skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The only valuable insights are the ones that people have used in real life. There is almost no value in listening to the blatherings of someone who makes sweeping generalizations, speaks in vague terms, and doesn't back up their assertions with any kind of data. It's the worst kind of truthiness, and HN would be much better off avoiding this kind of opinion piece.

"Personally I don’t know anything about Nick, but I do know that $30 million is a sh*tload of money to pay for a 17-year-old as an acqui-hire."

If you don't know anything, then STFU.

If you're going to criticize something as broad as "the lean startup movement" and you want to achieve anything more than FUD, then be prepared to be careful with your arguments. Have examples. Have data. Honestly, I don't know much about this "movement" but if this article is the best criticism people can muster, then I suspect it's actually quite good.
> 2)

That's basically how it is now.

> They need to spend more time with their constituents

That's what campaigning is, and they do it.
> The Legislative branch's ONLY JOB is to make laws.

I don't think that's quite right. Its job is to change the laws. That can mean adding laws, repealing laws, updating existing laws in the light of changing circumstances, etc. And "changing the laws" includes one-off things that do something once and don't leave much enduring cruft behind, like the Hurricane Sandy relief bill.

There's no reason in principle why they couldn't do their job while keeping the total amount of law constant or even reducing it. If in practice they do spend almost all their time (when not gridlocked) making new laws without trimming the resulting bloat, the problem isn't simply that their job requires them to do that.
I am curious about: "That's roughly the same level of hypocrisy as a government-fan shopping at Walmart."

I try not to engage in political discussions on HN so please do not interpret my question as me challenging your point. I am merely interested in what you find hypocritical in the Wal-Mart shopping example.
It's frustrating that someone with such poor critical thinking skills can become so rich.

Anyone with even mediocre critical thinking abilities and a general knowledge of markets would understand that the reason the stock market went up during the shutdown is because investors know the government will be back. This understanding and expectation is obviously priced into the market. If they are implying that the stock market would remain resilient if the federal government disappeared overnight never to return, they are quite simply idiots.

The #1 reason the US and other western nations are able to attract capital and have sophisticated economies is because of their predictable, reasonable legal systems and regulatory environments. Capital commands extremely high rates of return in risky legal frameworks, when an investor doesn't know whether they will be hit up for a bribe or seized by a populist government, they are obviously going to demand much more. A well-developed legal system and the power of the government to enforce laws and judgments is the reason the US is a "safe haven."
Hmm, surprising. Could have sworn you had at least some reasonable protections that you could sue if the owner knew of problems but failed to disclose them.
Ruby on Rails 3.2.15 has been released
an illustrated e-book. I would pay to see how an apartment houses 105 GPU
To a client that's what building a website is. Yes you are literally building their product for them but to them it's just a website.
How does this prove that "the SEC has no transparency"? The SEC had a credible basis for bringing a civil case, but ultimately couldn't meet its burden of proof. That's not "bullying."
Political theatre. New guys will be even worse, and can stall investigations pretending not to know what is happening hoping the calls for inquiry disappear
Seventeenth-century crowd funding
If you want to see a Saturn V, this is the place:

http://rocketcenter.com/mu/exhibits

And it is nowhere near the space nerdiest item on display. Von Braun lived in Huntsville, and Redstone Arsenal is where lots of the grunt work was done to put men on the moon.
The quick release in the video and the photos is used only for demonstrational purposes in the prototype phase. The final product will come with anti-theft screws that can only be used with a custom made wrench.

Of course the features of locking the motor and tracking the Smart Wheel via GPS are still helpfull in case someone still decides to steal it.
Where's "here"? I constantly get emails from recruiters looking for Python devs.

(I'm in the SF area, but a lot of the ads I see are for New York and parts of the Midwest.)
Hmm, the author seems to imply the idea is wrong or dangerous, then the article ends. Not sure what to think.
How to dance without sound Lol
Extreme position?

Given that so much software requires installing the JVM, or CLR/Mono run-time, or widget toolkit, or even is specific to an operating system, is it really that much to ask that users install a certain browser which literally runs on any OS, is free and open-source, and can be installed in seconds/minutes?

Why do we rail against people for using the wrong OS, make people dual-boot and run virtual machines, yet installing a different browser is completely unacceptable?

No one minds that so many apps are iOS/OSX/Android/Windows exclusive, but when web-apps don't run on IE it's a problem...
Wouldn't a fan of "big government" want to shop at Walmart, in order to further promulgate the necessity of welfare addiction to the working classes?
Of course you gain, since that energy would otherwise be wasted as heat.
Many bikes don't have any suspension springs. What is your point?
Perhaps I'm not your target audience but I would precisely avoid your website because of the poor, clearly bootstrapped, design.

Other than that I completely agree with you that it's easier now more than ever to get a site up and running. Design however takes more thought than throwing some existing bootstrap styles on there.
You might have a point if you want to draw attention to the fact that $150k in San Fran is equivalent to $80k in other areas, but bringing up inflation (at a time when inflation is stable and relatively low) makes you sound like a goofball.
It's not a victimless act, but that doesn't mean it should be criminal. I'm of the opinion that most "financial crimes" are on pretty questionable footing and should just be civil suits. Of course this was a civil suit so I don't see the big deal.
Totally disagree! It's an amazing time to be in the industry. Even though we have to deal with non-interoperability and lack of consistent formats, at least the data is now electronic. the Industry has also pretty much settled on the HL7 XML format. The EMRs can easily produce this document and most already use it for communicating with outside systems. If the gov is going to say that patients get access to their data electronically, there's no reason why we shouldn't be able to get it under this standard instead of printed on a pdf.
Ask for Nothing and you shall receive.
Also, it doesn't exclude the option of a day job + the $114 you get "for free" once you've set up the farm.
This is one of the most unthought-out posts I've ever seen on HN.

A) Please do some research and determine if in fact you must cede your US citizenship in order to become a Columbian citizen, plenty of countries have dual-citizenship agreements with the United States.

B) "gave up one of the most valuable things anyone could have" -- Please qualify that. What exactly does he get for his American citizenship? Sure he can live here without being hassled for a Visa, but if he's married to an American citizen, then that point is moot. This isn't Sweden where citizenship entitles one to heavily subsidized healthcare/childcare/higher education or Switzerland where citizens might soon be entitled to an unconditional income. The right to a social security number, some paltry Welfare income and the ability to tell your friends that you live in the "land of the free, home of the brave" is not exactly much of a birthright.
Will it be waterproof? ipx7? What about vibrations? The housing for a Di2 battery case are enormous compared to the battery it contains.
There are actually even surprisingly more than one would initially think. In addition to Robozzle and BotLogic, there's LightBot(actually 2 versions), Lego Mindstorms, Daisy the Dinosaur, CargoBot, Move the Turtle, Robot Turtles (board game), and RoboMind (just found this one, looks fascinating) to name just a select few of an ever growing number of similar games. Personally, I hope one day there are more "programming" games with an educational spin than there are first person shooters, but that's just because I'm hooked.
pwnt~ http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=porygon-like+curve
> I think both Nick and his company would have benefited from more time as an independent company to grow into greatness.

This is half-baked reasoning. You can't use success as a rationale for why something's broken. You'd begrudge the Summly team their millions? No one's going to listen to this. Who says Nick's not going to take his cash and build the next Dropbox? It's not like a successful exit means the end of your career. If anything, that's when it really begins.
The only bad thing about modern diets is the lack of moderation and common sense. We have access to more food, and better food than ever before.
He is much more erudite than you give him credit for.

This is a much better instance of him speaking on various affairs, not just on government:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59uTUpO8Dzw
Win a Free WordPress Theme from ThemeFuse
In California, there is a Petition for Factual Innocence/Declaration of Factual Innocence. The judge (not the jury) makes the determination.
"Companies don't make money killing people"

No, they don't make money killing their CUSTOMERS. But they can make a lot of money by not giving a fig about people impacted by their operations.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster

This is why we have regulations, by the way. So when amoral idiots find themselves in a position to do serious harm, there's some external force to compensate (as much as possible) for their lack of suitable ethics and working moral compasses.
historic significance does not matter much. what it is doing now?

it is no wonder that someone who has private transportation, private insurance, private retirement, private everything... does not care about government. he is the embodiement of the capitalistic dream. government for those people is only for taxation. of course they would cheer.

the weird part is the middle class worker with the obama bumper sticker cheering for them. this i will never understand,
Firebase is hiring operations engineers in SF
At Firebase, we're building the first realtime database-as-a-service. Every other database was designed to be downloaded and run on a business's own servers behind a firewall. Firebase is different -- it's a cloud service that's managed directly by the people who make it.

By centralizing operations in the hands of our team, we can provide a superior experience for our developers, increased reliability, and massive efficiencies of scale. Our small team already manages the databases for 10s of thousands of developers.

We need some smart, creative, and disciplined operations engineers to take our infrastructure to the next level. The ideal candidate would have:
(1) a keen attention to detail
(2) a solid working knowledge of Linux
(3) a drive to automate things

This will be a fun job for the right person. We work at serious scale and we have a tight knit team of talented folks. What's more, you'll be handling operations for a product you'll help design and build, rather than simply running someone else's software on your servers. You'll be joining the 24x7 on-call rotation and day to day tasks will align with maximizing the uptime of the Firebase production environment. Switching between the OS, network concerns, and
deployed application details will be common place in this role.

Why should you join Firebase?

First, we're one of the few small companies who are tackling tough computer science problems on a daily basis. We're in the business of handling the hard
technical aspects of real-time data sync so that our customers don't have to. We also work at serious scale. To this end, as part of the ops team you'll be in close contact with making sure everything is running smoothly for our developer-centric customers. You'll get to work on a deployment of physical hardware on the path to our globally-distributed, multi-datacenter operations.

Second, we care a lot about cultivating a great work environment. This is our happy place. We're friendly people, we have a light-weight engineering process,
and we have a sweet 3 story penthouse office in SoMa.

Third, you can have a big impact here. We're a small team (but growing very quickly), and you'll have a big say in the direction of the company. And, since
we're serious about changing the way software is built, you could have a big impact on the way all software is made. We won't stop until the "refresh"
button is a thing of the past.

If you're interested, send us an email at jobs@firebase.com.

You can see more about our open positions here: https://www.firebase.com/jobs.html
One of the best pieces of advice I've ever heard "The client isn't problematic, you're just not charging enough to make it feel worthwhile."
Private Address Forwarding proposal to USPS
The Rise of Niche Online Dating Sites
I've proposed the USPS adopt Private Address Forwarding, and the USPS' comments are in.

tl;dr proposal: Google Voice for postal mail. The USPS assigns you a unique ID, you tell them where to forward that ID, and they can't disclose who it belongs to or where it goes without court process or your permission. You could get mail that's just addressed to "PAF 13JS-00EG-C, United States", and it'd automagically get routed to you. You can also choose to give UPS, FedEx, etc permission to access the forwarding info if you want.

tl;dr benefits: Getting mail while preserving your privacy; never having to update your address w/ everyone when you move (just w/ the USPS); cheaper & easier than PO boxes.

Take a look & tell them (and me) what you think. :-)
Actually, ASIC mining bitcoin is fairly unprofitable at the moment :/ A 60GH/s BFL machine nets 0.11 BTC (about $15/day at current exchange rates) right now.

Bitcoin difficulty has risen MASSIVELY lately.
No public info on pricing implies a strong statement of "if I must ask then I can't afford it". So I won't bother looking at features you're obviously not targeting at most of people here.
Yeah, it kind of blew my mind when I learned this as well.
Exactly, no average person will be questioning the choice of apache over nginx or vice-versa. Nor will they be evaluating choice of hosting provider. The average person probably has no clue what AWS is.

Instead the average person can be expected to google for something along the lines of "free website" or something similar, arrive at wordpress/blogger/tumblr/squarespace/flavour-of-month .com and just create an account.
Why Currency Will Be Digital
It's not because the Internet was started by the DARPA that it's still the DARPA that controls it all. History only matters to some point until it does not matter anymore.
That was really something. Thank you for that.
Lawsuits are filed every day, has there been a ruling that just by serving alcohol they were liable? Or perhaps they are liable due to obvious negligence similar to how a bar can be found liable after a DUI if they over-served someone?

It is interesting that there doesn't seem to be the lawsuit worry or even the worry about "living with the fact that you were involved in an incident during which someone was seriously hurt or lost his or her life" at European companies.
'South Park' won't air as scheduled for the first time because of a power outage
In France they are catching up I think.
The IPython notebook protocol is a pretty good general protocol for remote REPLs. We're planning on making sure that the same essential API works for both the Julia command-line REPL and IJulia (there's some common functionality at the moment, but it could be factored better). I wonder how possible it would be for LightTable to interact smoothly with any IPython kernel.
I was taught Latin, badly, at a British boarding school for, but never mastered it and was 'demoted' to the woodworking class after a year. I also spent my free time in the computer room learning to program on a Commodore Pet (I still remember the number 32768 primarily because it's the start of the video memory page; vital if you're going to poke ascii values into the display page).
In later life I was made to feel ignorant by my inability with Latin, and my ability to speak C,C++,Pascal, Basic and Assembler was largely ignored or derided, even when needed.
I've always found my knowledge of woodworking and programming massively more useful (and therefore valuable) than a decent grasp of a dead language, but my more 'cultured' friends disagreed and condescended.
Now, however, I'm beginning to perceive a level of discomfort amongst my more 'cultured' friends, that while an understanding of Latin is absolutely required for an intellectual life, an understanding of javascript might be needed to. Be interesting to see where this goes.
Ask HN: What happend to Nimbus.IO?
They offered extremely cheap S3-like storage and data transfer, but never launched their private beta. Their website hasn't been updated since 2012 and their Twitter account has been dark since April. Anyone know?
Why software development is different now
> That doesn't sound like a better world. That sounds like a worse one. Governments tend to at least have some interest in keeping their citizens alive, healthy, and happy.

Oh really ? Are you really so naive? I'm sure the people in Syria and Libya are certainly happy about what their government is doing for them. Oh, and in modern democracies, apart from raising taxes every year and making more debt for the future generations to come, I fail to see the "good deeds" provided by governements.

But it it makes you happy, I guess that's what matters.
How  to Get Paid Faster
That seems like something you could cite. Not the misunderstanding of life expectancy at birth vs after childhood, the 70 year figure.
I see why this is super useful, but won't this functionality make more sense at the iOS level, as part of their standard API and with full support in the XCode environment? All apps should be able to deep dive into other apps, with certain rules attached.
Often with government backing. The modern nation-state is founded on the premise that the state has a monopoly on physical force; it is hard for a corporation to cause misery and death without that.

I would be more scared about cozy relationships between government and corporations. That is when you get the most egregious offenses, eg. British East India Company + Great Britain vs. India and China, oil companies + US vs. the Middle East, Chinese government + Baidu in censoring their own people, Blackwater Associates + US in Iraq, etc. It is sometimes good to have the interests of corporations and government diametrically opposed, because that means they are not conspiring against the people they serve.
Will it come in black? 700c?
There are plenty of retrofit options. This is just a retrofit in a shiny iphone inspired design and a price tag to match.
$114/day is actually a very good income income in Indonesia. For comparison, fresh grads are paid around $200 - $1000 a month (excl. bonuses) depending on the company (better pay for established, international corp).

The only problem I see is the reliability of the electricity provider itself. There are frequent surges and parts of Jakarta are known to experience regular rolling blackouts.
The article raises some Interesting points, even if all conflated under the banner of 'everyone should code' being wrong.

"Not everyone enjoys coding"
Sure, in which case there's no point doing something you don't like. I do think however that everyone should be encouraged to give it a go and the barrier to entry should be low. Indeed it is getting lower with sites like codeacademy.org. My personal opinion is that basic coding (like that currently taught in UK universities) should be a mandatory class in high school alongside mathematics since the exposure and insight into the fundamental technology of the day is immensely useful.

"Not everyone is good at coding"
Absolutely, the reference to academic programming and 'scripting' is absolutely true and as pointed out does not mean that the code solves problems inadequately. In fact I've experienced smart programmers go through this and completely miss the point that that they are hired to solve problems. Programmers can become obsessed with the style and cleanliness of their code – at the end of the day, the real aims should be maintainability and correctness, which are similar but not entirely the same.

"Code can't solve every problem"
True story. Just like philosophy or mathematics, it's a tool in a box. There are always going to be crazies who take things to extremes, and let's face it, many programmers are somewhere on the spectrum and tend to have an idealistic outlook on life.
How you, entrepreneurs, can help us reshape a fairer world?
"After all, A/B testing, or its near cousin multi-variant testing, is a known animal these days. In practice here at Bislr, we find that about 70 percent of the things we want to test are ultimately not going to make a big difference to the business."

I stopped reading after I read this. What an outrageous statement. If 70% of the things you want to test will not make a big difference, what about the other 30%? Test them! There are probably way more untested questions waiting to be answered as well.
Facebook Eases Privacy Rules For Teenagers
Gramp's machine was called "Big George". It vibrated stuff at insane frequencies and amplitudes. At various times he claimed it

1) Made paper stronger

2) Aged wine

3) Could filter industrial smokestack pollution

But after many years working with engineers, I finally realized that gramps just wanted to make the loudest, highest frequency sound possible.

His patent (one of many, no he wasn't a troll, he built everything he patented)
http://patent.ipexl.com/US/3708033.html
So your view is that the expected lifetime of the product is identical to your one year warranty? I think that's the sort of thing you're supposed to let your disappointed customers discover after they've purchased.
Kernel programming is an eternal struggle between people trying to pull more into the kernel for performance, and people trying to pull stuff back out for safety and modularity. We've all seen the arguments about the in-kernel HTTP daemons and whatnot. I tend to be on the side that says that more things should be pulled out.

> This is partly driven by "we need device drivers and no one understands C anymore"

I don't buy this argument. Who are the people

* Using NetBSD

* having cutting-edge hardware for which drivers don't exist

* deciding to write device drivers

* that have device specs/docs needed to write them

* that don't know/want to use C

* that would do it if only they could write it in a scripting language?

Do these people exist? I assert that the far more common case is that the device specs, documentation, BIOS, etc. aren't accessible. If that's true, they couldn't write the driver regardless of the language, C is hardly the limiting factor here
English is usually SVO; I assume you meant OVS?
A lean startup typically exits through acquisition. Some exit through IPO because they create new markets but that is rarer.
A16z startup Anki launches Oct 23rd
New website went live just now. http://anki.com/

Coverage also: https://news.google.com/news?q=anki
Master CSS nth-child