skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Great questions. I'll answer each in turn.

I want to mention the "polish": I personally don't believe in releasing an open source project without polish. If it is missing docs, its just not complete. If it is ugly, it is not complete. The technical aspects of Serf were done weeks ago. Getting the human side of things done took another few weeks (contracting designers and such).

> When did you realise the need for serf?

The need for something like Serf has existed since I started doing ops. Every time I hit something where I say to myself "why is this so hard/crappy" is when I write it down in my notebook for a future date. I then just think on the idea for awhile and eventually when I feel like I have a significantly better solution than what is out there already, I build it.

I decided to start building Serf when @armon started throwing gossip protocol academic papers at me. I realized he figured it out, this was clearly significantly better, so we started working on it.

> Did you work on it as a main project at some point or is it a side project?

To get it out the door we focus on it for some period of time. After it is shipped it is still what I would consider a "main project" but time is split between various projects.

> When and how did you decide to commit to getting this done?

A few weeks ago. It took about a month to build. Building it is easy. Figuring out WHAT to build... took a long time. I have to say I've had "service orchestration/membership" in my notebook for years.

> What strategies did you use to keep the plates spinning while building surf?

No good answer here, we just prioritize some things over others. Serf was our top priority this month.
Pinterest Does Another Massive Funding: $225 Million at $3.8 Billion
Fixed. How does CSS work?
Schedule a meeting for "ideating" with several other people who want to think quietly. Rotate whose project gets billed for the time.
Hi, gamedev here.

At one point on stage, you brought up the possibility of open sourcing your code, and Paul cautioned you that you may want to follow game industry conventions.

There are two reasons the game industry tends to keep their code closed-source. 1) It has been lucrative for game studios to sell licenses to their closed-source engine. Some game studios, such as Id Software, have made hundreds of millions of dollars (if not $1B) from licensing their engine. This is the main reason game studios tend to keep their source code closed. 2) There is strong institutional bias against releasing source code precisely because nobody else releases source code.

If you're not planning on licensing your engine, then I just wanted to reassure you that it's not a bad idea to go open source. You own codecombat.com, and hence you own the pipeline of users. Even if someone uses your code to launch their own version of CodeCombat, it's very unlikely that you'll suffer any problems for it. The only possibility is if your servers go down and theirs don't. But anyone who tries cloning your idea is going to suffer the wrath of the gaming community. E.g. see what happened to "War Z," a videogame that was blatantly ripping off the recent hit "Day Z." The War Z developers were basically tarred and feathered for it. Gamers may be fickle, but they are loud and they are loyal. I can't imagine them defecting to some competitor who steals your code.

Beyond code, there's art assets. You could release the code with a permissive license, and release art assets with a restrictive license. Nobody will be able to catch up to you if they have to develop all new art for their clone.

I wanted to speak up as a voice from inside the game industry: Don't follow industry conventions out of fear. Their conservatism wasn't derived from experience. Rather, it's because no studio wants to take any risks whatsoever.

Let's put it this way. If Notch (the creator of Minecraft) hesitated to follow his instincts, he would've tried to write Minecraft in C++ rather than Java. If, before Minecraft was written, he tried to convince any professional gamedev that using Java was a good idea for writing a multiplayer 3D game engine, everyone would've laughed in his face. And everyone would've been mistaken, as Notch wound up demonstrating. Java turned out to have many unexpected advantages new to the gamedev industry (e.g. the ability to deploy the game through a web browser and the ability to edit code without recompiling the engine).

So if you see an advantage in open sourcing your code, go ahead and do it. Don't second guess yourself just because it goes against conventional industry wisdom. The conventions are just groupthink, not pragmatism.
If lobbying yielded such returns, lobbyists would be richer.
Gross; you're hiding the credit card requirement until after I've made an account.

As a customer, I would abandon your site faster than anything, no matter how slickly you'd done the presell.

And yes, I tried making an account. It's very jarring to suddenly be hit with a credit card wall to actually do anything in the trial. A free trial where I give you my credit card number isn't free. I don't feel this is going to help your conversion rates.
To HN commenters:

If you don't trust LinkedIn, fine. Don't use it.

But please, don't assume that LinkedIn is universally not trusted, the same way you assume that Microsoft is universally hated.

This is a neat feature, and I'm sure that many people trust LinkedIn enough to think that the trade-off is worth it. Would you prefer to not have the choice to have access to this feature, and prevent others from having it too?

I don't see this kind of reaction when 99% of other services ask access to a third-party API. Why is this so different? Is it because they have access to emails? What makes email SO MUCH more important than any other data to be in a category of their own? I don't think you can draw a line, and it's pure subjectivity.

Surely, the service itself is not a problem. Google would do the same thing, and you would all think it's the best thing since sliced bread? Why? Because most people already trust Google with their emails (and everything else), and accept that they know everything about them.

So please, don't criticize the solution, don't blame the hack (unless you can suggest a better way to do it). The only good reason not to use it is for lack of trust for LinkedIn, and nothing else.

I've had enough of your drama-seeking behaviors, and I don't think I'm the only one. Grow up.
Thanks for the correction :) - just a figure of speech. A lot of people would take offense to being called a sociopath (even though its not always a harmful condition). I guess I would "hate to say it" because its potentially shameful that we elect people like this to lead our nation (or maybe we need people like this, I don't know)? Again, I cannot make any definitive judgments without a full, undeniably accurate account of their behavior. Even if not being murderers, it can be dangerous to have a sociopath in the President's seat because (among other things) a full-blown sociopath would not hesitate to enrich or empower themselves at the expense of others (i.e. the nation), by making poor decisions based off of lobbied cash.
On OSX it just gives me a zip file with the font in it.
For anyone like me interested in which new gTLDs were introduced but was surprised that their names were not included in the blog post:

شبكة (xn--ngbc5azd) — Arabic for "web/network"

онлайн (xn--80asehdb) — Cyrillic for "online"

сайт (xn--80aswg) — Cyrillic for "site"

游戏 (xn--unup4y) — Chinese for "game(s)"

Source: http://www.circleid.com/posts/20131023_first_new_gtlds_go_li...
In case anyone wants an easy way of understanding what Pinterest is and why it's so popular with women, I urge you to find one of those cheesy women's magazines (Cosmo will do) and flip through it. You will most certainly find a page that looks like this: http://www.zatchels.com/press/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Wom...

Pinterest is a digital representation of exactly that page, but now anyone can be the curator (not just Cosmo) and more importantly, it has the ability to make the buying process more frictionless. You want the hat, sunglasses, and skirt? Great, just click the button and buy.
> 100,000 phones a week? Big deal. Just over 5 million a year.

Considering the fact they managed to created that market in three years, I'd say it's quite a big deal.
Previously posted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6601870
> I'm actually most excited about allowing customers to invest.

You can already do that, they should buy your product. If they are so jazzed about it, they should tell their friends, and it should be easy for them to do so through whatever your product is.
I want to see a documentary showing how such a feature was conceived, greenlighted, implemented, and ultimately released without someone pulling the plug.
I think what you are asking about is referred to as a food challenge: Dose. Wait. repeat. His Allergist sets the plan. We started with really baked eggs (muffins, cakes, etc). At first it was in the Dr office with controlled dosage and interval. He passed so we went home and continued to feed him muffins and such. When that went fine for a few weeks we started with lesser cooked eggs (pancakes & waffles). We will not be trying just cooked eggs (fried, etc) for a bit. And that will be back at the Allergist's office.

Prior to eggs, we did the same challenge with soy in the Dr office. Tiny sip. Wait 15 minutes. Slightly larger sip. Wait 15 minutes. 1/4 oz. Wait. Half oz. Wait. Dose. Wait. Dose. Wait. After the final dose we had to wait another 90 minutes before we could leave. At about 85 minutes he just started vomiting. All. Over. It was horrific. I'm glad we were in an examine room and not at home. The nurses handled everything perfectly.
There's a coworking space above the café: http://www.sanktoberholz.de/?page_id=1514&lang=en
Stop signs are opt-in. Ignoring them and/or telling other people to ignore them is a bad idea.
Um that part about LinkedIn's product being simple... what??
It actually makes me uneasy that 40-50 hours is considered "normal". I know 40+ hours a week is very typical for any fulltime job, but that's SO much time. Between that and driving, cooking, sleeping, doing housework, etc, we have practically no free time (or at least I don't). I also don't feel that I'm any more productive after about 30-35 hours a week; anything over that and I may get burned out, which negates any benefit from the extra time.

Maybe I'm alone, but I doubt it.
I'm not saying I wouldn't do it, but I do have an anecdote that might explain why you should be cautious.

About 15 years ago, I did some work with a guy who ran online pharma websites. He made a mint in the business, but it wasn't without it's bumps.

This was before the online pharma boom, and before the Feds really got involved. He ran a website where users filled out questionnaires, which were then reviewed by a doctor (no really, an actual doctor), who then wrote a prescription, which was then filled by a pharmacy.

One day, the men in the black suits came knocking. Right now you're probably thinking that everything above was clearly illegal and this guy is screwed, but that turned out not to be the case. He and his partner sat in jail while the Feds figured out exactly what they were doing wrong. They had good, detailed records of every "patient", and because selling medication over the internet was so new, there weren't a lot of laws that covered exactly what the requirements were.

In the end, the two owners spent about 90 days in jail, and had millions of dollars seized by the government. The Feds dictated that they could continue to operate their business under a handful of conditions:

1) They could no longer operate their own pharmacy.

2) They could no longer directly employ the doctor reviewing prescriptions, and the doctor must be paid regardless of whether a prescription is written.

3) They could not sell any drugs of a certain classification (controlled?).

There was some specific class of controlled drugs they couldn't sell, but I can't remember what it was.

This guy, and his family, ended up in the press with their name slandered all over the place. They ended up moving out of state to escape the aftermath.

I'm sure plenty of people are lined up ready to judge the guy, but I knew him. He was the kind of guy who gets shit done, and he ran an above-board business considering what they were doing. That's the only reason he's not still rotting in a cell.

So, the moral of the story is, these kinds of businesses can be very profitable, but they're not without risks. This is an entirely different kind of risk than what an investor is willing to take on. We're not talking capital risk, we're talking criminal prosecution. Those are the risks when you operate in a legal gray area. Don't get me wrong, someone has got to do it, otherwise there will be no progress, but you should go in with eyes open.
yeah, i couldn't believe they were talking about all these new gTLDs and then neglected to mention any of them.
I'm of the opinion that the way we interact with code is flawed. This author touched on it when discussing text dumps. I agree with the author that little time is spent modifying large modules of code (something NoFlow[1] is trying their hand at).

However, I think these text dumps we work with should be organized differently. As it stands, we interact with code on a file-by-file basis. But any programmer knows that the execution path of a given program is rarely going to be contained within one file, and it's not going to execute from the top of the file to the bottom. Execution jumps from file to file, and programmers spend much of their time maintaining a mental model of these jumps.

I think this is the wrong way to program. I think execution path should be more easily accessible to a programmer, and they shouldn't have to navigate through function calls one "Go To Definition" at a time. This topic has become fourth year design project for myself and a few peers and we're trying to play with different representations of code on a function-by-function basis.

Here's a rough prototype we hacked together a few months ago: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bm38U40HL4E

We've since integrated it into Visual Studio so as to retain Intellisense, syntax highlighting and existing plugin functionality. We're using Roslyn to gain insights into semantic information about the code.

[1] http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/noflo/noflo-development-...
Looks like an application to apply is $185K, takes 4 months to process, and around a year to get approved. Not including costs for any legal or infrastructure needed to support your gTLD.
Can't redeem in the UK :( (amazon)
Ah wow didn't realize that. In their FAQ it said "tap the Intro app icon" to add a new account so I assumed it was an app.
Was chatting with a someone from CodeCombat on olark.
they had no idea it was on HN but the traffic was booming.

Ah startups...
It’s no accident that the first tranche of gTLDs to be delegated are all non-Latin strings

It's a shame it took so long, but hopefully this will stem the tide of young people who have been pushed towards using their language in transliterated form rather than the original script (I am thinking of Arabic dardasha writing specifically, but I imagine there are other examples)
Arguably there is a lot of purchasing intent if users are pinning things they wished they owned.
Would it be relevant that Kogan is providing firmware update blobs themselves? e.g. http://media.kogan.com/files/support_files/KALED423DSMTZAFIR...
Thanks for the list. I was trying to find it as well.

Serious question: what would sway one to register and use one of the above extensions compared to what's already out there? Other than localized content, I can't imagine typing شبكة would be simple...

Also, شبكة is also relevant in Farsi (Persian).
So glad you posted this video. I didn't get to see your interview live and had been looking for it. Fantastic job! Imagine the pressure for the next team up :)
it's slow, but i think it's happening. co-routines are starting to become popular 35 years after icon had something similar. that could be seen as step on the road to integrated search (which needs some kind of idea of sequences of results).

[incidentally, i wrote a recursive descent combinator lib that worked on generic sequences, in python. afaik no-one ever used it for anything but strings. not even for parsing binary data in comms protocols. i extended it to a regexp engine; it was hopelessly slow. one reason regexps work so well is that they're so efficiently implemented on simple sequences of bytes. the overhead of "irregular" sequences is quite something - perhaps jits will help here (although pypy didn't help me)...]
Newspaper presses FOIA fight for food stamp payment data
You're right, thanks for supplying the info
we are located in salt lake city, ut
I'm just thinking logically - not even on a pointer level. If I'm doing index/offset math to calculate an array position, it's foolish to start at 1 instead of 0.
> First, the court ordered that Thuen be served with the demand for his computer without prior notice. According to the order, this is something that the court can do in extreme situations to prevent evidence from being spoiled.

I'd accept upon equal consideration being provided. Why should he have to be forced to pay for what is essentially a fishing expedition by the prosection? would they have a case should the computer not be taken?
This isn't much of a solution when it involves putting a binary on every host. Clearly, the best solution is a service framework at the platform level, not a separate, unmodifiable blob thrown on your hardware.
Akka at Conspire: How We Built Our Backend on Akka and Scala
The trait that connects these countries: Sufficiently large countries whose opinion is reported in newspapers.

The scare quote around "equal" :

It means country X's opinion about how internet is to evolve and run would matter as much as country Y. Which is to say some countries such as United States who have contributed to growth of internet would be under represented and some countries like Sri Lanka will be over represented. This often happens in UN and eventually the large countries like US or China have to use different tactics to gain favorable opinion.
Wow... must be a lot of Dad's on HN! :(
My comment was mostly targeted to young silicon valley engineers with big salaries but often pushed to work long hours and feel uncomfortable but don't know how to stand up for themselves.

However, I don't think anyone should be consistently working over 60 hours a week for any reason. When I say working, I should clarify that I mean going to an office where you have an authority figure telling you that you have to do x, y, and z for them to get a paycheck. I love programming on my own projects and could see myself "working" on those 60 hours a week, but I'd never work that hard to make anyone else rich.

However, even for your own projects, you still need to set aside plenty of time to eat meals with your family, play with your kids (if you have any), eat healthily, exercise, and meditate. Balance of life is the most statistically proven path to increasing your happiness and well-being.

For those making less than 6 figures, I don't think working ridiculous hours is the answer. For one if you can't think of anything else, become an engineer! I mean you are already on hacker news, what are you waiting for?
> Fred Wilson coined the term over 2 years ago

What? No. That's ridiculous. For as long as people have used the phrase "logged in" there have been logged out users. A simple Google search for the phrase turns up a thread† from 8 years ago, and that's certainly not the first either. Coined the term? Really?

† http://www.unix.com/unix-advanced-expert-users/25178-who-9-c...
For the last OS I loaded it up on my iPad and then took it with me for a weekend, reading it whenever I had downtime (we were doing a lot of shopping so there was a lot of downtime).

Managed to finish it up by Sunday. I'll probably do the same this time.
Analysis done by applying a sophisticated large scale neural network containing modules trained on, among other things, problem-domain expertise, common sense heuristics, general reasoning, and hopefully just the right amount of temporary-absurdity-ignoring free-form concept generation.
I would recommend the CS 61C course videos from Berkeley: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL01C2A0DE46A54CA9

It uses MIPS assembly, which you can run on a simulator. I don't think many machine architecture classes teach x86 because it's more complex. The MIPS knowledge from that course has translated easily to x86 in my tiny experience of peering into my compiler's assembly output.
It's a blaming statement, which means he's not.
Snap.svg being able to parse existing SVG:s I've generated with Sketch is totally awesome. Even more awesome would be the day when Sketch lets me play around with animations and timelines and then generate Snap.svg instructions.
"A free trial where I give you my credit card number isn't free."

It is when you aren't charged for anything. It's basically a way to qualify a (future) customer.

...Also, what paywall were you hit with when creating the account you mentioned above? Right now, you can create an account and activate your timed trial without entering anything in. After 11 days, I send out an email stating "If you don't plug in your credit card soon, your account will be deactivated."
You don't need RAII if you don't have exceptions. Separating allocation and initialization is a good thing.
http://mgwis.tumblr.com/post/64899888414/technological-morta...
I agree, I'd actually much prefer 30 or 35 to 40-50, but our society isn't set up well for that. There are tons of employers who will pay you market rate for normal effort --- normal being defined as 40-50 hours/week of diligent work.

What you can do tho is put up with the 40-50 hours a week for a decade and then have the rest of your life to decide what you want to do with each hour of your day and not worry about how much society thinks you should dedicate to working.
While that's part of the attraction, I think to really understand Pinterest you should probably understand three use cases: why you'd curate, why you'd care about what an actual friend curated, and why you'd care about what a stranger curated. It's the interaction between these three which causes Pinterest to spread like wildfire.

A bridal magazine curated by your bff is not just a bridal magazine.
Why the hell not? Heroin from Bayer would not have the quality control issues Heroin typically has.

It only becomes problematic when you consider that the user is getting themselves into a situation that they do not fully understand and potentially cannot easily back themselves out of.

With drugs that have a high potential to cause harm, we typically force the consumer to consult a professional before allowing them to proceed. Tech is still in the era of patent medicines.
I smell a bubble. They're not nearly worth any of this.

Their service is trivial, and can't scale. They have a great user base, but I can't imagine them moving in the right direction. At the moment, it looks like a glorified wishlist.

At one point, the paradox of choice will kick in, and they'll realize that too much (without proper curation) is as bad as not enough.

I hope they will do the right thing (it's quite obvious what they should do), but I predict that they won't. They'll miss the big picture, focus on scaling in quantity (not quality), and burn through their money in no time. That's what happen to startups that think they have won.

But that's just my prediction. We will see what will happen.
http://xkcd.com/163/

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?ZeroAndOneBasedIndexes
Adding things that aren't conceptually indices to indices works the same way in both conventions (so a[idx] and a[idx+k] have k-1 things in between). You miss out on stuffing multiple dimensions into one with a[x*xlen+y], but there's generally no reason to do that.

Could you elaborate about the uses you have in mind?.