skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Yes, but we don't expect someone to use actual numbers in response to a hypothetical question in an interview. The question is intended to see if you could figure out which numbers you'd really need to figure out the right estimate.

Often, the specific result of an estimate is less interesting than the user's understanding of what drives that estimate, because it determines if they understand the levers they can pull to change the outcome in the real world.
Atlas Shrugged

The Fountainhead

(both by Ayn Rand)
Geeking out. Another phrase that makes me want to bite my arm off.
Or that she has to justify a billion dollar purchase to her shareholders and using it is one way to do so.
Please Don’t Ask For My Email
I knew Second Life very well. In 2007, I built a perfect replica of the Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi [1], met with Philip Rosedale in San Francisco, and almost cried when he told me: "This is the most beautiful building I've ever seen in Second Life.".

I was very critical of Second Life at the time: I thought that most people were using it in the wrong way, and that the "gold rush" would soon bring problems.

However, I've been lucky: I found my job through Second Life. You can read the story here. [2]

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JE282TzLH3M

[2]: http://www.brunozzi.com/2008/05/22/how-i-got-hired-by-amazon...
Her experience and micromanagement apparently produced a logo that looks like it belongs on a web portal framed by IE6's forward thinking UI and appears to have been designed by someone who just figured out that illustrator could do 3d effects.

So, so much for making users think the company has moved beyond its stagnant products. Which in a lot of ways it has, look at the Yahoo weather app for Android, the design is modern and integrates one of Yahoo's rather under leveraged properties: flickr. That was nice design.

As to signals to the best of the best, this blog post confirms both that she will micro manager you and do design by committee simultaneously (a dubious distinction I don't think even Steve Balmer could achieve). And that's the signal if they like the logo.
I avoid literally everything that is owned by Yahoo. This is almost entirely due to how they present themselves. A bad logo is evidence of a company that does not care about their products or services. They are finally making steps to improve their image.
Which mobile & desktop OSes do that? The only software that automatically installs updates on my Apple gadgetry seems to be Google Chrome.
Hate to burst people's bubble here on the privacy of email addresses, but it's routine at universities to have open, relatively unprotected LDAP directories or even web listings. That said, under Canadian PIPEDA (privacy laws), email addresses are considered personal information, so this would be a severe breach... As are all the times I get CC'd a bulk email rather than BCC'd.
try using genymotion. it takes 20 seconds on my mbp to starting up.
Hmm. Thanks for the tip. I've been working on trying to graft Groovy 2.1 onto an old Java app. The static type annotations don't work with Java 1.5. You have to have at least Java 1.6. (I discovered today) So, if you have Java 1.5, you can really only use Groovy 1.x language features, as well.

Otherwise, it turned out to be not so hard to start putting little Groovy seeds into a Java garden, which I'm not going to rewrite as Grails. Just being able to use closures with the Groovy Collection extensions is pretty useful.
Ted Nelson demonstrates Xanadu Space
Well done - for a multi billion dollar company, spending a weekend on your logo is about the right ratio of time to value. Looks good enough to be acceptable, can be reused in all the sub projects. Done, now lets get on with real product improvements.

Move on folks, nothing exciting to see here
Flickr

Tumblr

Mayr
You might also enjoy xstow, a reimplementation in c++ -- in case you might want to use stow without having perl:

http://xstow.sourceforge.net/

edit: I use xstow for managing ~/opt -- putting stuff like ~/opt/xstow/golang-git, with symlinks to ~/opt/{bin,lib,man} -- making it easy to add the relevant folders to PATH, MANPATH etc in .bashrc.
What makes it good for startups also makes it good for malware, spam apps, information harvesting and other user unfriendly things.

I'm not arguing against this post, it's true in the sense that it is indisputably easier to iterate on Android vs iOS because of the lack of a review system. But as someone with both Android and iOS devices that they enjoy, it's very easy to see which one is a more user-friendly approach.

Having a broken app or two for a week is a small price to pay for trust. I don't trust the Play Store, I check out each individual app before downloading. On iOS because of the more robust review & permissions model, I can trust that while what I download might not be good, it will in all likelihood be safe.

In addition, I feel like evangelizing to developers like this is pointless. Besides the minority of personal developers driven primarily by morals, their preferred platform or preferred tools, developers go where the users are and the money is. If "Android is for startups" then that should be the case, and a blog post isn't going to make it so. The presence of startups iterating on Android initially makes it so, and that is driven by users + money.
Focusing on the logo is a detraction from the vast array of truly positive changes that have been implemented over the past 6 months -- by some very talented teams I might add.

No question the whole site is on the move. To where or what, I dunno. But my interest is piqued and the overall experience feels tighter. If that makes sense.
so where would be a good source of quality books in India?
It's obvious they missed the easiest way to simplify and modernize the logo... Drop the exclamation mark! Remember when Marissa had the TM removed? Nothing screams 90s more than an exclamation.

It takes courage to innovate. Ford, "They wanted a faster horse". Jobs, "They wanted a phone with a physical keyboard". Yahoo? The "new" logo doesn't signify that anything has changed.
First impressions for me were "They've sterilised the logo!". Now it looks so corporate and planned...

... and I actually laughed when I read "Our last move was to tilt the exclamation point by 9 degrees, just to add a bit of whimsy".
You mean like posting images of lolcats and memes is a perfectly legitimate use of a discussion website? Also, doing things other than virtual sex is also worthwhile, and for that there has to be "less than" 100% virtual sex, all the time ^^
Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5403988
If the logo hadn't changed in 18 years, what exactly had this logo design team of 4 been up to for so long?
Afaik that doesn't say much. Amazon listings list prices are often as inflated as cell phone prices are in the first place. Amazon uses list prices as a maximum, then puts the item on sale based on how it sells. Though it's equally true that Google is selling the phones basically at cost, making money instead off the people using them.
I'd have to dig into the subject and I can't speak for the whole EU. In my country, by definition, a bicycle can't be powered only by an engine. Electric bikes are bicycles when their electrical engine is powered by pedalling, how weird wouldn't that sound. The electrical engine can't be more than 250W and needs to power off over 25km/h. Not sure the 'modes' would count, IANAL. (But keep in mind Poland is a beaurocratic hell and our laws regarding even normal bicycles are an evil clusterfuck, as an example we have 4k people locked up for bicycle DUI and only 1k more for DUI in a car, and during the last policies update blinking headlights and reflective tires were banned - in the name of safety of'koz.) It may work differently in other countries. F.ex. in Poland you can make a motorbike license and jump on a Hayabusa, Germans have graded licences based on power so noobs don't kill themselves on the first day, etc. Most unified laws among the EU concern trade, not issues like road safety.
It is one way you verify your identity with credit card bureau.
How would you know if the word combination is a valid sentence? NLTK?
In addition to down-voting, it would be helpful if you could explain why you think I'm wrong (because, hey, there's a first time for everything ;) Thanks.
> spawning up even 3 JVMs is difficult to justify

Well, you could compile to native code instead.
A group of stem-cell biologists have grown an “organoid” that resembles a brain
Go Library for accessing GitHub API
They have a total of 2 online purchases for me. One is in "art and antiques" and the other is in "bedding linens" I don't recall purchasing anything in either of those categories online. They don't have my current address (I moved about 2 months ago). They don't have my education level quite right. The information they have on my income is current, and I assume they got it from a credit card application.
Politics Wrecks Your Ability to Do Math
I used to use RCS, but these days I use mercurial. Pretty much any DVCS is going to be a "better RCS" than RCS (bzr, mercurial, git, fossil, monotone...). Even if you never need to pull/push.
As of now, I order books mostly over Amazon. They ship the 'real' edition. Its expensive but that's better than the other alternative.

Also, I never claimed all the Indian books are flawed. You wouldn't know until you buy one. Your best bet would be to check one out from a library, use it, figure it out for yourself and then decide whether to buy an Indian edition or the real one.
time you spent on something != quality of the result
Forgetting about the ridiculous bevels, they're using what looks to be a variation of the Optima font, which screams 70's/80's. Unlike other fonts (e.g. Helvetica), it has not aged well -- it was once a standard corporate font, now nobody touches it.

Seeing it used in the logo of modern company is, quite frankly, bizarre -- especially a company trying to be "fun", because it is not a "fun" font. It was corporate/educational.
Don't do it! I entered all that information and it said I needed to manually authenticate. Basically, they want me to provide even more information. Can't opt out and I just gave them more info...
The idea the American government is "the most evil regime on the planet" doesn't pass the laugh test. I don't care what your perspective is.
So advocating piracy are we?
Google play services is one example. Any app can download executable code in the background without you realizing what is happening. Apple has some mechanisms of their own coded in if necessary.
"Logo's"? Really?
Are they A/B testing the logo without the exclamation? About one out of 10 times I load yahoo.com the little animated ! never happens and the logo is left without the exclamation. Could just be bad code, though.
this is close to the old functionality, but not the exact same.
IFA 2013: HDMI 2 is released
> you be the first one to not give your fiancee a diamond

did it, and it was awesome. My personal feelings is that if get into the habit of spending money on illogical things, then it is going to continue onward and forever. My wife is on the same page, so...
Android is awesome for the way it lets apps interoperate. The "share with" functionality is just one example and it's not just for photos either. For example if you have Readability installed, you can "share" the article to Readability from within both Chrome and Firefox (speaking of which, Firefox isn't available on iOS because Apple doesn't allow it).

I would like to add to your list the ability to completely block phone calls and SMS messages from annoying numbers, with no traces left in the phone's logs. Or the ability to automate your phone settings, depending on time or location, like turning the data off at 11 p.m. for battery preservation or turning silent while you're at work.

I don't know if such apps are still banned on iTunes, but it's what made me switch from an iPhone 3GS to a Galaxy S.
True, though so far it was less obvious, as in they're non "processed" snacks and deserts, and not brand names (as far as I can tell, maybe for North Americans it is more obvious?)
Like the form. Hate the bevelling.

Am I just following the braying "flat is the new shiny-lickable" herd here?
Love the boldness. Going against flat is bold - and ugly.

It reminds me of a book I had in the 90s which showed 5-click Photoshop tricks, there was a golden bevel trick in there (and marble, and shadows, and stamping).
Are you talking about RoboVM?
Working from home of course
I see them at Safeway and Target here in Mt. View all the time. My location might be relevant though :)
Unfortunately, to me her post says different things:

* "I work on weekends." (With a hint of "Just saying...").

* Designed in only two days.

* This was personal. Talking about her love for design and "most of all" Illustrator (!?) says "It's at least partly about me."

* Mixed messages. "We didn’t want to have any straight lines in the logo." -- yet the logo ended up with a ton of essentially straight lines.

And worst of all, the new logo seems to throw out too much of the old brand, misunderstand modern design trends and logo portability (logos with depth still need to be interesting when flat), and try too hard to have weight and impact without really achieving it. For example, the saturation of the purple has been pumped up till it almost hurts your eyes. Like TV sets at Best Buy, it's attention grabbing, but it's not desirable in the long term.
Yuckir and yuckir.
Thanks for the Amazon recommendation.

I am an expat (repat?) living in rural India and do not have access to libraries.
> Apple's provisioning process on the other hand is the most painful thing I ever experienced.

Your information is years out of date. In XCode, you click 'use this device for development' and all the provisioning is done fully automatically.

So no. It is not far easier to get your app running on the device itself. That is just false.
This is a discussion of science. Kindly take your partisan political posturing elsewhere.

The science on IQ shows that European Jews > far east Asians > Caucasians > Africans. There is still some uncertainty about the exact numbers and rankings, but there is zero controversy about the existence of the intelligence hierarchy.

In a few years we will resurrect the Neanderthals, who had larger brains than any living human race. It is entirely possible that in 50 years they will be winning all the physics Nobel prizes.
So you're saying Android users don't care about innovative apps? That makes this whole discussion moot.
> It's just crass selfishness... but here it is.

Are you being sarcastic?
Heh, that is what I thought too. Maybe for geocities?
I searched it on Amazon and saw numerous reviews saying you need a strong grasp of discrete mathematics, which is hardly "very very little" knowledge of math. I didn't study serious discrete math until my upper classes in undergraduate school.
I fully agree with you on the hidden information problem. So many people seem to kind of praise this though.

I, for one, started 3 characters and with every one of them I ran into a problem at around the time when the lightning spear becomes too weak. Pretty much the only option I saw was to craft a weapon, but the crafting system just isn't explained at all. The only way to learn something about the crafting is, as you said, trial & error, which is just frustrating, especially if you have to sacrifice rare resources for that.

Basically if you want to play the game without the wiki (which still feels a bit like cheating for me) you either have to put in insane amounts of effort (I mean come on, it's still only a game!), or you're fucked.

I really hope Dark Souls 2 is better in offering at least basic explanations of the friggin' game mechanics.

</rant>
Seriously, 31 comments about (a really mediocre if you ask me) LoGo? I'd only wanted to know how did it cost, out of curiosity... Because at eLance you can get a better one at 75USD without ruining a weekend (not joking).
Funny... The whole time I was reading this I couldn't help compare it to Ballmer's last re-org call-to-arms letter. I only understood maybe 5% of Ballmer's memo... This one actually got me excited for the future of Buzzfeed.
3 Factors That Will Bring Wearable Technology To The Mass Market
I just saw it as a new logo. I didn't notice the details (bevel, choice of colours, etc.) but my first impression when I saw the logo was "Nice!". Maybe it's mainly targeted at people like me who are not very discerning when it comes to visual content.
So... Paid for alternate launchers and task switchers are the future of mobile operating systems?
1. Create a list of common words, the more the better. Let's say we list a common spelling dictionary of 80,000 words.

2. Create an order-5 permutation of the list (a result in which the order of the words matters). For an 80,000 word dictionary, that's 3.27 x 10^24 test sentences, each of five words.

3. Scan the result sentence set, using a heuristic able to distinguish valid sentences from invalid ones. Let's say that one optimized validation test requires one millisecond -- in that case, the test would require 1.04 x 10^14 years, 7536 times the age of the universe.

Meaning this is a much easier question to ask than answer.

EDIT: Another approach is to make an arbitrary assumption about the structure of a five-word sentence, like pronoun-noun-noun-verb-noun: "The calico cat ate breakfast.". Crude and limited, and many apparently valid results will be meaningless, but it makes the estimate easier.

We realize that random words have a probability of being pronouns, nouns or verbs, pp, pn and pv. The probability of producing a valid sentence (pvs) using the described template is therefore:

pvs = pp * pn * pn * pv * pn

Just generate the probability values by scanning a dictionary, identifying the word types (easier said than done), perform the above equation, and you have your answer.
This is called certificate pinning (a.k.a. Trust On First Use or TOFU). If you use Firefox, just install Certificate Patrol.

If you are interested in the rationale, and how you can use technologies like DANE to make it even better, read the paper by Gabor Toth and Tjebbe Vlieg (http://staff.science.uva.nl/~delaat/rp/2012-2013/p56/report....).
The CEO and an intern redesign a $25b company's logo during the weekend. That's news!

Minor nitpick: the logo is looking like a 1-bit alpha GIF on Chrome, due to the downsizing: http://cl.ly/image/183U1t0l1u3e (FF on the left)
What Scrooge McDuck can teach us about Ad Revenue Optimization
Wasn't mapreduce developed at google around 2003? From what year are you comparing Acxiom's system?
So much more makes sense now, like why I feel like their use of Tumblr for the corporate blog is purely perfunctory.
> active tramp deterrent systems :-(

I always wondered how buildings avoided becoming homes and sleeping areas. Can you give some insight into what is done? I'd assumed it was passive and all about locking every service entrance.

Great original post btw!
I have 3 monitors over 2 video cards on Fedora 19 - works fine & as one would expect.
> [...] they have missed the train by designing a very technical logo.. I may be wrong [...]

You may be correct though. What does the LOGO has to do with what Yahoo! will achieve is beyond me.

I like logo stories: Makes you think that if Nike didn't had the Just do it logo, it would have failed (and some kids in Eastern Asia wouldn't have to work their ass out for my Nikes).
The saddest part is that some of the former might be perfectly happy apprenticing for a trade instead -- a chance which has really been destroyed in the last few decades in some areas.

The real issue is that we're trying to forcibly prevent delinquent members of society, just like you force small children to eat their vegetables and go to bed -- because as an adult you have the foresight and ability to delay gratification that they lack -- but it doesn't always work.

Where do you draw the line? When do you give up on kids and say "fine, screw it, don't go to school, go eat candy and smoke pot behind the 7-11"? There are the kids who, if you force them to go to school at 14 when they don't feel like it, will grow up and realize that playing videogames for 12 hours a day would have been a bad life decision.

Then there are the other 14-year-olds who will fight it until they can drop out and become a chronic plague on the rest of society, no matter what sort or form of education you offered them. The problem is that no one wants to admit the politically incorrect truth that there will always be some children left behind.
Because a large portion of religious zealots choose to insulate their kids using Method X, clearly Method X is the problem.

This is why logjam's argument is a pure fallacy.
When I was in India about a year ago, the exchange rate was about 50 Rs to 1 USD. So, I took to calling a 50 note a "Ghandi Buck" (sorry, guys, but it helped me remember the relative value, and it does have Ghandi's picture on it -- just like every other denomination).

That said, lunch in the company cafeteria was about 50 Rs, if I recall. So, where I would spend about 5 to 8 USD at home on a modest lunch, they would spend what amounted to 1 USD. Salaries are scaled accordingly, so yeah, those Rupees come dearly when you have to earn them locally.

100 Rs might exchange for 2 USD, but it feels like having to earn 10 USD (or more).
Religious zealots use Method X to brainwash their kids. Therefore, Method X is the problem.

Hmm.
Yes, I'd be interested to hear about this too.

FWIW, here is a somewhat related, recent experience we've had:

During May/June this year we created a freeware app (for Win), made it available for download via our website and then used an auto-submitter to submit it (the PAD file) to a few hundred shareware/freeware download sites (in the hope of both - getting downloads and some link-love for SEO).

The App got listed on a good number of sites (with many linking to our site) and we've been receiving a decent number of downloads, but all those links appear to have done nothing as far as Google rankings are concerned.
And yet, Neal Stephenson made an interesting distinction between "geeking out" and "vegging out":

"To geek out on something means to immerse yourself in its details to an extent that is distinctly abnormal - and to have a good time doing it. To veg out, by contrast, means to enter a passive state and allow sounds and images to wash over you without troubling yourself too much about what it all means."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/17/opinion/17stephenson.html?...
Home schooling is a tool. Just because a bunch of religious whackjobs use it improperly doesn't mean it's fair to deny it to those who would use it effectively.

Can you think of the REAL problem that is the issue in this regard instead of inflicting massive collateral damage because it's an easier path?
Why employ communications experts and designers if the final decision is left in the hand of the consumer?

Thankfully this has simply been an exercise in PR. The proof is in that logo. It's goddamn awful. I imagine it appeals to a nostalgic memory. It's appeal, much like a bad movie sequel, is base.

Remember a logo is not a brand. So this decision will not have any meaningful repercussions beyond hype.
The TSA Racket is Now Selling Your Basic Rights Back to You
Really awesome job by team playerify!!! Congrats guys !