skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This is really ridiculous. I used to have some sympathy for their cause—through no fault of their own, they're being priced out of their neighborhood.

But the point where they start physically attacking employees is the point where they lose any respect. Employees aren't trying to get them evicted. Heck, at least they're taking shared transit instead of private limousines.

Sorry, but they've reduced themselves to common hoodlums and should be treated as such. No evictions? Evict every person who participated in a violent attack on their neighbors.
Delicious! Social justice rhetoric comes back to bite the SV hipsters. I hope the non SJ warriors among the techies pay attention to this demonstration of how the left wing hate machine works. Savor your own denunciation as lackeys of Koch brothers (lol), evil capitalists, rich, white male priviledged running dogs, etc. Then maybe this will make them rethink their own judgments when such rhetoric is used against other industries or classes of people.
The Amborella Genome and the Evolution of Flowering Plants
Ask HN: Where should we give our time and donations this holiday season?
Hey all,

There are definitely a lot of threads on HN right now discussing the complex and nuanced situation regarding the tech divide in the bay. I wanted to find some way to channel my frustration into something useful, and so I'm compiling a list of charities and organizations where I can either donate time or money. Here's what I have so far, but would love to get your opinions on causes and organizations I might have missed. Thanks!

Non-tech related (skews SF city, apologies!):

826 Valencia (teach SF children how to write, or donate money!):
https://826valencia.org/

Homeless Youth Alliance (psyciatry and services for homeless youth in SF, in danger of shutting down [1]):
http://www.homelessyouthalliance.org/

Glide SF (help serve a meal to those in need in SF):
http://www.glide.org/serveameal

Watsi (fund patient care to anyone in the world):
https://watsi.org/

EARN (financial services and education for disadvantaged workers):
http://www.earn.org/how_you_can_help/how_to_give/

Project Night Night (deliver homeless children in SF bags of toys and blankets):
http://www.projectnightnight.org/

Tech related:

Black Girls Code:
http://www.blackgirlscode.com/

Archive.org (3:1 donation match):
http://archive.org/donate/

Code for America (Reid Hoffman matching donations):
http://www.codeforamerica.org/2013/12/18/reid-hoffman-challenges-tech-community-to-support-civic-innovation/

[1] http://m.sfexaminer.com/sanfrancisco/haight-center-for-homeless-youth-explores-options-as-closure-looms/Content?oid=2651571
Someone should come up with a two factor authentication system for CC purchases. I swipe my card, then the processor pings my phone for approval. It would be great for validating tip amounts as well.
What tom said; also typing a url in a browser is a lot easier than installing something. This might sound silly but for the typical computer user (and even many nerds!) it makes a big difference.
What are the police doing in that video? Shouldn't they be arresting protestors for blocking traffic?
Is it just me, or is this less of the tech companies' and workers' fault and more of the greedy landlords jacking up prices? Shouldn't the protesters' anger be directed at them instead?
There is no concerted master plan, only least resistance paths when trying to build something.

Programmer uses language X (JavaScript) and need to do something sufficiently complex he doesn't want to write again (image processing / game dynamics / crypto). Programmer writes a transpiler.

Or programmer A wants to do something heretic for the sake of it, programmer B sees an opportunity for his sufficiently complex library.
A Twitter Message About AIDS, Africa and Race
I particularly enjoyed the insinuation that tech employees are living among and extensively using prostitutes.
> Just not to Windows users.

Oh okay, so you'd just lose out on ~90% of the market?
You don't have to rewrite it.
what if the salary is the only differentiator, and you really value them? What is your recourse to deal with compelling offers? (honest question, not trolling)
> all things are good in moderation

What about poison? Rabies? Rabies in moderation actually sounds quite appealing.
SoMa didn't have the ball park yet so it was kinda sketchy anywhere past the highway, and there were a bunch of weird muggings/knifings when a person of the wrong race would go to the wrong bar or place. We knew not to go the Korean club on Harrison. Meth heads would surround the happy donut and south park was a bit of a homeless tent city, and while there were some of the same hotels near the convention center, the west hall hadn't been built yet and it was all kinda run down the way most of moscone is.

I used to do a fair amount of work in the Potrero hill area in 2000 or so and dreaded parking there. Then the bust happened and not only did a lot more parking appear, but many of the good restaurants in that area shuttered almost overnight.

We lived in lower Haight until 1999, and it was okay, if you could roll with a little bit of homeless person screaming in the middle of the night just outside the place we rented. Our cars were broken into a few times and we got a few parking tickets a year but that was the price one paid to live in SF. It largely wasn't worth it. First me, then my soon to be wife got a job in the south bay, we moved to los altos to skip the commute.

The funny thing is the big 'displacement' story in the city around 2000 was the gentrification of the Castro, where older more established gay folks were making it difficult for younger, poorer gay people to find places to live near the Castro (which is sort of the traditional gay nexus in SF)

IMO SF is in much better shape nowadays, and it has a lot to do with the thousands of tech companies in and out of the city employing people who add their money and the rest to the city.
I don't complain about taxes. So now you know one engineer who doesn't.

That said, I do sometimes complain about what gets done with my taxes and occasionally I wonder if the system is fair -- but those are different things. I certainly don't begrudge paying taxes to support a civil society (and if I were massively wealthy, I wouldn't begrudge paying more taxes than I do now). I think a lot of poor people pay far too much, and most rich people pay far too little. It pisses me off, for example, that I have to pay taxes on every employee I hire, regardless of whether or not my company is profitable. Likewise, it pisses me off that someone making $30k a year in San Francisco has to pay income tax at all. That's just wrong.

Finally, as a resident of a city with outrageous rents, I think that property taxes are the one tiny, completely inadequate hedge that our society has against the total economic dominance of the people who were lucky enough to get here first.
Actually, yes. See the first two examples given in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON#Examples_of_industrial_...
They? Only one of the protest groups did anything, the other groups have just been protesting. I don't think it's reasonable for everyone to drop support for these guys because of a couple of assholes.
EDIT: Nevermind, this comment thread is a little toxic and I'd rather not add to its length.
If you always try to think in terms of the "actual real problems" you will find yourself unable to make judgments about a lot of obviously terrible ideas, so long as they are distantly related to an "actual problem".
I don't think there are many social justice warriors among "techies", at least those whose title is "Engineer". Some people might go along with it because they really agree or because they fear the consequences (viz Ben Noordhuis) but most of this politics comes from outside the industry, or from the leaders/management.
Why not disable auto-fill and auto-submit in your global preference?
I was trying to put myself in the position of the guy who wrote the article. I.e. someone who is a "progressive" but moved into SF and has a decent income. If I'm moving to SF and there isn't any new construction to buy, I'm going to have to bid against the existing residents for a place to live.

It seemed like the point of the article was like "Look, not all us SF techies are assholes because we don't say asshole things" and my point was more that it's the economic consequences of your lifestyle that have the biggest impact on the city's preexisting long-term residents.
> the elitist attitudes really need to stop

I hope everyone of these protesters standing in the way of the bus gets arrested (as opposed to protestors standing aside - no problems with them). It's not elitist to want people to be civil. It's not elitist to want to go to work. There's no solution to gentrification. Not a single one. There's nothing to be done about private entities buying private property at a price that the buyer and seller agree on. The next door neighbor has no say whatsoever over the process unless there's a pre-existing homeowner's association. If you aren't happy with it, tough luck. Annoying people isn't going to help anyone. Because there's absolutely nothing that can be done, short of a constitutional amendment that would never see the light of day.
lol I listed Sails though--my problem with sails was that their website promised tomes upon tomes of documentation; come to find out the copy on the website is all boilerplate and none of the docs have been completed yet.
> They? Only one of the protest groups did anything, the other groups have just been protesting. I don't think it's reasonable for everyone to drop support for these guys because of a couple of assholes.

But the other group also condoned the actions of the hoodlums and declined to disagree with their tactics.
Despite academic efforts to redefine the word, rape is sex. It may not be ethical or legal, and it may be violent, but anything that can get you pregnant is sex.
That's a good question. If the thieves didn't have the CVV1, it should have been a lot harder for them use the stolen cards. I would have thought the "no store" rules should apply to both CVV1 and CVV2 to help ensure that presence of a legitimate card.

--

Edit: if early reports are accurate, and the credit card data was stolen via malware on the POS machines as the cards were swiped, then it would make sense that they would capture every possible piece of data, including CVV1.
Moving the decimal point to the right just increases by 10x the volume necessary to create the same profit. I think a likely result would be massive consolidation to a couple big companies, who would then compete once again on latency but at much higher volumes.
He definitely got a lot right. To pick 3 of his "predictions":

1. "No online database will replace your daily newspaper" OK, he's wrong here. (Well, wrong, soon. Although clearly newspapers are struggling, they're not extinct, yet.)

2. "No CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher" How is this wrong? To the extent MOOCs replace face-to-face teaching, they might require fewer competent teachers. Anyway I took his point to be that learning is about more than viewing static content like a CD-ROM.

3. "No computer network will change the way government works" How is this wrong? It's overly optimistic to say that computer networks have transformed government. (For the better. They've clearly transformed the efficacy of tracking people.) You could argue that money in politics is worse than ever, and actual democracy is weaker than ever. I don't see how technology has improved this substantially or is likely to in the near future. We can hope and try, and kudos to civic hackers chipping away at this from the bottom up.

Although I love the internet and disruption, I don't see how we can laugh at him for being unduly skpetical.
BlackBerry Staggers to a Deeper, $4.4 Billion Loss
If you're going to talk about following the law, how about the fact that the bus is illegally parked in a public bus stop? That's why these guys are protesting, because the individuals in the city have one set of laws they're supposed to follow while the tech companies are apparently immune.

Seriously, read what these people are saying. They've complained about the fact that Muni buses are dumping people into the middle of the road because these tech buses are literally parking themselves in the muni bus stops to pick people up. If any other citizen did this it would be a $271 fine, but for some reason having a tech company behind you means you're above the law.

The two tiered system- the economic apartheid- is the real issue here.
Source? I haven't seen anything about that.
Which _several_ other mistakes?
I bought a yubikey with the intention of doing exactly that, but then it occurred to me...

What the hell happens if I lose the yubikey? Or indeed anything else that substitutes as the 2nd factor?
Thinking of this as an non-convex optimization problem, economic forces just make the mankind constantly evaluate the risk vs. reward they have around their current local point, and move towards what is most likely a local minimum (or on the very least move towards the global minimum in a very convoluted time-intensive manner).

All of this because of the pile of legacy we have ourselves created (not knowing at that time what the future holds, so not blaming anyone here), including getting the users' minds too adapted to that existing legacy.

Is there no better way (open-ended question)?

(Maybe not, by definition.)
There is a keepass extension, though. It's a pity they didn't review it.
Please, inform me, if you are not trolling on the cheap.

https://www.dartlang.org/articles/numeric-computation/

http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/math/BigIntege...

Both arbitrary precision immutable integer types. If some corner case differs, my point stands. Google has more than enough engineers on Dart to do the work of writing a bignum library in JS, if they can't find one to use that someone already wrote.

/be
The issue is complex, but let's look at demand vs supply. It is simply how the market works. The more people living in the city, the more likely the housing rent will increase. If there is a shortage, the rent will raise. If there are new apartments built, more polished, the rent will be higher. And there are companies pay for housing in MV which results in shortage.

The problem is the city does not do a good job securing affordable housing. It isn't like Googlers or Twitter employees don't shop. They probably shop a lot, spend a lot of cash.

These high-tech employees are also suffering with the high rent. Not everyone makes 180K a year. At least 1/3 of the salary goes to the government and 401K.

The other reason housing becomes less affordable is foreigners who come to invest in real estate.

Kick them out? Detroit is be happy to take care these tech geeks. But I bet 10 years later they will just be unhappy when the average residents can't afford an apartment.

My problem is with low-pay jobs. Security at big tech companies are hired by contractors and they get low pay. Google should be able to pay more, shouldn't they? I remember there was a series of protest this summer in MV.

Maybe Google should just build a dorm.

It is sad people can't afford a place to sleep. I can't imagine being homeless right now in NY, it's fucking cold. Can we do better? How do we do better? Should we have more affordable housing and more generous affordable housing policy?
> If you're going to talk about following the law, how about the fact that the bus is illegally parked in a public bus stop?

Well that's a perfectly OK thing to protest, but I'm not sure it's illegal though. Have you called the city and asked? I bet they have permission. Illegal means violating the law, are they violating the law or you just unhappy about the arrangement. I can see a valid argument being made about it not being a good thing, but I doubt it's illegal.

If it is illegal just call the police? What do they say?
That's a neat idea. But why twitter account is mandatory for this?
SOP does not apply to form fields, which is the exploit vector for the Y! mail attack.
I live in NYC, and I often wonder what Silicon Valley is really like. Most of the news I read oh HN regarding it is very negative and cynical

There are a shockingly large number of articles posting about how great Boulder, BC, NYC, Chicago, etc. are better than SV. Many of them are thinly veiled self-serving attempts to get more engineers in their area so that they won't feel so alone (ie, turn it into exactly the same environment as San Francisco where your average barrista is exceptionally familiar with the newest and greatest iPhone app and is friends with at least a half dozen founders or works part-time on his own project (s)he is attempting to launch).

It seems like certain neighborhoods are full of fairly wealthy tech guys, but that it's not all white dudes.

I know female founders, black founders, indian founders, asian founders, etc. There are around. Some are more prolific than others. The same goes for VCs, there is a large contingent of non-White people. Sadly VC is one of those areas that women are still the serious minority (though I know several of them.) It really just depends on who you surround yourself with.

I will say that there are some sexist jerks who play favorites. Someone I was dating got brought into a well known Data Science company and was relegated to doing Social Media (because you know, women, communications) on top of her current job (she has an MFE).

But I feel like there is a pretty strong informal movement to call out these kinds of assholes.

Are women getting hired at the more progressive companies out there? Cause these articles make it seem like it's only men out there.

There is a bit of a gender imbalance down he peninsula. It is more pronounced at certain tech companies than others. Up in San Francisco, you'll see far more gender diversity, but it still isn't near parity (on a larger demographic level though, San Francisco proper has a 50.9/49.1 split of genders). Certainly there are more companies up in SF that care about hiring women and many women-only or largely women-only startups do exists.

From a sexuality standpoint, you can't get much better than San Francisco. I live in the Castro so I might be biased, but the LGBT community thrives here and I know plenty of gay founders and tech workers. I've worked with transmen and transwomen in several startups (though there is still background stigma against it still being worked out).
I'm not sure if they should be angry at anyone at the moment. The market works - jobs mean more people coming in, high salaries mean high rents, people who can afford a good location will choose their place. Unless everyone in one group changes their mind, there will be an unbalanced situation (until the bubble bursts - rent goes so high that some people realise it's not reasonable to pay anymore and some big shift occurs - another campus of a big company gets built, new easier way of commuting is created, etc.)

If they really want change, they'll have to figure out a way to create an incentive for the landlords to keep the price low, or for the workers to choose their house location differently. Being angry at anyone trying to maximise their comfort in a lawful way is rarely useful or effective.
Thanks for posting this.

The takeaway here is to turn off auto-fill and auto-login.
You'll still get most of the convenience of the browser extension password manager: a repository of strong passwords that you don't have to remember and can access easily on multiple devices. This is why I use LastPass. I used to use KeePass and even donated to the project, but I wanted more convenience, support in the long run, and never liked the .NET dependency.
EX-CIA Chief Thinks Snowden Should Be Hanged If Convicted
OTOH it may be not landlords but city officials not allowing enough new construction, and their NIMBY-type electorate who protest against building adequate housing (yes, tall) and working public transportation?
Still seems like quite a hack. Why can't we just have immutable objects shared by all webworkers?
Quora Blog - Announcing Top Writers 2013
As in, not in IE 11?
I'm also doing the Matasano crypto challenges and they are pretty priceless, don't know of anywhere else who offers a similar learning experience by breaking stuff, for free even.
Then you'll be happy to know that he attributes the problem to government constraints on supply.
My IDEa: HTML parsing & formatting within code comments:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/ace-internals/pTcFXP...
You picked about the worst possible example. Drivers like that are the kinds of scumbags that make me question my opposition to capital punishment. You're not going to get the result you want trying to compare them to NSA employees.
Does that help in any way ever?
Maybe Google could just look at a subway map and put an office in a less desirable area, like Oakland, where people can easily commute from SF by subway. They might get good tax breaks if they build/lease in a depressed area. Then they would need a lot fewer buses heading south. There would be an additional benefit that some Google employees would move close to the office in Oakland, thus bringing some wealth into that area, which would hopefully snowball.

I don't know the SF area, but here's a subway map.

https://www.bart.gov/stations

The solution to the problem is building another office in a cheaper area that's close to mass transportation.
So the nuclear family combined with a distributed economy is basically a convenient tool for justifying atrocities of all kinds. Just feeding the kids, right?

Maybe not having kids is actually the morally correct choice, then?
Freshplum is hiring: 9c32c8481288458fd953d53cca134703
(hint: it's an un-salted email address. please don't share.)

Pricing is a hard problem, one that nobody to date has solved. How does one quickly and efficiently find the fair price for a particular product? Two years ago Freshplum was founded in the belief that we must use data to answer this question.

Today Freshplum observes and optimizes over $50MM in revenue every month. That number has grown by 45% every month for the last four months. By the time you join, we'll probably be doing $1BN annually.

Today Freshplum's ML algorithms can identify 100,000 visitors that aren't going to buy...and only be wrong once.

Today Freshplum works with billion dollar cosmetic companies, international retailers, and some of the world's largest online merchants.

Are you interested in solving hard problems? Do you want to work with some of the smartest engineers in the valley? Do you want to collaborate with the leading academics in this space?

Are you tired of social-mobile lottery tickets, and instead want to work at a real company that makes actual revenue solving a real problem? Then help us revolutionize online commerce.

http://freshplum.com/jobs/
Ok fine, then you made a choice. If it's a choice then you have to be an adult and deal with the consequences.
interesting discussions...
It happens indirectly, and gradually. Doesn't make it any less real, or this discussion wouldn't even exist.

If more affluent people outright refused to pay exorbitant rents were jacked up in expectation of their arrival, what do you think would happen? Would rents drop back to the level that was perfectly profitable "yesterday", or would the owners just let them sit empty to spite everybody?

One can still live in a really big house/apartment, you know, I'm talking about high rents for small/normal ones in areas that suddenly became hip, obviously - and where new housing is needed, displacement is hardly a solution.
As a New Yorker, this surprised me too. Tech companies should consider supporting the budgets of the SFPD et al.
So RSA sells its customers for $10 million, and NSA wastes $10 million.