skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Well, they aren't, especially compared to Americans as he points out. In fact, can we name any big ones that don't make hardware? I can't think of any off the top of my head, especially web site companies, but feel free to jog my memory.

His comment is also highly qualified, "a little bit absurd". And people not of the right are e.g. pointing out CGI proper recently getting fired by a province? for botching a contract.

And while I've been railing about the management problems above them, we've been hearing about a lot of issues at their level, the most recent here from one of our members: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6583778

This is not my field of expertise (I'm a back end guy and last worked at this level in 1997), but ... I don't think I've heard anything good, and I've heard a lot of things that seem to be inexcusable. Possibly process issues, going into production without testing, but that should be limited to CGI Federal, not the misbegotten integrator, HHS's CMMS. Well, except for the "we're not going to test this until the week before launch" minor detail....

Disclaimer: I worked for a short while for a part of AMS that didn't get bought by CGI. But they did seem to be above average in competence as Beltway Bandits go.
Great to see the weather in the title bar of my xterm, I often don't have the strength to look out the window.
Why Google Controlling and Standardizing Android Is Great News for End-Users
Why not offer to make a $25 donation in their name? Seems non-committal yet interesting.
>isn't even a warning

This is actually enforced [in some cases] as a compile-time error. (BTW the `gc` family of Go compilers don't have warnings.)

The two errors in particular that help trap this are:

1. All declared variables must be used.

2. All return values must be assigned to a variable.
(Go allows for multiple return values from a function.)

---

Idiomatically one would store [one or more] return values from a function with a short-form declaration (`:=`) which declares and assigns the LHS to the RHS.

`a,err := someFunc()` where `someFunc()` returns `(SomeType, error)` declares and assigns `a int` and `err error`.

If you declare `a,err := someFunc()` and do not use `a` or `err` elsewhere in scope, your program simply won't compile.

The only way to squelch that error is to either use the variables OR you can use a `_` on the LHS. (Which makes an "assignment" to a blank identifier, e.g: discards the value.)

---

An example of where this _wouldn't_ be enforced by the compiler is if you've declared [and used] `err` elsewhere in the scope and you are _reusing_ the identifier.

For e.g: if you declared, assigned, used, and reassigned `err`. The compiler won't force you to use it _after_ the second assignment, so that second assignment could go untrapped with no complains from the compiler.
It's hard to have thoughts on the content, as it's basically a novela of random things tangentially relating to self-imposed isolation. I would be here all day.
Tulip: Async I/O for Python 3
I don't use Postgres, but on their website they tell you that 9.2 is the default on Ubuntu, and how to downoad other versions. Trolling? Or is there a real issue here?

http://www.postgresql.org/download/linux/ubuntu/

It's hard to argue that secure boot, on which your machine comes with keys installed by Microsoft (I don't trust them) and requires the user to know how to a: install another set of keys to run Ubuntu (or b: disable the feature entirely and forsake bootloader signing)... should be blessed

... but that users installing a piece of software as complex as a database server, on a system where packages are cryptographically signed, can't be arsed to follow the instructions on this page provided by the vendor, that was the first search result on Google, to install the vendor key and to download vendor packages from the vendor's own PPA repos.
The author obviously does not live in California. I rarely check the weather since I know that it will be more or less the same as yesterday , or the day before, or the day before that...
I would recommend trying to reach out to them on Twitter (if they use it). Also take a look at Noah's email - https://gist.github.com/johnmurch/7090007 and see if you can do some background/pitch for the cold email.

Also helps if you find someone in common and have them do the intro :)
Nate Silver as well comes to mind.
So, You Want To Quit Your Job? (Why You Should)
One thing that should be emphasized for anyone who has not use FBA before: The cost of shipping something to an amazon warehouse is REALLY cheap if you use their provided shipping service. I would say it's about 1/3 of the actual cost of shipping it yourself.
That example is not comparable. The issue is not whether something is expressible. All 32-bit and 64-bit arithmetic operations are expressible in both C and Java (although I'd argue that Java makes it easier to know which you're getting). The issue is just what the default should be, and whether introducing temporaries should change the value of an expression. This is impossible to measure objectively, because we're talking formally about the exact same set of operations, just about which default is more intuitive/convenient/leading to fewer bugs/etc.
That was precisely my reaction when reading the article as published in Wired recently. It has some good ideas for increasing privacy. Too bad they are made to turn on an extremely weak claim.
Minimalist - Gesture Based Reminders for iOS
These paid editing services are obviously lousy and harmful to Wikipedia and it's great that they've gone.

How well did average wikipedians deal with the editors and their clients? Was anyone turned into a useful editor? Or were more people left frustrated and baffled by the WP process?
I am right here? Where did you go? We have to submit our application soon! :)
BBM for Android and iPhone is here
So why not add them to a next Java version?
While you don't use the battery for code you don't execute, when your code is finely tuned to a single machine (as in CPU + auxiliary chips) architecture rather than able to run on a wider choice of hardware, you may be able to squeeze some extra juice from your battery.
> - filter out (gently fire) the ones that aren't as good

God I would hate this. I'd rather be told that my work sucks, and shown examples of better work, so that I could actually improve and not just wonder if I was let go for some arbitrary reason. If I disagree with you BFD, life goes on, but I'd at least like to know if it was related to my output or not.
I think the distinction Bluedevil is trying to make is you're going into this SaaS app with no intention of it being hugely profitable or successful. You're scratching an itch and if other people decide to pay you to help scratch their itch as well, then that's just a sweet bonus.

In contrast, a business would be going in with the intention of the service/app being successful (profitable or popular). Maybe hobby isn't the best way to describe it, but I agree your way of looking at things is closer to a hobby then a business.
Please provide a source for your "fact" that Google "gave NSA direct access to their systems"

As opposed to the multiple vehement denials of that "fact" from Google's executive officers (see David Drummond's interview in The Guardian, for example)
Pick pretty much any private enterprise and you'd have a winner.

Amazon is a good example. If someone in France buys a "making bombs for dummies" book and then logs on a month after buying that book on the US site, guess what pops up? A subtle reminder like, "Here's some recommendations from our Terrorism for Dummies" series you might be interested in." And as far as I can remember, it always been like that.

However, If I were a terrorist and tried to cross the border near say Emerson North Dakota and they stopped me crossing, I could simply drive over to hwy 59 about 60 miles to the East and try again and their computers would have no idea I was just stopped from entering within the last hour.

This is the difference between Public companies and things the Government does. Government NEVER EVER gets it right. How about that huge project called the Office of Homeland Security? Even 10 years later, we still have agencies who can't easily share information they have in their databases. Even though this was the primary reason the office was even created in the first place.
It's an Office Space joke.
They've been told not to edit wikipedia. They're continuing to edit wikipedia.

That seems pretty clearly like accessing a computer system without the owner's permission, which feels like it should be a standard bit of law.
Silicon Valley, spy agencies and software sovereignty
After I moved out of LA, I realized there is a thing called weather forecast.
If you crunch the numbers, for more than two seconds, this is what the (de-fragmented) data show:

STEM = 46%

Politics& Beuracracy = 37%

Arts = 14%

This seems intuitively correct, but YMMV.
Oh, come on, putting a 20 MB binary somewhere is cheap and easy.

I think developers don't put APKs anywhere else because they think they won't have an audience for those anyway. But it's a pity anyway. For example Humble Bundle packs with Android games were quite successful and the distribution method was through download links.
I have very similar experience creating a few microwebsites making $200-300 a month with no intervention what gives extreme ROI (2-3 days of initial work). These are mainly spin-offs - projects we have coded in spare time - from our Ruby on Rails and Java software house http://codedose.com

<shameless plug> If you want to build your MVP or extend your existing development team with reliable programmers thinking about scalable design, SEO and A/B testing from the very beginning we are the guys the call. </shameless plug>
Perhaps a better question is why a reboot is needed in so many circumstances. Windows users have been trained to accept reboots as normal over many, many years. We used to need to reboot after every single application install. Very few OS pieces should actually require a full reboot instead of merely restarting a process or two.
Do they have heated garages for my car? :-)
Way back when, I did a small study (4 cyclists, 5 reps). The question: Could the rider tell which was heavier between a water bottle filled with lead shot, and one with glass beads. (2.5kg vs ~ 1kg).

1 rider managed to get more than half right. And he was a frame builder riding his own bike.
OP was clearly talking about hiring people on odesk where different rules apply.

On odesk you hire people for projects of limited time.

He didn't mean that you don't pay the people you've hired if they do the work they promised - that will get you kicked out of odesk really quickly.

What he does mean by "gentle fire" is "don't hire them again for more work".

And that's how it's supposed to work: odesk freelancers have no right to expect being hired by you for second job if they didn't perform to your satisfaction on their first job, for which they were paid the amount they agreed to be paid (just to make this clear).
Here's a Snowden video in which he explains it (scroll to the bottom of the article): http://politiken.dk/udland/ECE2108923/usas-spioner-overvaage...
Thanks for linking to that. I read it before the anon comment about the kernel so it was nice to catch up.
This is great advice - and similar to the one we got from another YC alum:

"My advice is 3 points to communicate in your application.
1. You have revenue or a plan to make it
2. You and your co-founders are a solid team
3. You will pursue this even without getting an investment"
Are you still going to use your product after the SaaS version is shut down?
"just use doubles"

Okay, and all of the data that I send off to my GPU for either computation or rendering - I should just accept the huge performance hit I get when using double on them?

Or I am up against the cache limits - I should just make everything double and accept that my code now thrashes as the CPU's cache misses?

Sorry, that probably comes off as antagonistic. But this is not a 'just do X' situation. Those of us that do heavy computation tend to think about this a lot, if it was as trivial/cost-free as changing float to double we would have done that already.
My colleagues built http://hat.jit.su/ also using AngularJS. Nice to see another one of these show up.
A Composition Book (the black and white marbled cover notebooks). I go back occasionally and put stars in the margins for ideas that don't seem stupid with a little distance.
What can I do (I'm 25) to get him to take this thing seriously.

I struggled with this with both my parents (one a smoker, one obese). I talked to both until it became a strain on our relationship (both were younger than yours is now though - they were maybe 48ish when I was 25). In the end, my mom just flat out told me that she knew it would kill her but that her parents died young and that's just okay with her. How do you respond to that? This is an intelligent woman - a professional DBA for 10+ years and an IT manager for another 15) - yet she is superstitious without cause ("My parents died early so that must mean I will too no matter what I do").

In the end I opted to just live and let live - no more preaching, no more "Are you kidding? You can't eat that! You're already 280 pounds!". I don't know what else I could do - I can't make them do the right thing and they know the "right thing" but willfully ignore it. It's frustrating, sure, but I enjoy the time I have with them. I ultimately chalked it up to "personal weakness" - my dad would sabotage his diets and avoid actual health knowledge in favor of fad diets, and my mom just didn't want to work that hard to quit smoking.

Bottom line: he made the life choices of the past 20+ years with full knowledge of what might/will happen.
See also: Kim Dotcom raids, GCSB amendment bill.
No, I switched to greener pastures[1] a long time ago.

[1]: https://www.petekeen.net/git-backed-personal-markdown-wiki
I started a thread where I was hoping to get a discussion of DDOS mitigation techniques, tools, and providers. Something that should be useful and highly relevant to web-based small business owners. It's here if anyone's interested -- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6587640
BuildZoom is looking for a hustler to help with sales, support, ops
We're growing fast and looking for a unique individual to be on the front line of our remodeling marketplace. In this role, you'll be working directly with expert contractors and the homeowners looking to hire them - educating users and making deals happen.

We're looking for someone who has the social skills to connect with users from all walks of life and the analytical ability to quantify and systematize their efforts.

The perfect candidate will be resourceful, independent and willing to run through a brick wall to make sure the job gets done. Their success will be based on how they impact user satisfaction, growth and revenue.

We're a small, dev-heavy team (6 in SF), located in a great office on Mission in SoMa. To be a good cultural fit, you'll need to be sharp, social and a workaholic.

If you're interested in learning more, please write to us at jobs@buildzoom.com and let us know why you're the person we've been looking for.

We like to hear anecdotes of the awesome things you've done and the data to substantiate how awesome they have been.
Web Configurator
http://www.biblestudytools.com/proverbs/16-33-compare.html

The dice are cast into the lap; all decisions are from the LORD.
For comparison's sake, I recently rented a 10x10x10 ft. storage unit for $90/mo. or $0.09 per cubic foot per month.
WARNING: CONTAINS AUTOPLAY SOUND.
If you are looking for an accessible book on Measure Theory, I like "Lebesgue Integration on Euclidean Space" by Frank Jones. A good undergraduate level textbook, problems integrated into the text instead of at the end of the chapter. I wish I hadn't given my copy away now.

For number theory I liked "Number Theory and its History" by Oystein Ore. Best part is it is cheap. Good intro to number theory, it was accessible to me in high school (I was advanced, but no genius) and I learned things that I never even encountered in college as a math major.
Communication/journalism (CIP 9)	2.5
Psychology (CIP 42)	4.1
Public administration and social services(CIP 44)	1.5
Social sciences (CIP 45)	20.6
Area and ethnic studies (CIP 5)	2.5
Politics & Bueracracy	31.2

Biological / Life Sciences (CIP 26)	7.1
Computer and information sciences (CIP 11)	5
Engineering (CIP 14)	15.1
Engineering technologies (CIP 15)	3.7
Mathematics and statistics(CIP 27)	3.3
Physical sciences (CIP 40)	4.7
STEM	38.9

Visual and performing arts (CIP 50)	2.6
History (CIP 54)	3.2
Liberal arts/general studies (CIP 24)	0.1
English (CIP 23)	3.6
Foreign languages and literatures (CIP 16)	3
Philosophy, religion, theology (CIP 38)	1.7
Arts	14.2

+Pro-rata on interdisciplinary (16%)
Lehigh University to offer semester-length "invention incubator"
Was expecting it to be available on my Palm Pre...
The Android app is atrocious. I guess I didn't expect much more out of Blackberry.
But surely, an adult who makes a conscious decision to enter the CS/IT field knows about the different domains in a much more real sense. Why would a woman not choose a CS career path in that case? She would know the difference between a technically challenging programmer position vs a support desk job.
But with Chuck Norris [1] on the board, how bad can it be?

[1] https://www.whitehatsec.com/abt/board.html
The 50+ year old CFO looks strangely out of place next to the 20/30 something founders.
That's fair but I believe these can be accounted by lower than the difference of monthly revenues.
Of course, you get access to a much larger group of potential buyers than a storage unit. ;)
I don't see why that warrants taking the github repo down.
In your face!
When I do front-end web code, I get 300-500 lines of code a day on a day when I sit back and think to myself: “Wow I really hit that hard today”, and other days where I have to prep graphics, correspond with co-workers, or produce mockups I end up writing considerably less code.

I am aware that writing templates, or using LESS or SCSS can let you generate more lines in output from a much smaller input, but they can't be counting the final output as what will have to be re-written.

I'm not mathematician, but let's say 500 lines of usable code is a good day, that means for this project that would require one million days worth of 'hitting it hard' and not doing any graphics work, correspondence, or any extraneous tasks - JUST code writing.

The timeline for this project was what, 3 years? So in order for 1 million human-days of writing code to take place in 3 years (1095 days), that would require what, 913 monkeys bashing away at keyboards non-stop for 8 hours a day? I mean it is feasible, but that's a gargantuan undertaking and I can't see how something so large could possibly be designed to run an application with so few features.
I love the idea and sentiment. The pale font of the page's text, less so.
Here is a video discussing the process, the actually gets very emotional talking about it. http://vimeo.com/28420510
Competition Not Found: The Rise And Inevitable Fall Of Reddit
Chrome is mad that the ssl certificate is issued to *.herokuapp.com and not magicshop.io hence demo doesn't work for me.
If this is a joke, it's a pretty good joke.
I wonder how diligently updates will be handled. Do the authors have access to all the restricted/confidential security chromium bug reports, and will they be able to push out updated binaries the same second chrome does? Otherwise this could quickly end up leaving users visibly exposed to otherwise-well-known future vulns.
What I mean is that if you want to do 64-bit math on 32-bit values, convert them to 64-bit first. (This matches what the compiler frontend is inserting into the IR and assembly anyway.) Not "use 64 bit everywhere".
I would also find it useful to just run the planning poker session without having to enter any stories. We are often looking directly at our JIRA board and don't need to fill in any information on a planning poker site.
> 3. You will pursue this even without getting an investment"

Makes all the difference in the world. If you're doing a startup contingent on getting into YC, its worth re-thinking. YC helps, but startups are still hard regardless.
How will Google determine which opinions to protect?

As wonderful as Project Shield sounds, there is a fundamental risk of it being undemocratic.
Glenn Greenwald et al release more PRISM slides
In my book If you don't enjoy doing it not a hobby. If you care about ROI, and profit it is a business.

For me weather something is a business or a hobby has more to do with outlook than anything else. A few lucky people have insanely profitable, and scalable hobbies with 1000s of employees, and plenty of kids are struggling to keep their lawn mowing biz afloat so they can afford a new video game.

Over the years I've been told that company I founded 8 years ago, and has been my and several other peoples's day job ever since, is a hobby for many reasons, including not enough W2 employees, revenue and so on. Which, even though these things were said to prop up the speakers egos, made me think on the topic - and this is what I've come up with.

---

edit: totally rewritten
How Keen IO Uses Storm
Lessons Learned building a Two-sided Marketplace in 12 months
> There doesn't' appear to be any direct revenue gain from this, maybe this is more of a mafia protection kinda thing (as in protecting its interests, the websites hosting its ads).

What? These websites are unlikely to be hosting their ads ("election sites" is one of the examples ffs). It's free while they're beta testing it with humanitarian/similar websites, it may be a driver for people to pay for the Page Speed service in the future when they roll it out to more people although they say they'd like to keep it free for non-profits.

All of which you'd know if you'd read the site rather than making ludicrous comparisons to the mafia.
One thing mentioned about the cables: Do you have to create entries online under your FBA account for every item you ship, or can they figure that out for you? I have tons of cables and other things I'd like to sell that is in good condition, but me spending hours upon hours looking up every model of cable / cheap item I have isn't worth my time.
A few years ago this would have been a killer app. Now I don't know a single person that owns a Blackberry (outside of a few that have them as work phones - and so, I won't BBM them)
Good Habits
I believe the ruse is that the kid was expecting a normal visit to a parent's friend, not having a stranger poke holes in you with strange instruments.
The problem is users like the presentation of a spreadsheet. So far, there seems to have been no evidence of this changing.

My question is why do they like it? My assertion would be because it is visual in how they want it. They are usually less interested in the complicated "how do I get this value" than they are "I want a value to be here." That is, even if it is wrong, they are more interested in seeing the data laid out in a way they specify than they are coming up with a data flow analysis of what they did.

And, really, I'm not sure this is that surprising. Having a tool show you how all of the data is linked together certainly can make for a good understanding of how the data was calculated. May even help fix mistakes. However, the table of data view of the spreadsheet is ultimately what you want. Just with no mistakes.
You don't count the guys of Storage Wars as potential buyers?