skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You need to read more books. Start with something about coal mine strikes, or the general history of the labor rights movement.

Or look at the LGBT history. For example, the modern gay rights movement in USA, started with the Stonewall riots in 1969. At the time cross-dressing or drag was illegal, you have to wear enough items of "gender appropriate" clothing, if you're a man wearing make up, you were arrested! Dancing with members of the same sex was illegal and an arrestable offence. So much for their constitutional rights.
Stay in the Building
That all seems reasonable, though "living Constitution" sounds a bit silly to my ear—if that's used by advocates they should find a better name. On the other hand, the originalist thing seems flat-out dumb if it tries to deny that interpretations of past texts are always filtered through the present. One might as well exhume the authors and look for clues in their remains.

But never mind that—I'm more curious about this:

Otherwise, it becomes a tool for peddling minority social viewpoints, which undermines its legitimacy in other regards. We're already feeling the effects of that today.

What minority social viewpoints and what effects?
Are you considering another venture? Did you learn anything form the experience?
There is only one mode, and it is Secure
You can get around readability with good comments. Perl can be a b*tch to deduce - but it is simple and powerful.

I would also think hiring professional, experienced, Perl coders for a decent salary is easier than finding Rails, node,etc. (I've used Perl and Ruby for quite some time in the past. My last startup is still looking for more Rails engineers. I chose Rails because it was a good fit, but finding talent can be hard).
> CMD+ALT+ESC on mac, btw.

That goes to Force Quit, whereas CTRL+ALT+DEL on old Windows used to open the real task manager the Mac equivalent of which would be Activity Monitor (sadly, there doesn't seem to be a default shortcut to it).
http://cdnjs.com/
It's been famous for probably longer than you've been paying attention, then. Windows stability has made huge strides over the past 20ish years.
Yes, but the BIG question is: with the move to 'digital', are they going make available all those precious back issues in electronic format?

Years back, I eagerly ordered the Byte CDROM archive from DrDobbs. My expectations were dashed: no glossy pdfs, nor even illustrations or ads; the articles were just text files. With those historical mags, along with the technical content, I find context very important...
compute was awesome ..and where i got my start programming
Grigg's other writings are also worth a read: http://iang.org/ssl/hn_hypotheses_in_secure_protocol_design....

But for me, this is the one that stands above the others. It's such a common problem that people only seem to add in security where they think it matters, whereas a system is only as secure as its weakest point.
The Mystery of the Voynich Manuscript
Um, no. The whole idea of democracy is that there is no "top level" of authority.

In the US system, there are representatives of the people, passing laws. There is a single executive, also a representative of the people, implementing said laws. And there are the courts, interpreting said laws when there are disagreements over them.

But the whole point of representative democracy is that the people ultimately get to decide who is doing this, so that a runaway government cannot be a single "top level" of authority that creates, enforces, and interprets its own laws. The whole point is that the people are the highest authority, and the government serves at their will.

But if the government hides substantial information from the people, a democracy cannot effectively function. The people need to know what the government is doing. There are good reasons for limited amounts of secrecy, for particularly sensitive information or for privacy purposes. But keeping vast amounts of information on things that affect everyone, outside of a wartime environment, is anti-democratic.

This type of secrecy, this type of executive action which is seen as being unquestionable by even elected representatives, let alone the people, is turning the government from a representative democracy to an oligarchy.
Show HN: Instantly improve the performance of (most) sites with one line of JS
Jef Raskin, The Humane Interface, page 51:

"BUTTONS THAT CHANGE IN THE NIGHT

Some aircraft have pushbuttons that contain dot-matrix display used to change the legend that appears on the button. This change is done under the aircraft's computer's control so that the buttons can be relabeled on the fly. The advertising copy for one brand of these buttons made some human factors claims. or one thing, fewer buttons would be needed in the limited cockpit area. For another, avionics and other system changes could be effected without having to rewire the cockpit.

From the perspective of cognitive science, good labels enhance visibility. Assuming that the person choosing the labels bothers to test the wording, to make sure that the chosen labels are effective and unconfusing, it is, on the face of it, a good idea.

But more careful thinking reveals a number of potential pitfalls to the product: All legended buttons get obscured– by the very finger you are using–just as you are about to press them, obviating a last-second check that you are pressing the right button. But this is a minor problem, for normally you have looked at the legend before you press the button– if you have looked at all. (I am certainly not looking at the legends on the keycaps of my keyboard as I type this)

Then there is the deeper problem of the disappearing button. You want to enable, say, the manual controls on the cabin air conditioner. There is, you recall, a button labeled MANUAL AIR, but it is nowhere to be found. The reason is that it now says COMM BACKUP. You have to figure out how to get that button to light up the way it did before. Perhaps a switch or a button somewhere else changes the legends on the buttons. Or perhaps the legends are context sensitive and won't allow you to change the air conditioning right now. Whatever the cause, when a button has variable legends, the button you want will perhaps have vanished because the system is in a different mode.

But the gravest problem has to do with habituation. Imagine the experienced pilot reaching up and pressing a button. The radio's not working; something's wrong. A communications problem: Time to enable COMM BACKUP. She jabs out expertly at the COMM BACKUP button. Click! Too bad. The copilot was adjusting the cabin temperature in response to a passenger complaint, and the buttons are now in climate control mode. The pilot has just achieved complete manual control over the air conditioning system.

Variable-legend buttons could be useful, for instance, if several people use the same console, each using it in such a way that the buttons do not change meaning for any one user. But this is a situation seldom encountered. Soft keys, whereby a display has changable legends that affect on-screen buttons or buttons adjacent to the display, have the same liability as do variable-legend buttons. A similar problem exists with the use of function buttons, labeled F1 through F11 on many computers. If their functions are unchanging, the labeling is mnemonic. If their functions change, you cannot use them automatically. In either case, they are a poor design."
It was an interview on a Perl blog, so the target audience is people already enthusiastic about Perl.

Here's why I think learning Perl is worth it: a lot of programmers write stuff in it. It won't make you know other languages any less.
In general, I think dropping out of high school is a bad idea. I did so, however, now I am about to graduate with a 3.5 GPA in software engineering at Auburn University. I do feel that some high schools aren't worth going to. If that is the case you would have ended up learning more at a community college and then later a University. I'm sure I did at least.
I don't have the feeling he did a serious analysis of any of languages, he sounds that he wants to work with what he knows.

I was very excited to see a startup using PERL but it's a pity the article fall into a languages war.
I'd think of Byte, Creative Computing, or even early Wired as more of a Vanity Fair for nerds than Computer Shopper.
So everyone that majored in comp sci has daughters?
Losing your phone is not the same as losing your phone number.
I've been thinking a lot lately about a completely pimped out keyboard interface...

It starts with hardware (Type Matrix, Kinesis) and hardware accessories (petals, extenders). It continues with a keyboard layout you're happy with (Workman seems to be the most hardcore), either built into the keyboard hardware or selected via the OS. The keyboard layout in the OS can be modified as well. Then come deeper software hacks like PCKeyboardHack and KeyRemap. Then, softer stuff like keyboard shortcuts go in your favorite launcher/macro/shortcut app.
Reminds me of that internet-controlled christmas tree.
Snowden documents could be 'worst nightmare' for U.S.
I recommend aiming a little lower. Companies with 500 employees and HR departments already have a lot of structure and process around making purchases. There are lots of much smaller companies with lots of revenue and very large pain points that you could easily solve for them. It is much easier to talk directly to the decision makers of these companies and if you treat them well they will be your biggest fans.
You don't happen to know anyone who works there do you?
> (Or trust Google's....)

What does that mean? Where do you need to trust Google's?
Freedom isn't Free. I think we need to get guidance to what is the next step to protect our 4th amendment rights
That's quite probably why my wife gets her contract renewed in half-year increments (and she feels like everybody wants to know if she's already pregnant)...
The first caveat I saw is all the uses of $left, $top etc. Makes me wonder what other variables the library puts into the global namespace.
Tremor is an integer-only Vorbis decoder, correct? Same they never ported the encoder as well!
Your Tinder Crush Might Be a Spambot
Regexp Crossword
I agree, my eye went RIGHT to the "y" at the end - but it's not supposed to be a "y".

I keep reading MailChimy
As an aside: Blekko is a PERL company (not sure if they qualify as a startup anymore).
source of the above, in case anyone is confused: http://wikileaks.org/Statement-by-Edward-Snowden-to.html
Nice perspective from outside the USA USA USA bubble.
This is the part he lost me at as well. You can tell very little research went into the article when you quantify the broad-scope merits of any language. You can't say Python is 50 good, while Ruby is 100 good.
Sure - it's not something I would call polished but it gets the job done for now - http://hastebin.com/hofejobumu.mel

It only looks good for me when I'm plugged into a big thunderbolt display. The rightmost window intentionally goes off the screen boundary so that it can maintain its size and not cause any kinds of resizing artifacts when switching it in and out of the wider center pane.

The way I'm arranging center panes and switching focus to them is definitely a hack, and doesn't work when there are other windows open on the screen.
Take a look here: http://www.bombjack.org/commodore/
jQuery would never have come into popularity if not for oldIE and its often dramatic variances from competitors: If you are willing to forsake that old browser, there is little added but a layer of inefficiency between you and web standards. We have become so accustomed to jQuery that it becomes the default, many unaware of the dramatic improvements in all major browsers since.

As to the cost, assuming that everyone is pulling it from the same CDN (and there aren't the often considerable times simply to check an etag, which is the case with the overwhelming majority of jQuery hosts), an iPhone 4S takes about 80-100ms to simply parse the jQuery file (and given the plateauing of the integer core on on the An chips since, it is a reasonable assumption that every Apple variant since is similar). On each and every page render. A tenth of a second is a long time (and a lot of battery) for what is often of minimal value.
I can't seem to find DuckDuckGo's intro to Perl.
I don't really understand the argument the author makes about SMS being easy to spoof. Most of the 2FA systems I've seen using SMS use it to communicate a secret that the user needs to type back in on whatever screen they were at. If an attacker spoofs the SMS message, the user is just going to get some secret that doesn't work when they type it in.
It was fantastic up until the end of the 90's, but DDJ steadily got more and more bland after that.

There are still specific issues and articles I remember very well, like their article on ternary trees, and various issues on programming languages.
HAHA Python is fucking readable.
https://github.com/hiddenillusion/AnalyzePE/blob/master/Adob...
http://blog.delroth.net/2013/03/escaping-a-python-sandbox-nd...
Reasons and resources to start teaching yourself coding
It's harder and harder to find web devs especially if you're in a bootstrapped start-up. So why not do it yourself?
The original title is more accurate. This edited one doesn't do the piece justice. He really is talking about the end of an age.

I was expecting some kind of snark, but not this. I'm glad I suffered through the page crashing my iOS browser once.
You mean write-only?
What a absurd python propaganda it is.

Read http://www.wikivs.com/wiki/Perl_vs_Python
Any language can be made unreadable. I can write terrible Ruby/Perl/PHP/JavaScript, too. Doesn't make them bad languages.
That's great to hear! My only feedback, your new site has way toooo much text. I think you need to cut out atleast 80% of it. I am pretty sure that will improve your signup/conversion rates.

Good luck!
You're in luck: http://archive.org/details/compute-magazine

I just had a burst of pleasurable nostalgia, followed by the sting of feeling old. ;)
> Security is about systems

That should be the top comment. Having done force protection for an aircraft carrier before, during, and after 9/11, it's all about systems. We involved nation-states in this. All our systems and all their systems. It took months if not years of planning, advance trips, meetings in SCIFs and prestaging assets to bring one of those into a foreign port. Lasers, standoff air defense, dolphins, guys in in cafes "reading the paper". Training 2000 sailors on .50 cal, shotgun, 9 mm. Boat teams. Here's us getting underway from Virginia a week after 9/11:

http://m.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2001-12

People with no dog in the fight, famously the older warrant and limited duty officers, guys who came up through the ranks for 30 years, would continuously poo-poo my plans. "What if this...." "What if that..."

Toward the end of my tour, the fleet force protection officer, a senior SEAL commander, drug my counterpart from another ship in, an old warrant officer who had been doing physical security since before I was born. The SEAL drilled our team on scenarios in front of this other guy for an hour. Then he turned to the warrant and said "These guys might take the first hit, but I know what they're going to do. I can count on them. I can plan around what they'll do. I have no idea what your ship is going to do. Fix it."

Screw the what-iffers, but make sure you can annihilate their what if scenario twice before it ever comes to that. Take ownership of you defense. Take you job personally. Use the what-iffers for the cheap war gaming they offer, and then don't worry about them.

Get everyone in your organization on board with your plan. Make sure you know who has the authority to pull which triggers, and make sure they're available on the necessary timeline, or devolve that authority to people who are. But don't let the intern have so much authority he can inadvertently start a war.

Know what your internal and external reporting requirements are, and why. For example, I'm willing to bet the security of gmail is considered a national security priority at this point. Even if no one in DC can do a damn thing about it. It's been wargamed, and the Pentagon battle watch commander can get a googler with need-to-know on the phone in under a minute. If that googler doesn't know that, he probably ought to have figured out why.
For me it was Byte, DDJ, and Computer Language.
This is for https://circleci.com. It was about 6 months in.

We started making a very general CI service, and it took 3 months to realize that we should refocus on web-apps only. At that time, we started to get a bit of traction: maybe 10ish customers were using it, and after a month we asked them to pay.

Most said they would, but for many, the service was too slow and it caused their tests to fail. So we spent another 6 weeks rewriting the backend to make Circle incredibly fast (we had been using t1.micros, we changed to huge machines with LXC, and many custom tweaks), and then our first paying customer, Zencoder, paid.

So we only got it slightly wrong once in this startup, but we had both fucked up a startup before, and learned a lot from it (mostly talk to your customers, and make sure what you're building is something they really need and want).

For us, it wasn't marketing/promo tactics at all, it was just to focus on a great product. Our biggest growth has come from word-of-mouth, and our biggest customers (eg Kickstarter, Shopify, a few more I can't name) came in organically. We got a reputation as being best of breed, and spent a lot of time focusing on how to improve lives for customers.

Rather than thinking in terms of tactics/promos, I would focus on making sure that people want your product, and they want it so much they tell their friends (in our case, colleagues at meetups and over twitter). That's long-term sustainable growth. (You certainly do need short-term growth tactics too, but its harder without the great product behind it).
I work at 2600hz and I'm the head of marketing so I feel pretty comfortable chiming in here :).

>When did people start paying for your SaaS?

I think the earliest indicator I had that people would pay for our product was when someone said "Wow" when they saw it. We started the company out as a consulting venture because we couldn't raise VC money. The launch of the SaaS platform coincided with the V2 of our GUI, and so we had a strong indication from the consulting that folks would pay, but it was quite relieving to actually see dollars coming in to our coffers.

>How many times did it take before you got it right?

I think it's honestly still a work in progress. The first time I felt ok about asking someone to pay for our product was when I was comfortable using it myself and when I could see real value when positioning it to people. This was roughly a year after I started (I'm in my 3rd year now) because we didn't get it right on the first iteration at all.

>What works for traction?

Content. We started doing Expert Q&A sessions that attract a lot of attendance, but they're active traffic acquisition channels for us. Each presentation nets about 1000 views a month right now, so there's a lot of value in continuing to develop that kind of high-quality content. I think people in your industry value expert commentary, so if you're in a position to provide it, do it. (We are at $X,000,000 in revenue in a little over 3 years, bootstrapped, so I know it can be done).

>What promos work?

Promos usually don't work. We're not in PayPal land where your cost of acquisition can be $20 per customer. That's insane. What works now is great content, syndicated effectively.

>What marketing tactics?

1) Great content

2) Speak at conferences

3) Charity (Not because it's going to pay you back, but because people love the things you're passionate about)

I think the best promotion/marketing advice I can give you is to be passionate about what you do and represent that passion with class. That's the ticket to success, in any walk of life :).

TL;DR: Content Marketing + Syndication. People will buy your SaaS when it solves a problem you yourself experience daily.
Everybody should read this wonderful book. It opened my eyes to the field, in a way that most modern UX utterly misses.
Data Dealer
We (Semantics3) are a perl shop too!
Other YC companies, AFAIK that use Perl are: Crowdtilt and Terascore
I started reading this, saw "Super Duper mode" and F19, and the assignment of Control+Shift+Option+Command to some newly created "Hyper" key, and seriously thought it was a parody of those projects trying to improve and innovate on computer input methods (e.g. vim, colemak, various ergonomic keyboard designs).

I then realised it wasn't a joke. Now I actually think this is pretty cool at what it does, but it did make me think about how much effort people seem to put into finding the perfect interface, and yet the QWERTY keyboard has (generally) been the unchanging standard for decades now...
The first part is weird and a little creepy. Really, he should listen to what she has to say, not look at a picture and say 'Yeah, I'd objectify her, she has a point'. Plus he had to click a few links deep to find a picture, so he went out of his way to see what some other commenter looks like, solely on the basis of gender. That's at least sexist, maybe you could really stretch and say it's salient to the conversation.

The second, parenthetical statement is what tips it way over the edge. It's like making a comment about 'culturalism' and then adding a footnote saying 'BTW, I'm totally not racist'. He obviously realizes that absent any context, saying "I spent at least 30 seconds hunting for a picture of you on the internet, person I've never met" is not socially appropriate. So he tries to shore it up with the fact that he's married, so obviously he has no interest in any other women outside of clinically judging their suitability for objectification.

This is further supported by the incredible, scientific claim that men's ability to process someone's comments on a message board is directly impacted by their ability to first judge that person's attractiveness - in a purely objective way, remember, he's married. No doubt this gentleman has a Firefox extension dedicated to finding all HN commenter's faces so he can better understand the cryptic squiggles they produce on his screen.