skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I find the worse entirely accurate.

This is a classic piece of programmer lore that goes a long way to describing why the software industry is the way it is today i.e. why everything sucks so much. My only criticism I have of it is that he mischaracterizes the-right-thing as being monolithically designed and slow performing (towards the end of the page). The-right-thing to me is always functionally and computationally superior, it just takes longer to make.
Perforce time lapse view is similarly amazing.
Contrary to the current HN title, the article points out:

Evidence presented during Private Manning’s court-martial for his role as the source for large archives of military and diplomatic files given to WikiLeaks revealed that he had used a program called “wget” to download the batches of files. That program automates the retrieval of large numbers of files, but it is considered less powerful than the tool Mr. Snowden used.

So the tool wasn't wget. curl, perhaps?
Feds to provide benefits, services to all same-sex marriages
Manning used wget, Snowdon used a basic web crawler, headline is wrong.
Sorting poll results would increase readability. It should be done after vote (or by clicking on some button) to avoid biasing the results.
The most newsworthy aspect of this post is that the NSA didn't compartmentalize their information. This spidering should have been impossible at the network level, even as an admin.
I'm curious - anyone know what happened to cause the (inevitable) end?
From what I can tell, it doesn't seem to be the lack of new interest/money. Possibilities I can think of:

- Author got scared (of legal repercussions)

- Author got greedy (pocketing much of the last deposits)

- For some reason (research?) it was intended from the beginning to only run to a certain point

- Technical scaling issues

Anyone know?
The problem is that's not what gentrification means. The article is about the opposite of gentrification. Here's my problem with all "trickle down" theories. If they worked in any kind of meaningful way there wouldn't be anything to argue about. If poverty and other kinds of financially based social problems could be voluntarily eliminated they would have been already.
The Power of API Driven Resources In Securing Your VC Funding
http://bit.ly/1fMaFnS

This was too soon to be funny.
Google Play is not the seller of record, they only act as a payment processor (similar to Stripe or Paypal). You are responsible for paying and collecting tax. Check section 3.2 of the Google Play agreement:

"Developer is responsible for determining if a Product is taxable and the applicable tax rate for the Payment Processor to collect for each taxing jurisdiction where Products are sold. Developer is responsible for remitting taxes to the appropriate taxing authority."

Note: Developer is responsible, not Google. (Apple handles this differently.)

As for VAT filings only being necessary for selling physical product: you need to look more closely at EU Council Directive 2002/38/EC:

"From now on, these services [digital delivery of software and computer services] will be taxed in the country where the customer resides rather than where the supplier is located.... For the non-EU supplier whose EU customers are non-business individuals or organisations, there will now be an obligation to charge and account for VAT on these sales just as EU suppliers have to do."
http://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/taxation/vat/traders/e-...
The title is wrong. FTA, Bradley Manning used "wget" and Snowden a site scraper (maybe httrack?).

What's striking is how easy it was for him to get access to all these documents. It probably means that most of things we hear in the news is already old news for other big government / criminal organizations.
It's funny, I sometimes feel like I am the only one on Hacker News who isn't an actual hacker, nor have any knowledge in field. I'm just a guy with a general, intellectual curiosity and HN somewhat satisfies that.

I'm a recording/mixing/mastering engineer and I study philosophy. For some reason I am drawn to the tech scene. It is very strange surfing this site, having to disregard 80% of the links on the front page. I mean, in the beginning, every second word i read was completely incomprehensible to me (ajax, kernels, clojure, get, git, whatever).

Yet I've stuck around for years..
Except they don't. Populations in developing countries have now stabilized and in some cases, Japan, are well below replacement level.
By this definition, there is.

>"purported returns"

Disbursements from ponzi.io are not purported to be investment returns or legitimate income of any kind. There are clearly other people's contributions.
Writing Letters of Recommendation (2006)
Sadly the word processing game has been won by Word. 99% of non-techie authors will use Word (or maybe Scrivener) to write their novel

That's because publishers rely on Word for workflow because everyone uses Word and they require interoperability.

They don't actually like Word any more than the rest of us do -- they mostly rely on Adobe InDesign for typesetting, and getting Word docs into InDesign is a bit painful unless the author is au fait with the publisher's own style sheet -- and if you talk to their electronic/internet publications specialists they'd love to find a usable alternative platform. Unfortunately they need such a platform to be universal, to support workflow-specific tasks such as copy editing (handled today, not terribly well, via Word's change tracking) or checking page proofs (handled today by going over PDFs until your eyeballs bleed), and to work for everyone they do business with. Scrivener is great, and generates very clean HTML/CSS/ePub, but it stops at the point when you hit "Compile" -- it doesn't interoperate with the proofing/production side of workflow. As for the rest ...

(Credentials: I write novels for a living and in the past week have been discussing this topic with Hachette's head of digital strategy and one of Penguin Random House's digital production specialists.)
EDIT: sorry I didn't notice that the project is set to private and I don't have the perms to change it. It's not secret, contacting vivien to fix this.
GCC and LLVM developers to begin collaborating?
Actually I couldn't post here since my account is too new.
Did I miss it or is there no Operating Systems & Compilers?
It looks like it stopped paying out at 20:27.

Money was still flooding in until around 22:55.

Overall with 344 BTC recieved, if everything was paid out as expected, the site operator would lose around 69 bitcoins.

As it stands, the address still has ~20 bitcoins left in the wallet, but obviously owes a lot more than that even if it were to pay the remaining payments 1:1 rather than 1:1.2.
No, it's not noble, but being noble isn't such a great thing either. It's being true to one's self and following the path you choose. Nothing more, nothing less.
> It really astounded me when I learned no shuttle was inspected for damage while in orbit until after the loss of the Columbia.

Atlantis was hit by tank insulation during launch of STS-27 (1988). While in space, the astronauts inspected the tiles using a camera mounted on the Canadarm. Hoot Gibson says that it "looked like it had been blasted by a shotgun." They were convinced that they were going to die on re-entry, and Gibson had even planned what he'd say to Houston in his final transmission before he died.

They got very, very lucky. There were 700 damaged tiles, but only one missing tile. And the one missing tile just happened to be over an antenna mounting bracket, which made the structure stronger than the rest of the wing. If the foam had hit just a couple of tiles over, then they would've died.

This was the second flight after the Challenger disaster. It might have ended the Shuttle program, right then and there.
Blogspam isn't a choice?
Always great to see people putting up open-source projects like this. I'll definitely give them a look, and at the least, get a grip on how other people found solutions with Ansible. Thanks man.
Also reported on at Phoronix: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTU5Njk
Could you help me with an hangout app I created for my company. How do I set the logo properly? Can I send information to google analytics? Thanks
History of Interrupts
404 for me as well. and don't see it on https://github.com/vivienschilis?tab=repositories
If I have an electronics hardware business based on microcontrollers should I choose entrepreneurship, software, or hardware?
> software-defined-radio

Can you conjure up a software-defined 70-meter parabolic dish?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Space_Network#Antennas
Developer tools is missing.
curl is just a library with a slim command-line interface. It can't scrape pages by itself. Perhaps you're thinking of curlmirror? Even then, I doubt it can be considered more powerful than a good wget configuration.
Exactly.

My problem is that usually the people who neglect to write a comment in the code, also neglect to write meaningful commit messages. Usually it's just "fixed the layout bug" or something like this, along with a bunch of other unrelated changes all squeezed into one commit.
Perhaps I'm too high on sci-fi. But I'd imagine office and retail would work well enough. Put in artificial sunlight, channel some light from the roof area, run large displays to simulate outdoors. If it really works well, then residential might work, too.

And fighting over real window space is a far cry better than fighting over any space. As-is, there are even parking garages taking up nice window space in buildings here.

The geography looks a bit hilly in SF; it might be cheaper to dig under those hills than just going straight down from a flat area.

Maybe I'm just completely naive, but anything seems better than the current solution of doing nothing.
They still have the site up at http://ponzi.io/index2.html anyway
Computer architeture, low-level, operating systems, compilers, drivers
Btw, the problem was solved by 61 people so far.

Random thoughts:

I think the mod is just there to distract or for hinting that you shouldn't come up with a brute force method.

Observations:

1. Assume an infinite grid. Add 3 random points _not_ on a line. Clearly, they'll be a convex set (a triangle).

2. Add a 4th point such that it is not on an existing line.

You've now a quadrilateral.

So for the case of Q(2,2) = 94 = choose(9,4) - 32. 32 is the number of points that would make 3 of the 4 points lie on a line.

Come up with a recurrence relations and solve it.
This is a bit unfair, since, as you admit, these changes are being made precisely because users don't understand the sync model, and the mismatch causes things like lost data.

Notably Chrome sync does let you encrypt all data locally, but it works the same way: if you lose your passphrase, you can't sync a new machine with it.

The big difference is that it's also tied to an account, which lets you do things like use it as a backup and restore service (the analog would be a pair code that's persistent and well known to the user). The current Sync pair code system makes your synced data just an extension of the data in your browser (or browsers, if you already use more than one). Lose that browser and you lose your data. The new Firefox Sync looks like it provides that now, which should ease a lot of user pain due to lost data (and not just annoyance).
(The connection there is that mustache is an existing templating system, and goatee is another kind of facial hair)
Ask HN: Advice for first days/weeks/months at first dev job?
So I just started my first development job a couple weeks ago (I've been paid to code before but never as my sole responsibility and never in a software company). I need to learn a new stack, other than JS and the base server language all the frameworks and tools are new. I need to learn the codebase. These things are going well, I think.

They know I'm junior and seem to know it's going to take a bit for me to spin up, but I was hoping HN could share advice for how to make my early days count for the most.
Good ole' sfcave. I've been playing that game since the palm pilot days. I remember upgrading my to a newer palm pilot and finding out that the game wasn't actually running full speed on my old greyscale palm. The android version is still fun.
7 reasons why the year of code is a load of bs
I can't see any connection between "goatee" and "moustache"

A goatee is a style of facial hair.
What makes you think it ended? People are still paying in and it appears to still be paying out.
I think it's morally objectionable to waste a rare opportunity when one could just as easily channel that opportunity towards the benefits of others.
Today I read some code I wrote in 2007 and laughed
It's at the bottom but maybe it was added after you posted your question?
Flappy Bird Score Generator
> This is probably not a popular view, but I don't really understand why comments are viewed by some people as a bad thing.

Probably the same people think that well-written code does not need comments at all. That may be so, but well-written code is hard to come by. While this rock-star macho attitude is aplenty.
So tick all of the relevant ones then?
Did you read up on all the stuff you didn't know or do you still dismiss them? Ever bothered learning how to code?
Very true. Also, it's SNES games. Not NES games.
Ah, ok, now I got it, thanks :).
This video has good comic component, but in reality I find bunch of other games way more frustrating. Getting all 3 stars in original Angry Birds is much more frustrating experience for me.

My theory is that is has to do with the goal - in Angry Birds you do bunch of actions and then learn the result, with the aim of completing very specific objective. Sometimes in the middle of the action sequence you already know that it's no good and you have to restart. In Flappy Birds it's simple, just keep doing it, failed, not a big deal, restart, you know you'll fail again.

I was playing it and thinking about zen-like qualities of the game and realized that this game would be completely genius if pipe layout would always be the same. Then zen experience would be complete.
I wrote this article to look back at the fundamental underpinnings of computers. Would love to hear comments from others about this history.
Or they realised too late that they had a bug which caused some people to get back 900% instead of 120%. That would break the model. Underpaying is something you could correct retroactively, overpaying not so easy.
Should have known! Like ten minutes before I expected 1.2x to be gathered and my payout to be done, the site reports "The experiment is over." Come on guys, just let it run. I would have accepted it if it just 'died of natural causes' and I lost all I put in (which is not much, 0.03); that was my gamble. Not that you'd pull the plug.

Somehow their pulling the plug just really bothers me much more than losing it would have been. Especially because at the rate at which it was going, payout was more or less ensured (300btc * 1.2 = 360. They quit 16 coins short). Right now, two hours after they supposedly would pay everyone back, I still got nothing.
Operations Research
Air Hockey Robot
Music production, electronic music, sound technology
What a strange headline. If it's been found, how can it be mythical? Even the article text itself only goes so far as to call it "near-mythical."
The current flap [sorry] was preceded by this fairly popular item here on HN:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7192265

HN is also a receptive audience for stories about the unexpected costs of success when a product takes off [sorry].
>> Where is he turning his back on his passion?

one passion of many. he was passionate about Flappy Bird, and he is now removing it from the app store all together.

>> I also reject the idea that it was because of the money alone that he is taking the app down.

fair enough and i agree. i really just mean that generally, there are not very many good reasons to outright reject this kind of money.
But saying "We'll take your items, if you give them to us" is not theft.
Makes sense. I'd be pretty surprised if they managed to write all that on 9/11, for a number of reasons.
Exactly this. I found myself thinking WTF as I read the article. Maybe I'm showing my age, but the project I just switched from (and still have to consult on from time to time) was started in the late 90's and probably won't be retired for at least 10 more years. I have found myself not just looking through version control history to understand the change history of a file to find a bug, but tracking it over multiple version control systems as the project matured.
Index Fund vs. Hedge Funds: Buffett $1,000,000 Bet Update
If the shutdown doesn't happen (https://twitter.com/dongatory/status/432227971173068800) I'll be seen as a hero amongst my friends
aerospace engineering as well
Might be a Windows issue; Firefox on Mavericks is working swimmingly.
I'm ok with not having chargeback rights on these transactions, because it's not like I'm going to do a chargeback on my local burrito place or grocery store or whatever.

Also, the article factored in a "Bitcoin discount" for customers, and .375% of revenue is a hell of a lot more that .375% in profit. That's easily 20% of profit for small margin businesses. The article was also very conservative on credit card fees.

If a Bitcoin user wants chargeback ability, they can use a third party mediator for a fraction of what credit card companies charge.
Most attackers won't be SSHing into your servers and firing up psql processes to mash your database as that would require gaining user access, SSH access and psql access. Most attackers will go the cheaper and more likely route of turning your application on your server by using SQL injection.
I suspect the essay itself might be an example of worse-is-better principle applied in practice. :)

My first impression was that author basically recommends quickly releasing ‘minimal viable products’ and expands on what should be considered ‘minimally viable’ for some specific kinds of software.

‘Worse is better’ is an interesting way to put it, though. I think it can be applied widely.

One way to avoid perfectionism is to constantly remind ourselves what's important, what's in MVP. Sure, there are a lot of things that are important for good product, but some are more important and we should focus on them first.

On the other hand, we can just remember that ‘worse is better’. No need to make yourself focus on what's important—it will come naturally once you label everything else ‘worse’.

It's hard to explain and I may have missed author's point, but that was one of takeaways for me.
The most disgusting thing is that these uncultured niggers couldn't give two shits about the things we could learn from this chimpanzee population. I say we take the US military in there and wipe them out.
Mine's OK with an i5 and half that amount of ram, although it's not perfectly smooth. OpenGL in software maybe?
The Sync protocol document is (linked in the article) has a lot of interesting details about the new system: https://github.com/mozilla/fxa-auth-server/wiki/onepw-protoc...
For US workers they must pay more taxes, more benefits (obamacare), and higher salary.
I'm looking at the huge text on the home page saying "The experiment is over." If that can't be trusted, then why in the world would anyone expect to receive a payout at this point (as if it weren't already incredibly risky)?
And to be perfectly honest, well written code might not stay well written as project circumstances change. Thus, documentation that can be updated often makes life easier going forward.
Debian committee members vote for systemd as init system
This is absolutely true, at least from my perspective. All of the programming jobs I've had in my career have been for medium- to freaking-huge companies, and most of my projects at those jobs have required me to do a ton of self-teaching to get up to speed on a bunch of technical (or scientific, or mathematical) stuff that I had no previous exposure to, in order to get my job done. On only one occasion did I ever get any training for anything, and that was just for two days.

I guess that's a combination "back in my day/get off my lawn" statement, plus a little whining, and maybe a humblebrag, but I don't think that's an unusual story at all for software developers.

I interned at IBM during grad school with a team of consultants that all did enterprise Java stuff for financial institutions- that was very different. IBM would frequently send those developers away for a week or more at a time, multiple times a year, to get training on specific technologies. I'm not sure how common that is anywhere other than IBM though, or if IBM even does that anymore. Maybe Google does it? I don't know.

Sometimes I deal with developers who either can't or won't teach themselves anything, and can't or won't learn by doing. They absolutely need someone to hold their hand and explain things to them every step of the way, and they will just throw their hands up in the air and fail before putting any time into trying to read up on whatever topic is giving them trouble. I don't know what to attribute this to, so I'm trying really hard to not jump to the conclusion that they suck or they don't care or whatever. I'm sure a lot of them do just suck at their jobs and/or just don't care, but maybe some of them have genuine problems with learning that aren't their fault. The only thing I can say for sure is that this is a trait that is a major impediment to their careers and getting their jobs done without sucking up too much of their cow-orkers' time (as we all know, orking cows requires long stretches of uninterrupted concentration).

TL;DR Spot on, and being able to develop your own technical skills to keep up to date and expand your horizons is absolutely critical to being a really successful developer. You are also the only person that you can count on to do this for you. You can't really count on any employer, even some mythical ideal company with bottomless resources that treats each employee as a magical snowflake, to do this. Even if your company does provide training, it's not necessarily going to be the training you want or need to receive.
Yeah, you clearly have never made an eBook. It's a jungle out there.
Any chance this is a PR stunt?
give it to charity, use it to sustain more development on your games, use it to build a company that can just focus on making your games, use it to fund or invest or donate to other gaming projects... etc.
Writing, journalism, blogging
> We will pay back everyone we can. We are not making money from this.

Paying people back can be done instantly. Adding 20% needed a wait. If they stopped the experiment an hour ago, I'd say my coins should have returned by now :(
http://maps.ngdc.noaa.gov/viewers/historical_declination/
Hah, yeah, I'm not sure if the game was timed properly or if it just ran as fast as your device could draw it.

Fucking loved that game. Android port is pretty good, but just not the same for some reason. Not as fast perhaps. Flappy Bird made me glad to see someone could do something nice with its formula still.
The whole working population.
I'm more interested in how people are posting bogus scores to the high score list.
Application development encapsulates both, Desktop, Mobile and Web?
Manifest Digital: Why The Web Is 'Becoming' Political
The game's physics, visuals and sound actually seem to be thoughtfully designed. It has an open yet secluded feel that can be compared to Minecraft or other historically successful games.
Will there be a way to access metrics for this to know how many people did it VIA your site?
[I can imagine some bureaucrat somewhere is saying]

Woah!

You mean he could just automatically download without even using a browser?? And he didn't need an expensive tool to do it? On a normal computer? People like that are dangerous, maybe we should be licensing that kind of knowledge...
Why did the military require human beings to turn the keys if they expected people (and weeded out people unwilling) to turn the key blindly? A wire would have been much more efficient...