skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think you're misunderstanding Stephen's point. He's not saying that all it takes is luck to be successful. I think it was more a comment on the rarity of income mobility from parents to children.

Look at the calculator in the middle of this NYT article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/22/business/in-climbing-incom...

If you look at the median income of a child born in San Jose to parents who were making $20k/year, only 11% of them make it into the top quintile. Only 1/4 of them will make it into the top 40% of the income distribution.

This skewed mobility is what people ascribe to 'luck' when people work their way out of poverty. Obviously it's a complex issue that is somewhat trivialized by calling the successful ones 'lucky', but it's a shortcut to describing the rarity of upwards mobility from parents to kids.
Food for thought: all this wisdom is really an attempt to prioritize how bits hit your browser and is very much due to legacy issues. These are hacks, albeit clever and measurably better.

HTTP2 when it comes (2014?) will negate the need to inline/concatenate CSS or cook up image sprites because it solves it at the proper level, the network layer.
A well-designed experiment that kills the subjects still kills the subjects. I'd rather that those subjects not be humans.

I agree that the experimental rigor ought be higher, mind you.
Apparently you didn't read it, but nevermind.

Specifically this:

>just run a background task that puts multiple random RSA's through the paces in alternate threads so the extraction can't take place because of garbled data.

Adding randomness does not remove detectable, statistically-significant information. It just takes more trials to extract it. This is the basis of many side-channel attacks. Super-trivial example: if you roll a super-weighted die and it shows 6 every time it's obvious, but if it's only barely weighted it'll still be detectable with enough rolls, to the same level of confidence (since getting 6 one hundred times in a row is not impossible with a fair die).
My dad hasn't touched his laptop in well over a year, since getting his iPhone and iPad. I know several other people who use tablets and don't even own computers.
Certain reddit communities are vigorously trying to uphold scientific standards. AskScience, AskHistoriance etc come to mind. Yes, if deniers of man-made climate change can't cite scientific sources they shouldn't write in scientific reddits.

The problem I see with "people with scientific training" though is that it's very hard to make a career unless you support the view that the current climate change is man-made, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Climate_science_opinion2.p.... But there should (still) be enough percentage points left to find valid opposing arguments.
Do you know what a growth market is? And why that might be important to a business, particularly a gigantic one?

Jeez. Sorry for the tone but the continued head-in-the-sand attitude towards MS is driving me batty.
There are a number of people who are CEO of this-or-that because they are smart, skilled CEOs with the proper credentials. And there are some that lack credentials and make this up by being smarter or better. And some who are pretty dumb and inept but make up for it by having really great credentials.

You're comment asks why people believe it's "100% up to 'luck'" and I'd argue that there are few people making that argument. Rather, the argument goes, luck is a component of getting a high-paying CEO salary. I don't think this is in any way arguable.

The argument that there's no luck and it's 100% skill on the part of the CEO is equally silly. Even if skill was the largest success predictor, credentials would still need to be evenly distributed throughout the population to achieve your utopian vision.
"For instance, once I was accused of being emotionally attached to my code (in front of a client, might I add) – an accusation I didn’t believe anyone would levy at a man"

In over 25 years of being in the software world (and a male), I have accused several other males, and have been accused (esp. in the first half of this career), of being emotionally attached to code. This happens in any and all fields of creative construction.

Not all reference to emotion is a "code" for an antagonistic remark against females.

I sense an ego issue here. The author repeats how she wants males to see her as a teacher. I guess she feels that a purpose of lead role on a project is one of educator. I think that's a misconception of that role.
For anyone who hasn't set up 2 factor auth - you can use Google's app as described here: http://www.hanselman.com/blog/SettingUpTwoFactorAuthenticati...

Much better than Microsoft's guide IMHO.
I'd heard of AirPair before, and my first thought reading the title was "Is Pair Programming Worth It? A Company Offering Pair Programming Services Interviews Another Company Offering Pair Programming Services". I wonder what the answer is!
It's a shame that people in tech are almost always seen as socially awkward. There are so many of us out there who are charming, funny and can converse in a large variety of topics at the flip of a switch. Unfortunately in today's world a book is judged only by it's cover.
"Things Every X needs To Say To Every Y They Encounter"
Something to keep in mind, and the source of much misunderstanding in alternative fuel discussions... there are really three different systems involved! Energy capture, energy storage, and energy conversion (converting stored energy to work).

Energy capture: Fossil fuel has the unpleasant problem that the energy was captured long ago, over very time-consuming (millions of years) natural processes. So it carries two flaws: burning it destabilizes the atmosphere, and it's a fixed resource that will eventually run out. In the long game (>100 years, when humans could be around for millions more), nuclear fission has the same problem. So the only really stable, long-term sources of energy are solar (including indirect solar like wind) and geothermal (including indirect gravitational energy like tidal).

Energy storage: This is where liquid and gas fuels have a huge win and battery storage has a huge lose. It's probably impossible for batteries to achieve the density and convenience of gasoline and other liquids. They're safe, easy to handle, etc. Even though electric motors are several times more efficient than combustion motors, liquid fuel storage efficiency more than makes up for it. Plus it requires no change to existing infrastructure.

Energy conversion: This is more about how it's used. We want vehicles, right? So we have to consider the operational goals and constraints of vehicles.
Thereby perpetuating the illusion of stability - which might all be that's needed to continue with more people adopting it.
Garry Kasparov wrote a fantastic article[0] a few years ago about computer chess, advanced chess and artificial intelligence. This quote in particular is worth considering: "Weak human + machine + better process was superior to a strong computer alone and, more remarkably, superior to a strong human + machine + inferior process."

[0] http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/feb/11/the-che...
This is kind of a dumb post no? Suprised to see it on the front page.

Basically don't be a dick and be humble? Sounds like universal advice. I thought this would be more technical.
There are some people who simply disregard reason/evidence and rationalize their beliefs on emotion.

That's true, and the world will never be rid of them.

And that's probably a good thing, because every now and then, they might be right. I'm not saying that this is the case with global warming/climate change, but history is full of examples where a contrarian turned out to be correct.

Repressing speech because it is unpopular or simply wrong is ultimately counterproductive, because it establishes a precedent.
> Microsoft isn't nuts.

Yep. Their spectacular mediocrity is only now being revealed, that's all.

Look, they've been great simply by virtue of being in the right place at the right time. There was an incredibly TREMENDOUS hidden demand for a PC and an operating system for it, and MS happened to be there at the time. A half-blind monkey in the same place at the same time would have made a truckload of money too. It was impossible to avoid being dragged up to (at least financial) greatness by that gigantic wave of history - if you happened to hang around in the right neighborhood at the time.

And that was a market that worked well if unified on a single standard. As luck would have had it, that was Windows. Okay, not entirely luck, Bill Gates is also a shrewd businessman. But from a technical perspective, MS has always been mind-numbingly mediocre and uninspired and anti-visionary. Remember how they got dragged kicking and screaming into the Internet era? That's the real Microsoft.

Well, now the tremendous hurricane lifting MS up is dying down, and it's becoming apparent that it really takes gale-force winds to keep flying an object with all the graceful aerodynamics of a brick.

With the tides of history turning against them, it's now obvious to everyone that they are really inept at innovation. What's funny is that this is considered "news".

Good riddance, MS. You've kept the whole industry back far too long. You've probably cost us all perhaps a decade of progress. Nobody of consequence is going to miss you.
I agree with this. By inlining all the JS and CSS, you lose the entire benefit of the browser cache, making each HTTP request for a real page a lot larger.
I think this is way off the mark, in general.

"But that’s not the roadmap we’re hearing from the Microsoft OS team. Instead, they’re talking about creating a single Windows code base that runs across all types of devices, something that’s technically appealing if you’re a Microsoft engineer but thoroughly uninteresting to customers."

If I wanted an Android phone, I'd go buy one of the bazillions of Android phones. If you're someone who isn't just going to buy go a Samsung phone, you're probably, like me, not invested in Google's ecosystem. You don't want a phone that plugs into Google's "cloud" but rather a phone that runs Outlook and Office, and can interface with your company's Exchange Server, Windows-based CMS, etc. That has value; being yet another crappy Android vendor does not.

Microsoft's strategy is just fine, it's their execution that sucks. Windows on Phones and Tablets should have featured tight integration with the Microsoft ecosystem from Day 1. Instead, they botched Surface RT by releasing it with a half-baked buggy version of Office on a tablet that didn't integrate with Active Directory. Windows Phone 8 has no synergy with Windows on a tablet or a Windows PC, and oh, the roadmap to a proper touch-optimized version of Office includes the phrase "when pigs fly." Microsoft comes consistently late to the party with products that are little better than MVPs, and that's sinking them.
According to the Pew Hispanic Center, more people have moved from the USA to Mexico than from Mexico to the USA in each of the past six years. The reverse flow was strong in the 1990's. That's one clue that maybe low pay in Tijuana is getting to be better than San Jose, at least compared to before.

I don't know of specific data between Tijuana and San Jose.

I do know recent college graduates in SF and Mexico City, though. It's clear that the average wage in relation to the cost of living is higher in Mexico City. My impression is that unskilled and low wage workers are probably a lot better off north of the Río Bravo, though maybe not at SF/SJ prices.
Agreed, I don't tend to use `git add -i` much directly either. I use editor integrations and/or a GUI tool that allows line-by-line staging. I rather like Git Tower's[1] approach: it's easy to stage directly in the diff view either by hunk or by selected lines. This works nicely because most of the time the diff hunk(s) are OK, and I only need to mess with a selection in the less common cases.

[1] http://www.git-tower.com/
Tips For The Minimalist DBA
Then how would we have found the 10% of drugs that did succeed?
'If there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities.. it is the United States' --Mandela in 2003

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/mehdi-hasan/nelson-mandela-i...
Answer: No.
https://help.github.com/articles/using-pull-requests
With Start8 installed, the Windows 8.1 is actually the best Windows OS I have ever used. Looking forward to a native start menu!
Speaking as a male, the vapidity of male, misogynist programmers (the kind who wrote took the time to write this chickenshit) who are threatened in their little enclaves is evident and pathetic.
Implicit in your reasoning is the suggestion that a security guard doesn't deserve a dignified living wage. I disagree with that -- I think in a civilized society he should be able to afford his own place, provide for his daughter, give her rides as needed without sacrificing job security, etc. As the other poster mentioned, we /need/ such people... we need people who mow the lawns, people who flip burgers, people who shovel snow. We shouldn't think of them as humans that don't deserve a respectable living wage.

re: luck, and making it in the valley

Consider the fact that if there was someone quite like Bill Gates, same skillset, same personality, etc. starting out today, how far he'd be able to get. I would assert that it's unlikely that he'd be able to maneuver the SV world today and be able to get more than about 300k. But the real-life Bill Gates has some 60 billion dollar worth... so what's the issue? Clearly luck is a big factor.. you have to be at the right place at the right time, with the connections, with the money, etc. I have known way too many poor people who work unbelievably hard... so I just couldn't disagree more with what you have to say.

I would like to respectfully suggest to you that you take some time out and maybe volunteer at a soup kitchen so that you are made more familiar with the real battles a lot of people face today. People like you and I, but without the social support, without the coveted connections and networks, without the job security, without the time to be able to learn a programming language without external pressures (like the pressure to just make money for this month's rent, so your daughter still has a roof on her head). It's very tough for them out there, and getting up is not as easy as you think it is.
The problem there is that the IT department may love Surface, but if all the VPs insist on bringing their iPads into the office, IT is gonna have to support the iPad. Then it's a question of "do we support iPad and Surface, or just iPad?" Because "IT says so" isn't much of an argument when it regards telling someone with power in the corporate hierarchy they can't do what they want to do.

In a way this mirrors the early days of the PC business, when people lugging their Apple IIs and Trash-80s into the office so they could run VisiCalc...
AI doesn't interest me. What interest me is the pre-cursor to AI. I have a suspicion that we will need to use computers to model the electronics and software necessary to stimulate the birth of AI. It's those modeling/creation systems that interest me the most as they seem the most relevant. Those systems have yet to be created.
I don't know if it'll ever be a stable currency/stock, but at the least, given what you said, it won't become a dead currency/stock (for a long time anyway).
The transactions won't get hidden. There will still be a record of you transferring to a mixer and the mixer transferring money to outside.

Mixer will just mean that there is no certain way of knowing who's input to the mixer goes to what output. However that can be a bad thing to you, as you can be accused of money laundering especially if you receive money from mixer that also handles something that has been linked to drug money etc.

"Now tell me why didn't you use direct transaction but transferred your flower purchase into a mixer address well known for tax evasion/drug trafficking?"
> Deflation... leads to a slowdown in the real economy

A fundamental, but slightly tangential question: is that a bad thing?

What if modern societies are running too hot and need to cool down? 'Reduction', 'slowdown', 'productivity loss' -- these are negative in a purely economic context. But economics is a means to an end, not an end in itself. The end, I believe, (to borrow an American term) is the 'pursuit of happiness'. I don't think modern, developed societies are doing very well in that particular pursuit. It feels as if we're on a treadmill -- try to run faster and it turns faster, and you need to keep running faster just to stay on it.

This may not apply to developing societies, who are still grappling with the lower layers of Marslow's hierarchy like food, health and education, but doesn't it seem like we have overshot? When we can afford to obsess over the number of cores or dots per inch on a handheld device, I think we can afford to slow down a bit. Perhaps a deflationary economy is just what we need.

People shouldn't feel pressured to keep producing despite having ample savings just to keep up with the wealth erosion caused by inflation. /opinion

Also: if the Bitcoin unit had been redefined so that the maximum number was 21 quadrillion, we might not have this debate. Nothing's changed fundamentally, but it is a number that for a laymen is a lot closer to infinity than 21 million.
> isn't bitcoin the most traceable currency ever?

It is, but... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6687848
If the majority of your visitors only ever load one page then only the cold-cache scenario matters, and there's plenty of sites where that's the case. Even if your visitors do load multiple pages, if the cold cache load time is fast enough, does it matter that the subsequent pages aren't even faster?

This obviously doesn't work if you're serving up multiple megabytes of CSS+JS, but I suspect they're an order of magnitude or two short of that.
I am extremely concerned about this move. We use AWS extremely heavily at our company, and as much as we love AWS, I'm concerned that their having a data center in China would subject the data and information flowing through their pipes to China's draconian data interception and censorship laws.

I remember Microsoft wanting to open up Azure in China:
http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/4357-microsoft-azure-s-china...

but backtracked just two months later, likely for exactly those reasons: http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/11/azure-goes-to-c...
Desktop support has and always will pay more than being a security guard in a parking lot. I did desktop support in the nineties as well and made decently more than my roommate who, oddly enough, worked in a parking garage.

There is nothing comparable about a contractor who does desktop support versus a contractor who does security work in a parking lot. I don't think you really believe these are at all the same thing. They are a very different set of skills.
$100 per person one-time works exactly how it reads.

If you have 27 employees, it costs $2700 one time. If you hire 3 more people, it's an extra $300, one time. If you let someone go, and hire another person, it's an extra $100. We don't sell against seats, we sell against unique people.

No recurring monthly or annual fees.
It doesn't need to work for the "general populace". As long as it's useful to a small set of people it will be used by this small set of people.
Thanks for your response.

So, you could use a small IR LED in outdoors in daylight to find objects less than X yards away. I wonder how to calculate X. I suppose you'd need 3 light sensors to determine direction. I wonder how far apart they need to be. The rotating reticle sounds interesting. Wouldn't that prevent false positives from the sun?
> Personally, I do actually want the government to be able to [...]

You will be able to do help the government to do so, even with Bitcoin.

Other user might get a choice to whether they want to participate, and you might not like that, but it is a little dishonest to qualify that statement with "Personally"
What's a "DBA"?
Ok great, so become a developer to make more money. What if he doesn't want to be a developer? What if he doesn't have the talent to become one? Then he has no right to complain? Is being a developer more noble than being a security guard?

You have to realize we're lucky to be talented in a field that pays really well.
Justin, your audience is here. Your products are "shovels for the gold miners", or simply motivation. I've listened to your podcast and mostly enjoy it. However, what you're selling, and what your advice caters to, doesn't really go far enough with people who sell other types of products, other than the "shovel sellers."

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/product-people/id5853909...

Maybe you could dig deeper and go beyond the "motivational" stuff? Of course, I do like a weekly dose of motivation.
I think the universe is just a bunch of math, but that doesn't mean there's not randomness. In fact, as far as I know, state of the art quantum mechanics says that there is randomness. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden_variable_theory.
How would one prove that arbitrary mutations don't lead to a consistent decrease of entropy given enough time?
Does mod_pagespeed work with Apache 2.4 now?
It sounds like his job could easily be replaced by a computer program and camera. I have a feeling left to Google they would get rid of the job completely.
Needs a unit test framework for checking privilege-assertion.
The article did say he was going to work at a non-profit. This article could have come just as he starts to work his way up.
Do Advertisers Hold the App Monetization Keys?
Bayesian networks and causality
Sadly, none of that really matters all the time, right, especially on a short time scale.

The initial stages of attraction seem to have more to do with aesthetics, physiology, and proximity than with wit alone.
Mac 101: Migrating from GNU/Linux to Mac for software engineers
The most popular PE/VC firms of 2013
Bootcamp is now Guaranteeing $100k+ Salaries for Top Bootcamp Applicants in 2014
On the RHS of the image, between the 2 sun boxes labelled "2" and "3" there are 2 clamshell devices.

Does anyone know what those are please?

http://imgur.com/6v2RiCK
It took me a while to realize why you said that.

I think you've been over-sensitized by spending too much time in certain regions of the Internet. When the only tool in your possession is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. When most of your informational input is of a certain nature, everything else tends to relate to it.
You're thinking of the universe in a very classical sense. Our current understanding of physics is that quantum mechanical outcomes are truly random. Not just that we don't know what will happen but that it is inherently not predetermined before it happens. You can read up on Bell's Theorem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell's_theorem) if you want to learn a bit more about this.

If you "ran" the universe over again from the big bang, then the probability that you would exist is essentially zero. I don't know enough about neuroscience to speculate on whether quantum mechanics has any relevance to brain functions over the course of a lifetime but from a physics standpoint it isn't inconceivable.

On a more philosophical note: if there is some true randomness in how our brain works do you think that that actually gives us any more control over our lives? It doesn't really change anything in my view.
I'm still shocked how a dumb meme-based altcoin gained so much popularity, where all other just as boring and generic Bitcoin forks died down or are completely insignificant.

To their credit though, they based it off of Litecoin... making it a fork of a fork.

Either I have no sense of humor, or we aren't going to be seeing October 1993 any time soon. Can't wait for "Latvian Potato Coin" to appear in the future.