skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
In Skype I have the option to show call technical info turned on.

It is immensely helpful since it shows continually updated values for latency, packet loss (in both directions), codec in use, bitrates etc. From that I can easily tell what the issues are (latency spikes vs packet loss are hard to distinguish due to the same symptoms).

That isn't helpful for the masses, but you can display some sort of connection quality indicator. You can also offer suggestions on seeing latency spikes or packet loss (try to work out of they are upstream or downstream).

The usual solution to video is to reduce bitrate, resolution and framerate. Blocky video that is taking seconds to update is an obvious indicator of connection quality issues.
JSON Schema refers to http://json-schema.org/

I don't personally understand what is so "un-human-friendly" about it. It is easy to use and understand in my opinion.
Show HN: Scoring Rubric for Software and Web Projects
This is a scorecard app that I whipped up to use for our post-mortem reviews. The idea is to score a project so that you can quantify its adherence to standards. As you check the items in the scorecard, different levels of points are added into the total.

I built it in a way that is flexible, as the list is rendered from a JSON array. So if you have a different process, you can fork the project and replace the JSON with your own.

Some other possible uses can be as a grader for classroom labs, scoring technical interviews, or grading essays and thematic writing.
fuck-it

God biotches

God says...
no_more_tears this_might_end_badly middle_class you_never_know
ahh what's_up how_about_that play hope bank joking happy_happy_joy_joy
thats_right fortitude quit Tomorrow vote I_am_not_amused
baffling

I removed CDocBin.type

That's why old graphics files don't work. You fix it.

Fuck you.

No Shutdown, just turn-off.
Obviously Africa is a huge and incredibly diverse place, but listing all of the countries in which Zidisha is currently working in the headline is kind of impractical. Julia (the founder of Zidisha) certainly isn't naive to the realities of working in Africa either -- you can read more about her experiences at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/julia-kurnia/why-i-founded-zid... and she's also responding to questions here as "jkurnia".
/app/interactors

It's a trivial thing to add new folders like this to autoloading:

# add to application.rb
config.autoload_paths += %W(#{config.root}/app/interactors)
Ask HN: How do you find app/web contracts locally?
What actionable steps do you take to land a app/web contract in your local city? What things do you look for in particular that has yielded a consistent client base?

I look on craigslist but it's often hit or miss. I end up doing meeting people for free and giving them free consultation and then have them back out at the last minute.

I don't mind following up on leads but it's just so sporadic, wondering what channels I should be looking into besides craigslist to find app/web contracts that I can work on after my day job.

Essentially I will have about 5 hours after work each day and I don't want to charge by the hour and prefer to a project based on deliverables.
You can have similar effects with CSS, but in this case it is JavaScript: http://alcatraz.io/javascripts/parallax.js
Q is trying to do both data and validation, which are very different problem spaces. I think designing for both involves serious tradeoffs for the individual parts.
While my instinct is to agree with you, I suspect the waste and emissions from producing and transporting the coffee greatly outweigh those from the half-ounce plastic container .
Nokia's Android X: Madness or Genius for Microsoft?
Coders Guide's series of Bootstrap tutorials featured on BWB in March
The way it should work is, Keurig should be able to do whatever they want in terms of DRM on their hardware, and other companies should be able to do whatever they want in terms of reverse engineering that DRM to produce compatible products.

I don't know if that's how the law actually is, but it sounds like it might be.
Idea for a digital currency that actually solves a problem, unlike Bitcoin
So now I have to ONLY buy approved pods so I can drink coffee and tea that tastes like shit? No thanks. I'll keep buying my whole bean and using my AeroPress. Not as convenient but they're also not greedy doucecopters.
Correct. I disregarded the nationality issue in assuming that GCHQ having "NHS, please pass me your data because terrorists" access to the health records is equivalent to the NSA having "[GAG ORDER] Google, a secret court has ordered you..." access to the health records, given how closely those agencies seem to be working together based on the Snowden disclosures.

Others may place differing weights and values on their cloak-and-dagger outfit of choice. ;)
> For some strange reason it is users in Europe that prefer manual transmission, since basically every car is available also with automatic transmission also.

The more likely cause is that gas in Europe is far far more expensive than it is here, and manual transmissions are historically more efficient than automatics (may have changed with hybrid e-CVT and newer drivetrains).

Also possibly an explanation is that engines in Europe are far smaller than here (to improve gas mileage) and manual transmissions gives the ability for a driver to play with the torque curve and delay shifts to improve immediate speed/responsiveness.
MWC Gallery: The novelties and crazy gear edition
Actual link: https://blog.liftsecurity.io/2014/03/02/of-atom.io-and-secur...
Well, car enthusiasts here in the US also consider driving a pleasure and a skill, and I too vastly prefer shifting myself when driving at speed. On the other hand, I find driving in heavy traffic with a manual transmission to be incredibly tedious. That's why a dual-clutch transmission is my favorite - manual performance and control when I want it, automatic convenience when I don't.
Sounds like Karpeles is a guy with a short attention span who looks for low-hanging fruit and ignores the big issues because he may not be able to solve them. I have this issue with projects too, but of course I never ran a 9-figure Bitcoin exchange.
Yes, I certainly wasn't disagreeing that trig is useful for games. The "if you want to try this out yourself" comes across a little patronizing in this context...
Venmo - San Francisco, CA

At Venmo, we are an outstanding technology organization rooted in payments. Our platform powers payments for new innovators, large enterprises, and great developer platforms - GitHub, Airbnb, Uber, and Living Social just to name a few. Our developer-friendly platforms allow companies to do much more than process payments - we are making it much easier for them to engage with their users and provide amazing new payment experiences.

AND we're looking for a rockstar Software Engineer.

Who you are:
You're an experienced (4+ years) software developer, with a passion for technology. You’re interested in designing and writing clean, well-tested code focused on high-transaction rates, security, and scalability. You have crisp communication skills and may have skills in any of these areas:
Ruby, PHP, Python, or similar technologies
Server-side software development
Test-driven development (TDD)

Interested?
We're looking for people who are interested in getting in on the ground floor of an incredible opportunity to build amazing software and transform the payments industry.

Take a look at some of our blog posts to see some of the problems we face:
http://www.braintreepayments.com/inside-braintree/how-we-bui...

Take a look at some of the code we have on github: https://github.com/braintree

Send an application to me at arica.johansen@venmo.com and make sure you mention you're applying from Hacker News. I look forward to hearing from you!
It's really... boastful. Cocky. Self-important. He's using it in sentences where he could just as easily get away without using any pronoun at all.

The closest thing I could think would be to conduct a business meeting in which you only describe your actions and refer to yourself in the third person, and then only as "Big Mark".

"Big Mark understands your position but thinks you're being a bit rude about all of this. Big Mark thinks we should cooperate more" etc, etc
you think that any effort for the companies to pay you less than your imagined self-worth is illegal

Good lord, not any effort, just efforts that are, in fact, illegal. Your argument seems to be based on,

"Well these people already get paid a lot, so I don't really see why they should get paid more, even if their wages are being illegally depressed"

you still think they owe you more and need to be coerced to pay you more

The suit is not to "coerce" the companies to pay them more, it's seeking damages for the companies allegedly doing something illegal to pay them less.
I actually think I understood you, but I'm saying that in that case where statelessness should be an advantage, node.js is actually a much less fault tolerant environment when you compare it to most other web application servers. Most other web app servers offer

(1) request isolation (so most failures in one request can't break other requests) and

(2) a way to catch all exceptions/errors in a single request (and domains don't accomplish this, unless you know what to expect errors from, or wrap everything).

Since node.js doesn't offer those features, it's not even as fault tolerant as PHP was 15 years ago. I'm a huge fan of node.js, but one of the hardest things to do on a large application with a large number of users is to keep an instance of the server from restarting and dropping all the other in-progress requests. If you write your node.js code to be crash-only (like one might do with erlang) your clients are going to have a terrible time.
Exciting plasmons: Smaller, faster and more efficient gadgets
I think they'd be banned from the project. If it looked to be malicious, I can see a lawsuit happening, though that would probably be a slow process and end in a settlement of some sort. Packager identities are verified against legal identity documents; depending on your threat model that may or may not be an effective barrier - a nation state can probably afford to burn a few identities, but regular criminals not so much.
Testing route handlers in Node.js
We have an extension (for chrome) and a bookmarklet (and ipad app) that use pdf.js to add comments to pdfs and save specific pages from pdfs. The extension and bookmarklet allow commenting on any page that can be rendered on a web page (including Pdfs!).
We are now targeting it for education.
Will love feedback (provided our site doesn't crash)
http://www.surfmark.com
Server seems unavailable :(

There was a challenge a friend of mine and I had a while back: take an image, and represent the entire RGB colorspace within that image, without reusing any colors.

It was a REALLY fun challenge, and I encourage everybody to try it as well.

The way that I ended up winning (ha) was to represent the RGB colorspace as a 3D array, and then unravel that 3D array into a 1D skip-list.

The script read the pixel value at (n,n) of the image, "decide" where this would exist if RGB was unraveled into 1D, go that that spot, and then either set the color in the "new" image (if that color was unused) the value in the array, or read the "skip" destination: the place where the closest unused color was located.

I believe this was the site that inspired us: http://allrgb.com
In 2011, 3,331 people were killed in crashes involving a distracted driver. 3,267 in 2010. [1]

When you say "This reduces distraction." you mean compared to holding the phone and doing those actions, right?

The way I would account for human behavior is to intelligently disable certain functionality as the car is moving. Compared to someone else's life, how important is that text message? Even dictating a text message takes some cognitive load.

Let's not mix the word "safer" and "distracted driving".

[1] http://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/distracted_driving/
Let's say you send a link to someone on an iOS device -- we can prompt them to install a native app, then as soon as they open the app, with no login, your call starts.

Apple actually is refusing to add WebRTC to Safari, because if you have good HTML5 support and WebRTC, you can do much more outside of a native app, which hurts their ability to control the app ecosystem, and helps developers ship to Android and iOS on the same day. I hope this changes, but right now it doesn't seem promising.
All but one of the cars I've owned have had a manual transmission, and I bought a 2013 GTS with a stick (even though the PDK-equipped model is faster 0-60, and certainly more fuel efficient).

But I reluctantly disagree with you. Almost all serious sports cars -- hardly "boring" -- now come with automatic transmissions:
* All Ferraris are now automatic
* All McLarens are now automatic
* Porsche's top street car, the 911 Turbo S, is PDK-only
* Porsche's top track-ready car, the 911 GT3, is PDK-only
* The fastest hypercars, the LaFerrari, the McLaren P1, and the Porsche 918, are all automatic (I recall all 7-speed dual clutch)

Even Lotus, the one company you'd expect to keep the manual faith, on lightness grounds if nothing else, made the Evora available a few years ago with an automatic transmission. And Porsche has been quoted as saying the manual transmission may no longer be available after the 991 is phased out: http://www.autoguide.com/auto-news/2012/02/porsche-911-manua...

Unfortunately manual transmissions now make the car slower. A stick is becoming an enthusiast's conceit, C&D's campaign notwithstanding, and I hope they're still offered, but I'm now considering a dual clutch automatic for my next car.
Tiny nitpick[0]: a UK postcode corresponds to a minimum of 1, and maximum of 100 (not 20), delivery points[1] (not households). Typically about 15 delivery points.

I fully agree with your main point, though, that the data are not meaningfully anonymised.

[0] http://www.poweredbypaf.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Progr... (page 19, "Small User Postcode")

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delivery_point
Thanks, that is a good suggestion. It takes 5 minutes instead of 15 seconds. I'll give that try using the Keurig machine for hot water. The Keurig coffee is definitely mediocre.
I think I'll stick to my Chemex and compost my grounds.
Meetup.com hacked
The term "standard time signature" isn't a technical term. I just meant it to refer to time signatures with relatively low integers, as opposed to something crazy like 101/32.
"Really liking" the place where you work has to be worth something ...
So is disclosure the only problem? Because I believe that I do disclose that they are affiliate links.

PS: I appreciate your feedback and thanks for keeping the discussion civil.
Over 75% Of Your Blogs Visitors Will Not Return: Here's What to Do About It
Parse Emails by Zapier
That's true; they may be secured in that fashion (does anybody know what NHS policy is?)

I was thinking "secure" in the sense of "Physically inside a datacenter with privileged access" as opposed to "Physically on 27 DVDs that are... Hm.... Where are those DVDs... Hey Bob, did you have the DVDs last? Shoot, I know I put those DVDs around here somewhere..."
the cat was trying to show the crew that they shouldn't go (the cat could have just run away, with no chances for "coaxing", etc...). The crew just didn't listen.

> She was reportedly last seen on the roof of
the shed at Pier 27, watching her ship sail out of Quebec
City.

yep.
Definitely doesn't do away with waste, although compostable paper filters are better than plastic pods (unless the pods can be composted?)
In a randomized double-blind study(n=127), science faculty from research-intensive universities rated the application materials of a student — who was randomly assigned either a male or female name — for a laboratory manager position. Faculty participants rated the male applicant as significantly more competent and hireable than the (identical) female applicant. These participants also selected a higher starting salary
and offered more career mentoring to the male applicant.

http://cst.yale.edu/sites/default/files/Science%20Faculty%27...
Information Economy Meta Language (IEML)
Well, Zidisha appears to mix those two.

Lenders are encouraged to charge an interest rate they find acceptable, but the average interest rate is lower than the default rate... so that means lenders (as a whole) are losing money! This would not be a particularly good investment, but it may be an excellent way to do donations.

- the lenders who select more reliable recipients and those who charge more will make more income, so I am sure many lenders are actually making a profit even if the sum total of the loans by Zidisha is not.
Tip: Run Jasmine From RSpec
That is an accurate calculation, but it is not exact.

Moreover, when you do floating point arithmetic, you are not adding the number "0.3" up three times. You are adding an approximation of "0.3" up three times, since 0.3 does not have an exact representation in binary.

What you're saying is akin to saying

"Well, I call 0.3333 + 0.3333 + 0.3333 = 0.9999 <> 1.0 inaccurate in my book."

This is totally accurate, and easier to see because it's in decimal.

The point of them is not that they are accurate to some degree. Floating point numbers have a direct correspondence to a real number. The "problem" is that the reverse is not true, so rounding has to occur.
Unlike speeders, I assume they are mostly unwitting and unwilling participants in the attack. Seems a bit unfair. Why not also sue Adobe for allowing the zero-day that led to the PC getting infected and added to a botnet?
http://kaizengarden.co/lp/textugees is the ex-staff solution to TextDrive.
At first I almost laughed when I saw the sum - they're asking $300? For a company that's been around for almost 15 years?

That said, Meetup's reasons for not paying it are very solid. I'm glad they're spending far more than $300 of their own resources[0] to fight this attack, because other websites would be the ones paying the price if they decided to start this precedent.

Also, somewhat relevant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danegeld

[0] I wonder how much this downtime actually represents to them (plus the engineering time)
Yes, JSON is "understood" in the sense that it is easy to parse, yes. That doesn't mean actually working with the results is any easier. (1) Without a schema, doing so can actually be harder. (2) JSON leaves out many useful data types and it is not extensible. So, perhaps JSON has "succeeded" by lowering expectations of data interchange. :)
I was referencing the "actively dissuade" part.

I don't mind if people adopt environmentalism as a religion where all trash is a sin, I just don't want to be a part of it. I want to think about environmental impact broadly and go after the high impact items. Talking about K-Cup trash is a distraction from what is important.
How to get your Professors’ Attention – along with Coaching or Mentoring
This code is not "quite clean." The only thing it has going for it is mostly decent naming. This is some of the most tightly coupled code I've seen written this _century_. This is the kind of code that gives PHP a bad rap.
You think the fact that you see less red is probably due to having a genetic defect that results in poor red–green hue discrimination?
Thanks Roger -- we really want to create a connection quality indicator like you describe, kind of like the number of bars on your cell connection.

One of our biggest frustrations with existing services is that it's hard to tell why the call quality is poor - is it my connection, your connection, or the service's fault?

Can I shoot you an email when we get a beta version of that indicator working? I'd love to get your feedback on it.
Lets captchalogue some fruit.
http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=002709
That's across all occupations.
NSS had to adopt a fix for accepting bogus DH groups; was Firefox just not willing to accept a renegotiation under a different server certificate, or is something else going on here?
While the site's down, here's all the RGB colors in one book:

http://i.imgur.com/kae66HY.jpg

('RGB Colorspace Atlas' by Tauba Auerbach)
Mozilla Lightbeam Web Tracker Visualization
It's interesting that you brought that up. As a westerner, I admit I don't have a great understanding of eastern cultures outside of the few movies I've seen. One stereotype, which I'd like some real clarification on, is the Chinese or Japanese societal culture of "saving face", or honor code. Could you give some insight on that cultural facet and how it pertains to knowledge/humility? I remember after the Fukushima incident, there was some talk of the officials' honor preventing them from admitting things were as bad as they were, making the entire situation worse. Is this pervasive as I'm led to believe? Would this come up in interviews and professional careers? Does it hinder our advances in technology?
I would assume it's not about storage; it's about processing.

The bold byline of BigQuery (https://developers.google.com/bigquery/) is "Analyze terabytes of data in seconds."

Store the data locally? Easily. Set up the necessary back-end infrastructure to sift, twist, and churn the data efficiently? Now you're talking hiring some people to set up an infrastructure for that... Or you could upload it to Google and use their infrastructure.
If you intelligently disable in-car functionality (such as GPS when the car is moving), people will reach for another device to get that functionality. It's naive to think that constraints will automatically change users' desires.
Would you care to explain why this analysis of history is/is not compelling, and would you care to cite those comments about ESR's butthurt?
Well, that's disgusting. Like printer cartridge vendors.

Luckily, this applies only to pods and guess probably can't do anything like that with the machines using whole beans.
As always, the question is should be in Rails or not.

I think that the answer is clear, this should not be a part of rails since it's not true to all apps.

I think that if you want to have something real quick, you don't need an interactor/service class.

When you have a bigger app, you definitely need that, or you will get to a point where you code is split into models/observers/callbacks/lib/app/concerns and you can't find anything.

Rails generators are pretty easy to extend, this way, when you generate a new model, you can easily create the service class for it.

You can also EASILY create new generators that will generate the service classes for you with your defaults and templates and what not.

Not sure Rails is missing that, however, it is definitely a best practice that people with bigger apps should use TODAY.
Anything that is application-specific, we put in /app

Anything that's generic and re-usable, we put in /lib. This code is normally a prime candidate for gems - only very simple code stays in /lib for very long.
We have plenty of clients like that.

Curious: who is "we?"
It turns out Debian is much more responsive to Mozilla requests than adware providers, and going through court takes a long time.
So what is an option for easily brewing a single cup of coffee without pods that will lock you into a specific machine? The things that I like about my Keurig are that you can get 4 to 6 cups before having to refill the water tank and that it’s easy to clean. While I don’t mind having to throw away a filter I would like to avoid having to refill a machine with water every time I want another cup of coffee.
great idea of yours :-) I especially liked the visualization Randall chose for his comic.
Or it could be cognitive dissonance. Explaining to yourself (or others) why you didn't push for the raise.
Your anekdote makes me think about another anekdote:

Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital. ~Aaron Levenstein
Yes, that's a wonderful talk