skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
So stacked ranking - why do companies not understand that the granularity level can't be too low (i.e., teams of 5 or so)?

Or is it just the case that stacked ranking works in theory but doesn't scale to real organizations (kind of like communism)?
because youtube comments are some of the worse on the net
SEEKING FREELANCER - California (Remote OK)

Android Prototype/MVP

Myself and a couple colleagues have an iOS sports trivia app at (http://playhattrick.com). We're getting some good download and usage numbers. People are asking for an Android version so we're looking for someone to help us build a prototype/MVP version. This isn't a long or big budget project but if it sounds interesting & you love sports, please get in touch.

erik[at]playhattrick[dot]com
Type 1 Diabetics have more hope and freedom thanks to technology
> It's vestigal on a server. It's there because the server installation and the desktop installation share that component. But since there's no UI for you to approve transmission, currently the crash reports sit on the server awaiting (local) examination and do nothing.

Aside eating up 8GB of RAM on one file server I'd built. I couldn't believe it when I saw that.

Wooopsie is just one of many reasons why I always recommend vanilla Debian over Ubuntu Server.
NAT works as well as it was designed to, but it is flawed by design. Simple things like "what is my IP" become complex thanks to it. It has it's uses, but not for consumer connections.

IPv6 does provide real world benefits, not the least of which is the simplification of allocations and a huge price drop in terms of address assignments.
I think this is very similar to the creator of liquid soap. He knew that no patent could keep this out of his competitors' hands so he bought out essentially every pump liquid dispenser bottle maker.

Looking ahead to see where the need is going to be (not where it is) is an old trick which has withstood the test of time.

"I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been."
Wayne Gretzky
Same here, I don't understand why I'm forced to append junk, and I'm pretty sure my first/last name alone aren't taken.

I canceled at that point.
Tesla Motors Inc (TSLA): Putting The Model S Fires Into Perspective
The Machinery of Freedom by David D. Friedman.
Except that when you're on a cruise you're typically also paying rent for a house or apartment elsewhere.
This baffles me a bit. Why would you even want this much money? These sums of money are comfortably beyond anything I could reasonably spend, so after a certain amount it's all moot.

You could live in a nice, cheap country with a good standard of living instead, and spend a tenth of what you make while living very well with your family. People keep wanting more money and what do they do? Get a car. Get a house. Get a second car. Bigger house. Big whoop.

Few people spend their money on experiences, or enjoying their life, because they work too much to have any free time, just so they can go back to their stately home, which becomes "eh, my house" after a month anyway.

My "recipe for success" is "make enough money so you won't have to think about it, make sure you have many good friends, and try to make others happy from time to time". Most people don't even seem to know what makes them happy, really.
> could have a pretty big impact.

You might even say it could be a game changer.
An interesting reply. But doesn't seem to address anything about the question I posed and more an attempt to throw a positive spin on PUA.

I mean, what you suggest here is that people are manipulative and sad before they become involved in the PUA community, and that the joining of said community is an attempt to free them of these negative traits?

I get confused by this logic because as far as I can tell the PUA community endorses manipulative and dishonest behavior, so what you're suggesting is that these lonely, manipulative, people, can transcend their manipulative behavior through more manipulative behavior.
The US is already holding the largest stash of Bitcoins in the world. They seized about 144,000 BTC from Silk Road.
That's quality feedback! I really appreciate you taking the time to write that out.

We figured since we're so small and unknown at this point, it would make sense to wear the partner badge high on our chest...but your msg makes complete sense.

In case the website didn't make it clear, we provide course creation tools so any educator can create or curate a textbook replacement.
I'm French as well and not really proud of the way you're phrasing your disapproval. There's a middle ground between sheepishly turning a blind eye and calling bullshit.

Just because it's not done by the book all the way doesn't we shouldn't salute the effort.
We actually have a full set of In-App Purchases (IAPs) ranging from $2 to $99, as well as the $5 coin doubler.

That being said, we're not trying to monetize by being heavy-handed and squeezing players for money with paywalls and the like. Instead, our in-game premium currency serves the purpose of "shortcut money" to alleviate frustration or grind. The game has been balanced to be pretty generous with giving out premium currency, and pretty easy to continuously play without pay, because then we can just monetize on ads instead. Better to make slightly less money from happy players than lots of money from pissed ones, we think!
Yeah, I was thinking that the plot sounded interesting and I should look for the book... then he said how it ends. Poop.
See "Datomic: Can Simple be also Fast?"(https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6426362)
I could try, but although the difference seems localized to a fairly small number of functions, I haven't been able to precisely identify why it's so slow (there's no single inner loop etc that's slow), and shrinking it to something minimal would be hard...
I disagree. Evernote, Airbnb, Twitter, Facebook, etc. could not be built without a great tech team.

Whether they solve new technical problems in the context of computer science is irrelevant to needing a great tech team to properly execute something like the aforementioned companies.
http://www.occidentalhotels.com/resort/royal-hideaway-playac...

I booked it through Costcotravel.com. It's much cheaper in the low season. Paid $325/night total including tax; that's for two people and it included round-trip airport transfers ($120 value). If we were to have a dinner experience like what they offer in the US, it would easily run $300+ each time.
Yes Virginia, starting a company is hard. At least you focused more of your effort on product and customers than raising capital.
Well done for experimenting and good luck :)

I especially like #2 -

Blocking ads is the only reasonable way for me to say "You don't have permission to show me ads". Let's say it's part of my Terms & Conditions for displaying content on my browser.

If a site owner doesn't agree to my terms, they don't have to show me the content either. If we can't agree, then there's no problem.
29 Colorized Historical Photos That Make The Past Seem Not So Far Away
It doesn't have to be all black and white.

Over praising your tech talents, saying nothing about them or saying something that isn't particularly good in nature are just all extremes.

It's really not a two side of a single coin, either this or that.. No, it's more of a spectrum.

Humility has never demoted a person nor has it affected their odds of succeeding in their endeavor. I think the real issue at hand here is the line of thoughts that "My company just got itself a VC round, I must be the BEST".

Well, maybe they are good, maybe they are even really good. But by all means with 7 billion humans on this planet, I'm pretty sure someone else is better out there.
Reminds me of a quote from The Prince:

"Hence we may learn the lesson that on seizing a state, the usurper should make haste to inflict what injuries he must, at a stroke, that he may not have to renew them daily, but be enabled by their discontinuance to reassure men’s minds, and afterwards win them over by benefits. Whosoever, either through timidity or from following bad counsels, adopts a contrary course, must keep the sword always drawn, and can put no trust in his subjects, who suffering from continued and constantly renewed severities, will never yield him their confidence. Injuries, therefore, should be inflicted all at once, that their ill savour being less lasting may the less offend; whereas, benefits should be conferred little by little, that so they may be more fully relished."

http://www.bartleby.com/36/1/8.html
Nice guys! I've been tracking the rc's with Ionic Framework (http://ionicframework.com/) and just updated to the final. I've especially loved ngAnimate and ngTouch which have been really solid.
> If this rule actually existed

I gave the link to the specific federal statutes oO

As for the case you're bringing, the criterion would be: it the website tyring to get people to believe it is actually endorsed by Apple to injure its reputation? In this case it is criminal impersonation, which is a usually a state criminal offense unrelated to trademark law.

Otherwise, if it's only criticizing the participation of Apple in a jewish conspiracy, to use your example, it is pretty safe on the trademark front (and even more if the webmaster was careful not to show ads or to link to a commercial website).

However, depending on the actual content of the website, it could still constitute defamation and Apple could thus sue, but again not in relation with its trademark.
As Yahoo is not on the verge of bankruptcy, I'd say start with a headcount freeze rather than immediate layoffs. That immediately changes the tone from "oops, you fell below an arbitrary line that makes no sense for this team", while providing an incentive to lay off true under-performers because you can replace them with better people.

Then start making individualized assessments of projects/teams. Start with the larger ones, where you can hopefully make meaningful cuts with the least disruption. Make individual judgements as to whether the team is pulling its weight or needs to be shrunk (or eliminated entirely).

Where layoffs from a team are forced, offer transfers to other teams, which can evaluate whether they would be better served by replacing their lowest performers with these otherwise-doomed employees.
Yep.

I know this sounds harsh, and this is pure conjecture on my part, but the way I see it is that Marissa Mayer is on a 5 year contract and after that she is out of there, regardless of what state Yahoo is in.

If the company is a mess in 5 years time she can blame it on the culture which was resistant to change. She will simply jump onto the next gravy train via her big investor and board-room friends.

The WSJ and NYT say her total compensation over this period will be at least $100m+. All she has to do is sit tight, look as though she's busy, and hopefully keep the share price up to maximize her share options.
With Javascript disabled the page is completely blank.

edit (bringing text from comment up a level):

If you are building apps for people other than yourself, then having a banner to notify them it won't work is better than a blank page.

A typical banner that I make includes the following things:

- Positioned at the top via CSS and sticks there

- Includes a link to http://www.enable-javascript.com

- Includes a tracking image so I can see how many people are coming without JS enabled

If you have a white page like this blog does, people will think your site is broken and bounce... and may never come back.
Oh man I would love to get this game on Steam. Not sure it would be a great fit for the platform though, as such traditionally hardcore gamers can be rather hostile to freemium. Some day we might rebalance it to be a premium game if we get the chance!
Maybe in 2004 but this is 2013. Rails, iOS, Digitalocean, heroku, aws, with a front-end designer. You no longer need to know anything about infrastructure.
Quick note: dollar-using countries like the US write $4.99 meaning one cent less than 5 dollars. Or they write $4,999 for one dollar less than 5 thousand dollars. Or they write $499 for one dollar less than five hundred dollars. Hope that helps.
The Syllable Everyone Recognizes
I think he means as a startup company you don't need the great tech team, you need the idea.
Apple competes against companies like Samsung (2012 ad budget: ~$4B) and Microsoft (2012 ad budget: ~$2.75B).

This is not a lot of money in the markets where Apple competes.
I've always wondered about this, the relative price of cruises make it a cool place to do the work from home thing. I lived in Costa Rica for 6 months while working from home, and it was a great experience. I was wondering about the internet connection, and I guess if you don't have to maintain visibility via some chat program then I guess you wouldn't really need it that often.
Show HN: Better photo filters for web
QR codes are great for augmenting ads, booklets and other stuff, but if you want reliable readability, you shouldn't go with more than a simple color change, in my experience.

I was tasked with creating QR codes for certificates (every certificate leads to a unique page for the certificate number on the website, for security and more information since the certificates were small and made to be pretty instead of useful).

We ended up with Level M golden (more like dark yellow) colored QR codes in the corner - using higher error correction is actually detrimental the smaller you go, and backgrounds, embossing or any kind of advanced design would lead to it being very hard to read - it's better to have a plain ugly QR code that is immediately scannable with any device than a pretty one that is unreadable (just imagine your buyers trying to scan the damn thing five times in a row then give up in frustration).

But the client really liked the idea (and the results), and I am still surprised that so many people don't even consider this nowadays...
China spends $40MM/yr on Post-Its.
I wrote about this over a week ago, also they demand your cell phone number and apparently don't allow you to change it.

http://privasectech.com/2013/10/terms-service-google-vanity-...
block cookies from YT?
I wasn't actually suggesting anything conspiratorial, just curious about what was on fire i.e. bits of metal don't catch fire that easily but obviously there's something under a car hood that does.
Scientists reward authors who report their own errors, says study
In Hong Kong, Asia's richest billionaire, Mr Li Ka-Shing of Cheung Kong Holdings, owns nearly everything. Anything you do or touch in a day makes Mr Li even richer. His wealth is opaque so he is probably right up there with Bill Gates and Carlos Slim for the #1 spot.
I got mine! The only place that I didn't get my name exactly the way I want it is on Twitter.
MIT Motion Track Table
I'm surprised I got downvoted so heavily and that nobody else is concerned about this. Facebook was known for using fb platform data in its app development. Amazon could easily too. I'd rather trust a specialized analytics company rather than a company that's been known to aggressively move into adjacent industries.

Why would it be free? No AWS service started out totally free as this is.
I was implying that PHP wasn't doing any of the heavy business logic, but then I re-read some articles (most notably this one) & I'll admit I'm a bit confused.

https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/2010/02/02/hiphop-...

I WAS referring to PHP as frontend, but based on the article it seems like there may be a lot more HipHop PHP than I suspected, because they mention that it would be too niche to write a ton of C++ code. However, there is this line which I think clarifies somewhat --
"HipHop allows us to write the logic that does the final page assembly in PHP and iterate it quickly while relying on custom back-end services in C++, Erlang, Java, or Python to service the News Feed, search, Chat, and other core parts of the site."

It seems like even though PHP is compiled & heavily utilized, it is still used mostly for page assembly on top of a Service-Oriented Architecture, with services written in C++, Erlang, Java, & Python.
> The problem with other distros is the lack of a design.

Not true - plenty of distros ship pretty default themes (ArchBang, Mint, ElementoryOS, etc). And themes are just that - a theme. They can easily be installed on any distro - even ones that look "ugly" out of the box.

> Ubuntu was the first Linux distro I used that did not look like a donkey's ass (back in 2008~).

They key bit there is "I used" - ie there's been plenty but you're unaware of them. Ubuntu wasn't the first to place emphasis on aesthetics (I remember being wowed by Mandrake back in 2002) and it's certainly not the only distro to care about that at the moment. Ubuntu is just the distro that shouts the loudest because Shuttleworth has deep pockets.

> Even today's Gnome Shell does not look as good as Unity.

Subjective. Personally I think Unity is the ugliest of the heavyweight desktop environments. And Unity is certainly the least attractive part of Ubuntu (the colours, icons and font rendering is what makes Ubuntu look good, in my opinion)
How a close call in the ER turned a young doctor into a surgical visionary
I had a good laugh before I realized the extension was at work.

I blame the elf-lords in Washington.
Its not the size of the money, its what the money does:gobbling up scarce resources in advance hence locking out rivals from crucial supplies.
I look forward to my phone screens breaking less.
That's a neat trick until you say "Google apps" and it all falls apart.
The prices do not include taxes and tips. Tips are added to your bill. Taxes can easily exceed to cost of the trip.
Ask HN: Why isn't "Super WiFi" Mainstream Yet?
I would love long-range wireless access from my home connection...
When Jobs rejoined Apple there were huge layoffs and a cleaning up of projects. But it was never permanent, he struck hard and it was clean. After that the company could focus on innovating and not fear politics of stack ranking. Can you imagine if he kept that system in play, would Apple have been as successful?
You understand taxes aren't just taking money for nothing, right? It is an exchange.
Meet The Silk Road Employee That Dread Pirate Roberts Allegedly Tried To Murder
Invention may revolutionise commuter cycling forever
Can it be used on more than screens and lenses?
I believe they are holding off antitrust lawsuits due to Android having higher global market share. I find it odd because Apple has higher share in the US and a near monopoly on tablets.
Yes, ability to execute is key, for the most part though you need people who are great with databases, rather than great at creating databases.

eg. Hire the guy that can optimize queries rather than the guy making PAXOS algorithms.

That's what I mean by great, and to be clear about startup I mean Facebook, et al, when they were at the stage of only having raised $5 mm, not Facebook post-IPO.
Malcolm Gladwell Has Found God
It didn't when I signed up, and thus far, I've not been forced to add it.
This is silly in my opinion. If she wanted to prune the comoany to make room for more (acqui-)hires do it in stages. First let the managers feel like they can more easily fire the most underperforming people. Donmt force them to do so.
Cat food (tinned meat, not kibbles) is more expensive than vegetables. If you're eating catfood to advertise your poverty, you're doing it out of a twisted sense of pride.
Holy moly. I'm the guy that's working on Sprite Lamp, and I just woke up to this thread (and a giant spike in my web traffic). Thanks everyone for the enthusiasm and support! I guess I don't have anything general to say - there are probably too many words on the website as it is - but I'll do my best to answer people's questions here.
I have to ask: did you work in a traditional Japanese bigco?
"most promising": the potential to have a large impact in future.
Not sure what you were expecting. AngularJS apps aren't usually built with a noJS fallback in mind.
in future (e.g in 5-30 yrs)
Favorite "bonus" feature: annoying semi-transparent blurs you can tweak but not turn off. Gratuitous fades. Choppy animations on an underpowered GFX.
This was the obvious next step for touch-based devices. Sapphire production seems to have gotten really affordable recently, and Gorilla Glass never truly delivered shatter protection, mostly scratch protection.

The Ubuntu Edge was going to be the (possibly?) first phone to offer a sapphire, so it's good to see others pick up the idea as well.
It is at the surface. I don't think it's commonly implemented that purely though. There will be projects that are failing and they will have, if they already haven't had, tougher cuts. There will be projects that are succeeding and they will get more people. Then there will be projects that are just coasting.. Mayer is way too smart to just sequester the staff like that. On paper you can't really say it's being done any differently though.

Every time this comes up, it's treated like kryptonite. What's better? I can agree if this is the ONLY thing they've got going, then yeah it's terrible and the whole company probably is in a lot of trouble. Thing is it'll be a policy of sorts but great managers of great teams will go to the mat and not have guys in the bottom 10%, that stuff happens in big corporations. To that, when you've got an elite team doing elite work, pretty much everyone knows it and usually they are scared to mess with it. Sometimes the hard choice is made and whole teams are shut down because they aren't performing or their project isn't, some times it's their fault and sometimes it was someone else' bad idea.

Should they have peers rank peers? What's better? I'm seriously asking, companies have better and lesser performers, companies of a certain size almost always have people that simply aren't good. How do you get rid of them and make the whole company stronger? Some sort of measurable business objective combined with manager ranking and peer ranking?
how do you apply stack ranking effectively if most of the dead weight is in the branches (middle management) but scoring heavily weights the leaves (workers) of an organization?

My feeling is that generally a group knows who sucks or is disruptive, and this is probably the most reliable data source. That's your scoring criteria. Other modifications I might make:

1. flatten the org chart for the purposes of ranking.
2. employees rank best and worst fellow employees, i.e. up to 10 best, up to 10 worst.
3. ranking is two-dimensional to distinguish between "this person is terrible and should be fired" from "this person isn't a good fit/being utilized well and should be moved".
4. Do the above and see if the results can be used to determine who should be fired.
5. If you want to repeat this process every year don't set forced quotas.
And yet everybody hires from Stanford or CMU.
What I Learned Building Medium (So Far) — Ev Williams
1. Well, that would be a hard bug to reproduce right?

"Saving this file (attached) takes an infinite amount of time."
With any of these scientific breakthrough the proof is in the pudding. They've got to get some sort of prototype invention that uses their science to validate it. If they can't get their prototype device to work then something's wrong with the science.
Why should Google agree to give away something to you for free forever? They are doing you and the majority of the users (who will never pay for Facebook/Google Plus/Github) a favor by providing the service without charging you a dime. They reserve the right to charge you in the future. If this changes, they will let you know.
Could it just be that apple is going to make a watch and will use sapphire crystal for the watch faces? This is already very common on watches.