skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This is exactly how the Disrupt SF Hackathon went IMO. Sponsors doled out hefty prizes for including the use of their respective APIs in a hack. With the addition of teams receiving passes to attend the event by participating, it led to a 5 hour showcase that was mostly comprised of variations on a familiar theme. Lots of, "Shopping app with instagram like filters" and other mishmashes of APIs with no critical thought applied. Really a bummer.
Since they could have passed any bill they wanted to, you'll have to ask them why they passed what they did. Parent's point is still valid - Republicans had zero input.

If it's really true that Republican backers are dimwitted, what's anyone supposed to do about that? Why can't the Democrats win them over with better messaging? Shouldn't be too hard. They're dimwits, after all.
Cubit is an affordable Wearable that pairs with a Smartphone
>they made 60K for about 20 minutes of work.

Did I misread that ?
If not, it's just insane.
Oculus Rift Virtual Reality Headset Coming to iOS Devices
I've got a few tokens for anyone that wants to try it out:

http://tokn.co/wa69ybv2
http://tokn.co/j7tb9cd9
http://tokn.co/c4yha3sc
http://tokn.co/amh5chnw
http://tokn.co/sxgdp2cx
I don't think "no side work" is a market contract term for tech workers. I'd appreciate it if someone could correct me on this. Noncompete was market, and practically boilerplate, before the CA ruling. "No side work" is a much more egregious intrusion into employee private lives.
Zendesk For Apps
Indeed, I have to vouch for ffmpeg as a the best solution. When I built GifMachine[0], it's pretty much just a web interface and automation layer to ffmpeg/imagemagick. Imagemagic and ffmpeg I found to be easy to use, fast, and delightfully scriptable. Using them together also produces the prettiest results.

For example, here's a gif produced with just ffmpeg: http://i.imgur.com/DWc4OdD.gif

And here is the version produced by ImageMagick: http://i.imgur.com/OdojPSo.gif

While the one made using ImageMagick looks better, it's also less compressed and takes up more space. So it's a tradeoff between the two.

[0] http://gifmachine.xwl.me/
I think the last gotcha there is the wrong way to think about it. If you say slices are passed by reference you risk passing on a lot of mis-information. Instead, slices are a struct, with a pointer to an array, and are passed by value. I mean you can't explain the append behavior without knowing what a slice really is.
At work my second display is a 27" iMac. It is connected to my other 27" iMac via thunderbolt.
The difference between the top and bottom result in the survey is 0.3 on a scale of 5. Given the small sample size of most survey research my hunch is that these differences are directional only.

Here is the original report:

http://blogs.forrester.com/nate_elliott/13-10-28-an_open_let...
Appalling bullshit from a self-promoter, e.g."

"None of these missteps would have occurred if the contractors had taken a gradual, agile approach...."

Which, however much or little they might have preferred to do, ignores the government's role as integrator and general "quarterback". No system wide tests until days before launch, and launching anyway after they failed? Don't blame the contractors, blame CMS on up for not seeing the need, or even the need to freeze requirements (changes occurred through the week before launch, and the big one blocking window shopping in August).
I would be shocked if those survey results were statistically different from "the same." The spread from the top (YouTube) to the bottom (Facebook) is 0.11 on a 1-5 scale, with a sample size of 395.

If I assume a std deviation of 1 (which seems low), that's 2-sigma, total, top-to-bottom.
Stopped reading after

> Preface: As a white, heterosexual, cis, male, I’m granted, from birth, an extraordinary amount of privilege

I wasn't actually aware people outside of the Tumblrverse said things like that. (Over on Reddit there is /r/TumblrInAction for things like this)
While that criticism is valid, it is also possible for them to think that the details of it be better kept a trade secret than be revealed to the public through either a patent document or a detailed enough paper. (Just giving them the benefit of doubt.)

If you look at Gary Drescher's work published in "Made up minds" [1], it seems possible that an AI that can influence the world can more efficiently arrive at intelligence than one that simply observes it - i.e. one that can learn by performing experiments rather than only looking at data coming out of everywhere. So there does seem to be scope for approaches to AI that aren't in the "data trumps everything" gang.

[1] http://books.google.co.in/books/about/Made_up_Minds.html?id=...
"Hello World" - Synthetic Biology
Not giving these people the same rights as every other human makes me scared that my human rights will not be respected. Guaranteeing a fair trial is an expression of ourselves, not a reflection on the people being tried.
What would be wrong with that scenario? Shorter, simpler treatments sound like a win for both patient and doc. They wouldn't necessarily be cheaper than long, complicated treatments but on the whole they probably would be.
Facebook marketing is great for some things and horrible for others. It is good for building up a brand that has a cool image. Here is an easy test, would the thing you are advertising interest somebody at a party, or would you promote it to your friends as something interesting or valuable without receiving any payment in return? Is it something that has intrinsic social value, or is it just a product that you are trying to spam people with? I have seen real results in FB advertising for building up artists and musicians and growing their own fan base. But, for selling products it has not worked out for me to be a good ROI.
Also check http://apiary.io.
They manage it by making you believe that there is no bribery ;)
All your points are valid, but none of them explain why Mozilla couldn't or shouldn't just put an explicit link from the main download page to something like "offline install" or "redistributable install."
Despite the rather silly checking of privilege at the beginning of the article, it's kind of sweet read (like, "dawwww :3").
They stopped a couple of years ago. For the first few small releases 5-7 the IE team sent a cupcake instead but they stopped with 8.
Fun. Fell a little flat when I found movies like "Craptastic" for Clint Eastwood, which he wasn't really involved with. Does the data dump have categories so you can restrict the list more appropriately?
I'm very happy with this compromise.

Schema migrations involving tens of millions of keys can be challenging. The KEYS command returns all matching keys, so you can roll your own iterator with KEYS AAA* then KEYS AAB* etc. But keys aren't evenly distributed so some result sets are zero and others are still too large.

I've been indexing keys with Redis lists and iterate through the index with LRANGE. That uses extra memory and causes more roundtrip calls.

I can deal with this compromise since SCAN makes Redis much more useful for my applications.
Instability is better than entrenched interests or revolving doors. Even term limits would help.
I didn't want to start or get into a debate, but I'll bite for a second :)

I have a really hard time understanding how some can claim that a body in one location is human, but that body in another location is non-human. How should it be classified? Is it even homo sapien or a different species (or no species)? Is a baby half delivered half human?

The argument is really whether or not women have the right to kill that human body, or whether or not that human body in her womb has any rights on its own to live.

edit: spelling
Where's the gif for "post your sysadmin horror stories site to HN, cause said site to crash under the load (and irony)"?

Nginx 500...
I think Betteridge's law of headlines applies here...
You must have meant to reply to someone else because my point wasn't that it is right, but that the position isn't contradictory.
I think NYC would be a great tech hub if the city could solve the cost-of-living problem

Doesn't Silicon Valley have a similar problem?
Try Tree Style Tab and you'll see how hard it is to leave Firefox.
This could be a pretty awesome development.

One issue with the story, though. They say that, "the initial mobile version of the Oculus Rift will work solely with iOS devices as Android is not designed to work with virtual reality."

I love iOS and everything, but how is it inherently better for VR than Android?
They're data centers with some innovation in water cooled servers. They incorporate a heat exchanger system similar to coastal nuclear power stations to avoid running corrosive seawater through the system. They have the added advantage of being able to run fiber to/from the DC along the entire coast.
Thanks! That was really helpful!
Where exactly did they make you say "Sir! Yes Sir!"? I have worked in NYC finance and fin tech for years and have never seen anything close to the caricature you're describing. Also, what is Marathon?
I'm not sure why you'd prefer an insurer with much stronger financial incentives not to treat Grandma to be the one making the final decision on funding...
Give people an unfair advantage and see what happens next
7 Most Disgusting Ingredients Used to Make Vaccines
I know it is commercial, but I think everyone here can agree that running something like OpenGenera solely on a javascript emulator in the browser is a total non-solution for anything production use and doesn't really compete for sales to customers. What it accomplishes is the opportunity to just try something out to determine if I want to purchase a copy and explore it further.

Furthermore, there is a lot of value in having something out there that brings more attention to LISP machines and the novel ideas they introduced. Right now the barrier to trying OpenGenera out is remarkably high. Even googling for Genera or OpenGenera doesn't show a product page among the top results and the symbolics website is a glorified advertisement page.
Give customers what they really value: open and honest communications (Buffer)
The problems with US healthcare seem fairly well known. But I want to know what sorts of solutions are promising. I don't think single payer is right for the US, it's much too anti-American. I also don't think a free-market free-for-all would work...medicine is way too stacked against the customer. Obamacare, while seriously flawed, is probably still a step in the right direction. Would getting employers out of the business help? I keep hearing about insurance company inability to compete across state lines. What else?
Presumably the Kindle and Matchbook names are designed to evoke book burning, unless there is an alternative interpretation I have missed. Matchbook = taking a match to a book, i.e. burning it, just as you should use your now-obsolete paper books as kindling. To me, book burning has terrible connotations, even though no actual book burning is being done (although it does seem encouraged by the naming). Perhaps I am alone in this regard.
20 euro/month seems way cheap. 20 euro/month for 24/7 technical support seems crazy.
Zombie CISPA bill pushes forward with NSA support
Insurance companies do reel in costs. They often pay far below the "public" rates for services. However, they don't pass that difference on to consumers. They keep it for themselves as profit.
> Tech here has always been about financial services and just doesn't gel with the kind of startups you see in SF. I got tired of seeing demos of stuff that had already been done (and better) on the other coast

It sounds like you haven't seen the full extent of what the NYC tech community has to offer, because I that view doesn't resonate with what I see at all. I'll admit that discover-ability is a problem in any community in any city, not just tech and not just in NYC (this is one problem that Meetup[0] aims to solve).

If you're still in NYC, drop me a line (my email is easy to guess from my username), and I'd be happy to get together in person and give you a map of the New York tech community the way that I see it.

> VCs that just didn't understand software unless it was financial services-oriented.

Again, I think you've had the misfortune of meeting the wrong VCs. I'm an engineer, but I used to work for a venture firm until very recently, and of the ~40 companies in our portfolio, only one was financial in nature.

And, ironically, that one company is based on the West Coast!

The only statement that I might say about NYC startups versus west coast ones is that NYC startups often seem to interact with the other industries we have in NYC, instead of being "just" tech companies or B2C consumer products[1]. But that's just a general feeling, with no hard data to back it up. Certainly there's no dearth of either kind of startup[2] on either coast.

(There's also definitely some sampling bias there, because those types of companies happened to be the investment focus of the company I worked for).

[0] which, incidentally, is an NYC startup that has nothing to do with finance!
[1] ie,
[2] Tumblr and Mongodb are examples of successful "tech" and B2C companies in NYC, for example, and there are plenty of industry-targeted companies in SF too.
In the US a large part of it is driven by malpractice lawsuits for cerebral palsy. If you have a child born with CP after a vaginal delivery, even if the delivery is uncomplicated, it's pretty much a guaranteed malpractice payday here.
The automatic updater takes care of all of the use-cases you mentioned better – why waste time manually copying files around when your relatives could be running the update days before you make it over with that thumb drive?

That said, they do make the full installers easily available (google “Firefox offline installer”) should you need to update a ton of computers behind a slow connection.
The D's had no option but to pass the PPACA.

Clearly they had every option. Including, doing something different. These are senators, not 5 year old children.
Can anyone comment on what they've found is the sweet spot (in terms of features and functionality) where using Riak is the #1 choice? I love the technology and have wanted to use it for a while but haven't had a need for something not better suited to a relational database.
I only stay logged in as root on my personal server. For more public servers I of course disable password logins, ssh in using a key file, etc.

(I wonder what about my post makes you think you should talk down to me and make (incorrect) assumptions about my approach to security?)
Jazz is my favorite programming music. In particular, Christmas Jazz (vince guaraldi trio, and some brad mehldau -style songs: pandora station: http://www.pandora.com/station/159969656237355797)
My home state of New Hampshire gurantees the right to revolution in the constitution. The doctrine of nonresistance against arbitrary power, and oppression, is absurd, slavish, and destructive of the good and happiness of mankind. So it's all "within the system" :) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_New_Hampshire#A...
Correct, but the point is that $5000/month is more than enough to get by on, so even getting doubling your income with a bribe has less marginal utility, especially when you're risking your job.

In contrast, an extra $100 for someone who is just scraping by could be make or break for that month.
Do you paint or draw anymore? Just curious.
World's first bitcoin ATM opens in Vancouver today
This reads like a talk that someone would give at orientation in college... does the tech community in SF really need this much help socializing?
I was talking about PDFs that look exactly or really similar to the printed book... (which probably are a leaked prerelease).
Yes, I'm currently working on that. I think I may be able to restrict a lot of the unwanted movies by filtering based on the number of votes.
Guide to Continuous Integration for iOS Development
Then why don't employers/patients influence costs down?
IOS7 GUI PSD (iPhone) from Teehan+Lax - Updated October 29, 2013
As a side note, this is very tame criticism for Michael Arrington.
I've come to enjoy many aspects of going out in the world alone (most are simply the effect of removing the 'distraction' of company):

- Much greater awareness of other people and surroundings.

- Great opportunity to take stock of what is good/bad in your life (for some reason it's easier to do this outside the house).

- Bursts of creativity (hint: this is a great way to fight writer's block).

These are just the ones I can think of at the moment. One piece of advice for anyone who feels self conscious when alone: since everyone else is amongst friends, they probably won't even notice you. We naturally assume our increased awareness (due to being alone!) is shared by everyone around us - that's not the case though.
We're streaming talks live today and tomorrow from RICON West in San Francisco.

ricon.io/live.html

There are no less than six talks dedicated to this release.
One of the best things I've ever done for myself is pack up and move to another country - just to get out of the cultural bubble we all get wrapped up in. Culture is nothing but a bunch of lies; when you shift from one to the other and give yourself a reset, you see just how much this brings to bear on the individual. Eventually, dealing with a foreign language and strange people can be quite enlightening, if you treat the exercise as a means of rejuvenating your ability to respect the peace and quiet you'll get, at least for the first year.

I've done it a couple times now, having no real affinity with national identity, but I sure do love the cooking and language I've managed to collect. And finally, real experience with the people of the world, not just My Own Team™ ..
I am not asking anyone to do anything. I am just saying that it is possible to communicate outside of Facebook. The choice of tools and exercise of free will that make it a realistic possibility for each individual is up to them.

The idea here is not simply about using an existing alternative network. The idea is that creating an alternative network is always a possibility, and that free will exists.

The "network effect", while a real observable phenomenon, is still a flawed rationalization for the existence of a network, and undermines that thing which actually propagates the network - the free will of the individual.
Two questions:
1. why not just carry a battery case for your Nexus 4?
2. keep in mind that modular = bigger. Would you still like to carry the phone if it meant that in Nexus 4 configuration it would be 2 times bigger and weight two times as much as your regular Nexus 4?
Britney Spears' music used by British navy to scare off Somali pirates
"The D's had no option but to pass the PPACA."

Yes, they did. They could have not passed it.

It's an option that is likely to look increasingly attractive in hindsight over the next year or two.
BlackBerry says BBM for Android and iOS passed 20m users in the last week
Maybe sites would render correctly in Firefox if more web developers used it as a primary browser, rather than just for "testing". ;)
My insurance was billed $50,000 for my extremely uncomplicated vaginal birth. They didn't pay that much because of negotiated discounts, but that was the bill, and is what I would have been charged without insurance. (I live in the US).
Of course this is true. How could this be at all surprising?
Do you disagree with the author? Depending on where you live, his point is very valid. As a resident of Canada, I feel that I live in a fairly progressive, culturally diverse society. Yet even here, I have heard friends of different ethnicities complain about racial issues.

Not all racial or gender divisions are obvious; exclusion or denial of privilege is harder to spot.
Apple should buy Tesla
Want more details about Riak's new Data Types? They're on GitHub: https://github.com/basho/riak/issues/354
Whistle-Blower Creep
I debated whether or not to point this out, but found that I couldn't not say anything as it was effecting my perception of the quality and trustworthiness of the article.
So do what the spec says by default (and if the feature appears to exist), and only deviate for particular UAs.

Assume good faith.
https://hacks.mozilla.org/2013/10/firefox-developer-tools-an... has the current description of that relationship.
Jaguar: light-markup system for long-form documents
Confession: I totally faked the referrals on distrokid, using 5 dispostable.com emails, and was frankly a little surprised when it worked. Strangely, I don't see the "scholarship" plan as an option when I log in, but maybe it only applies to new phonies?

At any rate props to you pud, for so many reasons... it's a fantastic model and a great product execution. It's the first product that encourages casual music distribution - but that's exactly why I didn't, and probably won't, pay for it.

I have 2 albums up on tunecore, that actually generate revenue. These are albums - professionally recorded, produced, etc. - that I spent money creating, and that I make money back from. I picked tunecore because they were the best thing available at the time, but if I were to do another big release, I'd use them again (despite the fact that I'm not thrilled with the company at the moment because Jeff Price is a great guy and they totally screwed him). And at the end of the day, it's because they have the most distribution partners, and because they send me a check every month. tunecore is for music that I want people to buy.

Then Distrokid came out, and I celebrated. I'm sure there are exceptions to this, but musicians make tons of songs that never see the light of day. Maybe the song isn't entirely finished, maybe it's not good enough to pay for mastering, maybe it's part of a musical direction the musician changed his or her mind on. I've got a ton of these, and these are what I'm using distrokid for. I'm not really promoting these tracks, I'm not expecting a great return from them. A lot of them are unfinished experiments or lo-fi fun, nothing market-worthy. But I can put these up for my friends, other musicians, etc. to hear on Spotify at a higher quality than soundcloud can provide.

As soon as I make $19.99 from distrokid, I'll buy the yearly, more as a thank you than anything else. But until then, I'm probably going to keep my phony free account.

And pud - if you can match tunecore's number of distributors and earnings reporting... well, "disruption" doesn't even scratch the surface.
> In particular I'm delighted to see both the definite and indefinite streams of things.

Why? I can see the advantages of either one, but I don't see what having both gets you.

In my experience the implementation advantages of having length-prefixed lists disappear if you have to support indefinite lengths anyway.
So, is Twitter or Facebook the only way to get randomly invited to a party with your social compatibility? Is privacy equivalent to aloneness nowdays?
It is not just a PR gimmick. Look at this line:

>> No cash required! Donations will be charged directly to your Uber account.

This is big as most everyone who signs up now has an account with Uber. Once Uber has my credit card information, I am less hesitant to use their service in the future. It sounds like a great way to reduce friction to me.

Off-topic: I remember when the only reason I signed up for Living Social was because Amazon.com was giving me $10 in gift certificate. I thought they were idiots for giving me free money. Of course, I don't think twice about having a $90 gift card balance "because it never expires".