skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Some additional thoughts for the author:

- Training / warmup overhead for new employees: the amount of time a new developer needs to warm up when joining a company grows exponentially with the number of different technologies / tools used on the job. It's not just learning Redis - it's learning _your Redis_.

All of the configuration details, deployment procedures, setup, integration with other services, data model, etc specific to your company. This can be a killer for small companies, where everyone needs to know a little bit about everything...

- Future-proofing: the greater the number of different technologies used, the higher likelihood of future driver / server / runtime / etc incompatibility issue. A future release of Cassandra which has a mission-critical feature for your business, but the CQL drivers that support it all require a later version of Node than your background workers currently run. Unfortunately, if you upgrade to a later version of Node then your Redis driver won't work because it hasn't been updated to support the past 6 months of Node releases due to breaking changes Node.JS introduced into a critical security update and ad nauseam...

There will always be a level of this even in a tightly integrated stack, but you're setting yourself up for more frequent headaches the greater the number of technologies you have to maintain in parallel.

- Operational complexity: beyond the basic stuff like service outages, there's dealing with less catastrophic but more frequent ops such as monitoring and configuration management. While there are a number of great generic solutions for monitoring the health of processes, services, and VMs, there's a level of requisite application monitoring that needs to be deployed for each service too. Need to monitor the query plans and cache hits for PostGREs, the JMX metrics for any JVM application, compaction and read/write latency for Cassandra, etc...

Setting up that level of monitoring and _actually using it_ on a day-to-day basis for a large number of different platforms is expensive and cumbersome. If you're Facebook, it may not be a big cost to manage. If you're a 6-person engineering team at a startup, it's a bitch.

Great article!
I think this is due to the fact that many many years ago logic used to be taught in highschool and all of those concepts would have seemed significantly less foreign.
Your macbook air is just plastic, metal, and some silicone. Just throw a couple of those together too while you're at it.
I used to think like that, then I took Caltrain for the first time.
What a lot of people are complaining about isn't necessarily the smell of it. The fumes from the plant are essentially pepper spray. People are complaining about difficulty breathing and its getting in their eyes.
Unless Amazon is secretly in bed with them as well
Analysis of Wikileaks leak of TPP
It's a horrific example, but the point being made is true, in that in areas such as music enough information is generated regularly in a non-structured way with no tie in to the semantic web that, the Facebook silo aside, practically no one has up to date information about bands etc., certainly not Freebase or similar. It's also a lost cause hoping for such things to be comprehensive.

Facebook have also become a serious problem, in that a lot of places publish there without realising or caring that their information essentially is locked in. This gives their graph search a simply enormous advantage over anyone else.
I don't get it. He gives the woman on the beach as an example of.. quote offending work unquote.

> the men who don’t respect women do respect men

There are people that don't respect anybody. If someone's being an asshole to a woman it doesn't necessary mean it's about sexism.

Btw, sexism != the discrimination of women. It's a discriminations based on person's sex - so it's discrimination of men as well e.g. implying they have to have particular qualities and behave in certain ways.
Exactly.

I'd really love to contribute more to Open Source projects and/or put more stuff on Github, but that's not going to happen after 8+ hours of software development. I'm doing my share of bug reports and patches here and there, but I wouldn't take a role like maintainer/developer for a FLOSS project in my spare time. I admire those who are able and willing to do this, but it's not for me.
You'd love to live in a Mace pepper spray cloud?
Very valid arguments. I'm very curious to see what transpires here, whether Facebook will come back with a better offer or not.
Want what only a woman can give a man?
Chrome Helps You Silence Noisy Browser Tabs
Absolutely. However, even though a site can and should take steps to mitigate risks, that doesn't really excuse the vendor for shipping software that doesn't even attempt to adhere to security best practices in the first place. Especially in the world of PHP software (forums in particular - vBulletin/phpBB/IPB/etc.) where it's marketed pretty much as an all-in-one solution. Easy to setup, easy to manage, easy to grow. It's the software equivalent of "just add water."

But when you're marketing solutions like that to lay audiences, the onus is on you to at least try and account for the fact that most of your customers don't really have a clue what's going on. Especially at first, their customers are placing a great deal of trust in the software and the notion that the people behind it know what they're doing. What's a shame is that, if you've ever had the misfortune to dig into the source code for pretty much all of the PHP options out there, they really don't know what they're doing.

To call it a mess would be an understatement of epic proportions.
An analysis of Windows 8 ASLR Internals (2012)
Specs lie. The HTC One does have a super high-res screen though!

http://www.macworld.com/article/2049270/benchmarks-iphone-5s...
I'm guessing the HN crowd isn't really the target for this offering, though its clients may be. Having the full MS suite is a big deal, especially where there's ancillary storage right on board (and similarly firewalled).

A very interesting move by Amazon. Wish it was available by the hour, though.
Very slick. To ask the perennial HN question, do you plan to monetize it? I wonder if Coinbase (or any other BTC marketplace) offers an affiliate program for people you refer...
Reads like a fever dream. A programming system that curates
algorithms and data. What could possibly go wrong?
Well I guess if Wikipedia doesn't mention it, it didn't happend, right? Awesome argument ...
Unless Google is bundling this with an unlimited bandwidth cellular plan, 8GB/16GB are totally inadequate for anyone who hopes to create or consume audio/visual content.
Very neatly done and surprisingly accurate !! Loved the Api !!
University math departments really should reconsider their approach to real world applications. Most math professors don't seem to consider it a part of the curriculum, and that can be really detrimental.

My largest college regret was blowing off linear algebra- it was an annoying class taught in an annoying way (handwritten homework showing your work for each step of matrix multiplication, no proofs, ect). I blew it off because there were no applications of it in anything I cared about.

A semester later, it showed up somewhere in every single advanced computer science class. Really wish there had been a proof-based linear algebra class that showed up later in the curriculum so by the time we reached it we knew it had value.
If I remember correctly, this was the threading model used by Solaris. I'm sure there are many applications that make use of M:N threading, but for the server I worked on (~3000 concurrent connections and 50+ threads), this actually hindered the multi-tasking performance of the server. I remember investigating and figuring out this was the reason, and switching back to 1:1 made the performance increase.
> Norvig's 21 line python spelling corrector

That spell checker is intended to demonstrate a technique but it is far from 21 lines of real code. It you look at the included modules (re and collections) you'll find THOUSANDS of lines of code.

As always "I did x in n lines of <insert language>" often are really interesting learning tools but real production code isn't (or should not) ever look like these examples. No criticism of Norvig's code, it's interesting and I, too, learned something very interesting the first time I saw it.
Clouds and Cloud Computing
Pinterest's demographic is women who are looking for stuff to buy or making mood boards to get inspiration for what to buy.

I'd say they should be able to monetize that quite well.
So, I actually somewhat agree with the idea that many of the search examples ads and such use are ridiculously misguided.

Consider, when I'm looking at a blog or an article, it is easy to see other people's reactions if there is a comment box. What is sometimes harder to find is the general context of why a blog/article exists. Did its existence prompt the creation of other blogs and articles? More, is the article still relevant? I think some pushed for this concept with "trackback" and such. But I don't think that really took off. (Maybe I just need to learn to use some tools better.)

However, I think I get lost around the notion that things should be pushed to you. I mean, unless you are referring to twitter style "you probably ignore 90% of what is pushed at you."
I'm a sysadmin and I write some simple database driven tools for internal use. I wish I could make the owners of the company realize this simple truth.

Just because I can make the program, doesn't mean your shitty neighbor's son will care more about his job.
Thanks! We're working directly in Java right now, but might explore alternatives later. We're also planning to add support for Impala/Presto/etc.
When did sales and biz dev become "hacking"?

Can we put this nonsense to bed already?
Please post an how-to. Most of them are now outdated. I would love to see it.
Thank you, now I feel better as I see more sane souls. The OPs article is full of personal, short-sighted asumptions.
hey! this is steli (from the talk), sorry I didn't have the time to turn the talk into a blog post yet (will do sometime soon).

I have lots of friends on HN so this translates into a lot of praise which is good for my ego but not really useful to the community. srry about that!

Just uploaded my slides to slideshare to give you a bit of content. check it out to decide if you wanna invest 45mins to watch the talk later :)

http://www.slideshare.net/SteliEfti/deal-closing-sales-hacki...
There is some in my local supermarket, in France, as well as a few other brands. I don't think it's difficult to find anywhere.

Edit - looks like in Europe we usually have a Thai brand, while in the US it's mostly the interviewed guy's brand. I never paid attention, I don't like it anyway.
He's doing great things now, but that's not in the slightest way relevant to the point I made. His wrongs were not and are not petty to those who suffered from them and pointing that out is not finding mistakes in his work nor is it disapproving of what he's now doing.
I'm not sure which map you're looking at. Irwindale is located in LA county, one of the most populated areas of the US. Obviously if the smell didn't go very far it wouldn't be much of a problem.
Everybody has a model. It might be specified in code, it might be a set of equations, or it might be a poorly-specified and half-unconscious set of assumptions and biases in your own head.

I'm having a hard time thinking of a topic involving economics where the latter would be preferable.
In Norway, it and its knockoffs are widely available in ethnic stores, but the price is closer to $8 than $3 for a big bottle.
> probably 75% chili, 10% vinegar, salt, sugar, garlic for the last 15%.

But there is more sugar, and more salt, and more garlic, than vinegar.
Well they can also make money by selling the thin client which the ChromeOS is good for.
Where do you make the connection between "virtual desktops" and outsourcing? Also, who are those Shenzhen developers and who are they working for?
The product is different.. maybe. But that is not the point.

OP of my reply was talking about how crazy it is for Snapchat to reject a $3 billion buyout offer. My reply was that Zuck just a mere 7 years ago rejected a $1 billion offer and people thought he was crazy for doing that. He obviously wasn't.
Did you mean to reply to tsunamifury?
I didn't have as big of an issue with the business model than I had with the product itself. Seriously ... what happens when it rains? How do you navigate pedestrian-dense sidewalks? I'm not George W. but I have managed to crash one.
Design studio Upwell hacks IKEA.
on the cost structures: my guess is this is primarily aimed at the type of game developers who build upon a MRR (monthly reoccurring revenue) model - from WoW through to XBox-Live type gaming. Being server based particularly lends itself to multiplayer gaming where network latency should be zero and MRR is most common.

It's basically OnLive for mobile but you bring your own distribution channels.

This isn't going to compete with casual games you would natively run on devices for a fixed deployment cost.
This. Whenever someone tells me programming is some kind of magic I tell them to write me a note with steps of making pancakes. That's the most basic form of programming I can think of. That opens their eyes.
It's not a straw man at all as products with Unity aren't making any effort to appear native to the platform they're running on.

Unity is also notoriously painful when it comes to 2D UI style work as well, which is why there's a tools ecosystem around it just to deal with that problem.
http://www.etsy.com/blog/en/2011/how-tuesday-make-your-own-h...

Hang out with some small-batch hot-sauce makers.

--Robert
I have not tried this recipe yet as I have not been able to get my hands on a large quantity (for me) of good chilis, but I've had this bookmarked to play around with:

http://www.instructables.com/id/DIY-Sriracha-aka-Rooster-Sau...
Well, the Boolean operators in C-like languages are NOT normal functions, which is the point. Furthermore, what is strict about them is the order in which their operands are evaluated, which is a different aspect than the one you mention: whether all arguments are evaluated before considering the function. Consider e.g., notUnderAttack() || enableDoomsdayDevice(). A lazy language is free to decide that it's more optimal to evaluate the second operand first.
There is a theory called "When the founder drives a porsche", which refers to already wealthy entrepreneurs who have much more appetite for risk to go for the big exit.

Evan has taken at least $30-40M off the table in subsequent financing rounds. He has enough stacked away to go for an exit that deems him a billionaire which my guess at this point would need to be a $5B acquisition (assuming cap gains tax for his piece)
The city of Irwindale is the one trying to get it shut down.
I'm not sure what's worse, the infomercial quality says-nothing marketing speak about what this thing is and does (both on the site and here -- "muscle quality"? ORLY?), or the insistence on trying to treat HN threads like twitter with top level @whoever responses.

Either way (and I appreciate my response to this may be a bit over the top), I've never wanted to downvote an HN front page story as much as I want to downvote this one.
Steli here from the talk :)

Sales hacking in this context means using very leveraged strategies to get to results a lot faster with less resources.

This talk is focused on founders who need to hustle and close customers fast without any prior credibility and sales experience.

I agree that "hacking" is overused these days but I still decided to use it because it attracts the right audience and creates the right expectations if that makes sense
Just Get Hacking
Hey Robert,

Thanks the article and the debate it inspired.

Tell me, was picking a company name that Google attempts to auto-correct a conscious choice? I couldn't get to your website just by searching for your company's name on my first try.

Follow up: About how long do you think it will take Google to recognize I am not making a spelling error and I am looking for your services?
Oh yes, I'm also sure that every story I hear is true as long as it plays to my political biases.
There was some point in my education where I was taking three classes, each with their own definition of phi. It drove me nuts.

Coq notation, lisp-style notation, even python-style notation- anything would be better.
Given his relative success (the article states its a multi-million dollar business) running the outgassing from the plant through a water bath should be pretty straightforward. Basically blowing the air through pipes which bubble it underwater. The water runoff would then have the pepper oils in it.

Next up Sirachi Spicey Hot Bottled Water!
Have you been to the Wikileaks site? There are plenty of documents/leaks on other countries. Why are you expecting to hear about them on US/UK media?
Whoops - fixed. I moved my blog to a better platform and had some hiccups.
Problem-solving is time-sensitive
look at the TCO page for the announcement [1]. The biggest cost savings Amazon is touting lies in reduced IT staff and total elimination of hardware costs. By their calculations, the licensing is only 3% or $3 per seat for a 1,000 person business unit.

[1] http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2013/11/tco-comparison-amazon-wor...
Thanks for your support maslam!
There will be times when you make a change to a page and the difference in reception between the two pages is as stark as the situation you described above where out of 20 clicks, one page does twice as well. But most often there is a very minor difference between the click rate of the two pages, like less than 1%. In that case, you need a much larger samples size.

And even if you do get lucky and get a test like the one you described above, chances are, you want to continue to revise the page and make more subtle changes which will mean you need a much larger sample size even to reach the low bar of 90% confidence.
Yeah that is suspicious. Especially this one: "Amazed at what I learned from a 45 min video." By "raybeorn 18 minutes ago" Maybe he watched it before the post.
I was trying to be clever - that didn't quite work.
1. Local transport system in an unfamiliar city is always more complicated than catching a cab.

2. Given the importance he attached to YC, he prioritized the problems flawlessly. Saving that $100 vs. making absolutely sure that he reaches YC office on time, not exactly a brain-teaser if you ask me.

3. $100 doesn't mean the same to everybody.
- I was really looking forward to new money-making schemes/tactics/ways. All the same, thanks for the advice.
I really felt college level math (abstract algebra, groups, monoids and such) was abstract painting in hieroglyphics, until I made a full turn into programming where you start to speak about abstract patterns that makes absolutely no sense (iterators, monads) at first, then I felt that this way of thinking seemed to be about finding your own solutions by being "mathematical" in the way you model your problem. Then abstract algebra started to feel like 'math + generics' and I went into re-reading my college textbooks. I still don't understand more than 15%, but I feel I have a chance.

I agree about the way its taught, teachers either forgot their own learning process, or they're all very advanced brains aiming at younger advanced brains that can unfold the possible application behind the abstractions.
I'll go out on a limb and say that cooking is a tad easier and more accessible than building a MacBook Air.
Yeah, tool-specific monitoring is always forgotten. There was a great article I once read on how your second datastore inevitably turns into a ghetto. People overestimate how many things they can keep track of.
Agreed. I would recommend bringing on board someone who's worked as a strength coach, or has some sort of expertise around long-term training regimens. Specifically, "muscle confusion" isn't a real thing. Have you spoken with any high-level athletes?

And it's easy to see if you're plateauing. That's when your performance plateaus. If there's any published research showing that this device has predictive power, that's a different matter. But I imagine that tracking cortisol/testosterone levels over the long term, plus the immediate hormonal response to an exercise stimulus (over the 0-48 hour window), would be much more effective than any sort of impedance-based approach. Plateaus and overtraining are more hormonal than muscular.
Jeff, thanks for the write up.
You mentioned 'Windows 7 desktop experience'. Is this Windows Server 2008 themed to look like Windows 7? AFAIK, Microsoft has restrictions on putting Windows 7 on cloud instances.
This matters due to font-rendering differences between desktop and server editions, and my use-case is around web design.
Yeah, the article is crap. But did you take a look at the site: bottlenose.com? It's kinda gorgeous.

Having been in the biz (NLP search with sentiment extraction) once, it still comes down to precision and recall, with poor precision being the fastest way to lose sales. I didn't see any indication of bottlenose accuracy. But maybe I was too blinded by the beautiful d3.js.

Speed is also an issue. Machine Learning takes setup time and good corpus sets, after which it's pretty fast. Traditional NLP is faster to start but slower and less accurate after. Neither is remotely close to real-time, which makes me wonder what they're really delivering.

Also, at least in my experience, I couldn't get product managers/marketers to give a hoot. But ad-agencies ate it up. And boutique survey shops. And sometimes CEOs. And sometimes customer-service organizations that had too much inbound hate mail and had to triage.

I think they may be smoking it to think they're going to get inbound traffic. I had to pound doors.
Well, yes and no. Erlang's GC is simple, but incomplete. Shared data structures like ETS aren't GC-ed, and there are many data structures that you simply can't implement in Erlang because of the way that GC works. For example, you can't implement Java's concurrent hash-map in Erlang. Erlang relies on C code whenever it needs shared data structures.

So the simple and effective GC comes at the cost of a limited programming model. For Erlang, it's the right tradeoff, but not for every environment.
I've been wanting to write something similar for a long time. I left high school feeling very "bad at math", and now I'm a CS major with a math minor.

I think the biggest problem in my approach to learning was my refusal to practice. From other classes, I was used to reading the textbook and understanding immediately. That meant to study for math exams, I would read the chapters, try to learn principles, and memorize some formulas.

I later realized that I would never get any better without doing practice problems - and lots of them. The best advice I've gotten is to start with the problem, and then learn.
You are doing something wrong, make sure to anchor a high salary early on.
Domainapalooza !
The article, like many on this topic, conflates meritocracy with a just world:

The idea of a meritocracy presumes that everyone starts off and continues through with the same level of access to opportunity, time, and money...

Meritocracy is simply the belief that meritorious people will (either deterministically or probabilistically) rise to the top. It is not the belief that the distribution of merit is fair.

A person who ate lots of lead paint as a child, had Down's syndrome, or some similar tragic circumstance, will have very little programming ability and very little merit. This is unfair. The lack of mentally retarded individuals in open source is not evidence against meritocracy.
Nullify NSA |Nullify NSA
What does YC have against lone founders? I don't really get it.