skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You haven't been building twitters, have you? (I have, I was in a team that build Jaiku, microblogging service that Google bought in 2007).

An average programmer couldn't build Twitter.

Even with only 100K users, you start to hit interesting scaling problems that are specific to activity streams. (For example, should you use inbox or outbox model to construct the streams). They are well understood now, but they were not well understood in 2006-2007, when Twitter (and Jaiku too) had constant scaling issues.
Really? There were people who didn't understand that the movie was satirical? Even though it was made by Paul Verhoeven?

I just lost some respect for Roger Ebert. I thought he was more perceptive than that.
> This is also the logic behind ‘Eating Your Own Dogfood’ as Google has monikered it.

facepalm

How has tech media gotten so myopic to any history or context outside it? Hell, even within tech Microsoft and Oracle have used that phrase for decades before google was a big deal.
Would you pay for the value they provide? If so, how much?
I am doing a similar thing in a organization that has been at least as dis-functional, I know exactly what you're talking about. In fact, everything that you have presented and chatted about here resonates so well with me that I'd be interested in getting in touch with you. Case studies like yours are preciously rare on HN. My address is in my profile if you're open for it.
It's not just a different story; the book has some political points to make which, I think, the movie is trying to directly rebut. Feels a bit tasteless to use the book license for this purpose, to me, but then again I'm a Heinlein fan and I thought Robocop was dumb.

One of the big issues in the book is that patriotism isn't just a rhetorical trick to get naive young boys to volunteer for a meatgrinder (though of course Verhoeven and Neumeier are right, it does that too). If no one stands up for a society, then that society is vulnerable to predators. Sometimes it's foreign invasion, sometimes it's internal predators like corruption and profiteering. I think this call to have a little backbone is relevant in every era. (This position is straightforwardly argued by the mouthpiece character, Dubois.)

And another issue, a little less prominent but often-criticized, is the idea of only giving the franchise to those who earn it. Heinlein later wrote that he wasn't so much advocating this particular plan for the franchise, (e.g. forwarding an alternative: only give the franchise to mothers!), but that he felt that democracy was going in a bad direction (bread, circuses, demagoguery, and holy-war-style partisanship), and that maybe this "franchise-for-all" premise should be revisited.

Why do I think Verhoeven was spitting in Heinlein's face? I probably shouldn't try to paraphrase Heinlein, because he was a complex guy with complex political opinions, but I think he generally favored military strength (though he generally did not favor a strong central government). I'm not as familiar with the Verhoeven oeuvre, but seems to be focused against military-industrial complex (though that's more straightforwardly a Robocop thing), and his anti-war rhetoric is so un-nuanced (it's so slapstick that some people thought it was pro-war) that it's tempting to believe he's anti-all-war (contrasting with people who think the phrase "just war" is meaningful, a group I feel confident includes Heinlein). As I said earlier, I think it's a bit tasteless to try to make a franchise work into a direct attack on the original.

For some contrast: IIRC, Haldeman wrote The Forever War in part as a direct reply to Starship Troopers. Haldeman had lots of direct combat experience, too (as contrasted with Heinlein, who I think never saw combat), which partially informed his views on books like Heinlein's. Personally, I think The Forever War is too good at raising new issues to be seen entirely as a reply to anything, but I understand that was a motivator.
reflecting off of itself
http://maximecb.github.io/Turing-Drawings/#11,3,2,1,0,1,2,0,...
Assuming a standard vesting schedule, I doubt he vested at all in 9 weeks.
Oh man. I spent a couple of days tracking one of those down. When the light went on in my head I felt like such an idiot.
That's your take on the issue. I see IP as just another market with a variety of interested parties, not of all whose interests coincide. From my perspective, a lot of people want to build consumer services without having to pay for content, just as many content holders are engaged in rent-seeking. I don't like the copyright lobby, but nor do I subscribe to the proposition that because the marginal cost of production in some industries is terribly low, no ownership interest should entail. And in case you're wondering, I do not lobby for or even own shares in any media or IP portfolio companies.

So when you continue to try to focus the discussion on trade agreements, historical negotiations, 'trade liberalisation' you're plainly engaging in continued artful misdirection.

Sorry, those happen to be my actual opinions. copyright, patent, and DRM issues are not the whole story of economics. I'm also interested in things like environmental and labor standards, public health policy, food security and poverty reduction, and I'm not going to apologize for having an interest in broader economic issues or willingness to compromise; it's my firm opinion that half a loaf is better than no bread, especially so in matters of economics.

That's why I'm broadly in support of a TPP and ardently in support of TTIP, not withstanding the numerous likely imperfections.
Vagrant is a useful way to very quickly get a Docker capable host. You wouldn't use it for production, no.

For development, if you're running on OS X or Windows (in which case, my condolences), you basically have to use a VM. If developing on Linux, it's a tossup; the complexity and overhead of Vagrant versus the pain and annoyance of fooling around with kernels and dependencies.

I use a Mac for day-to-day development, so a simple Vagrant VM is a no-brainer. :)
> Easily hundreds of dollars a year worth of value. Easily.

So naturally you'd pay hundreds of dollars a year for a subscription, right?
AirBNB is a commodity to me. I can replace the value they provide just by pointing my browser to another provider.

That is the double-edge sword of being a tech company. Non-capital-intensive, but fast growth. Make it work, and make your money fast, because what you're doing has almost no barrier to entry other than code and server time.
Starship Troopers has the heroes wearing Nazi uniforms, and it has a scene from in-fiction television, "teaching" children that killing terrestrial insects is what they should do to assist with the war on the bugs.

I don't remember much of Robocop, but how much more satirical can you get than that?
Ask HN: What would you rather use for IPython: an IDE or the Notebook?
This. The moichendizing was a riot - "It's a good day to... buy!"
Incidents like this are good. They will teach idiots not to trust "online wallets". Why on earth would you entrust a 3rd party service with your coins when you can keep your private key safe on your own and never have to worry about this?

When will people finally learn that since Bitcoin is decentralized by nature, that there is no need to re-invent these online "banks" to store coins?

Serves them right.
What are the Instagram folks doing with their cash? Did they not net more than Musk and Thiel from their sale?
I'm quite content to wait until it comes up for ratification. As I mentioned above, a deal you can vote on is far preferable to no deal at all, which is what we have with the WTO for over a decade now.
Except that utilities are a heavily regulated industry because they could easily hold everyone including facebook hostage and make a lot more profit that way. I don't disagree that the markets can be out of whack, but I'm not sure this is a good example of it.
A comment to the article paraphrases Verhoeven's DVD commentary track as "yes, this was a satire, and I'm baffled that people don't get that".
Can you try to give more details than snark? What particular experience has left you so scarred?

I have never had a problem doing Wikipedia edits for stuff I found inaccurate or needed more details. I didn't always go back to check but whenever I did, the edits were still there / no one has removed or edited them away.
It's been a while, but I think the movie makes it relatively clear that the asteroid attack was in response to violent colonization by the humans.
Because the Obama administration told them to.
I think the problem is that people are looking at Spotify as a replacement for album sales, when realistically Spotify is a replacement for listening to music from torrents, YouTube, or Grooveshark. Album sales are a lost cause. If Spotify disappeared, the situation for musicians would not change. Right now, Spotify makes a convenient scapegoat because they are popular and don't pay much, but they are not the cause of the problem. I'm sure many people at Spotify want to help musicians get exposure.

To put this in perspective, $20 is a ridiculous amount of money compared to traditional record contracts, but after administrative and promotional fees were extracted, the classical record contract could often cost musicians money. The recording industry has been preying on musicians for years, but music fanss have been more than willing to pay their favorite bands for merch or buy expensive concert tickets for a live event. Ticket scalping is booming.

There are legitimate revenue streams available to musicians, but pay-per-listen is not going to be profitable.
I lost most of mine when he said "video games can never be art" http://www.rogerebert.com/rogers-journal/video-games-can-nev...

Not that I had a lot prior to that, for a variety of reasons (Starship Troopers and other "really? you didn't notice that? you caught it in X" moments). But still.
Vince -- I don't want to piss on your parade, but I've worked for dishonest people and it's never worked out for me: every time I've done it I've come to regret it. You may want to start looking... Good luck.
Google silently ties OpenID with G+ accounts
Can I fire someone if I don't like them?
I'm looking to dismiss an employee (5 weeks in; still in probation) who I have trouble with. This is a bootstrap startup.

Performance wise, the employee is doing an above average job. However, we have a lot of personal conflict. These conflicts drain a lot of energy from me which I cannot afford to lose because I need my energy and focus to run the entire company. I lost a lot of productivity because of the stress.

Ethically and legally, I understand it is not the employee's fault if I have conflict with them. As result, I'm willing to offer severance (one or two months of salary) just to ship this person away even though it is not required by the law.

I will be consulting with an employment lawyer on Monday. I just want to hear what you guys think about the situation.

For the sake of my startup and my own well-being, should I terminate this employee and offer some severance (not required by any law)?
Drones map the Matterhorn
It depends on the execution, I think. http://thecodelesscode.com/case/106
Is DevOps an extension of Agile? or, Agile on Steroids?
Among the things that names/identifiers do:

(1) They act as indexes or discriminators.

(2) They describe.

(3) They prescribe.

(1) will be useful for at least as long as we program in a textual medium. (2) is also useful, but type systems make it ancillary. (3) is dangerous since it's merely an ought statement that can easily get divorced from reality; decent type systems obviate the need for that role.
"Who is IHG? They are the place I end up at because I search at Hotels.com and they posted the cheapest rate. Sounds like a shit business that is as profitable as an airline."

IHG is InterContinental Hotels Group, one of the largest hotel operators around. And given that their net profit margins are around 25% annually (that's $500 million in profit, and it's growing YOY) [1], I wouldn't be too quick to dismiss them as "a shit business" in favor of AirBnB's 12% surcharge. They seem to be doing pretty well for themselves.

Seriously, folks: take the two seconds to look things up before you snark. You'll look smarter.

[1] https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3AIHG&fstype=ii&ei=SHp...
The point is, the original technology is not special at all.

Its about branding, name recognition and value.

That is why Twitter is not overpriced at all. Neither is Facebook and that website sucks :)
So ... you do it all locally?

Especially because the above hinged on higher powered computers. I don't doubt that Google could do this right now...
The x86 vs RISC debate is a perfect example of how technological advances can confound seemingly simple tradeoffs. There's simply no such thing as a CISC processor anymore. All "x86" processors have RISC internals and use micro-op translation to present an x86 ISA at a software level. As you point out, the same sort of dynamics play out at every level. There's only so much advantage that simplified core designs get you, since the overhead for "legacy" support tends to be small.

It'll be interesting to see how Intel's x86 SoC development pans out. With the Atom they weren't really aiming for the SoC market and only recently have they actually bothered to try to do so. Even with their first generation stuff they've produced pretty competitive, to ARM, results, given Intel's research muscle and their FAB capacity it wouldn't be surprising to see a lot more x86-SoC based smartphones and tablets hitting the market in the coming years.
Would you agree that there's a demand for a simple and reliable MQ? Possibly one that just supports Stomp, possibly written in Golang? That just works and does nothing fancy?
Everpix, Snapchat, and the Startup Lie
If you don't mind me being a bit pedantic ...

The primary difference is that a person in a far away land is unable able steal my actual currency without putting a lot of their own funds at risk. Which is to say they would have to fly out here, find my house and/or wallet, take out money, leave, and then fly home. Its the same reason cash is more secure than a debit card. Debit card readers can be hacked with skimmers, nothing to 'skim' with cash.

So the risks with BitCoin are that from far away people can steal it from where it is being kept. These are the same risks as having cash in a banking instituion, except the bank has regulations that it has to meet in terms of being able to guarantee that even if they lose my funds they will replace them. Without the equivalent of the FDIC for BitCoin is qualifies as "higher risk."
>>The movie does criticize the establishment, it just stops short of criticizing the actual street cops.

That is what I meant. Contrast that to Starship Troopers, where the military (the organization the main characters are a part of) is spared no criticism.
I'm less than impressed by your link. Having experienced medical care, including emergency room visits, in both the US and EU, I far prefer the EU. I have found the standard of clinical care as good or better, and it's been massively less expensive.

Clearly you have an axe to grind, so I'm not expecting this discussion to go anywhere, unless you want to get back on the point and provide some evidence for your original claim that finance is the most heavily regulated industry there is. Meanwhile, I suggest you move to Singapore, Hong Kong, or New Zealand, the three countries which the world bank considers to have even more business-friendly regulatory environments than the US. http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IC.BUS.EASE.XQ?order=wba...
Wow, what a smart, timely and appropriate comment. However, making a smarter and even more condescending one is too easy. Here:

Folks, consider this for a moment: the movie is better than that crappy blog post, the book is better than the movie, it isn't the best book of that author, and that the author, while good, isn't the best the literature can offer.

Why waste time discussing the blog post?
"Agile", "Data Science" and "Growth Hacker" also fall into this category. At the end of the day use what works for you, there is no "one size fits all".
I await the day when a single article is published with a proper unit of power or energy. If it's not a 54 kW battery it's a windmill that generates 3 MW per year.
One other suggestion that's kind of fun - put an easter egg in the text part. Depending on your customer/user base, there may be a lot of people that view text only. We've gotten some nice feedback doing that.
I have to wonder if the failure of so many people to pick up on the blatant satire in, for example, Starship Troopers and Robocop is due to something akin to Poe's Law as applied to so many other films which were not satirical muddying the waters.

Dirty Harry is, seemingly, not satirical, yet it is every bit as ridiculous as Robocop.
Go watch the "you have 20 seconds to comply" part again.
In some kind of very weird way, these incidents give me more confidence in bitcoin-the-currency.

There are so many attacks on "bitcoin infrastructure" it is pretty clear that it is seen as a target by criminals (of various degrees of skill).

And yet there is no evidence of any critical break in bitcoin itself. They still haven't worked out how to print money.

I'm still a bitcoin cynic, but I'm slowly gaining confidence in it as a store of value.

Like I said: Weird.
I strongly suspect Ebert and the other critics were in on the joke. They knew if they played it straight and panned the movie, even more unwitting teenagers would pour into the theaters on opening weekend.

(At least, I had no idea the movie was satire until the opening scene started playing. The early internet reaction was mostly nerdrage from Heinlein fans.)

Edit: In retrospect, I was very familiar with Verhoeven's films, but somehow still bought into the hype that he may have 'sold out' until the movie started playing. This movie really had some great marketing/pr.
Not military, just service. Any kind of public service. As they said in the book, they'll have you count caterpillar hairs if there's nothing else to do--anyone can get franchise.
It was the coercive positive / negative spin they put into each "story" that was 1984-ish.
Hey,

Just got approval for hiring a front end programmer as well. We don't have a job posting for it yet as I literally just got the confirmation, but feel free to send your cv, code samples and whatever you find is relevant to martin@oppo.com.
I don't get it. A country that spends millions (if not billions) of dollars on Cricket and Movies every year, is being criticized for spending on space exploration with "there's so much poverty there! Build schools!". Where are these critics during the Indian Premier League?
Got your point. I'm going to provide sufficient Es because I have to convince the users anyways. Give me an opportunity to prove with you first.
No, he is saying the early adopters can take on that responsibility if they wish. There's a slight but important difference in connotation.

I ordered a week's worth last month. I didn't do it to "determine the safety of the product." I did it because the idea intrigues me and I'm willing to give it a try. It's made of well-known ingredients, so what's the absolute worst that can happen?
Unfortunately the template they used in the email failed to render on outlook...
Incidentally, "relevant Dilbert" at http://dilbert.com/fast/2013-11-03/
First Apache Spark Summit
http://maximecb.github.io/Turing-Drawings/#4,3,2,1,3,3,1,2,1...
however, all that happens already with the traditional government/banking/fiat based system

don't make us start citing all the recessions, depressions, shenanigans, thefts, bubbles, Ponzi schemes, snake oil salesmen, gambling, front running, short selling, bankruptcies, inflations, deflations, monopolies, defaults, perpetual-inability-to-balance-a-budget, carry profiting, spying, overly-complex-taxes-riddled-with-loopholes, usury, special treatment, insider trading, counterfeiting, etc that have occurred, and, will likely continue to occur, in that economic system.

Bitcoin is not without risks. But at least it's run by engineers in a way and to a degree that can't be said about DC and Wall Street.
It may be disingenuous, but actionable? I really, really doubt that.
So, you take a famous sci-fi novel, completely change it, then use it's good name to make money and push your own politics. What exactly is misunderstood? You love money, you have a particular agenda, and you fuck over something else to achieve your personal goals. Other people are upset about this. Again: What is misunderstood?
Serious advocacy of citizenship through military service? One soldier was there just so she should could have children. (Gotta listen during the shower scene.)
Blogpost says this change is only for Windows stable/beta. The workaround for the "ordinary" user is to use dev/canary. Btw, if you're a ordinary user, do you care where you get the extension from?
Meanwhile, I'd put Twitter and Path in with the Pets.com crew.

I'd put Twitter in with NBC/CBS/Fox and other TV stations that sell advertising against entertainment. That's a pretty well-proven business model with an obvious cash stream.
If that's the reason, then I don't see a case for ethical issue. It's you who have the biggest stake in seeing your start-up get up and running.
Slashdot was the future.
This is extremely scary, and it also seems like a better way of phrasing the argument for the general populace to realize what mass surveillance is capable of. I don't think most people would argue in favor of Watergate type spying, evidenced by how Nixon resigned shortly after it was revealed. Hopefully this kind of tack will be used more and more to get these stories to resonate with the average non-techie person and get them worked up enough to care.
The problem with Heinlein's corpus is there are so many characters who can be read as author avatars representing his views that it's hard to tell if any of them should be read that way.
It wasn't given by him, other users have done their jobs tracking down information about this person - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=326914

Seems credible enough to be real in my eyes.
You have to be careful there.

Twitter is valuable because of the huge audience. Making everyone pay will lose that.

BUT, there is an important subset of people who will easily pay hundreds for a subscription.

LinkedIn is a good example: free for everyone, but recruiters pay for extra access. It's easy to imagine brands paying Twitter for a similar model.
Ethically it's not how things should be done in the business world. This won't be the last time you come across an employee or client you won't get a long with. It happens and it can be toxic for the work environment and other employees.

A couple months severance pay is a nice gesture. I would explain to the employee you think they are great and highly talented, but you feel as though they are not the right fit for team and environment. Acknowledge conflicts, but whatever you do, don't go pointing fingers and shifting blame.

Amicably end the employment and offering a couple months severance pay will ensure that it definitely ends amicably. Most people don't find themselves in a situation where an employer is willing to compensate for things the employee cannot change.
You being a Co-Founder of Mailgun, I know you have a way stronger background in sending emails than I do (almost non existent), but I thought they (Other ESPs [Exact Target, Responsys, Etc.]) debunked the idea that using phrases like "Buy Now!!!" or multiple exclamations marks increases the chance of an email getting marked as spam. Can you please clarify? I'm interested to see if this still applies. Thanks.