skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> What do "income gaps" produce? If my neighbor makes $10 million a year and I make $100,000, how does that affect my life?

Well, for one thing, you are probably not neighbors if the income disparity is that wide. Secondly, you are really not comparing apples to apples. Someone making $100K/year is by no means poor. They make relatively less than someone making $10M, and they might be just as over-extended, but they can easily meet their basic needs, whereas somebody making $15K/year may have enormous difficulties doing so and as a result, might break into your car and steal your briefcase. That is how income disparities can affect your life.

The rest of your post is patently absurd. Food stamps in AZ amount to $160/month, and the maximum federal Pell Grant for this year is $5,645 [0]. For comparison, tuition for an in-state student at ASU at the college of engineering is $10k/year [1].

Not to mention that you cannot get sick or hurt, otherwise you are basically fucked. Are you suggesting that it is somehow easy to be poor?

0: http://blog.collegeup.org/maximum-federal-pell-grant-increas...

1: https://students.asu.edu/tuition/results?acad_year=2014&resi...
He said nature, not the nature of markets. Winter storms, which Uber doesn't control just yet.
UI Kit is dead
If you were determined to make Bitcoin crash, how would you set about it?
Political campaigns at least have downtime though, right? You can have a month or two off between sprints. I think certain creative work (movies?) is like this too.
In the past I've noticed posters on HN picking on Rails by lazily linking to these benchmarks but click over to the average latency tab and Rails looks pretty solid with an average response latency of 1.8 ms, which is not at the very top but far better than Django, which is a comparable framework and is near the bottom of the average latency table.

If anything to me this data confirms that Rails is an amazing tool because not only do you get to develop quickly, but you also get pretty good average latency (or at least the potential depending on what you add to your app in terms of 3rd party libraries). And what Rails isn't good at is throughput, which is almost never a problem for an early stage company.

Working at a startup it's a huge success if I ever have to handle a lot of connections to my app, but today and everyday, I want fast response times on a page load.
I've never worked in a very small company, but I've been working in very small teams. While claiming a 'culture clash' seems pretty much of a copt-out from the employer's part, it's true that one single person can make or break a small team. Sometimes the clash is purely of personality (an example I've witnessed: one very competitive and personal-win-orientated alpha male in a group of laid back, traditional geeks), sometimes it's procedural (i.e. a former start-up guy in a corporate environment) but I do see potential so-called culture problems as very real and potentially unsolvable, if not by the removal of the "offending" party.

Having said that, the threat of an established monoculture is probably much worse for productivity, morale and sheer fairness that having to put up with one sour (or clashing) apple.
Dynatables.js: Like Datatables but newer and funner
google for "four bar linkage crank rocker" and you're gonna need a flywheel on the rotating side. For some definitions of intermittent rotary motion.

If you're ever bored, look at what four bar linkages can do. Stereotypical mech eng topic where its shocking just how many different things four chunks of metal and some bearings can achieve. A really poor analogy would be its kind of the turing machine of the mech eng world in that it can seemingly do almost anything with a minimal amount of parts.

There is an interesting scaling effect where the math for linkages scales pretty scarily as the number of bars increases.

(edited to add, and you can see an applied model in some stair stepper exercise machines where the arm actually moves thru an arc, which I guess is the intermittent rotary motion you're looking for?)
> World’s best investors, including Kevin Rose

At last I got a laugh scanning the post.
Split text between columns...

http://jsfiddle.net/BZuu9/
Ever heard the term, "don't knock it til you try it"? What do you have to lose by trying free operating systems? It costs nothing to run GNU/Linux in VirtualBox on Windows, and learning to interact with your machine from the command line will expand your skillset and your horizons, making you a better programmer and more valuable team player. Regardless, you're bashing people for using free operating systems in a security context, which is just asinine. This is not the holy war you're making it out to be.
You pay for computing a hash function over directly walking to the next node.

EDIT: Here you go. Some work I contributed a while ago when we were using Mongo. Replace hash table with a TRIE, deserialization performance goes up 40%. Because you don't need to decode a string, hash it, and then hit a hash table.

https://github.com/mongodb/mongo-csharp-driver/commit/0b7879...
APIS.io: The open-source API directory
After working in an agency setting while trying to run several small projects on the side, I can see why work-related stress would turn hair white and bring about countless wrinkles prematurely.

With that said, alcohol may help to a degree, but with the stressors of everyday life it's too easy to get carried away. For awhile I was drinking nearly every night of the week. I would drink in an attempt to forget about the failures of my career and the debts I had taken on as a result. Only to find that those worries were still very realistically there the next day, and I had lost time that would otherwise have been spent working or improving myself, thanks to drinking.

Now, due in-part to meditation, a closer circle of friends and peer supporters, and a lot of reading, I haven't touched more than a single beer in two weeks. And it feels great because it allows me to get more done.
Congrats on your company's success!

However, I'm surprised that you single out a 40-hour work week as though it's something exceptional. Isn't that the standard? I would never consider joining a company that expected me to work weekends. I hope that's not as common as you imply.
> The real problem is the core NodeJS libraries aren't promise compliant. I don't know if there's a module that cleanly wraps all of these in their promise analogs but that'd be the best thing here.

There's a few of these in npm, but I think the best one is probably the pr package [1], which lets you do e.g. var fs = require("pr/fs") and then use Bluebird-promise returning versions of the fs methods.

[1]: https://npmjs.org/package/pr
This is simultaneously the funniest and most tragic thing I've read in a long time. It's nearly unbelievable.

It reminds me a bit of Eddie Murphy's skit for SNL where he dresses up in white-face so he can experience society on the other side. This is almost as funny as that skit, no exaggeration. The tragedy is that this story is true.
[Ridejoy] She said: "One day ridesharing will be commonplace in the US, but I don't think we are at that day yet. Here is my rationale:

1. We didn't see any desire even when all the right pieces were in place (origin, destination, timing match, long distance + high cost of parking, compatible and networked ridesharers -- they still couldn't be bothered).

2. In Europe, where ridesharing is catching on, it competes with bus and train travel which is expensive, not car travel. In the US, ridesharing is competing with going in your own car (or nothing) and it isn't very competitive. The costs of car travel are not significant enough (yes yes I know that it is 18% of household income and $8k per year -- remember, I spent lots of money and a couple of years on this business).

3. For short trips, it'll never work because the cost of any minutes of delay just aren't worth the reduced cost of travel to the driver.

4. As I'm sure you are thinking about dynamic real-time ridesharing -- everyone is -- answer this when you set about building your network: Robin driver posts her trip once, twice, four times (?), maybe keeps an open trip pending and gets no response. She stops posting and doesn't tell anyone about what a great service/app/method you are running. Ditto passengers. When you move to real time, you have reduced the likelihood of getting a match because now the window of opportunity is 5-10 minutes (if we couldn't find a match when we said any time you ever go to NYC email me, why would you find one if I said anyone wanna go in the next 5 minutes?)

5. Look at all the past efforts, and figure out honestly why your idea is different. Everyone so far has failed. Smart phone apps, social network connections, through employers, on narrow corridors, etc etc.

Driving is still too cheap in the US. People still aren't willing to make the effort in adequate numbers to make it work.

Sorry to be such a downer but I get asked this all the time. So many people starting and thinking about this space."

Note that she's using rideshare in the traditional sense, before Lyft/etc. took over the word within the tech community. (Lyft is awesome! Just different, for now.) So for short trips, using pseudo-hired drivers on shifts a la Lyft, it obviously works well, just like taxis work well.
Dart compiles to JavaScript, is open source, and is now in ECMA. The project has mostly Google engineers committing, but we also have plenty of open-source contributions.

asm.js is a compile target that takes C/C++ code and outputs lots of typed arrays, and a custom engine to interpret the asm.js "hints". It's an interesting way to get C code onto the web, but developers don't write asm.js code by hand. In contrast, Dart is designed to be written by developers. The similarity is that both asm.js and Dart want to enable faster experiences for users, but they take very different approaches.
Fair warning: as far I know, Wrk's latency measurement does not distinguish between 500s and 200s. For some frameworks, you will see unnaturally low latency because the front-end web server is providing a 500 response very quickly.
I've been recently looking to build a theme or have one built. It's been a bit of a pain trying to track down the best practices and tools to use for theme development.

Can anyone offer some guidance? Does a framework like Genesis help or hurt in the long-run? Are tools like http://roots.io getting traction?

What are the essential things to require when hiring someone to build a theme for you?
Aren't they taught by professors? Good point though - at the end of the day, we're all self taught. I should've been more specific: "self taught coders with no formal computer science education."
Ah, so it is a motivation issue. One way, is to have something you do in the mornings that you look forward to. For some people, it is making an enjoyable breakfast. Others, a morning jog.

How about this -- if you have a TV in your bedroom, don't watch it before you go to bed -- instead, watch some of your favorite shows starting an hour or so before you have to get up. I figure if TV can cause issues getting to sleep properly, then maybe you can use that effect to help get up. After an hour of watching a couple sitcoms, you may be ready to face the day.
Warren Buffett buys $1 billion of wind turbines, the biggest purchase ever
WebObjects 4.5 anyone?
For those not familiar WebObjects was the Objective-C framework created at NeXT for developing Web Apps in the 90's.

It was then later on ported to 100% Java.

WebObjects 4.5 was the latest ObjC version and was cross platform even at the time: NeXT, Windows, Solaris and HP-UX.
E-Commerce Sites Need 2 Types of Breadcrumbs (68% Get it Wrong)
Higher speeds!
so what you're saying is your "technique" doesn't even work for you
Also Cornell's KMODDL, I suppose start here:

http://kmoddl.library.cornell.edu/resources.php
You can do this with a combination of a flywheel and overrunning clutch.
I grew up in an era when in fact the most potent computing power I had access to, as a hacker/programmer, required 20c.

Alas, I realize not everyone thinks the way I do, but I consider among the worlds most functional 'computing experiences' occurred during the Arcade era, where, indeed, one could wonder at the .. sheer .. computing power .. being used to render sprites. With 256 colors.

So, at the risk of perhaps moving the goal-posts, let me just say that while the 6809 might've been a 'games console cpu', at the time, it was also used in a few .. relatively interesting .. micro's.

Anyone returning to that era, in their own way, contributes what they can. In my case, I consider the still-functioning Joust and Defender machines in my neighbourhood, at the very least, accessible through a repository ..
What is Minimal Weather?
Ruby Engineers wanted to help revolutionize testing at Rainforest QA (YC S12)
Because it's more focused and comprehensive (at least in theory).
Kevin Rose's new web idea tweet
I have a problem with all of these tax loopholes. The tax code already has a rule in it about estate tax, which means that estate tax should be collected. To not close this loophole is unfair, that is what I am saying.

Finally, how many hardworking farmers do you know that would just straight-up hand their kids something for nothing? If we are going to work with stereotypes like that, I would be willing to bet that the farmer would be happy to sell his successful farm to his kids for fair market value so they could work as hard as he did to make a living for their families.
Boosting Performance While Avoiding Eternal Damnation
wp_bootstrap_navwalker is GPL, wordpress is GPL, you cant license your project as MIT
> I'd argue we should be making it easier for developers to build more decentralised systems

Why?
OpenStack Project Update Webinars, notmyname talking OpenStack Swift on 12/19
If the web community doesn't continue to work on innovative new platform features, and deliver fantastic experiences for mobile users, then native mobile (ios, android) will become the de facto way to deliver apps to users. That day is more likely and closer than some may want to believe. So double check before you say something like your comment. :)
No, you don't need hindsight to figure this out. It should be easy to figure out in advance which of these strategies is likely to be more effective in solving a problem:

(1) Go into the debugger and trace how the system got to the bad state it was in.

(2) Randomly change stuff and see if it fixes the problem.

After doing (1), you understand exactly what your code is doing and why. After doing (2), you may not even understand what the problem really was, or why it got fixed, or whether it's really fixed or just doesn't happen any more in this particular situation.

I've seen people debug using strategy (2), and when they give up and ask for help, stopping, thinking a while and employing strategy (1) will usually find the problem.
Designing Products that Scale
Thank you for your work, it's really interesting
Original poster here. I thought you good people would find the Geneva drive interesting. It is so simple and elegant; similar in spirit to the elegance of a beautiful algorithm.

For further reading on the Geneva drive... don't miss the spherical Geneva drive design, illustrated in figure 9-3:

http://ebooks.library.cornell.edu/k/kmoddl/pdf/002_010.pdf

Although not Geneva drive related, if you want to combine your passion of horology with human spaceflight, you will truly enjoy "John Glenn's Heuer":

http://www.onthedash.com/docs/Glenn.html

Also, thank you all for the great, related links!
I was getting an off-peak train from near London into central London. The train is often packed, with people left standing, and I can only imagine it's even busier at peak times.

Many train lines are at or near maximum capacity and need more investment, if you believe the claims used to justify regular above-inflation rail fare increases.

If economies of scale make them profitable, they should be making money hand over fist.

I'm not convinced economies of scale are the problem.
I hit the button to say exactly that, but you beat me to it. It's unbelievably bad, even by Google's rapidly declining standards....
>We're all apes anyway, not monkeys.

I know we're getting way off-topic here, but this is a compelling argument that the "apes, not monkeys" thing is kind of silly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4A-dMqEbSk8
If the word "culture" is in any sentence when you're hiring/firing me, I'm punching you right in the fucking face (not actually though) and leaving. It's basically saying "for some arbitrary reason we're going to fire you, but we don't really know why and neither do you, bye!" Sorry for not having a beard, thick rim glasses, and not liking the same N64 video games as you.

The last interview that I was on where someone was not hired because of "culture" was because when an experienced devop was asked for an interesting disaster story, he had none. Then, when pushed, he had one, but one with parenthetical comments about how he had told them not to make the mistake.

We said "culture" but what we really meant was, "He's showing the kind of defensive behavior that you REALLY do not want in a devop when things go pear shaped."

And, given defensive behavior was already seen, do you think we really want to try to justify what was clear to us?
I find Dart much easier to learn than Java. Check out http://programming.oreilly.com/2013/05/dart-is-not-the-langu... for many differences between Java and Dart.
I've only found consistently high quality apps in the free software Android market, f-droid. I think the Play Store has been overrun with crappy, ad-infested apps since it was the Android Market.
Show HN: My side project to help you milk your Dropbox space to the last drop
I agree. Fatal familial insomniac's death is brough about by neurodegeneration caused by prions. Another non-fatal illness which inhebits sleep for extensive periods is Morvan's syndrome [0] for which there has been EEG recordings showing no sleep for 4 months [1] and showing no imparement of memory or intellectual performance!

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morvan%27s_syndrome
[1] http://sommeil.univ-lyon1.fr/articles/jouvet/la_recherche/pr... [in french]
http://choosealicense.com/licenses/gpl-v2/
Sublicensing is Forbidden
2014 Trends in Data Governance
60+ employees now and we're still doing the 4-day (32 hour) week. Probably saw this, but we have also since removed managers: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6886907
RedHat Fedora makes no apologies for dropping legacy support. Heck, they threw out ifconfig in Fedora 19.

It's good to be dropping things like syslogd from the default distribution, and the only reason it was ditched was because syslogd is behind the times.

Yes, syslogd does more. If you want those features, install it. Forcing it on everyone, regardless, serves no purpose.
Ha, I heard something like "it will be fixed on version 2" multiple times last week. The more I do this the more I realize I can only do what I can do (and try to get better where there are shortfalls in skill/knowledge). Like you said, no one's perfect. Thanks for the reminder and tips!
> Working at a startup it's a huge success if I ever have to handle a lot of connections to my app, but today and everyday, I want fast response times on a page load.

Realistically, I doubt many humans can distinguish between 1ms and 100-200ms. response times.
> Why do PIPs persist? Two words: externalized costs. An HR department can claim it saved money on severance payments, while the cost is externalized (and multiplied) to that employee's team and manager.

Very insightful. I wonder how much silliness in corporate America can be explained in terms of HR externalizing costs to other departments. I'm specifically thinking of the articles always talking about HR blocking good but unconventional hires.
Damn, I can barely click around the web without seeing a picture of that guy's skinny mug plastered on something.

I'm beginning to think the business is marketing, not technology.
Doubtful any research has been done on the matter, or that you could accurately do a survey or dig through data (Resumes? Job postings?) to get an answer.

However, statistically speaking, it's likely not an either/or scenario. I'd be willing to bet that it varies greatly and there is no "majority," additionally what about the companies that suck and only hire monkeys?
Brand Building: Develop your hype to boost your profits
Noting that the experiments described in the article were performed on yeast, can anybody better versed in biology convey a better idea on how applicable to humans these results are?

As described in the article, we both have telomeres, but as far as I know the comparison ends there.
This link was on HN a few weeks ago, but it's a pretty neat visualization of gzip at work: http://jvns.ca/blog/2013/10/24/day-16-gzip-plus-poetry-equal...
True, this system could lead to the above. But it will more likely lead to leadership by competence. One of the great failings of traditional management is that so many incompetent folks become managers.

Another benefit of this system is that it allows for the natural evolution of teams and leaders. A good leader may not always want to lead. A good leader may want to follow sometimes. A system like this allows for that. And yet, it also allows for new leaders to mature and grow on their pace, without needing an official title such as "manager of X".

I'm curious on the kinds of hurdles they'll face. Old managers simply become new PMs? How will "boring" projects get done?
UT.6.01x Embedded Systems: MOOC with an EE lab
Totally agree. Engineers are stripped of all their power when their ability to choose their projects has been taken away. They get reduced, as you said, to simple code monkeys. It's insane.
I used to spend my afternoons waypoint'ing all the computer shops I could access with a single days bus pass. This was a regular jaunt in the late 70's, early 80's, and .. at the time .. was a great way to prove ones chops. When you only had 20 minutes to type something in, it better be funky. (Coz the sales guy/gal is either going to let you save it to their "DEMO" floppy, or kick you out of the shop.)

Until you come back and decide to buy something, and suddenly .. it mattered which CPU you chose. Z80, 68xx, the rumoured 68k, and .. so on. It was a bewildering time.

(Thankfully, the still-functioning, embedded Video Game Arcades were able to provide some relief. I knew a few arcade owners, lets just say.. ;)

Anyway .. there was a Tandy shop, and I had a CoCo section in my (long-lost) notebook. There were some funky things, no?
But still .. in the Amstrad invasion, the Atari megalith, the Commodore death spiral.. Tandy kind of lost the plot. Strangely so. The CoCo were somehow 'tainted' in my mind, back then, because of the TRS80 connection. Things didn't have to be so grey.

Nevertheless, if the connection with the Arcades had been made, I'm sure the CoCo could have kicked some serious ass. What heady times!
Bacterial killing is not inherently valuable since so much of your homeostasis is regulated by native bacterial flora, both on the skin and inside the body. It could be that even beyond the skin damage of anti-bacterial soaps, that regularly wiping out your endogenous bacteria could increase certain infectious susceptibilities.

This has been seen with C. difficile infections that occur after broad-spectrum antibiotic administration. These infections are 50% fatal when treated with more antibiotics. Use of fecal transplants, aka the poop of a healthy person put it into the c. difficile patient's stomach, seems to drop that fatality rate to less than 1%. The impact appears to be from the reestablishment of bacterial homeostasis in the gastrointestinal tract.

Study is still ongoing on the broad efficacy of this method, but regardless there is at the very least a substantial subset of the population who are demonstrably at risk from the loss of native flora due to bactericidal treatment.
Welcome to startups.