there.

1. You can believe whatever you want.

2. Stretch the definition of law and everybody is a criminal.

3. The spectrum of things you can go to jail for is so wide the belief that all criminal brains are wired the same way has a low probability.

4. The belief that "criminals" deserve what they get is how all sorts of draconian laws come into being. When the govt. says it tortured a few alleged terrorists, and you stand on the sidelines and cheer, you don't realize you are being instrumental in your own destruction. Tomorrow it can be you getting water-boarded, and the rest of us "good citizens" will stand on the sidelines and cheer.
"Windows doesn't bring anything exciting to the table."

Sounds like somebody who has never used a Windows Phone.

This guy has used a Windows Phone before, and he has some things to say about it -- you might have heard of him, some Wozniak guy? ( http://www.theverge.com/2012/4/28/2983312/steve-wozniak-wind... )

Yes, Apple has that market -- for people who have $549 to spend, or spend money on some bloated post-paid contract.

iPhone 4s - non-contract price, $549 (previous generation)

Nokia Lumia 521 - non-contract price, $149.99 (current generation phone)
Now Serving: Freshly Made Guest Blog Post
Are you sure? I'd argue buying a physical item online and having it delivered is different in the consumer's mind than buying virtual downloads like music, television series, etc.

One can be held, consumed, worn, looked at, etc.

The other is a potentially unbounded virtual expense. This isn't necessarily a logical way to look at it, it's a safe way to look at it because deep down we all know we don't feel the usual lightening of our wallets.

So, I think we naturally set a higher bar for those "virtual" purchases we buy. There's also other factors, like us having foreknowledge of coffee.

Coffee is coffee. Even when it's shit, it's still an okay experience and you still got your performance boost. That app though...who knows. They're all different. It's shiny and I want to buy it, but will I really ever open it?
Looks like the problem was somewhere between noris.net and hetzner - so it was unaccessable from some bits of the net.
Mars pebbles prove water history
There's no place for political correctness when it comes to developing critical software systems.

Databases are such a system. They're expected to attain and maintain an extremely high level of quality and reliability. Those who build them should expect to do everything in their power to avoid flaws, and these people should be more than willing to accept harsh reprisals when issues are found.

When the security and safety of data is at risk, some developer's hurt feelings should be the last thing anyone is concerned about. There are far more pressing problems at hand in such a situation.
Woah... what's with the venom? The original article made a fair point: a coffee is more than the sum of its beans. Maybe it seems foreign to you because you don't drink coffee, but it's certainly true for me - buying a coffee is something I look forward to. Much more than I look forward to trying dozens of online services that provide some minor convenience to my life.

I bet the author enjoys writing too: so creating that blog post might cost more than a latte - but the experience of thinking, writing, editing and posting something online provides value to the author. Seems like a reasonable thing to do then!
This would be fine if many prisons were not privately owned entities and if most inmates were not overly sentenced for minor drug charges.

We also have a growing incarceration rate (U.S), which shows that prison does a pretty poor job of making people "scared absolutely shitless of prison so much that they play exactly by the rules" and don't forget, sometimes the rules are pretty ridiculous.

Also "...individuals that would love to sit around with a bunch of other lazy-asses and be fed 3 meals a day. For free." is already the reality of the situation in many cases.

It's not a choice between the scariest most brutal situation you can imagine or no prison at all. There are other options to make a better system. And in general, a society shouldn't have to be scared into "playing by the rules".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_rat...
Also read prison privatization.
Precisely so, the criminal justice system is incredibly vengeful. The widespread toleration of sexual assault against prisoners is perhaps the easiest proof of that.
No, the author of this bug report should not feel ashamed, you should. This kind of aggressive knee-jerk reaction is unprofessional, rude and childish.

People make mistakes, even good engineers do. They should not be derided like this even if they lose their temper. Writing software is a team effort, and the users of open source software should be a welcomed part of that team and their feedback taken in an effective and civilized manner.

The prudery of your comment does not help fixing this bug faster or better, but it does make it look like your priorities are severely misplaced.
Keep in mind that America is famously horrible at doing public projects of this sort cost-effectively (e.g. the NYC 2nd ave subway is roughly four times more expensive per mile than similar projects in other countries, including very expensive countries like Japan). There are various reasons for this, but a lot of it seems to be dysfunctional bidding rules etc. that result in few bids and poor methods for choosing the winner.

Other countries manage to do similar projects for vastly lower costs, and it seems pretty likely that an intelligently run private project in the U.S. could also manage to do a good job of keeping costs down. [It's not just labor costs, etc either—total cost per mile is remarkably similar all over the world, both in cheap countries and expensive ones, except in the U.S.]
From Brisbane, Queensland here and it's a similar story here. The company I work for is causing ripples in the Australian pond but as a whole the Australian tech scene is way behind that of the states and other parts of the world due to our tight regulations, expensive Internet connections and slow Internet connection speeds.

For every successful Australian company I can think of, there are thousands not so lucky. Atlassian and Envato are the only two companies I can think of off of the top of my head who have had major success spawning web based businesses in a country as small and somewhat lacking as Australia as Australia is. Melbourne and Sydney are definitely two locations you're most likely to start a successful business in. Good to see Pin tackling payments because in Australia you have two options: Paypal or a propriety expensive bank solution with horrible API.
It'd be nice if it could handle nested exceptions. I pasted in an ActorInitializationException caused by a PersistenceException and it only parsed the first half of the stack trace, all of which was Scala/Akka library code. The nested exception was ignored and that's where the calls to my code are.
The dollars in the title just look tacky.

As a Scala developer I've never felt the need for this product, but I'm prepared to believe others do.
I don't even drink coffee

I'm fairly certain this is why you're having trouble relating to the enthusiasm of the author. I'm not even joking - the reward response to coffee is huge.
You're not seeing the end of the logic chain. You're also failing to see that there are reasons the people that make statements like this, make the statement.

* In your head, 2 pounds sounds insignificant to pay for anything(because it is). That's why you pay for the coffee. You think it's worth that.

* You immediately associate their product with something useful, that enables you to work every day. You can barely make it without your coffee, and their product will similarly make your life much easier with it than without.

* It wouldn't change people's perception nearly as much as you think. People don't get Starbucks thinking, "It's 2 pounds, what the fuck do I care", they get Starbucks thinking "It's my coffee, I want my coffee"

It isn't about how you feel about your morning coffee. For one, you're not the center of the universe, obviously this comment is meant to be seen by thousands who don't have such a religious experience with their coffee. Second, if Starbucks had a way to magically teleport coffee through the computer screen, it STILL wouldn't change how people look at 2 pounds in relation to getting something they think is worth 2 pounds. These aren't people glorifying coffee, it's people making a value comparison to try and gloss over the risk that amounts to little(2 pounds) more than time.
Girlfriend and child - wakes me right up.
If you don't then you are a dumbass.

:)
Your definition of outrage must be different to mine. I get outraged by crimes, violence against women and injustice.

I'm not sure what there is to get outraged about a book where the author attempts to share an important part of his life with his children.
I've imagined similar stuff for children lots of times, seeing it come true is cool! Hope this is good. Nice work!
If you have any more details about this, or even if you don't, please post to es-discuss about it. Currently there is broad consensus on TC39 to add weak references in JS in the future.
Not to sound like a douche, but without the full context of the SaaS business and idea (or at least information on the target market and market size, traction thus far, potential, resources available to the other company, etc), I don't see how anyone here is going to be able to help you.

If this other company are a couple of guys that make some calls from their bedroom that are the 'sales/marketing' team, etc and the product is yet another CRM solution then you'll want a much larger percentage than if you're dealing with a company that has a number of staff, millions of dollars, etc to throw at this project, in which case you'd likely be proposing to take on a much smaller stake.

More info needed. :-)
As a proud taxpayer, I enthusiastically support government subsidies which move the ball forward.
Think of it this way - a professional might have done what you're suggesting. Now, any script kiddie can exploit it.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-media/product-gallery/1489...
I use it on an old PowerBook G4. It's the only way to have a reasonably up-to-date/secure browser (the other choice being TenFourFox) on PPC/Tiger Macs.
Nice, would be great as an IDEA or Eclipse plugin
Eco-friendly timestamping using Bitcoin
Level 4 hint:

Streets:

1. rue du Temple

2. boulevard Montmartre

3. boulevard du Temple

4. impasse du chat

5. rue des blancs-manteaux

6. avenue des champs-elysees
The venom is because this is literally nothing but a childish contrarian argument being made because someone can't follow their own logic to conclusion. He can't see the clear point they're making of saying that you think the 2 pounds isn't shit to pay for the experience of coffee, so why not risk a similarly insignificant amount of money on a product that might have a similarly religious experience on you.

If you don't think you'd HAVE that experience, then once again: Your problem isn't with the line about coffee, IT IS WITH THE PRODUCT.

He's taking a whole lot of time and tossing it out the window because he's wanting to be passive aggressive toward a product he doesn't think is worth a damn, which is even more inane than vaguebooking.
Couple of points:

- Benchmarking against Weka, R, and Python is not exactly pitting your product against stiff competition. Skytree (skytree.net) is another company in the same space with the same focus. Benchmarking against them would be interesting.

- I thought it was amusing that in a company of < 20 people the five founders thought it necessary to adopt such grandiose titles: CEO (fine), CTO, Director of Engineering, Chief Scientist, Director of Data Science (exactly how are the hairs split between these four?)
Since forever. Who are you to stereotype all hackers as uncaring, blunt, socially awkward and mean?
Before getting religiously high and mighty it might be instructive to run a security scan on the whole of the Internet and see how many SQL injection vulnerabilities exist on the websites of major US companies and small time startups.

The fact that MongoDB has in itself a vulnerability to unchecked input is not great. But consider that if you are dealing with client side browser or server side software, the entire stack is rife with security vulnerabilities because the components themselves right down to TCP/IP are inherently insecure.

Be careful out there, and write nicer bug reports. Use the process. If you were on the other end of that bug report, you would feel differently.
And this differs from commercial/closed source software how? Google Reader come to mind, as one example?
I didn't read it that way at all. I read it as another slant on the pricing-on-value-not-cost debate.

The point of the article as I read it is not that £2 is cheap - hell I come from a generation where the idea of charging £2 for a cup of bloody coffee seems insanely expensive - but that you're not spending the £2 because it's cheap. You're spending it because it brings you significant value.

Selling yourself on cost, especially comparative cost to a different product/service, is not - in my experience anyway - a terribly effective technique outside of commodities. For just the reason outlined in this article. Sell on value instead.
When i saw this title, i just knew that it was related to the Mary Meeker presentation, because i also kind of looked at that point a bit suspiciously but i was not motivated enough to investigate it further. I never look at techcrunch for any source of research info, the economist, economist intelligent unit still offers top notch research.
I noticed that one this morning when I went to use the app lol. I took note in the issues on github.
> It is also quite stunning how many times people who have signed employment contracts do not show up on their first day of work

What? Are employment contracts that useless?
That's exactly the point of the game :) Thanks for explaining it.
It sounded good to me initially, but then I thought... those users that are interested in testing their application (hopefully most) will already have built tests for their API.

I guess it's a question of whether you can provide a service that is good value for money (i.e. it saves time), when I can already whip some tests together relatively quickly during development of my API.
Full Disk Encryption on Exherbo and boot on usb
My problem isn't with their enthusiasm and coffee. My mind is capable enough to understand that the majority of Americans absolutely adore their coffee. Y'know what I absolutely adore? Pudding. Pudding is god damned amazing. I love the taste, the temperature, the texture, the weight of it in your mouth, everything. I fucking love pudding.

That still doesn't give me a good reason to passively aggressively attack a statement instead of a specific product simply because I can't be bothered to see the point the person is making, that 2 pounds isn't very much at all to pay for the wonderful experience of having pudding, so why not see if their product similarly will still have an insignificant price to you while giving you a great experience.
Even physical forms of harm are downplayed if they have lower visibility than traditional forms of brutality and torture.

This is a widespread trend especially in law enforcement and justice and it extends beyond prisons.

Consider waterboarding. It's a hugely traumatic experience, and undoubtedly a form of torture, but because it doesn't leave bruises or break bones it is tolerated and accepted.

Consider tasers and pepper spray (OC). Again, they cause pain or muscle spasms, but they don't break bones or cause bleeding or bruising so their use is tolerated at thresholds far below what would be allowed to bring about the use of physical force, even for use in restraining someone. Being pepper sprayed in the face and eyes is every bit as traumatic and physically violent as being slapped or punched, yet pepper spray is frequently used by the police in situations where physical force would be considered police brutality. The same goes for tasers.
I don't mean to do the automatic-HN-criticism bit, but...

I reckon I can think of better examples for each of the terms than he/she's come up with there. The two we have are:

"A is for Array: a place to store your toys." - then there's a picture of a box with lots of DIFFERENT toys in. Shouldn't they all be toys of the same type? It should be obvious that an array means "more than one of the same thing".

"W is for While: While there is food on your plate, you will sit there" - doesn't really describe what WHILE does? The operation should be related to the condition. For example, maybe it should be, "While there is food on your plate, you will keep eating."

Not to be too picky over a book for 3 year olds, of course. :)
I personally love it.
It is in the UK, the only place where that currency is used.
I wonder how this will affect the Maps data that Google/Apple/Microsoft has.
Thanks for the idea! We'll look into adding support for 'caused by'.
In the meantime you can simply remove the lines pertaining to the enclosing exception.
This comment is more than 100 words longer than the actual piece itself and seems particularly vitriolic in nature for a personal blog post about an observation he had.

It's a valid argument to make that, to him, comparing product cost to an experience he truly enjoys isn't the most effective way to convert him into a customer. At the very least it's something to consider for anyone who works with marketing.