skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think the smaller cable companies have been charging a rental fee for a while now. There was a cable modem in my apartment when I moved in. The cable company set it up no questions asked. 2 weeks later they call me saying that it belonged to them and that I either had to agree to rent their modem or have my service turned off in 24 hours. I ended up replacing it with my own modem. There was no trouble getting the one I bought from amazon setup, just called to register the mac.

Interestingly enough that old modem is still sitting in my closet and they have not shown much interest in coming to pick it up.
I am also waiting for a good answer ..
The problem with quantum computers is that you never know whether they are one or not.
I have to call out Paul Graham's idea that social class is dropping of the list of important things.

What it means changed a little, and I think it's now more important than ever. The thing is, someone like PG never sees or interacts with anyone lower than upper middle class. Other 'incompatible' classes are invisible to us.

There is a whole world of people in this country that he wouldn't even be able to talk to. Depending on your state, between 59 and 80% of people graduate high school. That 20-40% isn't dropping out because they're running a startup.

There is a class of people that takes advertisements at face value, as sources of information. There is a class of people that doesn't value education... There are millions of people that don't even have the same goals or life values as a middle class people do.

PG you used the cliche "second class citizen" a bunch of times in this article without thinking about what it actually means!
>But when you come to HN, 10-to-1 the comments are all about punishing the manager by leaving

It's not about punishing the manager, it's about getting the best job you can.

The problem, I think, was how the original question was phrased. It made it sound like a moral problem "You don't deserve good developers" which is a not very professional way of looking at it.

It's not your job to teach your boss how to do his or her job, and for cultural reasons, usually attempts to do so are met with hostility. The closest I have come without causing problems is buying my boss books. And even that... well, it was presumptuous, and it didn't change the boss' behavior, but it also didn't seem to blow back on me.

The question would have gone better if it were framed as an economic issue, a "what's best for me" issue, rather than as a "how can I change my boss" issue.

"I am getting paid less here than I think I could get paid elsewhere. That was okay before, because I am willing to take a pay cut to be treated a certain way, but management has changed now. What do I do?"

The problem here is that what the employee wants (and was sacrificing money to get) was a certain management style. If you want more money, you can negotiate that with your boss. If you want a new management style? you probably aren't going to be able to negotiate that. You could negotiate specific consequences of that management style, say, flex-time, but the root of it is still there. You probably aren't going to change your boss' management style.

In that case? A rational actor would leave the company. I mean, they would do so as gracefully as possible, of course, but you aren't going to change your boss' management style.
Amazing new machine breaks the $1000 barrier for a 30x human genome
I guess that's the main part, the Stanford founders I met (mostly second-hand, via friends who did work for them) seemed to have access to connections and surprisingly large amounts of "friends & family" seed funding. Maybe they were doing a ton of work behind the scenes to get it, but from my perspective it seemed like some pretty surprising piles of money accessible to pretty unproven companies (piles of money much larger than YC gives). My friends got decent pay out of it (even if below-market), so I'm not particularly bitter about it, but it was sort of an eye-opening "wow, people have friends/family who can kick in $750k just like that?" kind of moment.

Also quite different compared to the vibe around other vaguely nearby universities: Santa Clara University, UC Davis, UC Santa Cruz, UC Berkeley, Cal Poly SLO, etc. They all come across as more "working class", socially, which contrary to what I might've thought some years ago, seems to correlate against being startuppy. The working-class Cal-Poly/Santa-Clara/etc kids seemed mainly interested in getting a stable job with a big tech company, while the upper-class-background Stanford kids were all into startups.
Nearly identical situation, newborn kid. I'm at a place now where working 40 hours a week is not unusual or looked down upon. It's still a successful web company. I ended up here having worked anywhere from 50-100 hour weeks in academia, by following the "deathbed principle:" when deciding whether to do X, imagine yourself on your deathbed, and decide if you would wish you had done X or more of X. It puts things nicely in perspective. I now sleep well at night (well, kid permitting) and don't feel bad about not killing myself with work. There are certainly coworkers who work more hours, and no doubt they will get better bonuses/promotions but that's fine by me.
[people] seem to be figuring out what they want online then making
targeted trips to pick it up from retailers that offer the best price.

Partly. Price can be a factor, but for me, time is often more important. Specifically, if I can't readily determine that a store has what I want in stock, I'm not going to make the trip.
They do. Here's a chart that compares annual tuition fees at public schools circa 2008:

http://imgur.com/EIeOUQJ

US tuition was around $6000+, while most of the other Euro countries were well below $2000, with the exception of the UK at ~$4800.

source: http://www.oecd.org/edu/skills-beyond-school/48631028.pdf
Go over the manager's head. If that company is having trouble keeping senior staff, there are reasons for it and those reasons are probably not secret. I've done this, with mixed success, but have never had a problem with retaliation. You might be surprised how welcome your skip-level feedback is.

Oh, and if your skip-level manager doesn't know who you are (and ideally, his manager), then you either need to work on visibility, or you're not as senior or as pivotal as you might think.

Be polite. Tell them that you thought flexible hours were part of the deal.

And then walk. Moving to a new team in the same company is probably just as good, if you can swing it.
I never do exit interviews because I don't want any burned bridges. Smile and wave on the way out and go on to the next place.
wc -l is faster however it only works on an uncompressed file. The pipeline in the article was doing much more complicated work on the stream of output. I will often separate my pipeline logic from my "read this data and feed it into the pipeline" logic, since the logic around what to read in and where to write it can often change even when using the same logical pipeline.

As a simple example:
cat somefiles.txt | pipeline_script > stored_output.txt

Other times I'm reading gzipped files or remote log files, I don't want that data mixed in with the pipeline logic. If I want to move the output files to a different directory on one set of servers, that may not impact my generalized pipeline.

I work with trillions of lines of log files and there are many ways to scale up pipelines. I wouldn't start optimizing the difference between 1.6s and 1.275s unless it made an economic impact on the problem. How often is it run? Can you process more lines in an economic unit of time with the faster version? If this is a job that runs once an hour or even once a minute how many lines are collected during that time?

Intermixing the grep or wc -l logic into the pipeline logic can have adverse support and maintenance costs and many times saves machine time while spending programmer time. Which one dominates in this scenario?

It's like the old saying...there is more than one way to skin a "cat". :)
the manager would have no choice but to call his bluff.

It's exactly the same for good devs confronting a confused manager. They must call the manager's bluff, and that often (usually?) means leaving. Less experienced devs will try to push back, but it's probably as hopeless as the dev imagines it to be, and they risk just prolonging a bad situation.
NASA and Los Alamos are mostly played out, and White Sands is just a fun place to jump off sand dunes. This isn't to detract from the rest of your post, but the US isn't what it was, or all that you think it is.
> If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself.

Perhaps this one? I pulled it from memory, even though I couldn't remember the author. Google attributes it to Einstien. But the interwebs misattributes quotes all the time, so take it with a grain of salt.
I don't "get" SF, not as a place to live in (e.g. one that should satisfy all my needs, practical and intellectual). To me, SF is the mum in the Woody Allen sketch that keeps saying "Do your homework! Brooklyn is not expanding!" -- aka, no time for introspection or philosophical pursuits. I've found there, on top of social inequality, a curious brand of intellectual pragmatism, something like: if you cannot market it, then it's not interesting. But maybe it's a distorted perception?
• The absolutely best way: have your payees have an account with your bank and have internal-to-your-own-bank transfers. Some USA banks make this very easy.

• Second best, bank to bank transfers of money to your trusted payee. International transfers are in a state of flux, and may after 2013 be able to avoid high fees. Not yet though.

Otherwise:

• Trusted payee who is sophisticated and smart: Bitcoin.

• Trusted USA to USA party: Dwolla. See: http://Dwolla.com Dwolla only for trusted parties or individuals! Dwolla has surprisingly small cost, because they do NOT deal with credit cards. Best for others who have DWOLLA accounts, or USA to USA bank transactions or people willing and able to submit to USA law and bank regime.

• The credit card interbank system typically has fees in the vicinity of 2% to 3% of the gross transaction. Avoid.

• Avoid PayPal. The PayPal terms of service agreement indicates that whatever PayPal decides in a dispute, PayPal's decision is final without appeal. This in known as a contract of adhesion in the USA, where one party has all of the power. Because of this, do not use PayPal. Look up "contract of adhesion" for details.

• Most other online services rely on the credit card interbank system with its high fees of 2% to 3% for transfers. Avoid.

Off Topic:

• Non-trusted parties? Don't deal with them without a letter of credit. Look up "letter of credit" for details.
When I was in high school in the late 90's/00's in Australia we were taught in degrees. It wasn't until university that I relearned in radians.
Online still can't compete with shoppers that once something same day. That's where they should focus, not price.
People want to be lied to. That's the big secret. You can shout until you're blue in the face.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8Hk1-BpXO8
No, it's not scraping the data, just saving the RSS feed.
I am also giving link to their website. All the cogent belong to the blog authors, if they want it to be taken down from the app I will do it.
London and Berlin have 3).
Google.com failing to resolve from Brazil
Failing to resolve for half an hour now.

% nslookup google.com
;; Got SERVFAIL reply from 201.6.2.163, trying next server
;; Got SERVFAIL reply from 201.6.2.43, trying next server
;; Got SERVFAIL reply from 201.6.2.163, trying next server
;; connection timed out; no servers could be reached

Affects everything Google: GMail, YouTube, Analytics, etc.
Sorry right now I have added a lot of stuff but I plan to add c/c++, iOS and Ruby today.
> I'm envisioning a USB fob, attached to a bracelet, that triggers logout when it's disconnected, so by raising your hands, you've logged out.

This exists, it is called pamusb[1] and it allows you to automatically log in and log out using a usb stick. It would be simple to add password as well. The problem is, if your machine is still powered on, they can patch into the PCI bus and dump your RAM using DMA[2]. Most disk encryption stores the master key in RAM, so if they can dump your RAM they can decrypt your harddrive. GAME OVER!

You really want something that cuts power to your laptop so all state is lost. It's not hard to build such a thing:

1. Setup your laptop to use full disk encryption,

2. remove the battery from your laptop,

3. pull the power cord to "instantly log out".

One could even attach a string from the power cord to the door so that the laptop loses power if the door is opened. Cold-boot attacks[3], where they remove your RAM before it loses state, could be a concern, but they would have to disassemble your laptop very very quickly (within 30 seconds, perhaps longer if they just threw the laptop into a tub of liquid nitrogen). A counter measure would be to epoxy your laptop together to prevent quick disassembly (or use a macbook air those things are impossible to take apart quickly and the RAM is soldered in place).

It should be standard operating procedure to randomly overwrite all non-OS data stored RAM when a user logs out. Maybe someone with most experience in disk encryption can tell me which products do this.

[1]: http://pamusb.org/

[2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DMA_attack

[3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_boot_attack
This was a slightly silly essay that seems to essentially be more "places PG likes" than any sort of objective analysis...

Great cities certainly do have a vibe, but Cambridge (MA), although it's a very nice place to live and obviously has tons of smart people, is actually a pretty sleepy place in general; for all it's charms, it isn't a "great city." The "density of the unfamiliar" which I think tends to characterize great cities isn't really so evident in Cambridge (the presence of MIT / Harvard / etc does generate some of this, but universities tend to be somewhat closed societies).
Shortwave: Engage with the space around you
The consensus seems to ever tipping against the idea that D-wave is a true quantum computer. I wonder if Google and others regret spending $10mil on the machine.
Anyone here able to recommend a primer on quantum computing? I have a high-level understanding of the physics involved, but I get lost as soon as people start discussing the algorithms.
Google Express is doing very well at exactly that.
<< Understanding America >>

If three American people are talking together, and a fourth one joins the conversation, he will gregariously interrupt the conversation to talk about himself. Why?

In America, everything is about individualism. People are supposed to be different from each other. Everybody may not have a job, but people understand it as 'The American Dream', just one of the ways in which people dream of being more different by being successful. As a result, not everybody has money to live, but this is understood as a necessary sacrifice. American individualism means that people love guns and are okay with each other having guns. Often times this means that people will live apart from each other in the country in large mansions and in seeming happiness. People also live together in large interesting cities, like New York or San Francisco, but when they do so, they make a point to appear different from each other. How have they achieved this?

To understand the American way, you must understand a few concepts that are deeply rooted into the culture.

< Cowboy role model >

The Cowboy adhered to a way of life, ethics, rules, and a code that spread to all branches of society, and even today affects the way the American thinks.

- The Horse offered the Cowboy a sense of independence and self-sufficiency.

- The Frontier taught them to be ruthless and self-motivated.

- The Town taught them diversity and how to interact with many different kinds of people, including bartenders, sherrifs, outlaws, townspeople, and other cowboys.

- Justice, and honor are central. Toughness, manliness, concealed emotion, independence, and resourcefulness are important key values.

Though the cowboy no longer exists, this way of viewing life is ever-present in society. Students quit school early to seek independent projects they call 'Entrepreneurs'. Workers within a company see each other as opposing cowboys. The American is independent, performance-oriented, and mercenary at work. He/She tries to improve themselves every day and to move from company to company, just as the cowboy galloped across different terrains in their time.
I am collecting sites relating to general computer science (algorithms, data structures etc), machine learning, AI and programming languages.
What a seriously dumb outage to have. I'm still confused about it after reading the the RFO.
The datapoint in your last paragraph fits well with the pro-social safety net sentiment that is sometimes expressed here: It is much easier to take the risk of creating a startup if you have a guaranteed safety net.

Kids from a genuinely rich family - as in, pitching in 750k is not a problem rich - are more likely to feel safe enough to take startup-related risks.
>So your example of not needing economists is unconvincing.

I don't need to convince anyone of needing economists. Economists need to convince the world of their necessity and have never done so, nor could they ever. Human beings don't need economists to tell them how to live their lives and until economists come up with a good argument for their authority, no one ought to do anything other than listen to what they have to say and possibly give it some thought.

Remember, none of this has anything to do with you and your theories and whatever else you think has any bearing on the structure of societies. This is about general human necessity. People don't need economists or any other social scientists. The best we can do is be helpful participants and try to use our knowledge to help those who might lack it.
Difference between factory and singleton
Thanks, I will make these changes, it was something I build during the evening in a couple of hours, so it has lot of issues. I will fix it, and if you guys what a voting option, I will add that too.
Yes. And cars primary cause of 91 percent of car accidents.
I didn't feel like signing up for a Blogger account, but I still wanted to drop this here:

> My friend, Ray Sidney, with a PhD in mathematics from MIT explained away this nonsense rather succinctly.

> infinity + 7 = infinity

> If you minus infinity from both sides, you can tell the world 7 = 0!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann_sphere#Arithmetic_opera...

infinity - infinity (along with a few others) is very often left undefined for this very reason--not to mention it lets you divide by zero without breaking math.
I've lived in all of Durham, San Francisco, and Menlo Park (next town over to Palo Alto).

Durham, in my mind, had a weird vibe. Despite growing up there, I think what I remember best is taking a swing dance workshop (in my mid-twenties) from Sharon Ashe. Sharon had been at the heart and center of the San Francisco lindy hop community, possibly the best swing dance scene in the world. She had co-founded the 9:20 Special, which still attracts a crowd of hundreds every week.

But apparently she had burned out, and had too much of the cost of living and the competition (there isn't really any smog) and decided to move to Durham. She wanted a lower-key, quieter life, while still enjoying most of what she'd enjoyed in San Francisco. At the time, this struck me as a profoundly sad thing to do, and soon after I left town.

I would say that compromise is at the heart of what Durham has to offer. This is ultimately why I left, but it has got great restaurants, good weather, a lot of culture going on, and above all a wide range of diverse, interesting, active, intelligent people. Just not quite as much of any of the above (except for the weather) than SF or Cambridge. Take that for what you will.

e-mail in profile if you have questions.
sorry, but your story sounds like absolute bullshit to me.
...and here is Mr. Nichols explaining why even if Iraq did eliminate it's (nonexistent) weapons of mass destruction in 2003, the U.S. would've been right to invade because Saddam had been lying (about WMDs) and willing to invade his neighbors for so long:

http://www.carnegiecouncil.org/publications/journal/17_1/rou...

Given that Iraq was a belligerent in both the Iran-Iraq war and Kuwaiti invasion, that's reasonable on it's face. Of course, that presumes you aren't aware the U.S. supported Iraq in the former (to the degree that we ignored the only successful missile attack on a U.S. ship in history), and said "we have no opinion" two months before the latter. I presume an "expert" on IR and national security would know both of those facts---so why make that claim? Regarding Iraqi deception about WMDs... well, we know how that one turned out, don't we?

There are conscientious members of every university's IR staff, but there are also plenty of cryptofacists and priests-for-hire giving the discipline a bad reputation. I certainly hope students challenge this kind of man's pronouncements, because they are better humans and better thinkers for doing so.
Thanks, I will make these changes.
Having lived both in LA and Bay Area the biggest difference is that Life in LA doesn't come with any baggage. You don't have to change the world. You don't have to launch the next big idea. You don't chase money as hard as Bay Area (yes). You don't have to keep telling yourself and the world that "my city is awesome". You just live a good life with good food, good people, good work.
I'm really interested in it's usefulness as a learning tool. An immersive environment designed to teach a new language could be incredible and fun.

Also... sex stuff.
I have added Ruby in Ken, will add more today.
This may be my favorite line from a PG essay of all time:

So the kind of people you find in Cambridge are the kind of people who want to live where the smartest people are, even if that means living in an expensive, grubby place with bad weather.

I say this as I build out an addition on my already expensive house, while holed up in a AirBnB victorian with drafty windows watching wet, sloppy snow make the streets into mess.

On the other hand, I've chatted about web stacks with my landlord, auto-correlation functions with a dinner guest, toy accordion repair with my neighbor, and depth-perception optical nerve cross talk with my other neighbor. That's in the last two days.

I love it here.
Builder - fluent immutable builders for Go
That quote does seem off. Minified & concatenated JavaScript is pretty common these days. How many sites are serving up jQuery, unminified?
I was also blown away the first time I saw that animation, it really helped to clarify the notion of what eigenvalues and eigenvectors are. However, that is only a geometrical interpretation which is a very particular case, as eigenvalues/vectors appear in many many other applications which don't really have a geometrical representation or meaning. That's probably why books tend to stay away sometimes from particular examples, even though I have to say that this one specifically is very useful.