skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Since I bump into one of you guys in the Startup Lisboa elevator I been thinking about your startup. As a concept is cool and sounds great but as an actual product doesn't work.

First of, market. Not there isn't a market for computing power, but a market for this kind of thing. This is a good parlour trick, to show of browser power, but as a computational framework it doesn't work. There are far better and cost sensitive solutions, even using the cheapest AWS service. I know, because I did the math.

Second there is the ethical problem. You are are off shooting the cost of cloud computing to the website client that will pay for the extra electric power generated by your tasks. How do you justify that? More so, how can you justify a ecological minded person paying for mapreduce geological data from oil company?

Third, and the one that kills you, security. You cannot assure the confidentiality of the data being processed. You can not use homomorphic encryption because you do not know the operations you need to do on your data, and since you are working over it, at least in memory it must exist in plain text. Therefor you cannot assure your clients data confidentiality. Worse, this screws up the market fit. The only people that have big data needing to be processed that isn't confidential is research institutions. The thing is, research institutions buy computer power by the stack. I know, I work at one. There is always some grant that allows them to buy a bunch of computers to do parallel processing.

I've heard about you guys for over an year. And it took you more than a year to complete the full product to launch it. What have you been up to? I've seen clones of your product on techcrunch 500. I made a clone of your product using bitcoins, in a weekend. (I did the calculations and wasn't cost effective and I decided not to launch it) Where I work, Técnico Lisboa, we are actually thinking about deploying my clone in my work, over computers we own and provide that computing power to the faculty. Actually I've seen this in 2009, when it was shown of by Ruben Fonseca on Codebits (http://blog.0x82.com/2010/11/22/map-crowd-reduce). If anyone can do this, how can you assure the competitiveness of your product.
"Because .NET makes it very easy for average developers to write GUI programs, and Visual Studio is what they use to write them."

You know, this is an extremely valid reason

You just write the program (making it go fullscreen), put it on the Startup folder and that's it.

If there was a turnkey solution for other platforms I'm sure this would be very helpful.

And the cost of the windows license is irrelevant if you consider the other signage material (displays, mounts, etc)
Absolutely, but my way of going about this would be to first show _why_ something is a best practice, rather than forcing people to take it at face value.
Very cool idea. I recently spent quite a while paging through HNSearch.com looking for book recommendations.

My recommendation would be to make sure the "Next" button never moves. Some really long titles cause it to get pushed down a bit and that gets annoying when you're clicking on "Next" at a fast rate.

I also agree there needs to be a little more information on the page because of the sometimes-indirect post titles. I find myself hovering the Amazon link to see the name of the book.
Is there a way to add the year [2009] in the title?

I remember reading it back then. It's interesting how it's still relevant after all these years.
Multiple DUIs do deserve a severe punishment IMO, because that is attempted murder basically and they are a danger to the public. The rest I agree are ridiculous. Huffing drugs three times does not deserve permanent incarceration.
If bitcoins are going to be used for anything at all, the rise in value is likely to continue for a while longer. One can argue, and I might agree, that the velocity of money is greater in the bitcoin economy, but I still think the small size of the bitcoin economy (little over $5 000 000 000 atm) is limiting.
Actually, what browser are you on? I am not seeing the flashes in chrome.
7 Lessons Learned at a London Startup
I'm surprised this hasn't been shown here yet.
It surprises me how often what it takes to answer a "how do we fix this social problem" is to look outside of the US border, see how other people are fixing it. Yet it seems like it's the last idea on anyone's mind.
Sorry, that wasn't my attitude nor was I intending to sound that way. I fully understand why they'd rather use a Windows solution, I just wanted to explain in a simple way what I thought their motivations were.

> "They knew it" seems to convey that they were essentially stupid or not adventurous enough to try something else.
I did not intend to convey that they were stupid or not adventurous enough, I simply thought "knew it" would be a sufficient enough description. I did not intend "knew it" in a pejorative way at all.

> You make that sound like there teeth were rattling in horror
No, not really, actually I remember discussions with big companies where those were the exact words ("Our IT department is concerned with the stability of this Mac OS X")

> "muhaha, they are just stupid bricks for using windows
Again, no, I just tried to explain the seemingly irrational behaviour (for tech people) of choosing a technologically worse solution even though better solutions exists. I wasn't even talking about Windows actually, but about digital signage solutions based on Windows. I'd rather not go and open the box of pandora that is Windows <> Linux <> Mac OS X. Most of our competitors that ran on Windows (situation may have changed, I left that company more than 2 years ago) were on the feature side and in terms of possibilities worse than our solution (not only because it was easy to pull of a lot of things with Core Graphics really easy).

I really can't see where you read the "those people were stupid" attitude, but it may be a cultural difference, I'm not a native english speaker. Nevertheless, even if I sounded that way, it totally wasn't intended that way. If I were in a big (non-tech) company in such a situation, I might even decide in a similar way out of the above reasons.
Time to buy bitcoins was 12+ months ago. Now it is way too volatile and cashing out could be problematic.
>"Unless you're a techie or demand a larger display, Apple's iPhone will offer the better experience"

Apple IPhone offers a better experience? Maybe for the author. I have Android phones and an IPhone. I find the IPhone's lack of a back button counter intuitive. I also cringe at the idea of using Apple Maps. I don't know why these tech writers keep claiming the superiority of Apple's UX as an objective truth.
We built a custom web page that auto detects and scales to different resolutions. We also made a self service admin interface but it was just text and a few images.

The Pi has a surprisingly powerful GPU but I've not tried HW acceleration from the browser. Something to look into maybe.
You're right - I assumed they are involved in the arms trade. I should have clarified what I meant. I assumed too that this wouldn't be a mob going after them, though a due process to gather information and evidence. What would your thoughts be if they were in fact say an employee (of any level) of a weapons company? Also, you're equally assuming it's a "bad joke taken out of context."
If you bought Bitcoin a month ago, your investment would have doubled, so clearly your logic is off.
Ask HN: How do you use Twitter?
Do you

a) read all of your timeline tweets (i.e. scroll back for tweets you missed overnight)

b) don't care what you missed and start reading from present time on?
Great Early Stage Startup Behaviors Limit Scaling
Ha, I had to laugh at the "unintuitive software" bit. It's only unintuitive to a Mac user. I'm not insulting here, it works the other way, too. I recently bought a Mac to see what all the fuss was about, and am finding many things in OS X to be very counter-intuitive as a PC (Win/Linux) user for so many years.
I might have been unclear, the question wasn't entirely rhetorical. In my experience "more flexibility" generally leads to weakening of labour rights, more part time, more time limited contracts -- and more of the things featured in the above comment.

In short, in a buyers market (employers purchasing wage labour) -- without regulation, the buyers hold all the keys (starve or work - that's not a choice).

If you have any examples of de-regulation of a labour market benefiting the majority of the population over say a ten or twenty year period, I'd love to hear about it.
I find the visceral act of manually writing code to be an extremely effective tool when learning programming language syntax. I find it similar to the "Write these words 10 times" technique used when teaching grade school kids how to spell and read.
"Programming is learned by writing programs"

- Brain Kernighan

And that is what anyone who goes through K&R will do: Reading and writing lots of real programs. A simple program is worth a thousand words!

Which unfortunately the majority of technical books just can't get right. Explain the concepts in 5 full dull pages, and then at the end "Hey, checkout this little snippet of code, which by the way does nothing really interesting, but is here to illustrate what the author was talking about :)"
Being "willing to cross a line" by itself is not mental illness.

A huge part of our crimes are things that are hurtful to society and unfair, but completely natural for dominant primates to do to other primates in their group - i.e., take their stuff for own benefit, or violently attack a competitor. Doing evil stuff is evil, but most evil stuff isn't mentally abnormal, and isn't really curable.

Also, crimes such as 'stealing to feed your family' do cross the line, but are neither sign of mental ilness or even evil. Sure, it hurts others as well - but it is a completely sane decision to prioritize suffering of you and your family over wealth of others; if there is a lack of proper social support and a real necessity, a mentally normal person can easily be stealing 365 days a year.
It is usually extremely partisan. It is fairly rare for an entire country to be violently nationalisic, even if the ruling party is. Also, as saraid points out, it is by definition being partisan, just internationally rather than internally.
One thing I noticed: The live count of how many people are reading this post is cool. However, every time it updates, it makes the author's picture flash, which started to give me a headache.
Great feedback! I'll try to fix that nasty Next button.
Bitcoin is still in the early adopters phase.
I feel that it is obviously definitely not a good time to buy Bitcoin as it is at a peak in a speculative bubble. But additionally the world's largest exchange of Bitcoin (the magic the gathering online exchange) isn't allowing anyone to cash out. You are put on a waiting list.

So to actually cash out you need to visit that one ATM in Vancouver, which gives you access to $1000/day if there's money in it. Or you need to sell your Bitcoin to someone or buy something with them.

None of these are good reasons to buy Bitcoin.
520 Bitcoins?
It's a way to transfer money bank to bank exactly like cash - it's able to use security algorithms to determine whether the funds being transferred are "good funds" or not, and it doesn't require to know their bank account information, just their online banking credentials.

It overcomes the two major hurdles that have traditionally existed - convenience and security of the merchant to know the funds will actually be there.
San Francisco is a nice little town, but it's not in the same league as New York.
Seriously cool stuff. Are there other formats (PDF for example) for those who want to buy this and read it on their smartphones later?
I like how they choose songs by Judy Garland and Liza Minnelli to represent the different cities since they are mother/daughter.

I am one of the natives (NYC) the article refers to. I was tired of people being surprised that I was actually born in the city I live in. Why is that so strange? And yes, both cities were better before Starbucks and gentrification moved in. Far better. I finally moved out of my hometown two years ago. Why would anyone spend all that money to live in a place that is no where near its peak?

To answer the question, neither city wins. They both have their charms and are better in different ways. That said, either city in the '90s would be better than either city today.
501. So needs to go up a little more than 4x.
Hi, everything is looking fine for me in FF22 and IE11. This site does make heavy use of new HTML5 features... If you can let me know which versions of FF and IE you're using (and your OS) that would be helpful, Luc!
curious what browser you're using?
I use G+ for all my oauth since I am not active on that social network. If I use Facebook I let them only access basic info and not post. If they need post, I make them visible to me only
It's entirely decentralized, but it's not a new currency, just a way to transfer it. You do have to have your money in a bank, but it can be roughly any bank (we support 70% of US banking customers now, working toward 90 by the years end).

I'm sorry if my first comment came off like a criticism of Bitcoin, I love Bitcoin - I just never considered that being the online version of cash was part of its appeal. To me, it was being an alternative to government currency that was always what made it special.
Who cares if it doubles if you can't sell it
More like $5.
Nice work! Good luck I am sure you will be a millionaire before long. :)
This comment is off-topic, and is not related to hacking at all. This entire submission should be deleted. I agree with all opinions expressed here.
You can easily sell it. coinbase.com, bitstamp.com, btc-e.com...
instead of -ansi, i'd argue that -std=c99 (or -std=c11) would be more appropriate. also note the -pedantic flag.
No comparison - New York is a better city and the reason is pickles. Not once in my time living in California did I ever encounter anything like a good half-sour.

I also feel that the NY tech scene is humbler then SF. In SF there is a feeling that tech rules everything and you need to get out of the way if you aren't involved in it.
It breeds arrogance.
In NYC Tech is only one of many different industries coexisting. There is a lot more cross-pollination of ideas here.
Bitcoincharts has a log option... Its right there on the same page you just looked at.

EDIT: Also check the date range, Bitcoincharts has almost all historical data.
This submission is off-topic (not "Hacker News") and should be deleted.
Except this took place at SFU.
Homemade Camera Takes Stunning Close-up Pictures of Snowflakes
This submission is off-topic and is not "Hacker News". Moderators, please delete.
People do talk about politics though. They do it everywhere all over the place and even those who claim to not want to talk about politics end up talking about the politics of not talking politics. I am not sure it is possible to stop them.
Facebook Open URL Redirection vulnerability | The Hacker News - Security Blog
Big Bitcoin fan, I'm not going to edit my comment for the sake of being authentic but I wish I could. I just never considered that being an alternative to cash online was ever the point.

An alternative to cash online needs 3 things, IMO (besides being something anyone can use).

1. Has to be secure enough for the person accepting the money to know they're getting "good funds", or money that actually exists.
2. Has to be fee-less.
3. Has to be convenient enough for anyone to use fast.

We're doing that. I can demo what we're doing if you'd like, shoot me an email tommy@thecityswig.com, would LOVE your thoughts!
Yeah, I caught that 2009 bit later into the post/parody :). Agreed it should be there in the title.
They don't create or facilitate misery though..
If you're interested, I could demo what we're working on for you.
I would actually argue that there are more top tier Stanford CS grads than there are startups with Snapchat's engagement numbers. The value of the student should be discounted more than the value of snapchat from a competition standpoint.

In either case the point was to illustrate that, all risks considered, snapchat is still worth a lot of money. I have yet to see anyone (HN commenters, tech press) argue about what their valuation should be, which seems like the reasonable follow up to "It should not be $3 billion".

We can agree that its not zero, then what basis can we use to agree that $3 billion is inaccurate?
By saying the value is volatile, it admits the chance of increasingly quickly but also the chance of decreasing quickly.

With the benefit of hindsight, it's very easy to see which happened, but this doesn't necessarily make something a good investment if you think it is volatile.

If there was no risk associated with buying Bitcoin, its value would have already stabilised.
>"America’s two greatest cities."

The author lost me at the first sentence. I think "Two of America's most popular cities" is closer to reality. So guessing the author believes the crowd is always right.

San Fran and NYC suck cost of living which is the most important factor I look for in a place of residence. Its not to difficult to get to NYC from the smaller, more reasonably priced, more accessible Philadelphia.
The Decoupling of Conversations from Content
Also, when's Turntable.fm making its way to Canada? :) I know I could use a way to pretend I'm in the U.S. - though I'd rather not circumvent.
Because of that anchors bar I first thought, watching that video is what got someone behind bars for life - 'what, has America come this far already?'.
Surely looking at a 10x return by now? :P
Hi, we're releasing the full book and ebook in Jan-Feb. It will also be available in PDF form and will include all the comics from the website.
If you want to see it, email me @ tommy@thecityswig.com , I'd be happy to show you! We're in a super alpha batch of customers right now trying to make sure everything is as it should be, but I'm really really making an effort to get hackers opinions about this.
Thank you, now I can watch yt videos without any flash player!
In 2000 (dot-com peak) the value would be $ 1 trillion ;-)
Bitcoins are actually really easy to sell. Just transfer them to coinbase.com.
I haven't looked into the Pi yet, we used Mac Minis and frequently ran into its limits, so I just thought that it should be even more problematic on the Pi.
I do think that the market for small and simple solutions (webpage with a bit of text, images, etc) is far more interesting and bigger than trying to sell to the Fortune 500 like my former company does, because these have really difficult requirements, and they're prone to simply rolling their own solution. So in short I think doing Digital Signage on the Pi is a great idea :)
Typically I'll scroll back to read all tweets since the last time I checked, but I will rarely go back more than 8 or 10 hours.
>I’m trusting you with my data. I realise there are risks involved, but please treat my data with respect. Just because you can doesn’t mean that you should. And don’t be a creep.

Yes, we can! :-)
So I noticed a few things as I looked around:

- When I first hit the linked blog post, I saw a blank page for four or five seconds. Not so bad, because I know what's happening, but jarring.

- Then I see a footer for five or six more seconds, with no page content. Again, I know what's happening, but I can see that looking sketchy for people who aren't developers: https://www.dropbox.com/s/d1mezohgixlneeu/Screenshot%202013-... - and it's going to be worse on a slower connection.

- I see that same view on several different pages when I initially navigate to them.

- Hitting the home page occasionally freaks the browser out. I don't know what it's doing, but I get multiple animations of the main banner and some flickering etc.

I may have been a bit dismissive - sorry about that. I do get that "dogfooding" a tech stack as it were is pretty important. What Meteor's going to be good for though is highly-interactive, collaborative apps, and it'll be really nice to see some demos of that, rather than yet-another-could-be-static site.
"When all you have is hammers the whole world starts looking like nails."

Sure as hell not the way I'd do it, but for a non-critical system that really just kind of sits there and doesn't cause any problems when it crashes, why not if they only know Windows desktop dev and are only deploying a few? Use what you know.
Even Timothy Cook cringes at the idea of using Apple Maps; and overall the design of iOS 7 is also counter intuitive and far from being a seamless experience, especially for new users.
- Java.
- Can you create a poll for this? I will like to know people's choices.
First of all, I will short any stock you pick. It is always a good bet to predict that a company will soon be in a downslide.

Secondly, your personal feelings about the iPhone UX doesn't matter.

And finally, despite the earlier "expert predictions", somehow Apple have been posting record iPhone sales per quarter. Whoever these experts are, they such at prediction.
https://www.apple.com/pr/library/2013/10/28Apple-Reports-Fou...
There are days when I could write this comment.

But what you describe does not sound like an honest or clear assessment of the world. It sounds more like depression. Which is real and serious and treatable.

The world is often tragic. It <em>is</em> wrong to live comfortably and be willfully ignorant to tragedy, but it is not wrong to take care of yourself and make yourself whole. So, yes, seek something meaningful to make the world better, and start by taking care of yourself.
Serial theft is a tricky issue.

Imagine someone pricking you with a pin. And doing it repeatedly. For years. The crime is tiny, but you'd anyway want him to stop permanently.

So the question is what do we do with people who commit small crimes as a lifestyle, and have proven repeatedly in practice that our rehabilitation doesn't work on them? On one hand, harsh punishment doesn't fit the crime, but on the other hand, allowing to continue to offend all the time (we locally had an underaged teenager that was caught stealing 20+ times in less than a year, but was always released because the legislation doesn't expect imprisonment in such cases) is stupid as well, since it hurts victims.

What should we do with such people? I've no idea. Exile from society seems somehow appropriate, but we can't do that.
Stereotype map of the World
Share your stereotype about each country of the World, and check the toplist of the most popular stereotypes.
Try loading any Meteor-based site (such as the linked story, or http://www.meteor.com/ itself) with cookies disabled on Chrome or Firefox and watch them break.

(Meteor doesn't appear to trap exceptions when using localStorage/sessionStorage, and even something as simple as "if (window.sessionStorage) ..." may throw an exception.)
I'd like to add some emphasis on reading. For a beginner, writing is obviously very very important as the way to get to the point where he can just sit down and solve a given task.

But reading lots and lots of code (from many different sources) will help him pick up idioms and find common & good solutions to specific problems. Even for a smart person, I think it'll take a lot of time and effort to arrive to the cleanest way of doing things.

Of course there's a risk of picking up bad habits, but if you read lots of code, you should eventually develop a feel for what's clean and readable and easy to understand, and what's messy and wrong. This sadly doesn't help with issues like undefined behavior, but you don't learn these just by writing either. For that you need to look into the spec or some other text that'll cover these.

EDIT: I like to think that I'm a fairly good C programmer (having coded nearly all my life, with C mostly), but I still peek into others code all the time to find out how they've solved some things I'm about to do.