skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Note the distinction between some funds being consistent winners, and the whole set of winners being consistent over time. The 5-10 funds who are consistent performers: 1) aren't the whole of the "2%" who manage to make above-market returns over some time frame; 2) can't absorb all the money investors want to put into the venture capital as an asset class. That keeps the other VC firms who aren't Sequoia, etc, in business, even if the generated returns are less than stellar. That does not mean, however, that the other VCs are "losers." They still get their 2 and 20, and as long as everyone is consistently mediocre and the top VC funds can't absorb all the capital the big institutional investors have sloshing around, they'll keep being able to raise capital.

Interesting (and fairly recent) analysis of VCs from the point of view of a limited partner with investments in a range of VC firms: http://www.kauffman.org/uploadedFiles/vc-enemy-is-us-report.....

The mediocre return of VCs also says something about Silicon Valley. The idea of venture-capital funded startups as some exceptional economic engine is probably a myth. There is a lot of economic activity in Silicon Valley, no doubt, but you have to distinguish between expenditure of capital and return on capital. $20 million spent on a startup that never ends up making much revenue is not a net gain to the economy even if it shows up as economic activity. It's just expenditure of capital. So the success of specific VCs aside, the way to measure the economic contribution of VC-funded startups is by looking at the return on investment of the sector as a whole. And since that return isn't great, relative to blue-chip companies, that tells us one of two things about the sector:

Either:
1) VCs aren't great at the job of allocating capital to the right places; or
2) VCs are doing the best job they can, and its just inherently difficult to separate the winners from the losers when it comes to startups.

My gut feeling is that the answer is (2), which implies that the nature of the industry is such that it's so hard to separate the winners from the losers that the gain from the exceptional success of the winners is largely offset by the cost of funding the losers, which makes the economic returns from the industry as a whole unexceptional compared to the returns from traditional blue chip companies.
I didn't read the article you linked to and I'm not trying to contradict anything you've written. There are a few words in the citation that lead me to believe the article is biased or that they ended up with a particularly bad sample; indulge, hegemonic masculinity and fantasy. Also who fantasises about self-defense? I mean violence I get but how do you fantasies about self-defense?
I believe that the CIA is much much worse than the FBI.
Ask HN: How do you deploy updates to web apps seamlessly?
I'm looking at implementing continuous deployment on my own projects, but later on in my work products. Ideally, I'd like to be able to `git push production master`, and have the live site update (but eventually have a CI system do this for me on a successful build).

My questions are on how the unavailability during source updating, database migration and app server restarting are handled. It's not the end of the world if the app shows a 500 screen for a few seconds or so, but it's preferable that it doesn't (especially if a client happens to be submitting information during the upgrade - did it make it through?)

So far I've come up with two solutions:

1. Create a mirror system - clone the source tree and update it, duplicate the database and apply migrations, and then switch virtualhosts or symlinks once it's ready to go, however this takes longer and uses more space.

2. Deactivate the virtualhost to show a maintenance message, and then reactivate it again once the site is back - but I'd rather avoid this.

So what people are actually using in production systems at the moment?

My personal projects are Django apps (typical pg-django-gunicorn-nginx stack), however my work projects use PHP (so if a web request comes in mid-update, it can end up using a half-updated app; nasty).

Thanks
I believe Petr has switched to Java now though
That is the airline's fault. Their revenue optimization means that everyone on the plane gets essentially the same experience, but pays differing amounts through mechanisms that make car dealers seem delightful. Since the airlines made it all about the price, people responded.
> Correct, this does mitigate some of the issue. Namely, it allows the code to be reviewed as it is in use. However, the server can still push code arbitrarily and completely compromise the crypto, and XSS is still an issue.

You're wrong. If a JavaScript app is structured properly, especially one delivered as a signed browser plugin, it can run completely client-side with no capability to _execute_ remote JavaScript code from a server whatsoever.

Simply executing and parsing XMLHttpRequests does not mean that the JS app is executing arbitrary code from a remote server. It may simply be parsing JSON payloads. This is completely up to whatever code is delivered as part of the browser add-on, and cannot be remotely overridden by the server.

You are correct that XSS is an issue, but as mentioned elsewhere, so are buffer overflow attacks in compiled code. Any crypto implementation will have "issues" that need to be engineered around. That's the purpose of independent review and open source code.

The original claim by the Matasano article was that JS crypto is "doomed," which I believe is patently false linkbait. While no one would agree that JS crypto is "ideal," I believe Nadim has raised very good arguments to say that, at the very least, it can be done properly.
While cutting time in the air by half may not make a fundamental difference, cutting it by five or six times could. Point-to-point sub-orbital services have the potential to do this, though there are challenges for this type of flight that bring its difficulties closer to orbital operations than the (mostly) straight up and down trajectories that will be flown by Virgin Galactic, XCOR, etc.
HN comments and blog articles are how I practice writing. Haven’t been writing any blog articles lately, so.
Thanks Daeken. Can I contact you in a couple of weeks about this for a brief talk? I saw that you are in hnofficehours.
I think that the big win in convenience would have to be found in fundamental airport redesigns. The way they move people around is just terrible.

One huge problem I see is that the security is government-based. Getting of a plane, HAVING TO GO THROUGH SECURITY and boarding the same fucking plane takes 30+ minutes. Why does it have to happen at all ? Of course, the reason is government regulation : "security", so that it costs millions of people hours of inconvenience regularly is no argument. Can we please just get rid of this entirely ?

Walking around in airports, well I just really hate it ... why are we having these distances (I've walked 3 km already to get to a flight). Why the constant breaks ? Why don't we have a baggage drop off (without people, and enough to not have lines) that checks you in, gives you a "flasher" token, then 20 cafes to choose from (ideally complimentary, but I wouldn't mind paying that much). 5 minutes before the flight that token starts flashing you walk up to an elevator, and you walk out of the elevator into the plane. And security figures out how to "scan" the elevator in .001 second without any visible change to the people inside. Bonus points if these checkin stations are simply in the middle of parking space.
"You can't eliminate that by extending XMPP, something that a guy who serves on XMPP Council should know."

Ehhh... well... if you're willing to put some work into the matter that may not be as true as you'd think. Yes, to speak the federated protocol to another server you're going to be speaking the XML protocol, but between a server and a client that come to accommodations with each other, you don't really have to speak XML.

You'd want to speak something isomorphic to the XML, but the XMPP XML is not that verbose on a node-by-node basis or anything (minus a couple things, see below), it really is the XML, not the semantic content. It would be fairly easy for a medium-to-high skill developer to come up with an isomorphism for use with mobile clients. (It is sufficiently tricky that there would be a few traps that could catch the inexperienced or unwary (watch those namespaces!), but it isn't that difficult.) The end result is a more bandwidth efficient protocol that is a drop-in replacement at the XMPP library layer in the client for XMPP. (Of course, if your client is programmed to fling around XML all over the place internally this won't help, but, well, that's the price of failing to abstract properly.)

Where you'd still have trouble is things like roster size, but yes, there are XEPs for that, and before long you're looking at a reasonably svelte protocol (not perfectly, but reasonably svelte) that is still largely XMPP and easy to write communication with the outside world.

What's really difficult is semantic IM translation between entirely different systems, not protocol translation. ejabberd, the server whose internals I am most familiar with, essentially works by internally speaking Erlang terms with itself, and translating to the XML protocol only at the edges. It wouldn't be very hard to drop in different serialization at the edges and get a different protocol; as proof of concept of the fact this is possible, one could easily simply serialize those Erlang terms with Erlang's term serialization, and indeed, when operating ejabberd in a clustered mode, that's actually happening across the wire as the cluster nodes communicate with each other.

However much effort that may be, it seems easier than starting from scratch.
The fundamental problem is that the ground experience is managed by the airports, which are usually unionized governmental entities with little concern for the customer's time, and by the TSA. Similarly, despite very compelling economics, interstate passenger rail is a failure in the US because the government corporation Amtrak has a monopoly, deals with some of the most absurd unions in America, and doesn't seriously innovate.
I'm confused. The D-21 wasn't nuclear, and we've clearly fixed the problems with drones they had during that program. What's your point?
Free, open-source auto-checkin for Southwest flights
As much as I would like to say this is a good idea, it probably isn't.

Most "grants" that the world bank gives are usually as a supplement to some loan that they are giving to a country.

Think of it as Ford/World Bank funds a loan for a new road so they can sell cars.
The world bank gives a loan for the road, Ford sells the cars. And on the side the world bank sets up a little side thing to show statistics by training existing motor mechanics how to fix Fords by giving them money for parts/tools and minimal support. The money is given out piece meal to ensure they spend it on the right things, like Ford parts.

World bank builds the road, Ford sells the cars, some small figure is given to keep the mechanics happy and help fudge figures. The road builders are from a foreign country and get a tax break as does Ford.

Some years down the track, after the professors go home, the road falls into disrepair. The government/people owe money for the loan for the road, and the Ford/Car owners are in debt to the banks for their vehicles. Poverty cycle starts again.

The only part of the road that is kept in good shape is the road from some mine to the port/market, if at all.

The figures presented in the article look at a small part of the larger picture. The countries that "fund" the world bank benefit as they use it prop up their own industries to the detriment of the developing country.

The long term figures on most of these "aid" programs are mostly awful. Most countries would be better off accepting no aid and building what they need.

I have spent too many years working with shit like this. The world bank and the IMF are much the same.

Note: Ford is an example, please replace it with any car company.

Edit/update:
The author of the article is Chris Blattman;
He is most likely going to say great things about any project that he writes about. If you write bad things you don't get invited back to write again/get paid more money.
>The only reason companies are adopting SPDY is because it is an improvement than HTTP.

I don't see the problem.

>The issue is that with core internet protocols this is not the way it should happen.

This is exactly how it does happen. Someone creates something, people like it, the creators don't enforce patents on it or try to keep it a secret, someone writes it up into an RFC. That's how internet standards are created. That's how they've been created as long as there has been an internet.

Look at a counterexample. Microsoft with OOXML. Here we have a so-called standard which says things like "do this the way X version of Microsoft Word does it" without actually specifying how to do it. It's not an open standard, it's a document claiming to be an open standard on paper so that Microsoft can claim their proprietary file format is an open standard. No one else is expected to use it for any purpose other than attempting interoperability with Microsoft Office and Microsoft has no particular interest in having anyone even succeed in doing that.

SPDY is not that. Google has published a reference implementation with source code. People other than Google use it for reasons having nothing to do with interoperability and Google services continue to be available to browsers without SPDY. "They didn't ask permission first" is just disingenuous griping -- who are they even supposed to have asked?

SPDY isn't a problem. Hangouts are. I don't see source code for a reference implementation. I don't see anyone but Google implementing the protocol. That's how you know something is wrong.
The last time I used a lawyer that was less than $400/hour it was for some routine real-estate closing.

A routine contract review is $700/hour.
Amtrak is actually a creature of the federal government that does own the northeast corridor rail lines. There's no reason Amtrak can't run bullet trains on the NE corridor except that they lack the capital needed for the track upgrades, and likely are incapable of executing on the project.
I intended my comment to be a compliment ... in fact, I'd written and discarded what I decided was a "too nasty" comment about the OP's article.
Who do you think Facebook employees made rich?
Is this for long term contracts though, eg 3 months guaranteed work so long as you're not completely useless, implied that it could go on indefinitely?
They embraced standards via XMPP. They then extended them in proprietary ways, with Hangouts rather than gtalk. They then are deprecating gtalk in favor of Hangouts, and will finally extinguish it.
In order for compression to work, the data must be 'solid'. Which means to add or remove something from the archive, you must reprocess the entire archive. This isn't a very good model for backups, especially when you have lots of them. (As an aside, .zip files aren't 'solid', so two copies of a file won't compress well. This is also the reason why most archives on linux are done through tar, to create a single stream of data).

Tarsnap uses variable blocks (in such a way that inserting into the middle of a file creates minimal differences). If a new block is detected during a backup, it only needs to send that block, as the rest are already stored on the server. It also means that new archives can refer to the old blocks stored, allowing each archive to be independent, and unused blocks removed when the last archive using it is deleted. Before sending, blocks are compressed then encrypted, so compression can't really help since you might not have all the old data locally.

You can also deal with backups using a master and incremental diffs. This doesn't work well with the tarsnap model, as archives are no longer independent.
Ditto...nearly missed an exam cos Google Maps led me to the wrong place. Even so I still trust Google Maps more than Apple Maps app. Not that I gave it much of a chance to be honest, I was put-off from the start because of all the bad press
Disagree.

Draw your poll answers on a graph, and you will notice that the top number at 150 is not all that much below the peak.
The problem with VCs is not that they're dumb. I'm a pretty severe VC-istan critic and I would never say that lack of IQ is their problem.

Their problem is that they're ill-equipped to make the judgments necessary to solve half the problem. They know business and acquisition structures and legal pitfalls, but in order to really get signal on the judgment of people-- I'm ignoring the judgment of ideas because I don't think anyone has that down-- they need to hire someone like me to vet technical choices, talent strategy, culture, etc. because an iPhone app is not going to give them that kind of data.

How do you find that kind of person if you're not that kind of person? I think it's almost impossible. How are they going to tell the people like me from the many who claim they are? Likewise, I'd be incapable of vetting them for whether they're good at their jobs for the exact same reason. I'm not superior to them in any way; we just excel at different things and it's very hard for one side to judge the other.

Perhaps the best way to start a venture fund is to have the selection made not by permanent VCs judging "the team" but by top-notch programmers who do the vetting part-time (no more than 10 hours per week). That way, they don't lose their technical touch and can tell based on technical choices whether a company has a future. (How would a VC know that a company running a typical enterprise Java stack is doomed? It's not his job.)

By the way, the reason VC-istan sucks is not that VCs are evil or stupid people, because they're not. It's that humans are bad judges of character and VCs are no exception. When you can't judge expertise (and they can't evaluate technical expertise) you miss out on the associated proof-of-work and default to social polish, which means that you're going from a slightly positive correlation to what really matters (character) to a slightly negative one. VC-istan generates some awful startups, but not because VCs are bad people.
4000 $/hour for a trial lawyer ? I hope I never get arrested for anything in the US, my lawyer would cost me more in 2 days than what I make in a year (after taxes).

I understand better why people settle all the time - who can afford to defend himself unless he is risking lifetime in jail ?
Uh, that company was Google.
What's with qz.com? They seem to have come out of nowhere to be a pretty awesome source of news, maybe better than TheVerge (who also seemed to come out of nowhere last year).

Of the most interesting ~20 stories I've seen in the past week, 5 were qz.
Our computers are even more sensitive to radioactivity than our bodies.

Maybe yes with a drone based on TTL or some other "old" standard. Probably no with CMOS... Well, with a nuclear plant on board, I guess one can generate enough energy for a TTL computer.
I do agree that software development is many parts engineering, but I believe that farming is engineering to the same extent (I do both, so I have an intimate knowledge of how they compare). Imagine a farmer calling himself an agricultural engineer.

It is part of the nomenclature now, so it is what it is, but I don't see what was wrong with the previous "programmer" or "software developer" titles. The engineering part was already implied.
Heh. It's a bit ironical, but I don't think it's really hypocritical or anything. To go back to my computer example, I can argue for your right to smash it with a hammer and still not be able to understand why you would choose to. Or take a look at the comments on gadget destruction videos some time. Or I wonder if anyone has ever tried to stop a religious institution from burning books they paid for with their own money?

To be honest, it's exactly the point I think the article missed so closely. It's different when you're an enthusiast. You see a mass-produced object worth what it will cost to haul away; I see a unique work of art, low born perhaps but with a history and a soul, with countless beautiful features and imperfections. (Mind, this isn't guns for me personally.) Yes it's yours, but it shouldn't be destroyed, that's disgraceful!

All that being said, it is unfortunate that so many of the most vocal gun advocates seem to have so little respect for people who don't like guns.
You’re right in the general case. My language does not have mutation, so refcounting is[1] just an optimisation to avoid copying and allow in-place mutation when the refcount is 1; it only applies to boxed values. I should have said “copy on write”.

And I’m well aware of modern GC implementations, but one of my goals is deterministic memory behaviour, a feature lacking in other functional languages. I swear I know what I’m doing. :)

[1]: Read: will be; the current implementation is interpreted but I’m working with a friend on an x86_64 VM target.
I think the argument is that assault rifle has become a politically charged label that is meaningless. A rifle with a detachable magazine is just a rifle.

Generally I agree that using this sort of thing to get a 'gotcha' moment out of it is a waste of time. The problem is that context doesn't help me understand what a person means when they say assualt rifle. I've had someone describe an assault rifle as anything that's specifically made to kill people.
Sorry, I had seen another article under the same title that was talking about a study in India. My bad.
I will add than Twitter had a specific atmosphere compared
to other so called startups. The employees seem to be ...
beautiful looking ...

brb using imagination since no pics
I really have no idea but I've had them pick-up my belt buckle and keys before.
re (c): Why don't you like hourly charges?
The common opinion is that your mental capacity for learning is at peak when you're young and gets worse with age. You might find an engineering degree more frustrating with age.

Also, you might feel out of place in a regular college.

Not that I recommend schooling for the sake of schooling. I'm now doing it myself at the age of 29 (nearly done), and I keep wondering whether I'm doing something wildly irrational.
I suppose we half-agree then. I always figured that retirement was the perfect time to obtain a degree. Wise enough to respect the teachings and old enough to (hopefully) have the time and money to spend on such luxuries.
Re: the article on Chain World...

> He doesn’t...believe in vaccination.

I tried Googling to find evidence of this, but couldn't find any. He's a very bright guy, I'd be interested to hear his opinion on this. Vaccination seems like a no-brainer to me...
Know that feel. I am from Canada (which is probably closer to US culturally than Europe) and having been here for 5 years, I am really really home sick...
I don't think objective-C satisfies any of those constraints. It kinda gets close, but I don't think it does.

The compiler checks types... but there's no generics. Given that the author is coming from C++, they probably want a type system that can represent 'vector of ints' vs 'vector of strings'.

Nil doesn't cause null pointer exceptions... but it causes silent bugs, where you thought something was happening but it wasn't. The real problem (all types have an extra misbehaved value) is still present.

Automatic reference counting gives you memory safety... but it can't handle cycles automatically, and obviously it doesn't apply to the C subset.
You can settle criminal charges in most countries. In Canada specifically, it's Section 11 of the Criminal Code that allows this. I know there's a similar section in US Code, but I can't remember. Any lawyer wish to do my homework for me? :)