skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Great question re: "Blackberry V.S. Mozilla work environments" -

Related: one thing I've noticed some people don't place enough emphasis on when choosing initial internships/jobs out of school is the business models of companies, and the direct effect that can have on the working environment.

In this case, while Mozilla is technically a non-profit, rather than being funded by donations it makes the overwhelming majority of its money by sharing in the advertising revenue generated by the search engines which come pre-installed in Firefox (see http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2010/fa...). Therefore, even if Mozilla does absolutely nothing in terms of improving any of their products, they will still continue to make money (in the short term, at least), which lifts quite a bit of stress off everyone who works there, and let's management take a longer view perspective in general.

Professional service firms (i.e. tech. consulting and agencies) are effectively arbitrage plays - they sell the time of their employees for $X / hr, but only pay the employee $Y / hr, and then collect on the spread. If these companies ever stop selling for just a few moments, the arbitrage breaks down (as they still presumably need to pay their employees...). Therefore, there will likely to be more "stress in the air" in these types of firms, as in some cases all it takes is 1-2 contracts to be canceled for the firm to be unable to make payroll.

Hit driven businesses (Which Blackberry as a whole arguably is not, due to the significant revenue driven by their enterprise server), have a different set of issues, which is that losing really sucks for morale - therefore if the company you work for is focused on building a better mousetrap, and slowly over time people internally begin to doubt the quality of the mousetrap they are working on, that can make it really frustrating to work there, regardless of the other perks the company may provide.
These sort of pensions are already available to some people, in some countries (typically the elderly and the disabled). However governments are struggling to pay for them, and the eligibility criteria tend to get tightened (in my country, the old-age pension age will increase to 67). I don't see how they could be expanded to the entire population without destroying the governments' budget, and if they tried to raise such massive sums through taxation, destroying the economy too (and causing massive flight of the wealthy to lower-taxing countries.)
Wow, I had absolutely no idea. I'm on a Macbook so I'll definitely be more mindful of that from now on. Thanks so much, this is super helpful. And thanks for the suggestion!
Only if your time has no value. With at least one day to setup (according to the poster) and issues popping up from time to time (not to mention OS upgrades), the difference is not that big.

We are not even factoring the resale value after a couple years, of an iMac vs a generic hackintosh.
Okay, this has absolutely nothing to do specifically with javascript in the browser! This attack is applicable to ANY system where the application designer leaves sensitive data in a place that can trivially accessed by malicious applications if they jump through a few simplistic hoops!

Mega left user data in an essentially public place.
RIP Frederik Pohl, the man who transformed science fiction
Sounds like an integer overflow bug in the drive controller firmware.
Google crunches data on munching in office
Man Buys Promoted Tweet to Complain About British Airways
I recieved this error when trying to sign up for coinbase and transfer my uBTC there:

You don't have that much - please visit the Buy/Sell page to add more funds to your account..

Any Suggestions?
Plant-based version of Hacker News
Why should it be free software? What gives you a reason to feel that level of entitlement?
Sigh. I've got nothing against thinking big, but this is not the kind of investment Japan needs right now. BIG money, for only an incremental improvement. (The public transport infrastructure is already very good.)

If the boys in the ministry really wanted to boost Japan, they'd be investing in renewable energy, not playing with train sets. But there are too many vested interests...
As far as I can tell, there's no way to claim the remaining bitcoins at the end of this without creating a new coinbase account, even if you already have one.

Given that coinbase pays for referrals, that makes sense, but it nonetheless seems tacky.
"It has its own silent, automatic update mechanism that the user has no control over. In fact, most of the time the user never even knows an update has happened."

Great. So, if it was difficult to trust your phone/tablet/tv before it is now impossible. I'm looking more forward to Ubuntu and FirefoxOS than ever before - I want to be able to control what software runs on my devices!
Webcron Server Monitoring & Online Cron
Before I figured out it was garbage, I bought one of the USB<->SATA+IDE dongle things I used at ex-work for use at home:

USB to ATA/ATAPI Bridge:

Product ID: 0x2338
Vendor ID: 0x152d (JMicron Technology Corp.)
Version: 1.00
Serial Number: 152D203380B6
Speed: Up to 480 Mb/sec
Manufacturer: JMicron
Location ID: 0x24112000 / 6
Current Available (mA): 500
Current Required (mA): 2
Like most things open source is a continuum of subtle differences rather than a category.

In my opinion the following software is much more open than Android:

Linux, Apache, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, GCC, clang, and generally most open source products developed by the community.

In my opinion the following software is less open than Android:
C#, OSX, iOS, and generally most software developed by major corporations.

The real keys are that your Android device is locked down, fixing it voids your warranty, and development does not take place in the open, rather every few months a major patch is released and there is no way for the community to contribute to the project in any meaningful way.
Cool guy, is an "open-source advocate" but removes PureCSS's copyright notice: https://github.com/yui/pure/blob/master/LICENSE.md
You can have your hypermedia on api.<yourdomain> and then your AngularJS or whatever on app.<yourdomain>, consuming your api. Then all you need to do is serve HTML from your api when the User-agent accepts html (bonus points: set a canonical meta tag pointing to your foshizzle app so you don't lose SEO).

Best of both worlds.

PS: All this crazy talk stems from the fact Javascript created an apartheid on the web. We need to make a clear distinction between the HTTP-web and the Javascript-enabled-web. The fact the same software (browser) serves this dual purpose adds to the confusion and allows bad architecture decisions, interwinding content and rich interfaces inside the same hypertext mudball.
Isn't GooglePlayServices by definition app level? My understanding is it runs in app space. Any other developer could accomplish the same thing.
Hi, just curious, any reason this is using Arch as a base instead of a Debian base? I understand if you want to target specifically the RPi first but I think that using Debian will make it easier to port to other arches in the future (specifically armhf for the BBB and other more modern CPUs.)

I saw this as well https://bbs.arkos.io/t/why-arch-linux-why-not-raspian/43 but still think you should consider moving over... :P

Anyways, very cool project!
Curious to the reasons you didn't go with the iMac? Did you need a ton of cores, didn't want to deal with external disks...?
How is Play going to update the kernel without the OEM's involvement?

Some software improvements and new libraries will be available, and that's a plus for users. But this is still a far distance from REAL OS updates. I'd worry this disincentives OEMs to do real updates.
I did this exercise about 2 years ago.

The price difference between a decked out mid-2011 iMac (with a DIY RAM upgrade) and a custom-built machine via NewEgg was ~$200 ... the difference largely being that with ordering from NewEgg I wouldn't pay sales tax. The difference with the DIY was I had a desktop video card instead of the mobile 6970M w/ 2GB of texture memory.

The other difference is I had separate speakers, webcam, more cabling, and a large physical box.

Although folks will fault the current iMac on storage expansion, don't rule out Thunderbolt. Yes, it's expensive, but being able to plug in a RAID array only loses points because the enclosure manufacturers always include disks to pad their margin. However, at least you can always plug that array into your next computer a few years down the line.
DAISY: Dynamic Compilation for 100% Architectural Compatibility
Nope, guess I'm just that smart. ;)

But seriously, everyone comes to tech forums with different levels of ability, experience, understanding, and skill in getting these things across. Geeks are especially prone to under-valuing their talents as most of us are introverts, and tend to self-judge quite harshly.

The best life lesson I've had on this problem (which I've definitely struggled with) was from a very intelligent guy, who came to work at the same company as me when we were both quite new. I was crossing over from my field to a new field which he was very experienced in, and he was doing the same (crossing over into my old field). We naturally connected, and he was completely unconcerned about asking me questions which a person in his new position should have had down in muscle memory by that stage. He didn't care though - he accepted that he didn't know them, and did his best to learn as quickly as possible.

The takeaway: don't tie your self-esteem to your level of knowledge in any particular area. It's definitely the easy path, but it's also a precarious ledge once you're 'there', especially in the tech field. Just accept that your value lies in being able to reason through things, and that you'll always be less knowledgeable about something than someone else (but also conversely, quite likely to be more knowledgeable about something, however esoteric or seemingly useless).

In short, have fun and don't sweat it. Most people are in the same boat. :)
"So you're interviewing at Google and lunch time comes around. Food is free so you eat way too much, especially carbs. Your post-lunch interview is a disaster since you have trouble focusing due to lethargy. True story."

Ha... I might have chosen the wrong cafeteria, but to me the food was a disappointment during my Google interview. The veggies were way too hard, I didn't like tacos, some of the meat looked indecipherable, and I was fumbling as I wondered whether there was a line, or whether I was looking stupid. I kinda wished there was NO free lunch.
Autowork in the 1930s and beyond may have been semi-skilled, but before widespread automation, it was a craft, and cars were expensive. This de-skilling has always been happening in software. Back in the 80s, word processors were written in assembly. Today, they can be written in JavaScript.
but I dread any warranty issues (and therefore dealing with > 6 manufacturers)... / here in Australia

In Australia, your warranty is with the entity you bought from. If they supplied you faulty parts, it is their responsibility to deal with the manufacturers. Buy everything from the one place, and the warranty is all with that one place.

You can, of course, try your direct warranty with the manufacturer, but you won't have the benefit of supplier channels. Similarly, dealing with a parts store is a bit more random than the usual "we're so big that we'll just replace the part" story you often get from Apple or Dell.
While, you're right, it is minimalistic, Einstein's Statistical Ensemble Interpretation is an incomplete theory. It doesn't tell you which possible future you'll end up in. And if you try to patch the theory by saying there's some deeper element of reality that we just haven't found yet that's deciding the outcome of experiments, then the violation of the Bell Inequalities renders that whole line of thinking moot. If, instead, you try to patch it the other way and say that everything in the ensemble is real, then you've just reinvented Many Worlds by a different name.

I'm unclear why you're bringing up Hitach's experiment and what you think it shows. Maybe you could elaborate? My understanding is that the raison d'être of the experiment is to show that multiple particles are not necessary for quantum interference to occur, and that a single particle is perfectly capable of destructively interfering with itself. This is pretty direct evidence for superposition, because you're getting measurable effects from the superposition. And if anything, it's evidence against the Ensemble Interpretation.

Also, quantum computers are real and here today. Any successful theory of physics must explain how 15 was factored using Shor's Algorithm. (http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0112176)
America's Orchestras are in Crisis
Well the resale argument doesn't really apply to a hackintosh - I wouldn't need to sell it - not at least in 5 years or so - I can just keep upgrading. And a 5 yr old iMac will fetch you roughly $200 from Gazelle.

About time - I suspect more than a handful of people will find spending a day here and there worthwhile if it saves them $400 + $169. (Also if in best case Apple keeps your iMac for 2-3 days in repair - that's time lost as well. You could do the Hackintosh repair faster yourself.)

The OS upgrades however - yeah they will be a pain. I can see that as a significant deterrent.
This article brings to mind the story of Harrison Bergeron, a short story set in a dystopian future US that attempts to remove all possible sources of inequality.

http://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/harrison.html
This would be a side-effect of using a CSS minifier, not an intentional act against Pure.
... the browser transformed from being an awesome interactive document viewer into being the world’s most advanced, widely-distributed application runtime.

If only that were actually true. In reality, we're designing the interfaces for these applications using a presentation language made basically for desktop publishing. For interactivity, we essentially have one more or less shite language (http://bonsaiden.github.io/JavaScript-Garden/) to choose from. We're still arguing over the very basics on whether we should use callbacks, promises, generators, etc. for simple sequential operations. Hell, we're still trying to figure out how to get a reasonable call stack record to debug when working with any of these options. And God help you if you want to use a modern language that compiles to Javascript and have your debugger too.

But to address the author's original point, I think progressive enhancement is alive and well. While the majority of browsing is done on the desktop, I just think it makes way more sense to think first about presenting your basic content and then enhancing it than how you're going to strip out all the bells and whistles to get your design across on less capable platforms. In the long run, the former will probably save you more time and QA effort. It's just more natural to think about using capabilities when present then working around their absence.

And no one says your baseline should to a screen reader for all possible web apps. Just pick a the baseline that makes sense for what your doing, and enhance from there. At some point, it may make more sense to fork your platform and have separate implementations for different pieces of your interface. It doesn't have to be one monolithic project that magically enhances from mobile phone screen reader all the way up to VR cave.
You still have to trust SSL, in the case of MEGA, COMODO is their CA, and they appear to use 128bit RC4.

Of course, if you've not cleaned your trusted certificates, someone like CNic can just MTIM you.
"It hasn't required a programmer to build a website in many years now - HTML and CSS were declarative to begin with. It's only with the advent of CMS's - which are definitely NOT all automated (i.e. Joomla or WordPress) - that programmers entered the picture."

Well, first off, you're just shifting the goalposts and redefining what it means to "program" to suit your needs: it's inconvenient for your argument that there's now software that does what programmers used to do, so you just call those things something else.

But it doesn't matter, because you can't run from the core of the argument: it isn't limited to static HTML & CSS. Want web forms, but don't know how to write software or use databases? There's Wufoo, and dozens of others. Want to send email? Mailgun. Mailchimp. Want to accept payments? Paypal, Stripe. Want to show an interactive map with stuff on it? Google maps has you covered. Want to implement search on your website, but don't know anything about search? Swiftype will do that. So will Google site search. Need a sophisticated customer analytics system. OK. That'll be one line of javascript, please.

And what's more: it's only a matter of time before someone rolls all of these tools together into a pointy clicky interface that eliminates the token integration work (assuming they haven't already). There's no part of your argument that is safe from the trends that have been driving our industry.

"The true complexity of these startups lies in their server software - how to optimize at scale and so on."

True, but like I said before: almost nobody needs that. There's always going to be the need for complex software...it's just not clear how many people will be asking for it.
> In Australia, your warranty is with the entity you bought from. If they supplied you faulty parts, it is their responsibility to deal with the manufacturers. Buy everything from the one place, and the warranty is all with that one place.

This is true, and I'm aware of this; however the store still has to deal with the manufacturer, and they aren't as bound to timeframes/timelines as the store is. Waiting 3-4+ weeks for a replacement part isn't unheard of, and although the store might have to offer you a "like" replacement, that may not be the same/compatible.
The author should really look at Rob Pike's talk "Concurrency Is Not Parallelism"

http://vimeo.com/49718712
While they are the same class of attacks they are fundamentally different in the level of complexity required.

There's no 20 line piece of code that any user can run to get your TrueCrypt key, you're looking at an OS exploit to get kernel access, plus the code to find the key, and/or freezing the computer in liquid nitrogen and then reading the contents of memory directly.
> You would at least need the $169 AppleCare to allow for the possibility of free repairs on the iMac for 3 years

Kind of off topic, But in Australia the AppleCare is kind of a moot point as consumer protection laws mean Apple provides free repairs, replacements or refunds for something like two years.

From what I've heard it's similar in EU and China (and I believe Mexico, but I'm not sure where I've heard that from).
And how would you ensure that the passphrase isn't transmitted upstream by a modified js-client?
What if the problems to solve are becoming easier to solve, because we're more plugged-in into an infrastructure of information? That eliminates work.

Standards are a good example. We love them, but, in a way, they eliminate the creation of middleware jobs that transform the data from one format to another.
Sure android was a great step forward from ios, but after using it for a couple years I can't wait for a real linux phone and android to be a distant memory. The reason Google chose to back android instead of porting a real linux distro to mobile is because they wanted a market to sell programs, not an OS that already has 1000s of top quality open source programs already available. Google wanted an OS where you don't even get a file manager so people can be conned into paying for even the simplest features.
Even if you think your developers are supermen who can work all the time, (personally, I believe that is true in the short term, false in the long term.) in this market, why would a good developer stay with you, when they can get more reasonable treatment (often for the same total salary) elsewhere?

the "for the same total salary" bit is interesting. Most of the long-hours software jobs I've seen are salary gigs. Not only no overtime pay, but no extra hourly pay at all. Why would someone stay with an abusive boss when there are plenty of other jobs (with, in fact, a much higher hourly rate?)

My other observation is that the more you increase pressure to keep people at work, the more personal business is conducted at work. And the more the good people in the group negotiate their way out of the group (either to other parts of the organization, or to other organizations entirely.)
Flexible attributes, in which schemaless and schemaful coexist peacefully
Are you sure this is correct? How is this even possible when you can install Play Services on Android versions before Play Services was even conceived. How can you do this on custom AOSP builds?

Play Services must be playing by the same rules as everyone else or it just wouldn't work on as many devices as it does.
Awww. Without formats like BMP, ICO and friends, there are so many fewer libraries to exploit buffer overflows in!
> In Australia, your warranty is with the entity you bought from. If they supplied you faulty parts, it is their responsibility to deal with the manufacturers. Buy everything from the one place, and the warranty is all with that one place

From what I understand, the law is actually pretty vague about this one. In the advice the ACCC gives to businesses, it actually puts responsibility on both the retailer and the manufacturer.

Apple has taken this and will follow the same guidelines for their products regardless of whether you purchased it from Apple or not.
Seems ridiculous, if not snobby that the author will only run OS X.