skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Your "to be completely fair" was, for me, the reason Dropbox was a valuable tool.

I know that I can set up FTP to a remove host and store files. I'm sure I could write Automation scripts that looked for updated files, opened connections and uploaded files when I saved them. Then more to regularly open a connection, poll for updates, and initiate downloads. On all my computers, at least. I'm sure that'd work.

With dropbox, I don't have to invest the time to do that, or to keep it maintained. I don't have to think about it. And I have seamless access to these files on any machine I go to, as well as my mobile phones. It's simple, and as I haven't exceeded my 20GB of free space, it costs me nothing.

Yes someone else has my files. But if I bought a virtual server from a hosting company someone else would still have them, and if I used a single machine at my home, it's susceptible to the whims of my Internet provider, a modem/router failure, and the added complexity of getting and maintaining a static IP address to allow the connections (as well as spending more time to harden and protect that machine as it's exposed to the Internet).
For subjects with a lot of data analysis you could largely automate a part of the validation as scientists use programming languages.

Papers would have to provide access to their raw data and the code used to process it. You could then just run code(data) to generate the figures / results in the paper.

Two problems here:

1) assumes that the raw data is ok (which is a big assumption).

2) existing scientific code is largely terrible (completely imperative, no abstraction, no documentation, poor typing conventions), and it is very unlikely you can do

figures <- code(data)

to regenerate a paper.

This is what forced validation would aim to change though.
>the real issue is that under Reagan science became privatized.

and science in America in the 19th century was funded how? Because we sure didn't have the NIH, NSF, NIST, DOE, DARPA, or any of these organizations then.

Even into the 20th century: For example, most of Irving Langmuir's research (in both applied and basic science) was conducted privately, long before Reagan. Same goes for luminaries such as Gilbert Lewis, Josiah Gibbs, Robert Millikan, etc.
Jesus and the mary chain is also hugely influential, do you listen to Spacemen 3 at all?

Heroin took me years to appreciate, once I "snapped" that the dissonance is a metaphor for the addicts' life I fell in love with it.
We currently have 40 employees
It's not our strong side (unfortunately), but we are working on this, thank you. I'll do it right now. )
That's six times more expensive, not digital, and not a fun hack.

I fail to understand your point.
affected?
lol... the current page works as a punchline just as well:

Service Temporarily Unavailable

The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to maintenance downtime or capacity problems. Please try again later.
Dropbox doesn't really suffer from the first problem since you keep a local copy of everything and people have been trusting complete strangers with their email and bank account details since forever.
Will show this to the wife. She has a hard time understanding why working on week-end projects by 45 minute chucks isn't effective as I need 20 minutes to get in the zone and restart my thoughts where I left them
Magic bullet. ✓

"The very word secrecy is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it." -John F. Kennedy April 27, 1961 https://archive.org/download/jfks19610427/jfk_1961_0427_pres...
I think the biggest OSes _have_ integrated something like this, but unfortunately they don't work well between operating systems. So if I'm on an Android phone, an iPad, and dual boot Windows and Ubuntu then it doesn't really help. Dropbox does allow me to backup and sync on all of those.
> Small numbers are weird.

Weird and wonderful :). Thanks for all the examples, makes me wanna crack open my abstract algebra book!

I decided to go into engineering when I got out of high school, but part of me was leaning towards pure maths. Still feel that yearning when I read things like this. So incredibly fascinating, simple, and yet wildly complex at the same time.

I've worked a lot on chaos theory in the context of celestial mechanics and the gravitational 3-body problem (Newtonian). After having done my MSc thesis in the field and nearing the completion of my PhD in it, I still can't get my head around how such an incredibly simple problem can spawn such a wealth of complexity and beauty. Kinda envious of Poincaré when he first mapped out the tremendous complexity and structure underpinning it all.

Small numbers rule.
IMHO, while working on challenging tasks (bugs mostly) where we are not able to figure out something, tiny breaks spent on unrelated subjects seem to help a lot. While interruptions are bad, a badly timed interruptions seem to be the worst.
I would love a simple integrated file hosting solution built into OS X, where my computer is actually the host instead of iCloud.

I think, though, that the lack of high upload bandwidth for almost every Internet consumer makes this less useful today. However, if a big OS would actually develop and ship it, perhaps we'd have users demanding greater upload bandwidth and help push forward the idea of the "person as Internet producer", versus just the current "person as a consumer".
I'll definitely look into these guys. I'm unable to relocate right now, but there might be some future opportunity waiting.

Thanks for the heads up!
There are several but none of them will run in a browser.
>Finally, most of these arguments are disputed by the so-called "Austrian school" of economics. It's important to recognize that this school is much, much, much more popular with laymen than with professional economists. This doesn't mean that the school's arguments are wrong, but it does raise questions about why the school's arguments which seem so utterly convincing to so many people, don't manage to gain many converts among people who research the subject professionally.

It doesn't automatically mean the Austrian School arguments are wrong, but it does make it much more probable that they are wrong. When trained and educated economists think something is bullshit economics, we should consider it to probably be bullshit.

So why don't we? Because for so many of "us" on Hacker News, deflation is a class interest: "we" hold "our" assets mostly in cash and land. An Austrian-style neofeudal economy thus suits "our" portfolios.

Personally, this reminds me that I need to call Vanguard about my actual investments today. Fuck cash and land, I want my wealth in something productive, and a productive investment will have more to gain from inflation eroding away private debt and a steady pick-up in demand from a stronger labor market than from Austrian-style deflation.
As to the relationship between savings and investment, and the role of banks in there, ask yourself the following question:

Suppose that Alice decides that, from this month on, she will start putting aside 10% of her monthly income into a long-term savings account. Will this decision cause the bank to make more loans?

By default, the answer seems to be no. After all, banks lend out money when creditworthy borrowers show up at their door. How could Alice's decision possibly encourage anybody to borrow? If anything, her decision has reduced some businesses' incomes, and those businesses are now less likely to ask for a loan because they have less reason to expand their business.

If you want to argue that the answer is yes, you'll have to point out a clear transmission mechanism to justify your answer.

As to the point of why banks continue to offer savings accounts, the answer is mostly one of interest rate differentials. Banks don't have to offer savings accounts. They could refinance themselves via other means. It's just that those other means typically come with a higher interest rate.
agree with your sentiments,

I believe the issue that many people have with XML goes a bit deeper ... using XML means you are creating a bit of distance between yourself and the host programming language. XML stands alone, apart, that distance comes with costs in terms of ease of use (which could have been addressed by proper tooling), as well as many benefits.

HTML may not be pleasant to write documents with and I would say exactly the same thing of json ... show me the equiv of a Word document in json and I would argue that only a madman would like to directly edit that.

Really, James Clark said it right, 'json for data, xml for documents'.

Today's 'ease of use' of manipulating a native data structure of the 'language du jour' will eventually be viewed a bit more negatively in the years, decades to come. But really this is a storm in a tea cup ... XML has embraced json and has lots of support for generating it so I am fine. For others, they will eventually find the boundaries of json and start redeveloping the same concepts.

However, all the above being said/done I do think json is the right 'over the wire' format for data today; I just think we should embrace heterogeneity instead of 'knee jerk' cargo cult advice of 'don't use XML'; that's the equivalent of throwing tools out of one's toolshed and that's just plain stupid.
IMHO, you are looking at it the wrong way, that is the candidate's way.

From the employer's point of view, it's all about determining the most effective way of finding out if you're a fit or not. In my personal experience and confirmed by the research I've done, asking basic coding and simple problem solving is the most effective way to eliminate applicants on which you don't need or want to waste your time. Most common "exception" is if one is interviewing what he considers a superstar, but then we are not actually talking about an interview, but rather a sales pitch.

I find that Brian has put it perfectly in the last paragraph:
"A solid answer to FizzBuzz is like a firm handshake when meeting your new boss or like opening the door for your date. It’s an introduction that sets a minimum bar and guarantees that neither the interviewer nor the candidate is wasting the other’s time."

And then you ask for Github, resume, whatever-you-find-relevant.
I have endless TextEdit files strewn around my hard disk with very similar contents, I need to hoover them up every now and again. It's really useful to type something out like this, even just to map the problem out in your mind.
>That's the most important part, and the mostly often ignored in HN discussions

Example... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6572743
> Are you sure you aren't talking about present day America

I'm just talking about the world I know. I don't live in America. I can't say whether it's better or worse.
The "free market" is only as free as the consumer.
What the hell, is this spam?
We try to look at ourselves as solving the communication needs of businesses and the 3 products are 3 ways of solving those needs.

The KooKoo platform is similar to Twilio and allows developers to develop their own innovative voice apps.

Cloudagent.in is a full featured cloud based contact center and this helps businesses run their contact center operations.

Bizphone.in is a virtual PBX/receptionist product and helps companies get a virtual PBX on the cloud.

So though KooKoo is aimed at developers, Cloudagent and BizPhone are aimed at SMEs and we have adapted a separate sales strategy to sell those products. India is a high touch eco system and hence our sales strategy involved both inbound marketing and feet on street.

For KooKoo there have been many innovative use cases, including missed call marketing, developers integrating into various CRMs, integrating voice into their social media strategies and using phone numbers as a tracking system for their ads.
It seems that FED is clueless why inflation is low even after QE3.

The real question is how FED is going to stop inflation increase after they reach the goal of 2-3%.
Advances in storage and compute have led to a disturbing fetishization of machine learning.

While the modern Machine Learning Movement makes sense in a historical context and is a reasonable reaction to the disappointing returns from symbolic inference during the early days of AI research, it is terrifying that the research community is satisfied to rely on big data and statistical methods to carry us forward.

Few among us recognize the need to prioritize the study of the human brain. Even fewer are placing their bets on intelligent computer systems seeded with neurologically-inspired designs.

Vicarious gets it.

How long before others see the writing on the wall?

Now is the time to stop reacting. Now is the time to consider the field in a broad context and develop a balanced, holistic approach.

Consider this a wake-up call.

http://blog.perfmode.com/the-noml-movement/
That article contains the best analogy of programming I've ever found. Beautiful piece, thanks.
Mass media usually trails, rather than leads, on these kinds of things. There were tons of gay parents before you saw any on tv shows as recurring characters, and they still insist on the stereotype of the nerdy male engineer. Unless you think those are good things, it seems like they should work to stay at least current.
Regarding specifically the "free software" statement, It's a holy war. One where I'm on the side of the religious zealots, for once. The special extra fanatical wingeing about big software like DropBox not being free comes from seeing the founders as smart people who have a base ripe for promoting your (my) view (that free software is just plain better for the world), and if they just saw it our way, maybe things would start to change. So we complain. Well, I try not to outright complain, because I know that's a shitty way to get what you want and that my views are ultimately tangential to their cause, but you get the idea...
>He was 4-5 years early, and frankly 2002 prices weren't that insane.

Define "weren't that insane", please. Were they sane when compared with the incomes being leveraged to buy them? Compared with some shortage of supply that would naturally push prices up?

Because the story I've heard is that the mid-late 2000s housing bubble was just the peak of a vast secular inflation in real-estate values that had little to no tie to the actual feasibility of housing purchases for real families, and was fuelled largely by speculative lending.
Why entrepreneur should unleash their inner artist
I can't seem to successfully reset the calculator after a divide by zero.

It's funny how when I closed Windows and ended on the DOS prompt I mindlessly typed "win" & enter. Some habits never die I guess.
Umm .. because accessing such resources as files in a shared way is a duty of the OS, after all. Or, to put it another way, lets rephrase your question: "Why should OS vendors supply drivers for filesystem _X_?" "Why should OS vendors provide a way for users to share files, at all?" The answer: because it is the duty of the OS to provide such features.

Another thing: who says we need a Cloud model in order to deliver the same results as Dropbox? It could be just as easily possible to enable filesharing on a local workstation that is accessible to the public/chosen-users over the Internet, after all. The technology exists to implement these features entirely without relying on a Cloud at all: its called 'the computer in front of you'.

The "cloud" aspect of the feature is not actually necessary to deliver this kind of filesharing functionality - this is only a marketing gimmick that is used to justify 3rd-party, commercial access to ones information. Remember, if you're not paying for it you're not a customer: you're a product.

The features that Dropbox provide should already be in the OS. I create a Shared folder, I administer it with local OS features, I publish.

I believe that OS vendors were asleep at the wheel during this Web 2.0 cult phase, but I hope they wake up soon and relieve us of the security and privacy nightmare that is Web 2.0.
Eh, no need to call in the Grammar Squad. Not to mention effect is correct here (effect means ‘to bring something about as a result’). Hacker News did bring something about as a result.
> I'm not arguing for more regulation

Yes you are. But something in the American psyche makes it very hard to admit this, so you end up with utterly useless regulations and very little desire to enforce the ones you have.
I downvoted you before I realise you just provided a copy of the actual post. Please include some context next time and not just dump an imgur link.
There's people who try everything that is new and enjoy innovation, and there's people who tend to be skeptical at first. The first kind is busy trying out the software while the others are busy expressing their negativity on a website.

And there's of course those who find it a big shame, that Dropbox and other cloud services have become completely unusable thanks to the host country's government.
Still, we still favour short term over long term. First because the future in uncertain, and long term predictions are less reliable. That basically introduces a discount rate, which any long term investment have to overcome.

Second, there are other specific mechanisms that favour short term over long term. For private companies, it's the desire of the stakeholders for fast return on investment. They want their dividends now, not in 10 or 20 years for now. We only live so long, after all —for now. For public funding, the government favour anything further than the next elections. That spurs decisions that may be rational for egotistical individuals, but which are nuts at a societal level.

If our society really were rational, it would fund basic anti-ageing research more, and basic AGI and FAI research much more. Not to mention cryonics. But what would you expect? Most people are sufficiently nuts to still believe in the supernatural anyway.
John Whaley of Moka5 is somewhere here on Hacker News. From what I saw interning there it's a pretty healthy company.
Sorry, i will.
For your last point, I do wonder. How does high inflation make investment unattractive? It should do the opposite, since holding cash is very unattractive under high inflation.

As to the cost of living going up: in nominal terms, sure. But it depends on the type of inflation. Usually wages grow to keep up with inflation, so in the end, it's a wash.

I'm sure there are costs associated with extremely high inflation, e.g. restaurants having to print new menus all the time. However, I'm not aware of any serious work being done to quantify that effect. It seems that even at rates of inflation that we would consider very high - let's say 15% anually - those costs would still be irrelevant.

Volatile inflation would probably hurt more than merely high inflation as long as the latter is stable.
Correct, i was just trying to be witty ;-)
Someone put it on 9gag http://9gag.com/gag/av0z0Bn
Ryanair lies about flying to 'Barcelona' - it actually flies to Gerona, about 95km away (1hr by ground transportation):

http://gospain.about.com/od/ryanair/qt/ryan_barcelona.htm

Although, Gerona is itself a beautiful city and would be a nice place to live.
15 Unethical And Illegal Ways That People Get Ahead In Life
Following your examples, one of the ways of searching is by issuing a GET to /search?params.
The problem with this, is that is easily to reach the maximum size of the url. For example, if you want to know the data of your facebook frriends you will issue a GET /data?user[:fb_id]=123&user[:fb_id]=534...

There is a solution for this less ugly than using POST, is to sent data in the GET request. This is not forbidden by any RFC. Is just not so common. Most of the client libraries supports that.
Try getting any sort of commercial circuity stood up today. It's always 60-90 days, take it or leave it.

It's incredibly frustrating but I don't see it changing anytime soon. =(
And strangely enough, nobody outside of neoliberal bank-interest lobbyists has actually wanted quantitative easing. Keynesians want the labor market and consumer demand propped up, social democrats want infrastructure investment towards those ends, and radicals are looking for a debt jubilee.
Sounds like a recipe for even worse corruption. Pay into your friend's charity, have your friend pay into your charity. Make a deal with a homeless person that if you get back half of what you give them you'll give them a lot of money. You can continue on your own.
How can you argue that doctors care about avoiding high blood pressure? I don't know where you've been, but I've been watching those doctors here trying to help a bleeding patient, and not once have they done anything to prevent high blood pressure. They've even given him transfusions to increase his blood pressure. That's the exact opposite of trying to keep blood pressure low.
Becoming a superhero
This is a common technique in engineering troubleshooting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishikawa_diagram http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_Whys
They have been using Windows before hand.. At least my sister.
It doesn't change the fact that you pretty much need cable for internet access of any decent speed.
Unfortunately I don't think it's the right country to run a VPN service from, these days.
Off the top of my head: Laser tag on larger, more complicated battleground. Players have map displayed on their glasses & statuses on their watches. Commanders can give orders through glasses, etc.
Low interest rates is exactly what you want in a normal, non-inflationary environment. It encourages lending for investment into projects that allows a rise in economic activity.

The only time you don't want low interest rates is when an excessive amount of loans fuels demand-pull inflation. (Though, interestingly, high interest rates can also fuel inflation via wealth effects. Overall, I tend to think interest rates are the wrong lever, and fiscal policy should be used at all times, but that's a whole other can of issues.)

So the behavior is describe is exactly what is reasonable.

Now, the whole QE thing is obviously pushing on a string. The zero lower bound means it's not going to help economic activity. QE is like going to a witch doctor because all the people who could really help - in this case, the people in control of fiscal policy - can't get their heads out of their proverbial asses.
"it's simply engrained in their editorial outlook"

As far as I can see, in the UK we have a wide spectrum of "editorial outlook" in newspapers while the TV news channels (much to the disgust of Murdoch) are legally required to provide neutrality and impartial, unbiased coverage (and I know some people think the BBC is the last stronghold of communism).

Yes Prime Minister explained the newspaper market in the UK pretty well:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGscoaUWW2M
As someone who doesn't know much about that region - how prevalent / accessible is the internet?

I hear from friends that are from India / Pakistan of slow internet speeds, access limitations and general bandwidth restrictions - I assume this also plays a part in how big your target audience is, and with the limited speeds / bandwidth available I guess it makes pitching the product slightly harder?
A great example of how to market an iPhone game/application
Grammar Squad here with the facts. And just the facts.

When effect is a verb, the object must be the change itself, similar to cause: "Hacker News effected a significant deterioration in site availability". With affect, the thing being changed is the object: "Hacker News affected the site."