skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
>Great sales people can sell anything to anyone.

If that were true then an inventor could have asked a great sales person to sell an engineer on the idea, and build it.

In fact, this isn't true at all, and most innovative ideas are forced to be built by the same person in whose head they are, precisely because it is not true that "great sales people can sell anything to anyone", and some of the best ideas can't be sold, but must be built instead.
Top Arab Startup/Tech Stories in 2013
Google Expected to Partner With Audi to Put Android in New Cars
This post is not listed in pg's essays list on his website, for understandable reasons. Makes me wonder what I've been missing. Is there an exaustive list of pg's public writings?
Currently on a big project using flask + sqlalchemy and didn't want to use flask-sqlalchemy as well. At first, it was because it didn't seem like i needed to, then it was for a better understanding of the sqlalchemy session / flask request lifecycle coordination. That knowledge proved to be very useful once i needed to reuse my stack in a celery task.
If you think that liability issues pose a significant barrier to entry for self-driving cars getting to market, just wait until you consider robotically automated surgeries.
To learn Org mode and use it on a daily basis.
You are captured thousands of times a day on CCTV, even if you have done nothing wrong these images can be stored. Data protection means nothing if you never know about it!

This resistance comes 'mostly' from the older generation, look at generation X, your kids. They give information freely, its a natural part of life their life, daily!

When I can walk out of my door and thousands people are feeding information 2 miles away about traffic on route to my work, or predictions of flu outbreaks are spotted before then happen saving hundreds of lives. This is a world where closed minded people don't guard information like there are special. A would where people give information to help others! The world is currently like China, closed minded and guarded. Role on generation X!
Show HN: Late night hack to send out New Years tweet
> in a year and some months Python2 will no longer be receiving security updates from Python Core

Is this an official statement? A few minutes with Google produced a number of articles that claimed five (or sometimes six) years of support for 2.7 starting in 2010, but I couldn't find a clear statement on python.org.
I know that 3D graphics aren't trivial to learn, but the tragedy with Blender is that it is arbitrarily difficult. The difficulties aren't intrinsic to learning 3D. A lot of people -- both beginners and professionals from other platforms -- are turned off Blender when they can't even figure out how to do basic functions like select an object or pan across a view without watching tutorial videos. That's really unreasonable, and I'm sure that Blender loses a substantial portion of its potential users due to completely unnecessary UI anti-conventions like this. It wouldn't be difficult to fix: simply enabling "Select With: Left", "Orbit Style: Table", "Zoom to Mouse Position", and a handful of other existing defaults would make Blender vastly more approachable out-of-the-box. I'm sure that something as simple as this would produce a measurable increase in its rate of adoption, perhaps on the order of 15% or 20%, without compromising the advanced functionality in the slightest. Other measures such as consistent tooltips across the UI and contextual right-click menus would give another significant boost in adoption.

The tragedy of Blender is that the community is highly responsive to feature requests from established users, and has developed some superlative advanced capabilities as a result -- but is blind to the needs of beginning users. If Blender were a commercial product (maintained by people who think not only in terms of features, but in terms of market penetration) then these kind of simple issues would have been addressed a decade ago, and the good efforts of the Blender developers would now be reaching a much much wider audience.
That would probably make me switch from python to go. Not just because of the lib itself, but because it would help me gain confidence in the modeling and abstraction power of Go.
Happy, unexpected moment: Added a stupidly expensive "Enterprise" pricing tier as a polite way of declining business from users who were taking up too many resources to bother trying to service.

And people started buying it.
One static site generator that I recently discovered and plan to make frequent use of next year is Middleman (Ruby), which is like Jekyll, except less focused on blogging and more app-like conveniences...for example, being able to use erb rather than going through Liquid:

http://middlemanapp.com/

Overall, I'd like to see static-site generators become more widespread as an option. I've seen a few great sites/products recently in which the developer felt they needed to deploy a Wordpress instance even though their site was little more than a landing page and a few about pages. The less friction there is to getting content up, the easier it is to be motivated to create content.
My take on this: http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/12/26/was-2013-a-te...
Yearly Review – 2013 | Takis Athanassiou
UberWriter Professional markdown editor for Linux
I had a line in my comment hoping to stave off stupid things like this. I suggest you go back and re-read the last paragraph, it's only a couple sentences long.
It is a bit frustrating to see the NSA angle in everything these days. Going by the same logic, it is very likely that they are tapping into the backbones, should we then be less enamored with using the internet?

The snooping is a serious problem and has been discussed to death and beyond in various threads.
Yes, I'd say that their sites fit into more of an "app" category. More reading, for the curious:

http://blog.apps.npr.org/2013/09/13/using-a-static-site-to-c...
First off, I don't think anyone except "tinfoil hats" really imagined the scale of NSA spying. Who really thought the NSA would try to subvert the cryptographic standards they pretend to create to "secure systems"? Who really thought they'd go to US service and hardware companies and ask them to implement backdoors for them?

Also, there's a big difference between letting NSA protect US against Real Threats - real national security people-are-going-to-die threats, and spying not just on every single citizen on the planet (which includes corporate espionage), but on American citizens and companies, too.

Just like everyone has a little "evil" in them, without all of us being Hitler, the NSA can do a little bit of spying on important targets, without going 10/10 on the scale of evil spying.

So no, I really don't think "this is their job" or that "everyone knew they were doing this". I think the vast majority of people thought NSA would be reasonable with their spying.

I also hate it when people say, "didn't you see when they passed the Patriot Act? You should've expected this." Perhaps, but if you go back to when they passed it, they did it in literally hours, and if you watch Bush speak about it [1], he makes it sound as if they are only going to use it to spy on the terrorists' communications - not everyone's. Going by how fast they passed the bill, and how few details were offered, you can't really blame most people for "not knowing".

Heck, it was even called the "anti-terrorism bill" on TV, so I don't think people imagined that meant all of their communications are going to be swept up, because they were now thinking everyone is a potential terrorist (which is what "collecting it all" means) until proven otherwise by their systems.

[1] - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfRcfTakhFo
It's probably non-standard, but I totally buy SPJ's suggestion. Often when I read the related work section at the beginning I'm confused: I don't understand the paper I'm reading yet, let alone any other related work.
And this is why I want to find work in automation, robotics, or AI or something.

Labor against capitalist. Sharpen the contradictions! Radicalize the moderates[1]! Bring it all on!

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6GLoKkkCtY
No, the article didn't imply that.

"Here’s a problem: I don’t really believe that Apple didn’t help them."

That is a bullshit statement. It is pure speculation without a SHRED of facts to back it up.
"From writing code we will move to dragging and dropping, having everything visual and instant."

Sure, if he says so...
You must be really sensitive to horrible design choices. Sorry about that one.
exactly. that's what he says in the article, no? :)
Elon Musk vs. Gregg Steinhafel
I think what's missing for static site generators to gain traction is a consumer-friendly admin interface. Kirby comes to mind here: http://getkirby.com/
I'm slighly confused by the article's premise ("2014 will be the Content’s year") and it mentioning tools such as Wix, Squarespace, or even Macaw, who can't be considered as CMS but rather complete website builders.

Apart from its templating system and its vibrant community, one of WordPress' strengths is sticking to an admin interface that is actually focused on content: simple form elements and a decent WYSIWYG.

Drag & drop and in-­place editing are technically impressive but don't belong in a CMS: I don't see editors and website owners using it on daily basis to update and manage their content.
> He also gave Communism a bad name, and, by proxy, Socialism.

You should read the things Lenin did, and the many more things he advocated doing. Read his pre-revolution material as well, he was one of the leading theorists.

> These systems of government did not have all of the answers

That's not true, read anything by Marx, Engels, Trotsky, or Lenin and not only did they have an answer for almost everything, they (especially the latter two) believed maximally that there is "only one way".
shit I need to do this ASAP!
So much of this is subjective - there's no right/wrong. I would agree that it's in poor taste to ask during the first interview but that's my opinion and it's totally biased based on my life experience. Why? Because that's third or fourth-level information.

I'm choosing the job based on whether I want to do this specific work with this specific group of people who are aligned towards these specific goals - that's first level. Second level would be whether the salary is inline with what I need/want. After that, let's consider PTO/policies/drive time/etc. A "correct" candidate IMO is most concerned with solving the first-level problem during the first interview. It's a massively complex problem - lots of moving parts. 1-5 questions won't answer that completely - I'd need hours to figure that out. The last question of the interview might be, "And by the way, what is the salary range for this position?" We all know that 2nd and 3rd-level stuff is so negotiable that it doesn't really do much point to ask pointed questions about it during a first interview. So for someone to think that the first interview is the time to dig down to 3rd/4th level information - that's just showing me that their priorities are skewed.

That said, I can think of two situations in which it would be appropriate:

1) when, during the first interview, it becomes clear that the employer is ready to hire you right now ("Can you start today?"). Obviously the long game goes out the window here!

2) During an interview that has cost either party something significant. For example, if the candidate flew you out and you spent the entire day, I think it's a fair question for the HR person at the very end of the day.
Embedding Jython in Java Applications
Double tap the home button and touch the card for the app you were in previously. It's not terribly discoverable without being told that's what you need to do.
"Going by how fast they passed the bill, and how few details were offered, you can't really blame most people for "not knowing"."

True, but perhaps someday we can learn to not advocate the passage of bills in such a short amount of time that representatives themselves do not have a chance to read or digest them, much less have debate about the specific contents. I say perhaps because I suspect we'll continue to see much more of this until there's some sort of mechanical change requiring a X day waiting period on any legislation introduced, and/or something requiring reps to sign a document with real penalties for perjury that they've read the damn things before voting on them.
Guest conductors are hardly unheard of, but you're right that it's not a perfect analogy. Still - it'd potentially make for a decent first go to narrow things down, I'd imagine.
A business person trying to start a tech startup.... It's like a business person looking for musicians to start a band. This is beyond ridiculous. Either bring some skill to the table or go create a "business startup" and stop polluting the industry with yet another failed idea and even worse a "post mortem" of why it failed.

PS: This includes Marketing, Managers as well as the Business peanut gallery.
Why this is, I don't know, but when nerds get famous (not rich; famous) they suddenly begin thinking they have a fashion sense ;)
Wow Emacs really can do everything!
Learning: if you ask your users to help you improve your product they will give you bad ideas. If you ask them to tell you stories about what keeps them up at night they will give you gold.

Happy moment: growing way faster than we did the year before. Rentify now transacts with more landlords than nearly every brick and mortar letting agent in the UK.
You can take into account initiatives like OpenCores: http://opencores.org/

Vulnerabilities exists anywhere for sure but the community (whatever it means) should create a defense against those threads.
Why do you think the US was so concerned about buying gear from China? They just realized that since they're doing it, China is probably doing it as well.
Just wait until the probability of error with a robot surgeon is lower than that of a human surgeon.
Good article but I would look at this "failure" from a glass half full perspective. You "won" because you've learned valuable lessons you can take to your next idea. I've had many products that have not gained many users in their respective marketplaces but I learned from each and everyone of them. All these experiences has brought me where I am today (CTO of a 45+ employee company). No failures in my past as far as i'm concerned; just lots of self teaching (that you can't get in school).

>> ""An Indian company expressed desire to buy something from me other than the thing I was building, so I should have built that instead.""

I may be the minority but I agree with him but on one condition. If this Indian company wanted to pay a small monthly subscription fee for your product I would never have agreed developing "their" ideas. I would have taken their feedback and put in the big pile with all the other feedback I gathered up. But I would have pitched this Indian company a different story, I would have pitched them a professional services contract instead of a product. I did something similar in the past and it worked out very well because in a business money is king. With no money you can't do the things you need to do, like attend conferences to sell your idea, buying adwords, hiring solid developers, paying yourself a salary so you can devote your time to the idea.

In my case the customer was willing to pay ~$10k a month to get what he wanted. We built it for him while building our own product. Once we got big enough and could sustain ourselves without our original customer, I gave the customer away. The developer who maintained the project was interest in taking on the project himself. We came up with a 6 month transition plan, including lots of product/project management help, office space, etc. It was a win/win situation at the end.

Doing this is not for everyone though. There are many days I cursed this customers for taking up the majority of our resources. We had to be very good at differentiating between their requirements and the markets requirements. We weren't perfect at it but it worked out in the end.
Knowledge Workers as a Political Class?
Read it as the decimal that it is. 2.98 hours != 2h 98m
> No, the article didn't imply that.

There's a whole paragraph about that. You quoted part of it. It's not a minor point of the article. There's no smoking gun but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be discussed.
An intermediate step would be robotic tools that could be controlled by a surgeon as effectively as their own hands.

As such, I do not believe we will see majority-robotic surgery within 20 years.
Days of the holiday mobile game gold rush are fading
What if women are equal to men in coding aptitude, but simply don't want to code? Is that still a waste that we should do something about?
The actual questions are:

"How many women work for you? What’s your process for making sure you have diversity in other ways?"

"What’s your retention rate of women over 1.5 years? Do you think you could’ve done anything differently to keep people who left?"

Neither one of these necessarily has anything to do with "favoring" minorities (or women, who are a slight majority outside of southeast asia and the middle east). Rather, they can include doing things that encourage women to apply, ensuring that the office environment doesn't have major issues causing minorities to leave, etc. No favoritism required. Companies want to do these things because they help them find and retain good employees who their competitors may miss. I want my employer to do them (as a straight ivy-educated white male) because I want my co-workers to be the best possible, not just the best of the set of people who are able to ignore some awful brogrammer office culture (for example).
He specifically explains why he suggests this different structure on page 24.

Basically, if you put a huge discussion of related work at the beginning you'll either make your reader feel tired or stupid or both.
You mean its a total lie, axis numbering and all.
I wonder how the returns work out for sticking 'Email me to when it's ready to be tried' or something. I can see you getting fewer numbers, potentially, but I wonder about the people who are actually interested in the product vs drive by triers.

At least seems more respectful of people's time than 'try it free' just for them to have to click through and find out what it's about.
Pinterest Passes Twitter In Popularity, Facebook Stays On Top
usually i'm pasting somewhere else, e.g. some code i'm composing in an editor (and using the REPL to help debug it). thanks for the tip, though, i don't know if i have ever pasted it back into the REPL itself.
With the advent of new gTLDs, .fake could be registered.
So, use .invalid, a reserved TLD.
Soviets did it quite often. Production of one of the first minicomputers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-202 designed by Poles in cooperation with British was also canceled despite being very advanced for the time.
Precisely this. I would be surprised if most people haven't realised this by now.
I'm a beginner at the math of AI/ML, but I can say this: almost every task we've ever assumed requires human general intelligence - short of the old "world domination" standby - has turned out to be entirely doable by a sufficiently specialized AI/ML algorithm. Even spoken conversation is turning out more amenable than originally proposed, once you confine the software to one kind of conversation.
Http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=250&pub=careernews24
Twister: Anonymous, private BtC/DHT/Torrent P2P microblogging
Blame Silicon Valley for the NSA's data slurp.
One thing is true: whatever your phone is, the more complex, the more features, the more risks there are.

I really don't see the advantages of having a handsized computer, really. The performance/battery/usability/cost compromises are not really making it worth it.

Most people do a lot of text messaging, usual smartphones are not designed for it. Old school, classic cellphone do it pretty well.

Why would you need the internet while you're outside, in the cold, in the train, while not sitting ? You only need an iPhone for very unnecessary, unplanned, rich things.

For example, you need to locate something, like the nearest restaurant, or coffee place, in a town you know nothing about. The data transfer and costs to make a web search on such a low-powered device, will be ridiculous if you compare it to just asking somebody.

You're in a coffee place, you're arguing about something, and you want to know who's right, so you want to search it on the web. Why not just enable the wifi, and why not carry your 13 inch notebook ?

You want to read your emails. Even if you receive email, what's the real difference with text messaging ? Emails are for long message on which you can attach big files. Email is a very old protocol, and it wasn't really thought to work hand in hand with text messaging.

You want to read a digital document. If you're in for a long, comfortable read, use an ebook device, use the small screen of a classic cellphone, or just plan ahead and print it.

Smartphones are all-in one, expensive, software and hardware quirky solutions which are just not that much awesome. Computers are not entirely secure. A smartphone will create new technical challenges, but also many other risks, especially if you have a homogenous device like the iPhone.

Engineers should start to create protocols and software which are already designed for smaller devices, not create smaller powerful computers: laptops and desktops are already at the limit of tiny.

Apple created a market of an attractive, dreamy device, which sold, and the market followed, but the truth is, there is much more to do on the embedded software design.
So? With a camera they also have to sort of point it at you. Your second point, the problem is: if someone is wearing glass and talking to you, they can record me in the same way. So Glass will force me to be suspicious of everyone wearing it, and this sucks. Imagine if you were talking with someone and they were holding a camera to your face, but, you know, they said "don't worry, I'm not recording", yet they kept pointing it in your direction. It's pretty unconfortable.
Microsoft certainly did remove apps from Windows even after they are purchased. They had Crackdown on WP7 as a tower defense game. They shut down the servers and the game disappeared, never to be seen again. Really pissed me off. They also refused to update their Texas Hold'em game, so when I moved to WP8, the game I had purchased disappeared.
No Moore? A golden rule of microchips appears to be coming to an end
Are SQL Databases Dead?
Probably, but they may be alone supervising 3 operations in parallel rather than having a team of junior surgeons and nurses to help them on one operation.
Onapp has the same issue by default, it's not set by default to zero fill the old disks are being destroyed.
This need to specifically be enabled in the config file by the administrators.

In case you are running a VM on top of their platform you may want to check to make sure this is enabled.
Emacs would be perfect for this, if it weren't so dammn complex/complicated. The learning curve is too steep for someone who just wants to write and isn't a programmer.
Even if it's lower, a single mistake from a robot surgeon will not be forgiven. That's the same problem with self-driving cars. I'm pretty sure that they're already safer than a human driver, but a single mortal accident for a technical problem will be all over the news and block any progress in legislation.
CrypTome, Mr President.
"There is plenty of space for non tech founders."
In the tech startup ecosystem, I don't think there is that much space for founders that don't want to code.
Saying "I want to start a tech startup but I don't want to code" is as ridiculous as saying "I want to sell horses but I don't know anything about them and I certainly don't want to have to learn anything about them".
It's possible, but you're gonna have a hard time doing it...