skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
To me the most interesting aspect of this story isn't the inspirational "don't be afraid to try" message. That's a sentiment most people have heard, and I don't think this story puts a particularly new spin on it.

The interesting bit, I think, is how the protagonist challenged the traditional relationship between employer and job seeker. Instead of pandering by praising Uber's design, she had the guts - possibly because of whiskey :) - to offer thoughtful criticism of the product.

As someone who recently finished a tough job search, I found this concept very liberating. Following the traditional process - researching a company's best features, trying to say the right things in interviews, waiting for callbacks - can feel discouraging. It can be like a bad round of speed dating.

Finding a creative, respectful way to point out a company's flaws is an innovative approach that, when done appropriately, can shift the ball back into the candidate's court.
The issue as I see it is that when I click on an ad, I'm not just clicking on another link, I'm adding a bunch of extra cookies to my browser that now track my experience and try to target me even more.
By removing the organic search result you've essentially given me no choice, now I HAVE to click on the cookie generating link, and I HAVE to deal with all that fall out, I might begin searching with Private Browsing because of this, at least then I know that all cookie are destroyed at the end of the session...

I'm very against getting targeted results because it destroys creativity and discovery. It used to be that when I watched a video on youtube when the video was over I'd get a bunch of related videos that were concerned with the same topic (whatever that was) now instead I see links to past videos I've watched that I'm simply not interested at the moment, basically thanks to google's attempt to make me stay on the site longer I usually only watch the video that brought me there before leaving because I'm not interested in watching cat videos or whatever nonsense I watched once but now is appearing next to the videos like a bad non sequitur.

And finally for my last rant: Why did google begin hiding their product from me? it used to be that all their products were prominently displayed at the top of the page, now if I want to use a different product I need to click a non-obvious icon and then scroll to find the product that I want to use, which UX guy came up with this?
If you are looking for reasons to not try, you're going to find an endless supply of them.

I've done a lot of things that people relentlessly told me I had no chance of accomplishing.
If you consider playing the consumer lottery and hoping you get purchased a viable strategy, then sure!
You know, I never asked him directly what he thought about it. He was just happy I knew rails, and knew programming enough to work in other languages as well.

You can read other people's stories at: http://community.gotealeaf.com/t/share-your-experience-of-le...
Assembly - Quirky for Software
Summary of Legislation Intro'd Yesterday to Curb Patent Trolls
...incl. a section by section breakdown of the "Innovation Act"
Uber, indeed!
Yes, technically it is possible. Some languages (and build tools) are a lot easier than others.

For purposes of learning the code, it may not be worth automating the dependency graph. You will probably learn more from tracking it down than you would if it was pre-generated for you.
Dolly.js - Clone your tables easily
PyGame actually does mostly support Python 3. Their binaries seem to be a little old, though.
The point of an IPO is to offer stock to the public. Once its on the market, anyone can.
Uber should also overhaul their website. I had to go to wikipedia to figure out what this company does.
Apple made it abundantly clear that they wish to differentiate current Airs on battery when they doubled battery life instead of adding a retina/touch screen like the competition. However the 2013 Air is actually slightly slower than the 2012 one in CPU benchmarks [1]. I think this is the last hurrah for this generation of Airs. The current Air body is about as old as the Pro was then the Retina refresh occurred. I think next June Apple will release a new Air body and I can't wait to see it.

[1] http://anandtech.com/show/7085/the-2013-macbook-air-review-1...
i think there are two concerns here. one is that the source is not tainted by a third party during or before the download. the second (arguably much more important in this case) concern is that the compiled binary matches the source. the second concern is addressed well by the author as far as i can tell, but i think that there is room for improvement in their concerns about the former. i assume they have thought about this and do have at least some concerns because it is mentioned that

The PGP signature of the binary can be downloaded
through the button PGP Signature, which makes you
download TrueCrypt Setup 7.1a.exe.sig over HTTPS
(*although with the NSA in the middle, it might not
mean much*).

[emphasis mine]

cross-referencing the pgp signature with at least one other (public) source would go a long way toward allaying those concerns (that the HTTPS might not mean much).

this criticism is in no way meant to detract from the rest of the work, and i mean only to refer to pgp sig verification best practices here.
Perhaps partially. Doesn't stop evercookies or IP address tracking or ever more inventive means.

Check out Pardot if you want to get an idea of what's possible. They drop a cookie on you the moment you browse the site and it logs every interaction you have with the site. When you finally sign up or fill in a form somewhere it'll associate those sessions with your new account and let you better target drip campaigns and market to them.

There's a lot of other ways to identify someone. It's like in Serenity -- everything has a fingerprint.
I've been thinking about this lately, too.

What I find weird is all that inspiration/motivation about hard work and going after your dreams is very big in MLM businesses yet ~16million people account for ~$32billion in annual sales (divided equally: $2,000/person) [1]. I don't have any specific source on startups, but the thought that working as hard as you can will make your dreams come through seems prevalent, too.

My thinking (and I'm really wanting a conversation over this because it's an interesting topic) is that not only should one work hard, but make smart moves. Using startups as an example, a person could hack away 100hrs/week on a social network for pets while another person could be putting in 20hrs/week on a monetization tool for Instagram. The former is putting in more hours, but the latter has a higher chance (if by only a tiny percent) simply because it's in a position to 1. be acquired and 2. solve the problem of Instagram not having a model. So they're both putting in work, assuming good attitude, and taking the chance as OP's point was. Yet it seems the defining factor is where all that energy is directed to.

[1] http://www.dsa.org/research/industry-statistics/
Great story. That's really the right way to get a new job, tell the CEO of a company exactly how you can help her/his company. And smart of the Uber CEO to listen to her.

That said it really helps if you're already hanging around at a party with a CEO of a big, in the news, growing startup and thus have insider access to tell him exactly what you think after a few drinks.
Well first you are correct in that there is a psychological cost of failure for sure. Which is why it's harder for some people to cold call than others.

I've found that since the advent of email (and before that postal mail) it's much easier though. You fire off an email and you forget it. If something happens it happens. So you don't really feel the rejection.

By the way separately some of the best cold calling salesman are people who can't register or feel the annoyance or discomfort of those they are pitching. People who are able to feel this (either visually or by vocal tone) have a much much harder time overcoming the negative feedback. (Source: This is based on anecdote and observation over many years in business.)
I like both people in this story a LOT
I hate this self empowerment bullshit. Do people have any idea what this sounds like to people with actual, real problems? Your life can't be solved by positive thinking and being impulsive. In fact, I can make a very good case that that kind of attitude will create far more problems than it solves. Hell, I'm sure I could come up with _two_ anecdotes, which is already twice the evidence given by this blog post.
Right, but David Cameron has been prime minister since 2010, and still is, so "former" doesn't yet apply to this case.
>Maybe your project is still simple.

It's moving past the simple app point that gets problematic on someone else's solution.

I have dependencies on postgres, redis and elasticsearch within the application. I need a browser too run the feature tests. I need phantomjs to run the javascript suite. Is there any saas offer that covers these?

>...keeping the build green on Circle is lower than the cost of keeping it green on Jenkins anywhere else

Keeping the build green involves my team figuring out what we broke. Faster build times help, is that what you mean here?

Don't even get me started on the stuff we are doing with deployment automation...

Edit: I think it was too hostile initially, appologies
4K will be the revival of PC sales, in two ways:

1. Consumer affordable monitors. You'll need a better GPU, and probably Display Port. I don't expect most consumers wanting 30" 4K display. They'll want 22-27" displays of 4K resolution, a la Retina. (PPI scaling) Everything is still the same size as people are used to (compared to 1080p), but everything is sharp as Retina.

2. 4K adoption of multimedia on the Internet. The more 4K videos that pop up on YouTube, the more people who are going to want to upgrade their hardware. This one isn't specific to PCs though, it could apply to mobile devices as well.

Go to YouTube and find a 4K video (the quality slider goes to "Original"). Now look at the comments. Many of the comments in 4K videos are people complaining how they can't watch the 4K video because of their crappy computer (and sometimes bandwidth).
After reading your comments in this thread, I can see your training doesn't seem to have given you any particularly useful insight into this subject either.
I am unsure if you can attribute your abilities to your anti-TV upbringing. I grew up with parents who had a relaxed attitude about video games and TV, and thus consumed a lot of both.

But I also spent so much of my time drawing, painting, and programming because I love creating things. I am unsure if TV had any negative effects. The ownership and pleasure you get from your own creations is unlike anything that TV or games can provide, and it is utterly addictive.
Not sure how much of this applies to you, but this is my advice for anyone trying to monetize a SaaS idea or product:

1. Reach out to people (beyond your friends and family) to gauge interest in the idea. This probably involves networking, cold calls/emails, meetups, etc.

2. If there is any interest from anyone, ask them what specifically they'd need from the product in order for them to consider buying/subscribing.

3. Repeat until you have enough feedback to start understanding your market and their wants/needs. (Also, think about how you'd solve their problems in ways beyond what they simply tell you they need.)

4. If your market is split across different segments (and would require different sets of features) pick the group that seems most engaged and target them exclusively.

5. Once you feel that your product would work well enough for them (this might require one or two more rounds of feedback), throw together a pricing page and the underlying billing infrastructure, and start trying to make sales.

Note: You can always lower your prices, but it's harder to raise them, so start as high as you think could be remotely reasonable -- who knows, the price might still be worth it to your clients. If not, wait a bit and then lower the prices. (Perhaps you can use the new discount as a marketing tactic.)

6. Success? Cool. Think about how you can expand your market without succumbing to feature creep. Not success? Don't worry -- pick another market segment or do more rounds of feedback. It's up to you when to give up and move on, but just because it didn't work this time could mean plenty of things. (Maybe you need more focus on customer acquisition, or maybe you need to hire a designer). The point is, don't give up until you're really sure it won't work.
I used to fear that also, until I made a conscious effort to learn (Pharo) Smalltalk and (Racket Scheme) Lisp. I spent so much time and energy on these two. I practised and practised and practised. And then practised some more. After what seemed like an eternity, I looked at other people's code (Java, C#, PHP) and could instantly identify deficiencies and ways to improve them. So my advice: learn Smalltalk and Lisp, and then practise till your gums bleed.
I think it is about the decisiveness of a founder. It's not about asking her to come at 9. It's about having a team ready by Monday and flying people from out of town.

Although, I appreciate that the designer took his offer seriously. More importantly, it's the guts of a founder in this case that made it happen.
They've done studies that show if you force yourself to smile, even if you're in a bad mood, it'll make you happier. Even if it's forced, it still helps.

This same idea can be applied to self-empowerment and it works for people. Just because it's cheesy doesn't mean it doesn't work. I mean, even knowing you're taking a placebo can still lead to positive outcomes.
Maybe http://flexget.com/
Continuous Integration in Xcode
Can anyone explain what is going on here?
> Trying isn't always zero-risk

Trying is never zero-risk but not trying is always 100% risk of failure.

The bigger the risk the bigger the reward usually, that's how capitalism works.

Work a 9-to-5 at a safe company, make a nice salary, have little risk

Work a 9-to-7 at a startup, make less money but have equity, have more risk of the company going under but have a bigger shot at reward

Start your own company, have no salary but 100% equity, risk being homeless, reward being a billionaire

Every choice you make is a risk-reward calculation and you have to decide what's important to you and whether it's worth risking for a bigger reward.
I am really excited for the possible future of self-driving electric taxis. All the pieces kind of fit together: you can use an app to dispatch and gauge number of fleet vehicles to put out (Google just bought a huge stake in Uber), self-driving cabs can return themselves for a recharge when low on batter and another vehicle can replace it instantly, the amount of cars on the road can scale with demand fluidly. There'd be no need for a car ever in a metro area.
The Great Discontent: Elle Luna
The thing that is most fascinating, is that she basically said, "I like your idea, but your execution sucks". That is the pinnacle of the most painful thing to hear, but the CEO took it in stride and made his product better.

That is the lesson I am going to take away. Ideas matter, but if execution is the thing you can change, then embrace the people that tell you your execution sucks and have ideas.
The awkward moment when I clicked on a web page with MS virus in action, while browsing the awesome gifs, the site decided to play ad suddenly like this (
http://i.imgur.com/6I3WTUX.png)...
This is vapid as hell.
I don't think you're going to get the numbers you're after, and hopefully you can live with having given an honest effort if you fail. The truth is, having this kind of attitude, and doing the work that comes along with it, is necessary but generally insufficient for success. Meaning, you can get there with with work + (some Other Factors), but you absolutely won't get there without it. Which is why the stories you hear about successful people all include the "hard work paid off" bit.

Other Factors can include but are not limited to: having the right contacts, being in the right place at the right time, having a unique insight into the market, etc. Looking at a list like that might be dispiriting because the items all appear to be frustratingly correlated with random chance. And that's partly true. But what is also true, is that doing certain kinds of work often has the interesting side-effect of raising your chances for bumping into one of those other factors. Which is what you were saying above.

For example, working hard in, and paying attention to business in a given industry for a while might a) Give you insight into how something might be done better, and b) introduce you to people working in that industry who could help you out by b1) teaching you more about it, b2) directing you to others who can, b3) becoming a collaborator with you, or b4) pointing you to capital resources interested in solving relevant problems.

I mean, yeah in the end, in business you're likely to fail. Most businesses fail. Most people who have the right attitude and do the requisite work fail. But you can't get to the top of the mountain without hiking.
Audio is unnecessary. The video shows a slow-motion decoding of a gzipped version of the poem. The red text between brackets is a chunk of text that was earlier stored into the huffman tree (example "W{hile I }" means that the "hile I" was previously encoded; it occurred in the substring "while I pondered"). You can see the red chunks quickly occupy the larger volume of the poem, which visually highlights the symmetry in lyric that the computer is using to encode the file as gzip.

Pretty neat.
Not really. She qualified herself by saying:
1. she uses it all the time.
2. she hates it.

As a founder, I am always looking for that combination in my users.

The bonus was offering herself as the solution. I'll venture that his decision was made even before she finished the sentence.
"there's a good chance you'll succeed. Is this actually true?"

Depends on what you mean by "good chance" obviously. And "succeed".

"accurate picture of how one can become successful."

I looked at your website from your profile.

Being successful at the "creative" things you are good at would be much more difficult than some of the other less creative things you have listed.

There are (from my observation and I believe this is common knowledge) many people who have really good creative skills in music, art, acting etc and no where near enough opportunities for those people to make a good career out of it. In that case the hustle is probably even more important than the skill level (not that that's not important). But even with hustle it can be random. And there are many people hustling to get ahead. You aren't competing with people to get a job as a dental hygienist who really isn't super into their job, right? Some of your competitors are really totally over the top in their commitment to doing what you want to do. They aren't phoning it in or anything.

Like with dating or landing a job you only have to be right one time (well assuming you find "the right one").

Not like selling where you have to find a certain number of sales per time period. So you have to assess how much time and effort it takes to get a sale and extrapolate.
How is this different than PayPal credits or any other credits?

You don't prepay?
> Once upon a midnight dreary, while I {pon}ered

It's a visual demonstration how gzip works. The first line says it all. 'pon' matches the bytes in 'upon', the first first instance, thus it's pointer to those bytes instead of "duplicating" the pattern. As the text goes on, there are more matches, thus more pointers.
JRuby Wrapper for the jMonkeyEngine 3D video game framework
Agreed. I used to think it was best to "do it yourself so you know it" but was quickly abused of that notion. Do important things yourself (if you can do it better -- the stuff the makes or breaks your business). SaaS is a godsend.

TRWTF is that the author knows someone who reimplemented NodeJS in house.
We could do it all together on assembly - I can fast track through to assemblymade.com/ideas

(Disclaimer: founder)
Smoothed Analysis: Why The Simplex Algorithm Usually Takes Polynomial Time
gzip works by constructing, on the fly, a dictionary of strings it has seen before and sort of inserting them by reference.

When you see something red and in braces, that is a bit that has occurred before and been inserted by reference.

I'm guessing that it is happening at a constant symbol rate, you'll notice it speeding up as it includes more and more text by reference instead of a single character at a time.
Nope, this was still the rule for Berkeley as of 2012. Since then though, they've been replacing Berkeley's prior system with a Google apps. I'm not sure if that changed anything.

I should also note that there have been a couple of cases since 2008 where courts ruled that use of an employer's e-mail system broke privilege with respect to that employer. See, e.g., Holmes v. Petrovich, 191 Cal. App. 4th 1047 (Jan. 2011). It might be a stretch, but I could see someone trying to argue that Gmail use voided A/C privilege with respect to a lawsuit against Google.
Sounds like a great thing for job security in two decades when almost nobody but people born during the PC era know how to program.
The difference between viruses then (most did little real harm, left your computer in perfectly working state, and were meant to show off the skills of the writer) and now (network zombies used to make people money, or replace web content with ads) is kind of depressing.
PHP is now on Twitter
Empire Strikes Back cowriter joins Abrams on Star Wars: Episode VII script
And perversely, if accidents happened one tenth as often, they'd become news, and people would think they were more common and dangerous than they do now. The question is whether we can get to a point of no return with self-driving cars before that effect takes hold.
What else can you expect from the Empire? Anakin was once a honest Jedi, too. But the evil forces of greed overpowered him :)

Choose the path of the Jedi - use DDG!

https://duckduckgo.com/
Shhh, if the auto industry, public transit industry, and car rental industry hear you, they might band together and try to stop it from happening.
For some reason I find theories and approaches in compression really interesting. For those unfamiliar I recommend Blelloch's introduction to compression (http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~guyb/realworld/compression.pdf)
The questions you want answers to are valid (and I'd be curious also) but I think that most likely the answers to this are n=1 and we don't have any knowledge of others who might do the exact same thing and have a different outcome.

Not to mention the fact that whatever his answers are they are specific to his organization, what he sells and who he is surrounded by.

Once again, interesting questions but I'm not sure either way the answers matter that much. I don't think how he handled this particular case (noting though that you did want to know if he had done these things before) you can draw any clear conclusions.

Separately I wonder if the person who pitched him were not an attractive woman but say an unattractive woman or man what the results would have been and what would have happened. (That said I've had great results pitching people by email which is more or less a neutral.)
Citation needed. There's no reference anywhere on LinkedIn's site to selling data sets at all. The only thing they sell are subscriptions to their site and there's nothing anywhere that indicates any of those include any kind of this data.