skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The best testimonial I've seen for Obnam is that Joey Hess is using it.

http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/trying_obnam/
Well, I bet those that are nit-picky will still correct others like

+ It's "Ask HN" not "Ask"

+ Come on man, grammar, "If we could erase all of the"

+ Were you too lazy to put a space after the comma? "over,how" {Add some other insults here}

+ You sound a lot like someone in Brazil, it should be "how would it look like?" rather than what you have there.

But then there are those that shrug and move on, not wasting their energy or frustration on such silly little things (with their help).

I expect that web developers would panic initially at the loss of all their documentation--but they are now aware that graphics designers and typographers have existed this whole time and recreate grids and other things.

Standards would definitely come out with different quirks, but probably not as much as IE6 brought (and kept) to the market.
Not to mention the brainpower. Most devs spend enough cycles during the day, and frequently on very tedious details. Who wants to spend more cycles thinking about a few bucks when all they want to do is unwind and watch a flick or two?
You're dealing with terrible project maintainers then. Refactoring is super, super important and any project that rejects it must have a strange codebase.

Either that or the project owners/maintainers have a lot of pride.
I'm a Google SRE, and the first place I go when faced with a complicated problem is the whiteboard (if collaborating with others) or the legal pad (if I'm trying to figure it out myself).

If collaborating with others in a remote office, I begrudgingly make a Google doc and treat it like a whiteboard.

Most of what we do involves enormously complicated systems with lots of nodes and RPC flows between those nodes, different pathways depending on the flavor of the RPC, systems spread out in different metros around the world... it's very difficult to visualize all that complexity in your head if you've never seen it on a cocktail napkin.

For example, just last week I sketched out a diagram inspired by the famous visualization of Napoleon's campaign to Moscow (http://www.aviz.fr/wiki/uploads/Research/minard.jpg), primarily to help me wrap my head around a complicated RPC flow (at the first node, 32% of the RPCs are classified as XYZ. Each of those spawns 3 new RPCs that go here and 1 that goes over there...) When I got stuck, I called over a colleague, and he was able to immediately see, just by looking, where I was going wrong, and with a few strokes of the marker, set me straight.

I later turned it into a spreadsheet so I could use it to explain the model to others. Also, it was nice to be able to use worksheet functions to do the math. But I never would have been able to get that far that fast without starting at the whiteboard.
I have an interview with Google this week. I've expressed my interest in security to the recruiter 3-4 times and I have been told I will be interviewing as a software engineer (aka....a data structures and algorithms interviewing...)....

Doesn't make sense to me, the things they do. I've had bad experiences with several of the big tech guys now...

Too bad you were denied but I'm sure it will all work out for you. In my opinion computer science is really cool because if you want to be really good you don't have to work at a big tech company. You can learn in your cube, learn at home, learn wherever. It is so easy to network and be with other smart people that you don't need them and they need you.
Counterexample: Pao's husband sued his employer for discrimination and made a sweet million:

Fletcher sued his employer, brokerage Kidder Peabody, for discrimination and won $1.3 million in 1991.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/kleiner-perkins-ellen-pao-law...
Wow, compressing the code further by doing find-replaces on the code. That is hardcore.
> There are millions of great controllers out there with good D-pads you can buy.

I'm open to suggestions. The Xbox 360 controller I have hooked to my PC is about the best I can find, and the d-pad on it is pretty terrible, but just on this side of usable.

I have drawer full of other old controllers as well because the d-pads were virtually unusable.

The original NES d-pad, which Nintendo has wisely brought forward on all their consoles, is simply the best 8-directional digital control interface ever designed -- it's so good it absolutely ended the age of joysticks as a home control interface.

A few comments here mention the Sega pads which are a very close second IMHO.

About the only device I've found with a reasonable d-pad alternative is my GP2x Wiz, which is weird at first, but ends up being a pretty good control interface. Even Sony's d-pad alternatives, which are better than the 360s, barely compare.

Since it's now basically free to use, there's very little reason for everybody to not just put the Nintendo d-pad on their stuff.

> none that come even close to comparing to a mouse.

True, but a mouse is a terrible interface for platformers, fighters, and basically the entire genre of gaming genres from pre-N64 pre-dual shock times.

That's why, if you're going to offer a controller with a new style of analog interface intended to replace a mouse, the complementary 8-way digital parts better be rock solid awesome.
My approach is to work on bugs I encounter and that I am capable of fixing. So far that has lead to contributes to SimianArmy, Ganglia, Anemometer, and Logstash. Just be a good community member and get in where you fit in.
You can play 4096 on android

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.runningwit...
The xbox 360 controller d-pad is pretty bad.
I agree the paid catalog is nice and am generally happy buying content from Amazon over other choices.

Ignoring selection, Amazon does a _much_ worse job at actually streaming content then Netflix. I subscribe to both (for now, I likely will not renew Prime) and sometimes switch between them in the same evening. Without exception, Amazon will show more compression artifacts, be slower to start, and generally lower quality then Netflix. Add to that the fact that Netflix has apps for almost everything and they are generally well maintained and attractive, whereas Amazon barely supports the Roku with a clunky interface, forget about from IOS or Chromecast.
fungi precluded trees

s/precluded/preceded/ (not to be confused with proceeded).
Am I truly that alone in not liking split keyboards? I can certainly use one, if I have to. I much prefer the standard flat keyboard, though.

Of course, I confess that I have been lucky enough to never have any problems from one. I fully understand those that need it for medical reasons. I just don't know as that I would choose it if I didn't need it. (Rather, I know I would not.)
This never presses the down key. A small correction so it'll move randomly in all directions

function step() {
var eventObj = document.createEvent("Events");
eventObj.initEvent("keydown", true, true);
eventObj.which = 37 + Math.floor(Math.random(0, 1)*4);
document.dispatchEvent(eventObj);
}
int = setInterval(step, 0.001);
I got 4 x 16s first row, 4 x 8s second row, 4 x 4s 3rd row and 4 x 2s on last row just by pressing up.

Then it says game over.

This is wrong because I should be able to shift left / right and merge those same numbers that are matching in a row.

It seems it is game over if all 16 cells are filled in regardless if a move is still possible.
If he really wanted to call out lockin, he'd be shouting about Apple's lockin from the highest parapet, as they are much worse than just about everyone else out there (Microsoft included!). But of course this is Marco, so I was surprised when he called out Apple at all.

I'm an Amazon Prime customer who has experienced no lockin, so I'm not sure what Marco is going on about.
Are you being purposely obtuse? The root of this entire thread was around the use of the word "Queen" to criticize a female coworker. Please don't take my point out of context. If you really want to have a argument over semantics, then I'll amend my original argument to say "veiled gender pronouns".
I did not know that it was American government that invented light bulb, electric motor, transistors, IC chips and so on.
I think that's the point, since one of the key strategies to this game is to only use 3 of the direction keys.
>Our generation doesn't have a NASA or Bell Labs.

Bell Labs was a private corporation.
Hmm, really? I had tried it a while back, but it took around five minutes to back up around a megabyte over local SSH. I don't think I'd list speed as one of its advantages.
OOP in keyboard firmware? Am I the only one who finds this quite a lot more complex than it needs to be?

> The fact that I2C communication blocks immediately is important. Button debouncing is done by counting the number of "frames" for which a key is in a certain state.

The obvious solution for this is to synchronise the I2C clock to the matrix scanning loop, so you receive/send one bit each time through the loop. Even better, do away with the I2C overhead completely and use a continuous serial protocol between the two halves.
True, but then you could have potential issues like people running old computers who send 100 or more legitimate emails per day. They won't want to wait 1 - 10 minutes for their computer to spin away every time. They also probably don't want to leave their computer running all night just to get enough tokens for the next day.

CAPTCHA is not a nice option, but compared to the alternatives it's probably the best we're going to get.
I don't think one should be surprised when they focus on the things you claim to be good at. They probably have a large pool of interviewers, so they can choose one with a deep knowledge in your specialist areas to chat with you.
Huh? Isn't it a question of whether you are doing matrix or array ops, so the type system is the issue? I have rarely needed to do elementwide multiply on matrices, and if I do, in Eigenproblem I can just call mat.array() to get an ArrayView.

Really, the problem is that NumPy is a crappily designed library primarily intended for array ops, and is just not well suited for linear algebra.
Hydro wins:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:EROI_-_Ratio_of_Energy_Ret...

I guess it is highly unfriendly to the local environment though (on the other hand, we already did most of the damage in the good spots).

There is also the "high enough" factor. If things got awkward, we could run a civilization on solar PV, and even devote some of the energy production to increasing the total energy production.

(I sort of expect the cost curve on solar to start to bend quite a lot faster in the next few years; it's reached the point where it almost beats the grid without subsidies)
Robin Hood: Doge Edition
No, my argument boils down to "cryptostorm doesn't know who you are". They isolated their accounting (the part that has to collect money and ties an individual to an account) from their VPN service. They compartmented their operations from their business. So their customers are anonymous to them.

You purchase an access token (time limited from first use) from a third party (cryptostorm offers bulk rates for resellers). The entity which sells the tokens is based in a First Nation in Canada, meaning it has reduced legal attack surface. This entity is distinct and separate from cryptostorm.is the VPN service provider. They are compartmented and share no information. Neither one has sufficient information to link a specific individual to any activity.

That's the beauty of what they've done, they've made it so that you don't have to trust them. As I said, they could be compromised and log everything, it doesn't matter. They cannot tie an account to an individual. That's the problem that they solved. They removed trust from the equation.

Now, indeed, you should not use a VPN for anonymity. That is not what they are designed for and that is not what they are capable of providing. However, given that the cryptostorm VPN service can only know:

* you originating IP,

* your (anonymous) token ID, and

* the packet stream that exits their servers...

You can easily ensure a level of anonymity to your internet usage by accessing the VPN from an IP that is not associated with you (eg public library, coffee shop, etc). Provided you maintain discipline and never access it from an IP "owned" by you, they cannot know who you are.

I've spoken and written before about how VPNs are not tools for anonymity. A recent example is a "no logs" VPN used to catch a kid sending bomb threats to his school [0]. A VPN service is essentially just a proxy, and no single hop proxy is going to deter a nation state level actor. VPNs are tools for privacy, circumventing stupid IP restrictions, and evading (some) network access controls. They're not safe for robust clandestine activity.

I've spoken with them and they are competent, have been doing VPNs for years, and are passionate about privacy and security. That doesn't mean I trust them. The beauty of their architecture is that I don't have to.

[0]: http://grugq.tumblr.com/post/73393664323/no-logs-earthvpn-us...
Buy my social insights company
I'm going to reject the premise of this question, because I think it will lead to disagreement. I think you first need to ask what goals would a redesigned internet seek to fix/maximize. Would we be designing for increased security, with some sort of key exchange embedded into low-level protocols? Would we be designing for lack of control, where no country or corporation can gain undue control over a large part of the infrastructure? Would we be designing for future-proofing, to minimize the impact of migrations to improved protocols? Or would we focus on other problems that people feel exist in our current implementation?

Basically, there are a lot of things that people consider problematic about the internet, but not everyone agrees on that. Following the GRPI model (http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/GRPI.html), we'd first need to align on the goals for this project. To skip right to the end result will result in people solving different problems and arriving at very different results.

Personally, I think the three areas I identified above are the most important goals for the redesign. I think core protocols, whether low-level, like TCP, or higher, like SMTP, should be designed to require encryption. I'd want to remove centralized organizations like ICANN and even well-behaving organizations like IANA and the regional registries. I don't know if its possible to prevent consolidation of internet infrastructure, like the long-haul backbones, but we could optimize protocols for mesh networks and local connections to make it as easy as possible to avoid last-mile monopolies.

One of the technologies that I think we could learn from would be BitCoin. While I'm not really in favor of it as a currency, you could use a similar strategy as a replacement for DNS registrations and IP assignments. With a large enough address space, you could simply "mine" the addresses you'd want to use in the same way that BitCoins are mined. And domain names could be mined in the same way. The blockchain would be huge, but you'd have a way to issue a signed route to your IP address.
The parent called it a vanity project.
That strikes me as a bit of an odd stance to take. While refactoring is certainly a portion of the work done to most any project, I wouldn't think that refactoring would be attractive as a first commit for someone who may be viewed as an outsider to a project.

Even if you overlook that getting code that matches a projects style guides might be rarer than it should be refactoring (at least in most cases that I need to deal with it) requires a good understanding of how everything fits together and a better idea of how it should work. There are some simple cases in which this might not be the case at all, such as grouping together a whole bunch of copypasta style code, but even under those circumstances any refactoring is likely to yield a fair bit of work for the maintainer to verify (regressions/style/changed organization) with fairly limited benefit.

As such it doesn't really seem that effective to try to impose something like this on a project without a good justification. If a good justification can be made, then sure refactor away, but otherwise the maintainer would logically think that the work was a waste of everyone's time.
Anything you can study up for in a couple of weeks is also something you can learn on the job. What's the point of throwing a perfectly good candidate into an unfamiliar situation without any prep? When you actually get the job, there are plenty of people around to help you learn new skills.
How come only programmers and data scientists are treated to such a ridiculous process? Why aren't managers and marketers given pop quizzes and domain-relevant puzzles to solve?
Which ones are they? I always enjoy people talking about their projects on HN.
If that's how you felt then you're probably right.
I vote for solid state!

Voting for stat-mech almost seems like cheating :)
You might want to see a counselor about your crippling interpersonal inadequacy. I think after you clear up your mental health issues you might be less insanely fixated on shoehorning meaningless occurrences into the framework of your delusions.
Interesting that you bring that up, because I'm currently suffering from that exact situation (working under such a manager).
>Amazon Instant Video is _much_ better than Netflix Streaming

>I didn't buy Prime to get the videos, but the videos aren't s small feature

>I don't think streaming media is at all out of place in Amazon's core offering.

When you put these statements together, it illustrates the problem: bundling. Worse, involuntary bundling.

You take a service that people love, which is more oriented around physical goods, then you smash in a service that many of those people may not want, but you charge everyone for the whole ball of wax anyway.

It may not be so out of place for Amazon to offer streaming media, but there is nothing particularly synergistic about discount shipping and streaming media. Loving one does not mean you'll care for the other (or wouldn't at least want the option to choose another service).

If they wanted to offer a discount for their streaming service to Prime members or optional upgrade, that's one thing. But, forcing it on existing members, then eventually raising prices is not very customer-friendly. In fact, it's somewhat hostile.

And, that's another key part of this: Amazon has long been known as very customer-focused. Of course, Prime itself at one time felt customer-centric. But, moves like this feel very much like Amazon is becoming more Amazon-centric.

I suppose we shouldn't be too surprised. They've been laying the foundation for some time at the expense of their bottom line. Perhaps this is just the beginning of the end of that phase.
Ask HN: AdSense ad that autoloads app store when viewed?
I'm running AdSense on a sports forum and noticing that one ad for an Evony-style game appears to be able to auto-redirect to the App Store when the page is loaded on iOS. Anyone else seen this and how is this getting past Google's reviews?
Companies facing gender harassment lawsuits need to purge assholes or risk going out of business. In other words, your solution reduces to solution #1.
Wow! thank you for sharing your experience, I've just started the interview process for Google SRE and I found this very valuable. It looks like a tough road but I'll do my best. Thank you!
Bizspark removed Windows Azure credits?
Code Combat (YC W14) is a game that teaches people to program. It's been entirely open sourced and the devs/community make it extremely simple for new comers to contribute. I strongly recommend you check them out!

https://github.com/codecombat/codecombat
Damn, I like everything else about that product too.

What a shame.
It's a pity you don't teach C++, the LibreOffice team are amazing!
Sounds like you have a LAN problem. AC66U, iPhone/iPad/MBP, ATV 3, gigabit LAN, and a 12/1 connection and I stream like a stream (Internet, AirPlay, whatever).
Or the refactor doesn't make sense...
Minimal cli 2048 in haskell
How I rebuilt "Flying Toasters" using only CSS animations
She may not be easily able to.
Disposable paper microscope developed for detecting malaria
I don't know what @drakaal is trying to say, but here is the wikipedia page on non-blocking algorithms.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-blocking_algorithm

Node.js is said to run an a single-threaded "non-blocking" event loop. Whenever i/o is performed, you give a callback which is invoked when the i/o is completed, either with success or error.
I don't expect the NYT to have a multi-century sense of historical perspective, but is a multi-decade sense of perspective too much to ask? The present government-funded model of science was created by Vannevar Bush less than seventy years ago—"in the lives of those now living."
Transparency: final numbers on an indie film
The logical conclusion to this sequence is somebody making the polar opposite of this entry. Namely, a game called 2. It's a 1x1 grid, and you begin in the winning state.
The interviews cover a lot of potential material in depth and I think the perspective is that not everyone works with all of those topics frequently and may need a refresher. Since Google knows what skills they want the interviewees to have, they share that information so the interviewee can round themselves out so that Google can identify their potential fairly. Like I said before, my experience was that Google tried very hard to avoid turning people away because they accidentally hit a weak spot or quizzed them on some bit of trivia.

For me, the preparation was primarily:

* honing the skills I did have to make sure I was comfortable using them in a tense situation

* refreshing and re-honing some things I hadn't seen in a while (some since college)

* filling in some gaps of knowledge (so I could connect the dots in an in-depth explanation better)

* preparing my thought process for the types of questions I'd have

The last one is subtle but important. If the interviewee has a good idea of what is expected of them, they can converge on a good path quickly and avoid going down rabbit holes or wasting 15 minutes trying to get on the same page as the interviewer.

As a side point:

> doesn't that mean your current skills aren't a good fit

Don't they really care about your skills at the time of being hired (which they approximate by measuring them at the time of the interview)?