skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> “You know what my problem is! We’ve already spoken about it, you told me to come back with more information and I did. I’ve come back four times with the correct documentation and you’re still telling me I won’t be approved?!”

He was asking the wrong kind of questions. I figured out the right question when I was made told "the officer is busy at the moment", and asked to wait in an empty room. After sitting idly for about half an hour, I realized that the right question was "is there a fee that I could pay to make things go faster?" My task was accomplished in the next five minutes.

Of course, I'm Indian, and this was not at a visa office.
I don't mean this as advice to "Alex", but the rusty machine runs on greased palms.
I really really appreciate that, did you see all the resources on bottom of Flowtab.com?

Mike
Actually, if you asked in an interview how to sort, I'd try to come up with quicksort or mergesort. I wouldn't give you insertion sort or selection sort because I'd feel terminally embarrassed to go with so bad an answer.
I am appreciative. I wrote as much to the lawyer who contacted me. I should put that I am appreciative in.
(Full disclosure: I work at Colorado Sensors)

Intentionally building a Faraday cage is really hard.

The major radiation leaks are caused by non-conducting joints at edges of the enclosure. If there are penetrations (e.g., power lines, signal coax, compressor coils, thermocouple wires) then extraordinary measures must be taken to ensure that electro-magnetic radiation remains inside.

It took me about a year to develop a narrow band Faraday cage that achieved > 120dB of attenuation. The secret sauce was gaskets made of Indium and tuned-stub interferometers on each feedthrough.

A typical refrigerator door has a gasket seal that forms a lovely slot antenna. I have a 0dBm transmitter in my kitchen refrigerator that easily communicates with a symmetric receiver in the basement. The link loss is no more than 30dB. (Online demo at http://www.coloradosensors.com).

TL;DR Refrigerators keep cold air in, but let E&M waves out.
An Office Made of Software
Theory of Obliquity by Prof John Kay at Oxford is really interesting. In lay terms it suggests that if you choose to lose weight for example (the direct route), you are unlikely to succeed. Alternatively, if you choose to become a great cyclist, you are likely to lose weight, (the oblique route.)

Prof. Kay uses ICI which was a leading pharma company in the UK to explain obliquity in business. In 1987 ICI's mission statement read 'we make awesome products and innovate new drugs where possible to do good.' (wasn't in those words, but that was the message.) In 1994, they changed their mission statement to 'we exist to increase shareholder value,' and dropped the rest. The company went bankrupt not long after. The oblique route resulted in one of the largest companies in their field with the highest shareholder value, the direct route resulted in bankruptcy, i.e. the absolute lowest shareholder value.

Increasing shareholder value is only a motivation of the shareholders not surprisingly. Employees and customers have little interest in increasing shareholder value directly (unless they are significant shareholders) yet it is through motivating customers and employees that a company will grow and increase shareholder value the most. When longtime ICI employee Sir James Black (Nobel Prize Winner) was asked to change from making awesome drugs to pushing existing drugs on a roadshow to increase shareholder value, he left the company. He later created more blockbuster drugs in his new role, but not at ICI. Thus in VC funded and non-VC funded companies, I believe the goal should include to produce a great lifestyle for the team.
Yes you will be hated and it won't change anything.

There are members of your team who will agree with some or all of the points you make you will still be known as the a-hole.

Additionally that is just way too long to be persuasive. Most people won't read past the first paragraph.
> I love threads like this because it brings people like you out of the woodwork. It's like gazing into the abyss.

No, it's like examining reality, something people do what they can to avoid. But don't take my word for it -- try to erase poverty. Tell me how it works out.

But you know what? It's been tried. The experiment failed. You need to study history as much as the idealistic outlook of some political scientists.

> I'd absolutely love for you to provide some examples from history.

No, you certainly wouldn't. The histories of communism and socialism will do, but you have to read them with an open mind, and avoid saying "but the circumstances weren't right," or "the right idea but the wrong people," and similar explanations.

If you argue in favor of equality of opportunity and the eradication of sexism and racism, you will find me alongside at the barricades in common cause. But if you argue in favor of equality of outcome, that's where we differ -- and history favors my outlook, not yours.

> An appeal to nature (an untenable one at that) and a lack of understanding of scope on how natural selection works is just the beginning.

You may know 10% of what I know about evolution by natural selection, unless I'm being generous. And no, we can't contradict nature in human society and get away with it.

> I will argue that today, we have the ability to eradicate the circumstances in which poverty develops ...

This is quite false, and your inexperience is showing. Clearly you have never sat down with a woman and said, "you really, really don't want to have this next child. -- you can't afford it, and society can't afford it." Also, who would want to be placed in such a position? Based on the sentence I quoted above, apparently you do.

If we can't control population, we can't control poverty. It's as simple as that, and no amount of pontificating will modify that statement about reality. But the population problem is easy to state but impossible to address in anything resembling a fair way, and governments are the least qualified candidates to be in charge of it, as history shows.

You need to face the fact that, barring unacceptable measures, measures no civilized people would accept, the problem of poverty is insoluble because the problem of population is insoluble. You don't seem to realize that to "eradicate the circumstances in which poverty develops", as you put it, one would have to abandon any pretense of civilized behavior. That means you haven't thought through your position.

“Show me a young Conservative and I'll show you someone with no heart. Show me an old Liberal and I'll show you someone with no brains.” -- Anonymous
"the debugging story for generators is somewhat bad, especially because of the missing stack traces for thrown errors. Fortunately, there are solutions and workarounds, like those implemented by genny (obtrusive, reduces performance) and galaxy (unobtrusive, but requires native modules)."

From the post you brought up, http://spion.github.io/posts/analysis-generators-and-other-a... -- by the author of Genny. As I said, that's at least qualitatively the same as Q; quantitatively I haven't looked. At https://github.com/spion/genny there's the example line

require('genny').longStackSupport = true

and "This results with CPU overhead of approximately 500% and memory overhead of approximately 40%. In the future, the overhead will probably be eliminated in node but not in browsers." The benchmark post says Catcher is worse.

The README for Q shows the same switch and says "This feature does come with somewhat-serious performance and memory overhead,
however. If you're working with lots of promises, or trying to scale a server
to many users, you should probably keep it off. But in development, go for it!"

I'm not a current user of any of these systems, but this is why I said the first-order cause of any performance difference appears to be that ClojureScript is not a library.
Well, the idea is that the computer would do the rummaging and the human viewers would only see the things of relevance.

It's debatable, I guess, if there is any constitutional violation if a machine performs an unauthorized yet unbiased search of your property. But I think most could agree it's better than a human doing it all themselves.
You keep the data fully under your control. Who knows whatever ram-scanning-key-searching tricks Dropbox or any other Closd Source piece of software utilize...
The EFF report was compiled prior to the Snowden revelations. There is no star rating for "Allowing warrantless access to a user's data in contravention to the 4th Amendment". I should think in the current climate only Lavabit would receive a positive rating from the EFF.
"Its life became a startup story that most don’t tell: A company that didn’t make it."

Well actually there have been quite a few of these lately.
the design is very clean and looks nice, but doesn't come off as very creative
What's your evidence?

Typically, people who are involved in decisions feel much more engaged in dealing with the results. My expectation is that if something happened to the company, his employees would be much more loyal. Certainly if I worked for him, I'd be willing to take some bad times with the good times.

The one open-books company I visited had extremely loyal employees and great camaraderie. Causality is hard to untangle there, but it's not unreasonable that this is much smarter that the "Mine! It's all mine!" approach to employee relations that is a common alternative.
ون بيس 610
ون بيس 610
ون بيس 610
ون بيس 610
يلا موفيز
http://www.yallamoviez.com/2013/08/One.Piece.610.YM.html
That's a great video. Everyone should watch it.
No, you're encountering the bias that $.15 ramen causes. And the HN bias towards pedantry (not always unfair).

15-cent ramen is crap everywhere that you can discuss a $50 steak dinner and $3/dozen eggs. The egg in your ramen, by those units, would have cost 25 cents alone, and is clearly excluded.
We, the people[1], demand more Stick Figure Guides!!

[1] mostly me
I suspect that there's a lot of cross pollination of talent between ancestry and the church's familysearch.org there.
But no individual at Google felt that even an anonymous tip to a reporter about the program was warranted? Doesn't add up.
> So your idea that we can make things harsh enough to kill off all the addicts ...

You locate where I said or implied any such thing. If you can't locate the words you believe you are quoting, post your apology.

> It may be that through science we will understand what combinations of genes cause different behaviours, and select those at birth ...

Study history alongside science. What you have just suggested is called "eugenics" and it has a perfectly terrible history, one society doesn't want to see repeated.

> In short your solution is brutish ...

What solution are you dreaming about? I suggested no solution because there isn't one. Prove me wrong -- locate the words you believe you are addressing. And when you discover that you're posting a personal fantasy, apologize.
The NSA: “We Shit In Your Ice Cream”
This does a worse job of "prototyping" someone's writing than good old-fashioned reading does.
I agree that most apps might not be saving lives. I chose YPlan because the Founders used a rigorous strategy of looking for problems rather than looking for solutions.

This is beyond the post, but I agree that value should land where it can deliver the biggest impact. However, making money writing apps for 20-somethings isn't necessarily a bad thing, what matters is where that money goes afterwards. More on that in http://80000hours.com/.
Show HN: Educational implementations of popular sorting algorithms in Scala.
If you say "not enough x" the question is always "for what?". That usually isn't even answered in those articles. Not enough developers to defeat cancer and world hunger? Or what?
Is that because you care more about the people nearer to you, or because it's easier to help them?

(Personally, I'd answer 'yes' and 'probably not', respectively. If you want to help people in bulk, you can probably get easier targets if you're willing to look in some of the poorer countries in the world. GiveWell's charity evaluations seem to confirm this: http://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities)
Variety in Public Radio Music: A Look at the Data
You realize both phrases evaluate in exactly the same way?
If Microsoft really believed they had a "clear right under the US Constitution to share more data" they would step up and do it. Suing for the right to exercise constitutional rights looks more like a cheap dog and pony show to make the public think they haven't completely whored themselves out to the neo-stasi agencies. It's too late. They should get ready for a steady Exodus away from US based technology products and services.
Is it terminally embarrassing to say "this is bad, but..." and pass the test, then discuss (maybe write out) more advanced options? If all they care about is selection sort, you've saved time (often a good quality). If they care about more, you've demonstrated something, and opened the door for more.
Honestly this does not read well. You have some decent points (not unique points to any professional software engineer but good points) - there are several grammatical errors "to(sic) much magic" and you have not provided any examples.

You state that you are new to the project - from the writing style it sounds like you are fairly young, so I would guess this is your first programming gig? Either way take a professional writing course.

Provide examples - where are there problems with code clarity? Where are the repeated sections? Simply stating there are problems help nobody - you need data - how many repeated lines? What is the overhead of this code? How many special cases etc.

Good luck!
Do you accept that a robot performs a search of your house without a warrant because a robot is "unbiased" ?
> Congratulations, you've reinvented the eugenics movement.

Locate your evidence for this claim. I never suggested that there is a solution to poverty, in fact I clearly said the opposite. Eugenics is on the roster of ideas that society rightly rejects as a failed non-solution and a disaster, along with communism, socialism and a dozen others.

> I would have thought it was a little out of fashion in 2013, but I guess not.

Misrepresenting the views of others? No, you've proved that idea false.
Sinclair C5 Electric Car (1985)
Is a Career in STEM Really For Me?
Did all that years ago, didn't come to the conclusion radiation and cancer are unrelated. But, if you think a higher mutation rate is a good thing go ahead, I think Tepco is currently looking for that kind of worker.
Remember that they drafted everyone in World War 2. If you look at the pay scales for officers, you'll see some really weird things like Colonel with two years TIS. This is because they needed industry leaders and engineers to be in relevant spots in the chain of command - you wouldn't have a mechanical engineer who manages hundreds of technicians working as a sergeant.

Having all of this brainpower meant that the Army and Navy could actually do scholarly stuff. These days, it's all outsourced; it's considered crazy when an officer comes up with some innovation.
And who has made it their profession to study the principles of justice, how they are reflected in the law, and what the law means. It doesn't mean they're right, but it probably means their opinion is worth reading.
True. It is a highly corrupt country and there are two good ways to get things done -

1. Have cash ready
2. Know someone in the bureaucracy and 1.

I am yet to figure out a third way.
That's just bloody dumb. Just spend the same money to build cheap apartments and give them away for free.
I'll give another good reason to avoid living there: The air quality along the Wasatch Front (Ogden, Salt Lake, & Provo) is among the worst in the nation. http://www.stateoftheair.org/2013/city-rankings/most-pollute... ranks the Provo-Orem area as the 11th highest nationwide for short-term particle pollution (SLC being #6 and Logan being #10).

I left Salt Lake City 6 years ago. I miss many aspects of life there and have considered moving back. But the air quality there is an absolute deal breaker. The winter inversions are absolutely miserable.
Oh people people apply for a work Visa to India? And India denies it?? I am surprised!

Ok sarcasm apart, I didn't think getting a work Visa to India would be so difficult but yes the bureaucracy is strangling. I had to visit the Passport office 3 times to renew my passport. It's like your whole future depends on the whims and fancies of a single government official.

And there is no coordination between different government departments. For instance India has come with this new SSN like Unique Identification Number (UID) thing called Aadhaar (Support in Hindi). Government says it is a valid proof of identity, it says so on the Passport web site as well as a valid documents accepted for proof of address but as my colleague recently experienced, the passport officers flatly refuse to accept Aadhaar card as proof of address! If you want your passport, produce the document that I ask for, I don't care what the web site says!
At some point, society needs to digest this 'sharing economy' and understand its pros/cons. On one hand, it provides a way to make money. On the other hand, the laborers are often putting themselves in situations where legally they should be covered with various forms of insurance as well as wage regulations (paying them as 'consultants' is the current method by which all of this is sidestepped).
How was Hedy Lamarr a computer scientist? She was an intelligent and multi-talented woman, and yes she co-authored a patent for a frequency-hopping torpedo controlled by a piano roll. However, I don't think this qualifies her as a computer scientist. Clearly, no list would be complete without Grace Hopper, but putting Lamarr on the list, unless there's something I'm missing, would detract from Hopper's accomplishments.
> There is also quite a few laws that are actually hindering progress.

Definitely. I think this is one of those areas where the right way lies somewhere in the middle between the two extreme positions. Yes there are a lot of shit laws - but there are also a lot of great laws enacted for citizen protection and we should be careful this joyful wave of "disruption" does not throw the baby out with the bath water.
I agree that this seems to be one of the major lags. Though we are based in Utah, my company raised our seed round entirely from investors outside of Utah (Google Ventures, 500Startups, etc.).

We only had to do one thing to double our valuation -- book a plane ticket from the Salt Lake airport to San Francisco.
The Temple Operating System
Would like to know what your marketing plan is to get the product in the hands of the target market. Which is people that are old enough to have parents that need caregivers.

How are you going about (or are you going to go about) doing that?

Also noting on the page that there is a lack of information that can be had (it's one page) w/o supplying information and signing up.
A lot of people I worked for, if you gave then an ultimatum like this they'd tell you to leave. Better to frame the discussion around the value you bring to the company, and generic market rates, than having an offer. I've lost key members of teams, people who were not replaceable by anyone currently at the company, who tried the other job offer thing
Google selfspy on GitHub - tracks literally everything
A quote: "And while I like solving math problems, what does finding the slope of a line using three different techniques have to do with anything I might do in the future?"

Well, to start, not being killed by underestimating your car's braking distance (which increases as the square of the car's speed). For another, modeling compound interest, the bane of the middle class. For another, the rate of population increase given an annual growth rate, and its meaning for the future of the human race. Just three immediately obvious examples.

If this student doesn't see these obvious applications for math and pre-Calculus, her teachers should be held responsible -- of course, they themselves may not realize all the practical applications of this kind of modeling.
Join Exec as a junior product manager, growth
About Exec

Exec makes the world efficient. We’re a YC company founded by one of the YC part time partners, Justin Kan (founder of Justin.tv). We’re starting by building the world’s most convenient cleaning service and growing quickly.

About The Job

Exec is looking for a junior product manager who loves turning data - both qualitative and quantitative - into actionable ways to drive growth. The ideal candidate is an engineer who is looking to transition from an engineering role into a product role with a marketing/business focus.

About You

- You’re passionate about analytics and using engineering to solve marketing problems.

- You have a strong understanding of existing online marketing channels.

- You have strong analytical ability. You're not afraid of diving into SQL, Excel, or the Ruby console to answer whatever question you might have.

- You are empathetic. You can put yourself in the users mindset. If you don't understand the user you dig into the data until you do.

- You have a strong product sense, you can easily place yourself in the user's mindset and make decisions accordingly.

Requirements:

* 2+ years of engineering experience.

* A passion for analytics and applying an engineering mindset to growth.

* Strong knowledge of existing online marketing channels.

Bonus

* Experience running online marketing campaigns across multiple channels.

* Product management experience.

Email coreteam@iamexec.com to apply.
COBOL, originally, probably wasn't thought of as a general purpose language. It was more of a business DSL (hence its name). It was about easily processing business data in standard formats, reading and writing files, and producing reports. And for those things, it's actually pretty good. Where it became a "bad idea" was when it was pressed into service beyond that scope.
A Sudoku solver in python
This would be the equivalent in Kal: http://goo.gl/TwsL2h

It's a different approach, but it doesn't require ES6 or any libraries (once compiled). Forgive the slight funkiness with the indentation.

try
wait for tweets from getTweetsFor "swannodette"
url = parseUrls(tweets)[0]
wait for responseBody from httpGet url
print "Most recent link text: " + responseBody
catch error
console.error "Error with the twitterverse: " + error
I'm hoping China's efforts would ignite a new "space race".
It is a fact that they don't need individual court orders to obtain communications.

As to "obtaining targeted communications without having to request them from the service providers", here's a quote by Gellman:

> In another classified report obtained by The Post, the arrangement is described as allowing “collection managers [to send] content tasking instructions directly to equipment installed at company-controlled locations,” rather than directly to company servers.

Regardless of whether it is actually accurate, that is what the NSA documents stated.

I think the whole "direct access" argument over semantics is a red herring and completely irrelevant by now.
Implementing AES for crypto class? Seems the kind of school I would love to go to.
In some cities, most notably New York, homeless people can get free transportation out. Usually it's just bus fare, which is admirably cheap by the standards of government social programs.
If you are unknowledgeable about economics/incentive structures you really should try not to get so angry when your outraged intuitive solutions get shot down. I understand that moral intuitions tell your brain to get angry when they are violated, but you should take it as an opportunity to educate yourself. Casting your opponents as some sort of immoral monsters is not constructive.
It's also telling that you read my whole response and my use of the phrase "beyond help" is what you think actually represents my attitude towards these people.