skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Try to make one. You'll figure out why soon enough. ;) Like making a good piece of software, there are hundreds of subtleties in great typeface design that a reader never thinks about.

Jesting aside, there are a handful of large foundries who are still behind the times somewhat. They're used to dealing with only a few clients (design agencies usually) and certainly not the web. A few have thankfully started coming around, especially thanks to work by TypeKit/Adobe. For example, HF&J now has a surprisingly good webfont service.

But unless you're going for something really specific (Proxima Nova, Whitney, etc.) you can very likely find a great similar font that is already open and even CDN'd by Google. (Though their browser is lousy.) https://www.google.com/fonts/
World's second oldest joke.
Ask HN: Do others find Android work a bore compared to Web and/or C coding?
I'm very lucky to work with many different technologies.

These include:

* Web UIs (AngularJS/NodeJS)

* C, including embedded and protocol implementations

* Android Apps

I'm concerned that I don't enjoy my Android work, whereas I love Web and C work. Is this a common case? Are Android Apps really drudgery compared with Web and/or C coding? Or is it just my personal taste?
Interesting compilation of sensible, actionable advise on typography... but there's one choice that IMO hinders usability for this site: the absence of an clear(er) indication of hyperlinked text. The small caps is too subtle (for me), and also against one of the rules mentioned: "Never use unlining, unless it is a hyperlink". That at least suggests to underline hyperlinks.

This use is also in contrast with Nielsen's advise since 2004: "Textual links should be colored and underlined to achieve the best perceived affordance of clickability, though there are a few exceptions to these guidelines", on http://www.nngroup.com/articles/guidelines-for-visualizing-l...
Patents do not restrict rescues for research purposes, true. That is the one widely acknowledged exception to infringing use. That is why you can study an invention and then patent an improvement or novel enough variations thereof.

But distributing detailed plans (or source code, as mentioned in sibling comment) of something that enables others to easily recreate something covered by a patent just seems to be less clear-cut to me (IANAL).
I have asked my colleagues to try out the git mac app by github. That really helps.

I prefer CLI to be honest. I will check out SmartGit, never really heard about it before. Thanks.
the market for fonts aren't users but designers, and they transfer the cost onto their clients.
drop the A/An.. it's cleaner.
Trying to make a point, perhaps?
Yeah, i didnt notice that. Thanks.
LEO spaceship and Mars are on the same development track (humans as interplanetary species / retirement on Mars is the final destination, rockets and LEO spaceship are first steps on the track). Also it's nice how he managed to make his three companies support each other by flowing tech and cash between them (e.g. Tesla using SolarCity tech for charging).
> I don't know how long it takes to design a good font, but is it longer than writing a good smartphone app?

No if you spend years on an app! Seriously, developing a good type, from the idea to the final font files, is massive undertaking and can’t be compared to developing software. (I’m an experienced software developer and also a not-so-experienced type designer.)
That was the constellation program, which was mainly a return to the moon. A commitment to NASA visiting Mars was kept.
Ah yes, I misread a comment below which talked about Go and Rust, I didn't read closely enough and took the ISAAC mention to apply to Go.
"An EC10 can consolidate several racks of Linux blades into its zVM hypervisor"

So can a couple of beefier blades running VMware, for a fraction of the cost.
I didn't say it. You said D was as fast as C now. Then, according to your definition of "as fast as C", Java must be fast as C as well. Seems your as fast as C definition must be something between 30%-95% performance of C because those are the most common performance numbers reported for D in various benchmarks (I cited one of them, and the one in the blog also confirms this - only one D compiler managed to match the best C compiler, the others were significantly behind). The same numbers are consistently reported about Java, so I don't really understand what you're arguing about. So I conclude both are the same league (with two minor exceptions: 1. I saw Java beating GCC many times, once quite severely by almost 2x on simple array numerical code, while I never saw that happening for D and 2. D has much worse GC implementation than Java or C# have).
Business angels, more likely. Or even just friends and family, ideally, for 50k.
I know a few of the guys that run Makers and to give them credit, they do a fantastic job.

They are one of very few initiatives in the UK that are actively trying to bridge the skills gap in tech that's currently crippling the industry.
Calandoa
With a modicum of commitment, it is of course possible to learn the technical content of a course online or by correspondence. However, contacts are not the only (or even the main) benefit of attending a top university such as Harvard, Cambridge or MIT. Putting a group of similarly intelligent young people together in an environment that fosters learning and exchange is just as important -- students learn as much from each other as from their teachers. And the manner in which they learn is formed by the environment, which imposes certain expectations with respect to intellectual rigor and creativity.

This is how the top universities continue to stay on top despite there being only a small difference in the quality of the students studying there, and virtually no difference in course content, compared to those just beneath them in the various rankings.
Thanks for the kind words - we really do want to change the way that people learn how to code.
Flynn, the open source PaaS powered by Docker, now accepts smaller donations too
But violence has been declining steadily for the past 400 years. Something other than the internet must be behind that.
BTCST also spawned a huge ecosystem of "pirate pass through" operators -- the operator of BTCST went by the nickname PirateAt40 -- who gathered small deposits, offering small time "investors" the opportunity to piss away their BTC.
Who DARE challenge the power of MS Paint?

http://www.elftor.com/elftor.php?number=112
Having met the instructors (and some of the students), they're an incredibly bright bunch of people. They would have put a lot of time and effort into arranging this course. This is probably an excellent way to kick-start your programming skills, let alone "legit".

Do note that entry requirements are strict i.e. you need to show some aptitude for programming before they even let you start the course.
One of the best purchases that I have ever made is the Kinesis Advantage keyboard.[1] In fairness, I was tempted to return it shortly after purchasing, but opted to give it one full week of use before making my decision. It took a couple days to become comfortable using it, and now I can't think of myself using another keyboard. It's designed for optimal physical placement of ctrl, alt, delete, backspace, and spacebar, among other keys.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000LVJ9W8
Flynn was discussed earlier on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6058662
Back then their minimum donation amount was $1500, which can be a bit excessive for a lot of people. They now support smaller donations as well. You can enter an arbitrary amount in the donation form.
No layers... wow. I wish I still had win 95 to try to draw without any layer
A Case of Collusion: Interface Between Ad Libraries and their Apps
Yes, I COULD “just add another button”
As for the marketers... and you can quote me on this... "Fuck 'em" .. The issue is that you aren't the only ones vying for our attention... I get so much crap to wade through I can't keep up. What really gets me is the frequency, I see so many marketing emails from places I actually do business with, that legitimate and important emails slip through the cracks.

I have an acquaintance who had an online account compromised, his shipping address changed, and stuff ordered... He didn't notice the change/receipt emails because of all the garbage emails he receives from said vendor.

It's a serious problem. I feel the same way about technical recruiters for the most part now too... I get maybe 3-5 emails a day, and 3/4 are either out of state, and/or well below what I make now... I'm not interested in either generally speaking. That doesn't even count all the "connect with me on linked in" requests from people I don't know, and the emails that go with them.

Hell, even twitter is in on it all now.
$50K was just a rough sum to understand whether VCs or Angles invest 100%.
I think that is his plan. He can't apply for asylum in most countries without going to their embassies and to do that he needs entry to Russia.
ShowHN: SpamKlr - Crowdsourced Twitter spam reporting
I disagree - there exist SaaS companies that have successfully executed and are on the path to successfully executing the profitable B2B SaaS model. Take Constant Contact, Responsys, and Blackbaud. While not all of these companies are highly profitable, they are all proof (and will be increasingly so) that B2B SaaS companies can reach profitability. The names we all know (e.g. Salesforce, Workday, etc.) simply need more time to reach that point of profitability, but they're on their way.

Looking at Jason's example specifically, I have a couple issues:

1) Assuming a fairly strong churn rate (~20%/year), the base of customers for which CAC has been repaid will make up an increasingly large portion of the user base as the company grows (in later stages). Forgive me if I'm wrong, but it seems much of Jason's argument is based around the assumption that acquiring new customers (S&M) in conjunction with ongoing R&D and G&A will always outweigh the gross profit generated by the existing customer base. Maybe if he defines "healthy growth rate" as 50%+, then yes, sure, it will always be outweighed, but let's be reasonable.

2) If Jason is going with 30% COGS, his LTV metric is off. No startup business in its right mind would continue operating with a CAC/LTV of 2.53. We're talking double that in most cases with a bare minimum of 3.

Finally, while this is a good discussion to have, I think we're all a bit naive to think that a bunch of small-scale startup entrepreneurs have enough knowledge, experience, or expertise to questions the decisions of many large, long-standing investment firms and successful individuals that all have supported these unprofitable companies with expectations of their eventual profitability. Having worked at a late-stage investment firm, I looked very closely at 100+ of the leading, big-name SaaS companies (we're talking 1000+ pages of diligence in aggregate). From experience, I can tell you there is plenty of work, far more than just a short article and some speculation, that points to the fact that these companies will reach profitability.
The more I think about this the more confused I become

- the obvious first step is for pypy to generate a nonce for each upload request. If that is stored on the original developers source repo then we know that they control that repo. And ?

- send the nonce via a side channel - say email. Ok the owner of the repo also has access to that email. Which is slightly more helpful

But each turn I take I ask myself what am I trying to trust? That the code is not malicious? That's a third party test process. Who will do that?

So firstly ask the right question ...
>This article mentions, but undersells, the lead factor. Lead exposure causes cognitive problems in children, especially related to impulse control. The drop in crime correlates very well with lead cleanup.

Sounds like a totally unrelated issue.

In my country we had a 400% raise in burglaries etc in the course of 15 years, and it was all due to poverty (including an iflux of poor unskilled illegal immigration).

Oh, and that was AFTER the "lead cleanup".

Crime can go up and down with no relation to lead whatsoever, as it has in tons of places.
I like the tutorial very much! Thank you! And I like the final words, which I think brings to the point the whole discussion about Haskell vs. Imperative languages:

[..] Because the physical world changes only slightly
from moment to moment, it means that languages that
can comfortably mutate large data structures in targeted
ways will always have a role to play in real-world
software- The "real world" usually just doesn't work the
way Haskell, and other functional languages would prefer
it did: Haskell preferred that at every moment in time, a
"new universe" would look at the "old universe" and would
rebuild itself, from scratch, from what it saw in the
past, with radical changes happening all the time.

Despite its many advantages, I humbly suggest, therefore,
that in the future there will continue to be a rift
between the "imperative" and "functional" camps of
programming, until someone comes up with a truly robust
way of uniting these two camps- And I think that some
profound programming discoveries still need to be made in
the future before this problem is really resolved- I get
the feeling it's just not good enough to wave at the
problem and say "Monads".
I'm not really a high volume user (0 unread most of the time) but I have tons of tabs and filters. I really only want to be notified of a new email when it's from someone I personally know.
That's an argument not against Emacs but against not knowing Emacs. The only issue with the keybindings is that they are different from other software. This should not be an issue! After all, an editor is probably going to be your most-used piece of software; spending a good amount of time up front to get even a small benefit over the long run will definitely pay off.

After a week or two of using Emacs, you will get used to all of the keybindings and stop thinking about them. They'll become entirely natural and instinctive. Sure, Emacs takes more effort to learn, but you should view this as a good thing: more powerful tools are always like that. An F1 car is also difficult, but nothing will get you around the track faster.

The problems you're talking about will go away after a bit of effort. Is it really worth throwing out all the additional power and configurability--advantages that will last for years--just to save yourself a couple of weeks of minor frustration?
Proud to be Russian today
In my view the first version of the Loop (which seems to be something like electromagnetically driven 3-4 winged needle (something like StarWars X-wing starfighter without engines) in a pipe - you need to go supersonic to outrun your sound (for comfort), this is your Concord, and shock wave from the needle will be hitting the wall right in front of where the "wing" ends would be touching the wall, so one can have correctly designed wingtips doing "shock-waveriding" near the wall, instead of touching it, this is your "airhockey") is for ground transport while it will allow to develop/refine/test the next version of the Loop which will be used as the first stage accelerator for space launches
tl;dr Mass email "opens" have dropped from 13% to 12.25% (more or less, according to the chart), where "open" is according to MailChimp's definition/mechanism.
That's an interesting idea - there could be easily be a Python core key ring and each library / package could connect off that trust circle.

Interesting -
We spend so much time discussing to death the tools we use, time which should be spent using them instead. This man just got on with it.
My view is that if we are going to have a Mars manned mission it should be one-way. Send some resources to the planet, automated mechanisms to build out some basic infrastructure (cabins, greenhouses, barricades, etc). Then once things are in place, and a self-sustaining environment can be built find some people willing to spend the rest of their lives there, perhaps older people but families wouldn't be impossible. Think of a pioneer spirit, there would be no end of people willing to put their name down for a one way trip!

The main reason I say one way? Given it is an 21 month minimum round trip or even five years, the health (mostly bone density) issues are astounding. So, let the people decide to be the first Martian colonists and let it be a one way trip. If the preparation package was sufficient I know I would like to put my name down but I suspect that my wife wouldn't, so that vetoes me, but I know I am not alone.

Perhaps it is the idea of people dying in space and the publicity from that that worries those in charge. But lets remember that these trips aren't without risk, so lets say that the risk is better managed if they just stay on Mars.
I find the technological incompetence of our political leaders and advisers very worrying. I doubt any of them could describe the difference between The Internet, The World Wide Web, a web browser and a search engine.
Newspapers can report a Japanese company's profits in USD, but that doesn't mean yen are devoid of value…
Python IMAP for Humans
Reminds me of Seasick Steve. He plays a guitar with 3 strings missing. Sounds better than most with all 6.
There is pretty substancial technological gulf opening up between the "ruling class" and the "reasonably well educated folks" out there. This could be as disruptive and problematic as the widening gap between the wealthy and the poor.

Porn filters will be of no concern whatsoever to anyone under 40 with the most rudimentary technical chops (and appetite for porn). What else will be banned? It is getting to the point where fearmongering and shameless populism and shilling for votes by politicians result in useless laws being enacted only to incriminate anyone at all, when the opportunity presents itself to make an example of somebody.

I suspect this technological gap is going to get much worse before it gets better, if it does get better at all. The types of people who participate in the game of politics have very little in common with the types of people who have an understanding of the technical world. But can that last forever? Kids now live online with few exceptions, and a technical understanding of the world will hopefully become second nature to most people, eventually.
On a similar note, you can send in suggestions to this guy and he'll draw them in MS-Paint

http://jimllpaintit.tumblr.com/

There are a lot of really funny ones in there
The one thing that bothers me is the whole first chapter. The point of the book is to give advice on typography. And the point of the first chapter is to tell the reader that the writer has to get to the point or else it's a waste of the reader's time:

> Writing as if you have un­lim­it­ed read­er at­ten­tion is also dangerous, be­cause run­ning out of read­er at­ten­tion is fa­tal to your writ­ing. The goal of most pro­fes­sion­al writ­ing is per­sua­sion, and at­ten­tion is a pre­req­ui­site for per­sua­sion. Once the read­er’s at­ten­tion ex­pires, you have no chance to per­suade. You’re just giv­ing a mono­logue in an emp­ty theater.

Well, then... Don't write that chapter and let's get down to business! I guess I'll skip that chapter.

Edit: Oh boy. I hadn't read about Violet's and Trixie's resumés. I like typography and give it a great deal of thought in every digital undertaking; but I will surely not hire Trixie because she used a better template: she gives less information and the whole resumé feels like it has as much negative space as content. When, and if, I hire someone, I want information, not thin air.

Edit 2: Another thing, regarding the 1.25 to 1.45 line-height he recommends. I feel like it's a lawyer's thing. Anything smaller than 1.5 looks very clamped, and most times people use 1.5 to 1.75. Kudo for the font size though. My poor eyes are grateful.
Would you walk up to some one painting, and tell then to get someone else to do it?
Maybe I missed this bit of information, but can someone explain....

They use a multi datacenter master - slave redis cluster? What's the relationship between the master and slaves?

Are the slaves just failover? Or are they for read only?

How have they configured their writes and reads from their main application? I'm just curious how their application routes the reads/writes in such a multi-database setup. (Are they using DNS for a manual failover?)
please remember that some people (me) really need to use right alt, to make letters such as `ąśćółężź`
A Paul Staines vs Claire Perry smutocalypse, oh boy this should be fun. I may need to stock up on beer and popcorn.
This is exactly what I need. Since I am starting to make typography.
Yes legit and great concept!
Coding in C is, in my experience, a terrible, terrible thing. There are part of it that are interesting, for a while, but every time I have to touch C, I get frustrated, because I have to run long laps to get anything meaningful done in a sane way.

I can't imagine how android app coding would be worse, but arguably, I haven't tried.
Backbeam: backend-as-a-service for web and mobile developers
Awesome! This is valuable to me. Since I am starting to make typography.
I think he picked them because he designed them. Feel free to draw your own conclusions from that :P.

(I think they're fine but hardly awe-inspiring. Certainly better than the defaults though.)
I just read to the 10 minute guide to verify my fears: While some points are correct, the 10 minute guide doesn't teach you anything.

Ihmo every (web-)designer should read at least a few essays from Jan Tschichold: http://www.modernism101.com/tschichold_form_of_the_book.php

And I say that as a typography enthusiastic software engineer. The thing about typography is, when you do it right, it pretty much doesn't leave any room for creativity. There is one right way to print text in a given format.

For the web I can only insist that the users choice of font and size should be respected. From there on you can only work in EMs. The first rule is that a line has to span 8-12 words. That leaves you a text width of about 66em. The line height should be 1.2 times the size of the font, e.g. 1.2em. Every element of the text (paragraphs, headings, listings, tables, images, ...) should be spaced by multiples of the line width to keep the text rythm (important).

To get an idea what I am talking about you can visit my web site:
http://mr.gy/services.html

PS: justified alignment is to be avoided since the browsers lack proper algorithms. bSad but true.
Annual retention is honestly considered fairly strong <20%.
I think it's appropriate for the audience. There isn't the same market for typefaces as there is for a smartphone app. Development of a high-quality typeface can take an extremely long time.
Cork in Ireland is a good option.

There are tons of towns near the beach. Kinsale is one of the more impressive places that springs to mind.
Indeed. Let alone the difference between hosting porn, distributing porn, and linking to porn, which this MP seems to be confused about:

"That well known responsible campaigner @guidofawkes has been hosting a link that distributed porn via my website"[1]

[1] https://twitter.com/claire4devizes/status/359718721138343936
If only he had some sort of text enhanced to allow references to make for easy reading. I'd call it hypertext.
> I've tried all the open source MSPaint alternatives, and none of them even come close to being as good as MSPaint.

KDE's kolourpaint is basically a clone with more features: http://kolourpaint.sourceforge.net/screenshots.html

Pinta has this layer idea more prominent, but it can still be used as simple as you want: http://pinta-project.com/

mtpaint has a lot more features than ms paint. The gui is unintuitive, but if you get used to it I'm sure it's just as easy: http://mtpaint.sourceforge.net/
Sure, bad law. I'm not saying law is perfect or flawless. There's a ton of bad law. We should fix the bad law. Unfortunately making law is tied up to politics and PR and minefield of stupidity that is.
The Fascinating Vampire Squids of Law