skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I really wish he had. I literally had the experience described with a brand new Windows PC (a Dell) that my uncle purchased:

* Unbox and boot the machine (Windows 8, stock Dell image)

* Connect to a network

* 1st things 1st, remove the trial McAfee A/V and reboot

* 2nd things 2nd, install updates...

* 3 hours and an untold number of updates and reboots later

* Update failed to install, please try restarting

* Investigate error message

* Download and run Microsoft "Fix It" tool

* Fail to install update; investigate further

I dumped an entire evening in to filtering through support discussions trying to find a valid solution to this failed update, working under the assumption that the Windows 8.1 update would be installed somewhere along the line with the automatic updates. Finally, I decided to download the Windows 8.1 update for IT administrators, and just try applying it. Eureka! That did the trick.

It is patently absurd that this is the experience a new computer user should be expected to endure.
So only release one ebook format - PDF seems universally supported.
I'm guessing you haven't heard of TinyCore Linux[0] before. It's tiny. It fits entirely in RAM and boots in 5 seconds on 10-year-old hardware.

[0]: http://distro.ibiblio.org/tinycorelinux/
Ask HN: Docker for newbies? 
If I've been programming for less than a year should I worry about Docker?
Newegg counters Amazon Prime with $50 Premier membership
I hear these arguments all the time, fundamentally though as the author states, using best practices should get your code out the door quicker.

If best practices make your code take longer to develop then one has to question whether they are best practices at all.
Well, if the consumer is the server, rather than the server then serving the S3 data to a client, then I could see the benefit in the server caching retrievals locally.
>That's not funny or educational or even interesting.

Two of those are subjective and I'll ignore. But it is educational, it links to alternatives to 37 signals products.

>I can't really think of anything 37signals has done to warrant this

The company and its reputation was built on aggressively bad-mouthing and trash-talking anyone and everyone they could. Remember when rails started out? Anyone who dared to like something other than their framework was an idiot (at best).
Worst-case UN estimates are ~13billion, 9billion is best-case and looking increasingly unlikely. I think we'll hit mid-11billion.
Okay, I agree it's memorable, but favorite? 10 years ago you weren't even watching it like it's supposed to be watched on laser disk or blu-ray. Thanks for Koyaani-SCRATCHY I think :-).
Your code may f'ing work, but my code works and is elegant. So what if my code takes a little bit longer to write? From a technical perspective, it's easy to see how this is good. Spending a little bit of time to make your code better will save you hours if not days in the long run.

I also have to question whether this is really good from a business perspective. "First mover advantage" really is overrated. Rather than cutting corners to launch your product a couple of days sooner, perhaps you should be focusing on the long term.

Granted, there are all kinds of caveats we can think of. For example, very early startups don't have the option to focus on the long term and just need to ship something. But even then, putting in a little bit of time up front to polish your code will greatly help your velocity for your next couple of features. You are planning on having more features past the first couple, right?
ZFS on NetBSD is not really in a usable state alas. Hopefully it willl get fixed soon. If anyone wants to work on it that would be great!
Very interesting. 2 observations:

1) Will they lose the ability to experiment as a one product company?

2) "If we can't find the right partner or buyer, we are committed to continuing to run the products for our existing customers forever." This is very impressive. Forever is a long time, and comes with a real cost if you're not putting in new users.

Bravo for a successful company to be willing to make big strategic moves.
I think the author meant light weight in terms of usage complexity, not system resources.
There's a sub-species of programmer that loves /programming/. Not getting things done with code, but the act of writing code itself. They'll happily over engineer and refactor things for eternity if left unchecked. Leave them alone for two years, come back and ask if Hello World is done? "Not yet, I'm working on optimizing the text to speech plugin api". It's to these people that this article should really be speaking to.
Assuming climate change doesn't get the better of a major percentage of our harvests.
A bit sad that the piece doesn't even acknowledge that not all code is written for "business" or client purposes.
Yeah that sounds about right for a Marxist: "It's all those evil OTHER PEOPLE's fault that we suck! Trust us, it'll be a lot better after the revolution"
TXT records are bizarre things. Each TXT record is actually a variably sized list of variably sized character strings. There can safely up to 127 characters per string (there's ambiguity about whether the 8-bit length field is signed or not) and the total size of the whole record is up to 64k. That should be plenty for ascii art.

Order is guaranteed for these character strings; at the wire level they are a contiguous blob. With the increasing adoption of SPF though, it's also increasingly common for implementations to preserve the order of the TXT records in a multi-record record set; so that the records can be concatenated in order to make a meaningful SPF string.

On the wire the records look like this;

name type=TXT class=IN TTL=NN RDLENGTH=MM [length]some text[length]more text
name type=TXT class=IN TTL=NN RDLENGTH=MM [length]even more text

which should be concatenated by readers (e.g. SPF implementations) to form a logical string like "some textmore texteven more text".

so if you use multiple records, you're really just putting arrays on top of arrays. It's usually best to stuff things into one record though, so that you don't have to risk an intermediate resolver re-ordering things.

Here's one of the earliest records ever created in Route 53, to test things out;

dig +short TXT bradm.com @ns-323.awsdns-40.com | sed $'s/\" \"/\\\n/g'
Making API Errors More Transparent
Hey, I couldn't find any contact info on your site, but this is something I would definitely like to learn more about. I'm working on a different project to help fight state surveillance, and sending physical mail could be a hugely useful feature. Could you email me jeff@rubbingalcoholic.com

BTW, props on your generosity!
I knew this had to be satirical... What kind of "technology adviser" would update their OS to a new version (instead of doing a clean install) or install Windows 8.1 on a "work" PC.
I'm curious, why did the tutorial you watched choose to use both Django and Flask?
Nail on the head. I eveluated both of them a month ago, and while functionality-wise thay seemed pretty much alike, usability-wise Azure kinda owned AWS all over the place.
"Fewer than half of first-time home buyers in Silicon Valley, including in places like Palo Alto, Calif., can afford to purchase a median-priced home"

Half of people purchase homes that are below the median price.

Thanks for the insight there, NYT.
Fantastic story. This thought process can be applied to so many different things.
And all design is beautiful.
For my current position interview, there were several code samples I needed to write. One of the requirements was that I had to use two different programming languages (although I could pick which one for which sample).
Can India Create A $100B Software Products Industry?
> Generally don't be a dick and work on your stuff while at work and you will be fine.

Why not? These large corporations would pay you $1/hour if the market conditions let them.
Yes it was mobile phone data, I should have been more clear in the original reply. Looks like I can't edit it now.

I had no problems with data speed/cap before they phased out the unlimited tier. I was grandfathered in, but like I said, it was never the same. I primarily worked from the phone during that period and it was a constant struggle. Which is why it wouldn't surprise me if Verizon, across all of it's services, throttled traffic.
As some of the other comments explained it is one of any in the entire list. It was pretty hard to phrase it correctly and keep it concise (sorry on my part)
I agree. I think the next phase of evolution should involve transcending international boundaries and working as a planet rather than as a nation.
Maybe in five years the world will have moved predominantly to node. But right now, django is still extremely relevant.
They are using the Xbox as a gateway to the living room to launch other businesses, rather than trying to make lots of profit on the Xbox directly.
>Judging from the fact that their service has good reviews in major media and millions of users

They have no reviews in major media. They have both good and bad reviews in minor media. The "millions of users" claim is not supported at all.

>Any examples? Surely those mythical people know how to save a screenshot, right?

Yes, I happen to collect screenshots of things that are well known every time anyone talks to me about anything just in case some random redditard wants proof that the sky is blue.
so only code using Google platforms is worthy of being art? wtf.
Why Adwords did not work for us
I agree with your sentiment about those Keurig machines. What a vile invention.
My 2 cents... This is not easy. Understanding coding has a much higher barrier to entry than simple proficiency in other under-utilized fields like Statistics and Economics. It is very hard to say this is something EVERYONE needs to know.
> That being said, it wouldn't hurt to start off with a simple sentence that reminds/reaffirms the value of their product to everyone.

I think most newsletters could benefit from this, particularly if they're going out ~once a month or less. patio11 does a good job of this with a quick two sentence introduction: (1) who is it and (2) why am I getting this.
Well, that's the primary motivation for the purchase, is it not?
I always thought that one was kind of stupid. Encrypting laptop data protects you if your laptop is lost or stolen. If people are willing to kidnap and torture you for your data, you have bigger problems than the fact that they probably will get it.

This comic is much more relevant: http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2526
If the 20th century showed one thing it's that human rights are every bit as ignored under [non-democratic] socialism as nationalism.

The closest thing we have to a guarantee for human rights is the ability to hold leaders accountable for them, and throw them out on a regular schedule.
Zurmo?
Good ol' Yodlee MoneyCenter is pretty decent at tracking net worth. https://moneycenter.yodlee.com.

I don't log in much nowadays, but I remember it is pretty easy to add asset values and get them figured into net worth. You have to keep manually-input stuff updated, of course.

Several of the companies that offer bank feeds ("add your account") use Yodlee's data.
Over the next 25 years or so

1. The continuing destruction of the worlds Ocean/Aquatic ecosystems. We are far more dependent on free flowing clean water and the ecosystems tied to it than most realize.

2. The coming explosion of biological technology. This could be massively positive or negative depending on how it shakes out.

3. Revolution/Information control wars. Arab Spring, NSA scandals, and groups like Anonymous all seem like a prelude to me. The Internet was a game changer in numerous ways. On the internet real groups of people can have massive power and in part effect real change. A lot of people are starting to see that power and want to control it.
Pro tip for those who always do these inane headline reversals: 100 other people also think of the quip, but they all come to their senses and realise it isn't worth posting.
>Why are you bragging about making a bunch of uninformed, knee-jerk assumptions about someone you know nothing about?

You mean I'm in the bad making assumptions about a person making "a bunch of uninformed, knee-jerk assumptions" for other people in the form of a mean "parody" site?

Besides, who told you I "know nothing about" that person? I know what he wrote, and I know the tone he used. And I also have a pretty good sense of the kind of handle he'd use if he were to comment on HN.

>And why is this trash the top comment?

Because people agree and voted for it to be. It's social news site in case you don't know.

>Whether or not $20/month is too much does not depend on whether you have $20 to spend or not, it depends on the value you get from that $20. Products with very little value, and which have $0 alternatives that provide more value are not worth $20.

The value of something doesn't depend on what you say, it depends on what the market is willing to pay for it. Since they have a 10+ year, multi-million business with millions of customers, based on charging what they charge, I'd say the argument is pretty much settled.

If it feels like it ain't worth that much to you, you can use something else. I missed the part when using their service was mandatory. Or do you do parody sites for every "too expensive for me" product you find?
> I think that's about all that needs to be said.

Yeah, and that's like a perfect definition for "ad hominem" argument.
Mitch just started working for AWS ~1.5 years ago or so I think? That code was written long before he worked for Amazon.
I think he is talking about this https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.6/intro/tutorial01/

Indeed, it is One Scoop of Django
um, yes. I've got a major business system running on django right now. I'm also just starting a new one on the same platform.

I personally couldn't care less what the flavour of the day is, because I'm not chasing celebrity, I'm making my business money.

Django works really well when you need a full stack web-app up and running quickly. You know what I don't need? Javascript anything, really.
TL;DR — Process bad, automation good.

I agree with half of that.

The problem in the article is that the example team didn't "pop the why stack" enough. "Engineer screws up a deploy. Why? <insert wrong command, lazy practice, knowledge gap, etc here> Ok, let's automate all the things!"

Automation is great—its not an incorrect response to reduce the surface area for what can result in an error. but automation in turn depends on another process. Continuous deployment? Great idea—but it depends on your tests. How do we know your tests are good? Code review! Another great idea—but also its a process.

Process isn't bad. Being a slave to process is bad. So is being a slave to automation. What happens to your continuous deployment when the new guy throws up a server to spike something (creating a snowflake) and it accidentally gets put into rotation for deployment as an app server, which now fails on it?

process is fine. it allows automation. use both intelligently.
The type of users who value extensions heavily are the type that evangelize browsers, and the type whose friends and relatives ask them what browsers to use.
Come on there is a difference between just f* works and works.
Great article.

Note that much of the attitude comes from a belief that what is good for the company is ultimately good for the engineer.

However, I'll suggest that's not always the case. Take for example one of the OA's reflections:

"Technical debt should be weighted against the actual ROI, because in many cases it is more cost effective to launch early. This way, though you may be accruing technical debt, you are also accruing revenue immediately, and you can reconcile the debt over time."

Unfortunately, dependant upon your company, that last part may never happen and if I were to frequently experience that at a company, well, you better believe I would rather quit and if I couldn't quit I still would rather put my foot down and pump the tech debt argument for all it's worth, otherwise, in the longer term, working there would be a living hell.

I know I'll get a lot of flak for this take, but all I can say is that while I've quit companies like that, I understand why some people couldn't do the same, and at that point it may require some tough love people management in effort to create a brighter future with a healthy work place.
The main reason that I agree with this is that developers are, as a group, the boy who cried wolf. It's not that technical debt doesn't matter or code quality doesn't matter but so many developers complain about technical debt and code quality when their concern is irrelevant or flat-out wrong that it's difficult to distinguish a legitimate concern from complete BS.

Developers very often use technical debt or doing the right thing or similar arguments as an excuse not to understand an existing codebase and past choices, to convince management or fellow developers to rewrite something that doesn't need to be rewritten, or to buy time to learn and try new technologies/methodologies/patterns that are supposed to be better without understanding tradeoffs or to satiate their desire to overengineer and build a cathedral, when a simple cart would suffice. These efforts acrrue, rather than pay off, actual technical debt. A simple hardcoded one-off is a lot easier to throw away or fix than a half-assed "elegant" design with configuration options and tight coupling everywhere.

All this means developers and managers are correct to be skeptical when another developer talks about technical debt as a reason that they can't do something quickly. It's not that elegance and technical debt and doing the right thing, etc, don't matter.
Is it me, or does this situation reek of "damned if you do, and damned if you don't"?
I'd be extremely surprised if they can. Just because there are a lot of options, doesn't mean there's any good ones. Tons of nearly identical, virtually featureless products does not make it easier to find one that actually does the job.
Deep Dive on AMD's Mantle with Chief Architect
The Bill Nye-Ken Ham Debate Was a Nightmare for Science
Still need virtualbox.
Seth Godin has some great commentary on what traditional schools were designed to do and how they don't fit the changing world:

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13502938-stop-stealing-dr...
As a non-traditional programming language fan, I'd love to see candidates throwing up working solutions or providing code samples in any language they choose.

My co-workers, though, are a little more stuck in traditional thinking on this topic. Also, a number of them are programmers "by accident" and so have maybe picked up one or two imperative programming languages. Simply saying 'Haskell' or 'Lisp' or maybe even 'node.js' would make it impossible for them to make any kind of judgement on a candidate. You probably wouldn't even get an interview, but we are also fronted by a HR machine with a frightening array of check-boxes to navigate through.
Google Looks to Ads Executive Susan Wojcicki as Next YouTube Chief
scaling up to 35% for when somebody is making more than a half million dollars per annum

And beyond that, scaling up to 80-90 percent above 100 million. If this strikes fear in people's hearts, that would be a feature in my estimate. Moving to Switzerland is always an option. Realistically speaking, the implementation of something like this will be a decades-long project, because money translates directly into political power in the US at this time, so there would be a lot of effective resistance to be overcome for an extended period. But things are what they are, and I'm kind of ok with that.
I am really interested in companies like this: www.cleanseas.com.au that are trying to breed fish on their own. They still need to grow them in the ocean. Not sure of the cost to get there, but interesting none the less.
Yeah that'd be great. I've been wanting to do something like that for a campaign for a while. Feel free to send me an email (it's in my profile).
It specifically says:

Consider this great visualization of the most popular coding languages of 2013 from the interactive practice problem website CodeEval:
I really liked the OS but I had nothing but trouble with the [phone] hardware

This tells us what, exactly, about the Surface Pro?
A caveat : The pool of IIM or IIT aspirants is a very low signal to noise ratio. It's not just that they are hard to get into, it's the number of people who aren't prepared for it but still pony up the entrance fee. I'm sure that's not the case with Ivy leagues.
If epub formatting is a problem, they can actually release a PDF version.

They probably not realise that printed book also can be pirated. Someone will painstakingly scan the book into PDF.
You don't need to be a developer to know system administration. Hell, it used to be a given, but the barrier to entry has diminished significantly with the advent of the GUI and now consumer electronics.

I agree with the OP. It's important to learn system administration before programming. Know your environment.

Writing markup is fine and will help you understand what's going on when you view page source, but it's hardly the enlightenment you make it out to be.
Do you mind mentioning which ports/packages are not up to date exactly on FreeBSD?
Is scoring well on the CAT test enough to get admitted?

If that is the case then you can't compare the numbers directly, since you have a very non-trivial number of students who are rolling the dice.

In contrast Harvard is very upfront about their requirements, causing most people to avoid applying if they won't qualify.
It isn't even just "indie" ISPs who do it. Cablevision's Optimum Online, which is probably the biggest internet provider on Long Island and Westchester has a peering relationship with Netflix, and lands at #2 on the speed chart, just behind Google Fiber:
http://ispspeedindex.netflix.com/usa

It is also worth noting, that FIOS was #6. I do wonder if that has really changed or not.
Bogosort!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogosort
1. Global warming

2. Lack of privacy

3. Inequality (the 0.1%)
> But if you're in a time-sensitive situation and your code will only be used for a brief period of time, your business needs are probably very different than a code-and-maintain-forever situation (e.g. a SaaS offering).

I think this captures the central problem in our current software development state of affairs. Because as developers we are stuck with primitive tools that make doing even trivial stuff time consuming, we have been conditioned to view every piece of code we write as a "will be maintained forever" proposition. You don't generally see people using excel and worrying about the maintainability of their spreadsheets, because even sophisticated spreadsheets are trivial to create and so the default mentality is use and throwaway.

This is a problem we are trying to tackle at my startup, a web developer tool that you can use to quickly put out applications to support day-to-day operations without obsessing about whether you're going to need to build a spaceship out of your current requirement.
I have nearly perfect vision, but I also use accessibility tools. I have uniform inverse color theme in all programs, IDE, all webpages and even in PDF reader.

I work 10+ hours a day with large (40"+) screens. White background was very aggressive towards my eyes and cause of many headaches. After adopting Solarized it went away.

In case someone is interested here are screenshots of my desktop and some webpages:

http://imgbox.com/TiqtcFri

http://imgbox.com/1PEM5M7U

http://imgbox.com/Tpyl5hrq

http://imgbox.com/lxND4eoI

I use KDE and IDEA with Solarized color theme:

http://ethanschoonover.com/solarized

In Chrome you can use this page to filter colors. It has white/black list so you can set colors per domain:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/change-colors/jbmk...