skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
John...I just don't feel like you respect and value me as a complexly crafted inanimate object!

(A sexbot wouldn't be an inanimate all the time, but could become one in a power down mode.)
Damn! I've been teaching myself unity3D for the last days, time to stop!
I have a lot of friends who majored in the arts and humanities and graduated straight into unemployment and misery. Some of them are happy about the fact, but the majority is really resentful towards the society. They feel cheated, as they thought they'd get a low-paying job which would still allow for a modest life, but all they were offered is volunteer work. Money, it turns out, is unimportant only if your belly is full and you have a roof on top of your head.
> Do read some experimental physics -- see what assumptions are made.

lutusp, the way in which you are using the word "assumption" carries a very high risk that people will misunderstand you. The critical point here is that the physicists are nowhere using the Normal distribution as a modeling assumption. They are not suggesting that the Normal distribution is a reasonable model for any real data generating process in their problem domain. They are simply using it as a scale, like Celsius of Fahrenheit. There's a crucial philosophical distinction there that, even if you get, your readers will not.
Alright, someone create Twitch plays 2048 and we'll call it a day
It has skipped a hop.
i have yet to replace them.

I think I see the solution to your problem...
We need to understand the implications more holistically. We need people thinking hard about how a future economy would function with large amounts of automation. People need to be happy. Unemployment doesn't generate happiness!
Auto dealers fire back at Tesla CEO
This might be a minor comment, but I noticed you guys are using Node.js with Express.js to render nodemailer.com. You can (and maybe should) change the favicon from the default Express.js favicon.

You can do so by removing `app.use(express.favicon());` from the generated app.js file. At the very least, you could add your own favicon in your public/ folder to make the project page look (albeit in the most vain sense) more polished.
That is what gets me about these interview questions. I know a lot of very clever people. I am carefully differentiating 'clever' from 'smart', by the way. So many that are superficially fast and smart about solving whiteboard problems are terrible at all the things that actually seem to matter when it comes to creating value:

* Keeping a project on budget and schedule
* being able to create a budget
* managing people and resources
* Grinding out boring, but bug free code
* Writing clean code
* Being able to refactor
* Design software that is maintainable
* not tick off the people around you

SW engineering is a big, fuzzy, ill-defined optimization task in n-dimensional space. There are plenty of clever people that aren't very good at that sort of real-world iterative process. Sure, it is great to have a few people that can quote Knuth (if you don't know what algorithms are available, you'll often choose a substandard one), but by and large I want an engineer, not a scientist. A good one can learn red-black trees, or whatever, when it becomes necessary. The converse (a CS-y type person becoming productive in an engineering environment) seems less likely to occur, in my experience.
SO much easier than both original games.
For a disgusting toilet, the cleaning liquid you want is sold under the brand name "The Works". It's more acidic than other brands, so it removes deposits better.
I bet he (or his company) paid more than $19/month to see the source code. A lot more...
I've been using PHP to generate static HTML pages. It's usually as simple as `php somepage.php > somepage.html` and you have all the advantages of a full featured language.
flappy bird is much harder than this. my average score was around 4.
Apologies that this is about form not substance:

I appreciate the clarity of the "What makes Variance unique?" and "Where is Variance not a good fit?" sections. Really useful.

As someone who makes a data analysis tool (with a bit of viz thrown in), that's probably something we could do better.
Can you show me the source that you think is art? I see lots of #define and code that looks like C source.

Just to be clear, we are talking about source code itself that is art, right? Of course, source code can be written to create art. It's a tool, after all.
Extracting rent from the status quo?

Music industry revenue last year = $16B
Banking inudstry revenue = $600B+

Entertainment makes money. That is not a bad thing.
that's just added complexity, where it could all just work.

or fail consistently at the same time if your server isn't accessible. In that case it doesn't matter that the public cdn is still accessible.

i just don't think the possible benefit of public cdn hosted code can justify how many moving parts it adds.
It just needs to be made harder. It took me a lot longer than 1 minute to get > 12 pipes in the original.
What's the best engine you've worked with? (just curious)
Good question. In my case, probably not, but it might work for others (I do fairly specialized research; if I drop it, either somebody else will pick it up right away, or it will die altogether).

More likely for me, I think, is that I would develop interest in some other problem area, and just dig in to the new domain. For example, I'm always struck when I hear about the sorts of medical problems that hit people from my wife's village. I don't know anything about medicine, but it feels to me like a focused data collection project could lead to a significant improvement health outcomes.
I think you nailed it. Yes, the algorithms can't figure out all the proper tuning yet.

For instance, the lowest frequency (among the strongest amplitude candidates) is often the bass line, & thus the chord. However, those type of general rules are common, yet often broken to make the music more interesting in the first place. Esp. when notes are "left out" to open things up & let you mind fill it in.
How can people say this without giving the slightest reflection over their own lives and moments of happiness? I've had plenty of moments where desire-satisfaction has granted me happiness. Sometimes even without the satisfaction, the desire itself had given me a sense of worth and a life path that I found exciting and joyful.
It has begun!

The planetary forces aligned for this miracle to happen.
I would love to hear your thoughts about how your intellectual curiosity is being stimulated with Flappy2048. Because so far there is not a single insightful response. I suppose one could argue the emotional state of meditation through rhythmic controls. On the other hand, there appears to be no curious minds here so the argument is moot.
Many first-time entrepreneurs have raised more than $100M. They started with small amounts and showed great results at each stage.
Getting to the point where that's in the eye of the beholder. Those intimately experienced with nuances of rendering may see glaring indications of unrealism, but many are starting to just not see the difference. At one extreme we have movie CGI special effects which nobody notices isn't real; at the other are viewers who don't notice a 4:3 frame stretched across a 16:9 screen.
This whole thing reminds me of Autonomous Corporations [1]. It's generally better when things take care of themselves.

So Skynet was a delinquent? We're back to William Gibson's corporations as AI-led super organisms?
Can you recommend how to learn this? I don't work with the web or networking, and would like to shore up that part of my knowledge. Are there any good books that gives the high-level overview of it all?
That is a pretty good list of recommendations, but I have a couple criticisms.

The recommendations are mostly low-level. None of them are wrong, but they put undue burden on developers to get details right. For example, the AES-CTR recommendation doesn't talk about nonce management, but this is critical to the security of the construction. Application developers should always use the highest-level cryptographic constructions they can get away with. As such, many of these bullet points could be replaced with a recommendation to use PGP or NaCl.

Also, the list skimps on random number recommendations. It talks a bit about how big numbers should be, but it doesn't discuss sources. This is really important as RNG is a weak point in many systems. Short answer: use /dev/urandom.
Very nice and easy to use.
Yeah your comment was the first thing I thought of when I saw the title
Depends on what you mean by "sucked".

PLA, 303, cdc/l0pht, DoC ... there was precious little technical skill there (although there was some).

However, I'll take a CuervoCon over a pycon and a swamp ratte stage performance over a Steve Jobs presentation any day of the week.
This is nonsense. If the "media industry" can't survive, it doesn't deserve to. It's certainly not anyone else's duty to figure out for them what they haven't figured out for going on two decades now.

The "media industry," specifically the companies involved in lawsuits against regular people don't deserve anything but to be gutted and killed. The situation has been beyond legislation or a decent solution for many years. You can't expect the same customers who you sued in court to come back and buy products from you, let alone figure out your industry's problems. The quicker they die the better for everyone involved.
Ask HN: Webmail with some "Privacy"
I am looking for a new email provider - one that offers me more "privacy" than gmail, outlook, yahoo etc., I have been looking quite a bit and have yet to find something decent, so am coming to you all for advice.

Partly this is my small act of defiance/revenge for large internet companies collusion with the NSA et al. and partly because I would like to increase my level of "privacy."
Requirements:

1. Webmail
2. pop3/imap
3. Free for the above
4. Privacy friendly jurisdiction (or perhaps just a jurisdiction unlikely to comply with U.S. requests)

Optional, but preferred:
1. English interface
2. Encrypted (i.e. the service provider can't read my mail even if they wanted to)

Logic:
As I mentioned part of this is moral/activist motivation, but a large part of this is motivated by the old saw about "not having to outrun the bear, just having to outrun you!" Weirdly I believe that my email correspondence is no one's business but my own, and therefore I'd like to ratchet up that "hassle factor" of invading my privacy. I suppose I am not completely opposed to paying, but would prefer the option of maybe having a completely anonymous account as well. Also I should say I have neither the will nor the desire to get overly complex about this (running my own mail server etc.) I'd just like to be able to not be the feudal serf of google/yahoo/microsoft/etc.

From a threat assessment standpoint:
A. Specific targeting by government agency (NSA etc.): I'm screwed - so not going to worry about it.
B. Bulk Collection/Dragnet Surveillance: Would like to increase the burden of "collecting" my information.
C. Criminal/Civil Investigations: Jurisdiction should be effective impediment.
D. Hackers: want a robust provider, not fly by night.

Any thoughts would be appreciated, even if you think I'm missing the forest for the trees.
Blacklist. The original got there. It was too addicting.
Yeah, but all those Unity programmers agree with me.
Thank you thank you thank you.

What's worse is when you see sites running JavaScript from multiple analytics companies, social media companies, and CDNs - even on pages that should be private (login forms, personal details, etc.). It's even worse when those sites break without those scripts. This is a concern that far too many developers overlook. I made this (harsh) comment [0] on such a site posted to HN a few months ago.

CDNs are way overrated, from what I've seen. I think, for most use cases, you're better off avoiding the multiple HTTP requests and just compressing all your JavaScript into a single file. Serve that from your own server and you'll save the client from another domain name resolution too.

Do yourself a favor and install NoScript. For one thing, it will show you how easily Google can (or, could have) track your internet usage - and, as you pointed out, so much more. In my experience, about 50% of sites serve scripts from some Google domain.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7187593
This game would be incomprehensible but for the recent news coverage. But it's still really funny.
so, he knows how to pump and dump and abandon customers... A PERFECT YC FIT!
truly nice looking charts. Wondering, if the colors and other styles built-in or the user has to define them?

Also, seems only IE10+ version is supported, wondering what prevents the library from working on IE9, since (I think) svg is supported on v9 as well.
On the contrary, your self-deprecating swipe is easily countered by searching 'dotcom' at the bottom of the page.

The popular consensus seems to be either a) great marketer or b) self-serving scumbag, definitely short of 'hero.'
No. They were only prevented from speaking about how many they received, and still are except in broad buckets. The existence of NSLs and the fact that they were about collecting certain users' data have both been directly confirmed by all parties since NSLs existed.
Weird how the "morals over personal gain" argument works as both a pro- and anti- libertarian point.
Really? I haven't been in either place, but everything I've heard about California says it's a great place if you're a single twenty-year-old geek but a dreadful place to grow up in; intuitively I would have thought moving to South America would be ideal for the kids if they have US citizenship and therefore the right to move back to Silicon Valley later, if and when they are in the situation of being single twenty-year-old geeks?
Thanks for the great article and congrats on your Stripe offer. Great company to work for.

Despite the great story of your general interview process, I am quite interested in the hiring process of Stripe. What is its interview like? What do you think probably make you got the offer?
It's pleasing to me that writers like OP shed light on the folly of the personal productivity and efficiency arms race. Reminds me of the adage: "Don't just do something, sit there!"
Nepotism at TED?
Use any email provider. Encrypt your messages with PGP.
$19 for access to the Unreal 4 codebase, 5% of revenue. Have at it!
This is very important.

One of the best skills you can develop as a freelancer is to read between the lines when doing client development. Some clients say they want a freelancer, but what they really want is a full-time, remote employee. They won't necessarily know that about themselves, and if they don't, they won't articulate it directly. So you need to get good at sussing things out.

Taking a pseudo-freelance, client-demands-full-time gig and trying to compress it into ~10 hours a week is a recipe for disaster. You won't please the client, you'll drive yourself insane, and you'll end up resenting the work.

The biggest favor you can do for yourself is to discriminate ahead of time. Determine which sorts of jobs, and which sorts of clients, fit with your model. Accept the ones that do; turn down the ones that don't. (Don't be afraid to refer someone who doesn't fit your model to a freelancer you know who is a better fit. It's just a good-karma thing.)
No apology necessary, as there isn't a useful distinction between "form" and "substance" here = )

My dev background is in the Clojure community, where Rich sets a strong tone about the importance of discussing tradeoffs.
We outlined those tradeoffs explicitly on the site because that's always what's on the forefront of my mind when making a technical decision.
I'm glad you found it helpful.
Yes, I think those risks can be eliminated with some elbow grease since there's no need to load this app off a live server.

Instead, one would download a specific version as a tarball with a verifiable checksum that indicates the source is equivalent to the version audited by the community on GitHub. The app is then loaded & run locally.

In addition, you could control network access if you wrap it in its own OS-native custom browser app and use a firewall that controls outgoing connections. (Like LittleSnitch on OS X.) That is, create a thin shell around WebKit uniquely for use with this web app, and control its network access.

(I think the two measures are redundant, but hey, if you're going to be paranoid...)
Why do we need another one?

Because this one is much simpler to use than Jekyll and doesn't require you to install Ruby.
A heuristic to mitigate this problem: decentralization.
Decentralize power production. Decentralize food production. Decentralize communication networks. Decentralize manufacturing.

Decentralize also creates robust systems which will make it easier to recover from such an event.
Ok, "2048" game mods are officially an HN meme. Let's keep it going. What version is next?
Not just that, but chance meetings with powerful people are one key way in which to advance: one makes a good impression for a brief moment in the stairwell; one makes an even better impression at the business function; one is able to answer a few key questions; one performs well when given a small piece of greater responsibility; one advances.

Or one could make a good impression for a brief moment in the stairwell, then brush the powerful person off in public, where (rest assured) other people who know how the game is played (and how the metagame is played, and how the metametagame is played...) see--and not advance.
Does this assumption also include the other half of the World ignoring the affected? You raise some excellent points, but I think for chaos levels to reach society-crumbling status, it'd need to stop the whole World.

Then absolutely, it would be devastating and the resulting power-struggle when trying to maintain order within so many ranks of authority throughout various Governments would end in disaster.

However, if the other half of the World is relatively unscathed, I don't think they would let the other half just fall into oblivion.
I would cancel my premium Spotify subscription if they ever did anything like that and would resort back to buying music from iTunes.
I think that doesn't apply to very long time horizon projects. You might not have anything to show investors as progress until 10 years down the road. You either need enough money upfront or personal money to put in along the way.
Does this mean that Creative Market will start to offer 3D / product designs? Is an integrated route to market for industrial designers embedded into the AutoCAD family on the road map?
I disagree wholeheartedly.

If your world was flipped upside down -- say we had AI built tomorrow that could code. Would you deserve to survive?

I would say it would depend. If you're open to change and new opportunities, then yes, you deserve to survive. If the rate of change is great enough, sometimes you need help.
A few years ago I decided that I wanted more free time to work on side projects, travel, whatever, and I made what I thought was a rather reasonable offer to my current employer and a couple of suitors.

I said "pay me 3/5ths of the salary you just offered me and I'll work 3 days a week". I also offered to keep this arrangement flexible so that I could work in stretches of varying lengths if needed.

This did not go over well. People were actually offended by this proposition and it went nowhere.

As a founder myself, I understand the desire to only hire people that will give you their full heart and soul. But, I'm also a practical person and if someone's skills are valuable to me, then they are very likely still valuable in part.

In fact, when it comes to a product/engineering position, I think the employer would come out on top in such a scenario. They still get access to the person's brain and all of their knowledge and ideas. For someone that's being offered high compensation, their knowledge and ideas are probably a big part of the reason why.
This is great news. Many colleges and universities have been focusing on these types of startups for the past 5-10 years for their own VC type competitions, and now YC is seeing the value in them too. Hopefully many others will follow suit. Rock Health has been doing this for a while and has been pretty successful in the biotech/healthcare scene.
I look forward to tomorrow's post that solves this with AI. (I suppose it is intended as an AI challenge, as that would be the only way to get to 2048.)

I think this would be harder, at least for me, to solve with a bot than any of the previous submissions. Might actually be a fun exercise...

Here's a Flappy Bird bot that got up to 200+. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiomqZhUgUc
Gravity Wave Finding Hasn't Been Peer-Reviewed–Does It Matter?
Well I personally find clarity in the history of things — they provide context and a narrative for the topic in question. You don't start a class on warfare with Afghanistan, for instance, or even WWII. It's worth going back to the beginning, if only for a cursory look at how wars were fought, how innovations came about and when, and which of them is still influential.

Similarly, with crypto, I think it's about understanding how and why cryptography emerged, and learning about the arms race it developed into as people went from decoder-ring level encryption to the present state of the art. Knowing when and why key exchanges were first created, how they were broken back then, why one-time pads are still useful in some circumstances, and so on I think contributes to a larger understanding, something that exceeds a technical one - and I also believe that will lead to better implementation (though I don't have much to back that up).

Also, there are interesting stories in there. Learning why Enigma was unbreakable, and subsequently how it was broken and the attending circumstances, informed as they were by politics and strategic warfare, is a lesson not in cyphers, but in cryptography. I think that's important, though obviously that is not OP's goal! I just think it should the way one starts — at the beginning.
Just hold out for the AI version someone probably just forked and is working on.
Sony, Oculus, and Virtual Reality
I have found it is next to impossible to get more than 0.01% of my contacts to do that...so until someone figures out how to make pgp as easy as gmail, i'd like an alternative
It does not add complexity if your project already makes use of require.js, it is literally specifying an array of paths for a library instead of a simple string.

If my server is not available, my web application will ultimately fail anyway.
I feel like Richard Feynman always had a good take on this:

“I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of uncertainty about different things, but I am not absolutely sure of anything and there are many things I don't know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we're here. I don't have to know an answer. I don't feel frightened not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without any purpose, which is the way it really is as far as I can tell.”
The down-vote just proved my point. Thank you!
San Francisco Home Sale Map
OMG:) What's next? Donation system based on commits?
It's a huge shift in terms of funding levels. Instead of getting $100k to build a focused software startup focusing essentially on a single "simple" problem, you usually need around $10-$100 million to get started on these big problems.

On the other hand, one can start with $100k which is mainly used to secure the rest of the funding.

This new "shift" is essentially what the Founders Fund is trying to do.
As a typical dev, I have no idea how to uninstall things that were installed via easy_install, especially when it was thrown into the places sudo lets it go. So every time I see `sudo easy_install`, I just close the page I'm on.