skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
See, but this just shows that even those who think they are educated car shoppers actually aren't. Dealers never sell cars at zero or negative profit, unless you ignore things like holdback (a rebate on the wholesale price of the car when the car is sold at retail) or factory quota incentives (a "bonus" for dealers who sell a certain number of certain models of cars in a particular month). If you think you got the car for below cost, chances are you forgot to factor in holdback or you just pushed the dealer over the edge for a big fat manufacturer bonus check.
The biggest take away from this is that bots were driving the price up, and preventing its fall.

"Bots" offer a lot of stability to the market because they don't react to bad news. Though an error can cause "flash crashes" As happened in May of 2010 on the stock market.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Flash_Crash
No? I think it's something they want to do, there's a reference to it in the recent blog post[0]: "The new TextSecure push transport is a federated protocol, and inter-operates transparently with the CyanogenMod deployment of the TextSecure protocol to their 10MM+ users a few months ago."

I gotta say, while I can't really fault them for not releasing the software as quickly as I'd wish they did, I do think their communication could be a bit better. I still have no idea how, for instance, the CM integration works on either the user interface or the technical level. The inter-operability may be transparent; it certainly is oblique. ;)

Don't get me wrong, though, I like what they're doing and I'm looking forward to seeing more.

[0] https://whispersystems.org/blog/the-new-textsecure/
Well, this is one product that you can say the developers are NOT dogfooding.
I think this is true:

"For a technology startup with limited resources, broadly adopting a new DBMS means betting its own future on the DBMS. "

It has become popular to attack MongoDB, but I think it is difficult to get an objective view of what people are doing with it. If you want to read a really scathing attack on MongoDB, consider this post:

http://www.sarahmei.com/blog/2013/11/11/why-you-should-never...

But I recall reading that essay and thinking "These people don't want a document store, they want a relational database" and most of their criticism amounts to "MongoDB is not a relational database."

In my experience, you have to love map/reduce if you are going to have a positive experience with MongoDB. I mean this in the abstract sense: both your project and your mind need to be able to fit with that pattern of data flow that is called map/reduce. I'm thinking of map/reduce in broad terms: use a filter to get some data, use reduce to produce some aggregate.

I will here briefly mention a criticism I have of relational databases. Consider Wikipedia's explanation of Edgar F. Codd's life:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_F._Codd

"Codd's theorem, a result proven in his seminal work on the relational model, equates the expressive power of relational algebra and relational calculus (which, in essence, is equivalent to first-order logic)."

and Codd's theorem:

"The domain independent relational calculus queries are precisely those relational calculus queries that are invariant under choosing domains of values beyond those appearing in the database itself. That is, queries that may return different results for different domains are excluded. An example of such a forbidden query is the query "select all tuples other than those occurring in relation R", where R is a relation in the database. Assuming different domains, i.e., sets of atomic data items from which tuples can be constructed, this query returns different results and thus is clearly not domain independent. Codd's Theorem is notable since it establishes the equivalence of two syntactically quite dissimilar languages: relational algebra is an imperative, variable-free language, while relational calculus is a logical language with variables and quantification."

Clearly, this assumes that the relations among the data are known. I work mostly with early stage startups. The entrepreneurs I work with have no real idea about what relations they want establish among their data. They are an exploratory phase. I believe these entrepreneurs should be described as "pre Codd". If you force them to specify relations among their data, you will get answers exactly as useful as these:

http://blog.jimmyr.com/Funny_student_Exam_Answers_13_2008.ph...

MongoDB is useful in this context. Start acquiring data. Don't pretend you know what your schema is. You do not know what your schema is. The entrepreneur who perfectly understands what sort of data they want, and what the relations will be among the different sets of data, before the startup has launched, is a bit like Newton and Einstein: you can expect 1 such person every 200 years.
I would use CanCan ability.rb file for that: https://github.com/CanCanCommunity/cancancan
Anywhere in the world in three words
Last time I tried to get a prepaid card I still had to give out a bunch of personal info.
Regarding your last paragraph, I believe the only item that requires routine service is the tires.
While more interesting than the first part, it should be noted that the policy does not solve the same problem as the one they had originally, where different fail reasons led to different URLs.

If you only intend to redirect to one url in case of fail, then using normal validations (possibly on a service object implementing ActiveModel::Validations will suffice and produce as simple code as their solution.

Which isn't saying that I dislike it, only that it is quite equivalent with a separate service model without controller integration.
One day, something incredibly bad will happen. When that day comes, AirBnB is going to need a monumental war-chest.
The fingerprints are only because that's the only way to prove with a high level of confidence that the same person isn't repeatedly visiting the same ATM using different (faked) identities. This has been a big concern of the lawyers, FinCEN, and LE.

The bank doesn't have to do that because a human being can be reasonably confident that he/she isn't repeatedly serving the same person using different identities.

Also, note that the federal government has asserted that Bitcoin doesn't fall under the same laws as foreign exchanges, but rather as banks (see FinCEN's first guidance document on virtual currencies). A court could rule against this interpretation, but it's pretty unlikely.

EDIT: I should add there's a lot of grey area here as to what constitutes proper KYC procedures in this instance. I personally think a simple photograph would probably satisfy's FinCEN's concerns, but I've decided not to operate this kind of device, so it's not my own ass that's on the line. I can certainly sympathize with anyone who wants to be extra careful here since federal prosecutors and agents have been so zealous in this area.
I'm referring to this: http://gmailblog.blogspot.de/2013/05/try-out-new-hangouts-ex...

It's still opt-in, at least for me.
Car dealers don't solve distribution problems from 100 years ago. They didn't have these sorts of distribution problems 100 years ago, and the first car dealers were simply manufacturer storefronts.

Car dealers solve the risk management function. Selling cars is a risky business. Car makers are in the business of making cars, which is significantly different business activity with a wholly different risk profile and operational needs.

Tesla can sell direct to customers because its small enough now that the localized retail/inventory risks aren't significant. This business model (of manufacturer-owned dealers) simply won't scale to a national level.
I honestly have no idea what happens if two people try to connect to the same game! Let me know.
> Section 702 is not the only legal authority the US government possesses to harvest data transiting the internet.
I have a little bit by way of Haskell chops, and I'll venture that the performance of the Hack typechecker is a very big deal, and it is in a different breed than the turnaround time you get from snap or yesod (or Java).
Programmers of the world: please stop with the 2048 clones. We have jobs to do. Partners to attend to. Friends to acknowledge. Pets to feed. Plants to water. Have some mercy already!
Er, `paste serve --reload` restarts small-to-medium Python projects faster than I can alt-tab, which is actually faster than my static blog engine can regenerate itself too.
That's a fair point. One would need to put more effort into researching the manufacturer.
This spawns 1's and expects me to get to 16384. So that'll take about 16383 moves then?
Better integration for open web apps on Android
Having been @ Docker for about 9 months, all I can say is I am blown away by the incredible involvement from the community and the vibrant ecosystem that has been created as a result.

While it has been an amazing year, I am even more excited every day about future prospects and momentum we're collectively building in the industry. This is only the beginning.
I know this isn't the point of your comments, but I'll take the opportunity to point out that Ruby has a case statement that reads a lot better for code like this:

case
when user.blacklisted?
# ... code ...
when grouper.full?
# ... code ...
# ... and so on ...
end
Feels like I'm playing 2048 drunk. Every move requires a little thought to make sure I'm moving in the right direction. And having two extra sides on the shape is messing with my eyes.
> The fact that this device wanted to establish and verify my identity seemed unnecessary to me and counter to what I think are bitcoin's strongest qualities.

They don't collect that data because they want to, they collect it because they are forced to by the US government. This is a similar process that you would have to go through to open a bank account at any US bank. You make it seem like "It took over 45 minutes" but this was your first withdraw, subsequent withdraws would only require the ~10 minutes to confirm your deposit of BTC into the robocoin wallet. 10 minutes to (reliably) convert BTC to cash is unheard of. As I said in another comment, the only faster method would be to use Local Bitcoins (The people running the ATM you used) but I doubt you could finish one of those transactions in less than 20 or even 30 minutes.
Someone connected, we were playing and then it stopped working. It said it was my turn but it wasn't responding. Refreshing the page made me disconnect.
> It has been observed that the United States will always have a "President"... even if through the vicissitudes of history the President becomes a de facto King, or becomes de facto as powerful as the UK's royalty.

So we'll always have a president as this is a grand American tradition, even if the role is eventually reduced in power to that of a royal. But we'll fill that spot with an AI. Got it. ;)
What a silly joke[1].

Though they are planning to launch additional services [2] @aaronapple below (above?) is right... regulatory changes are on the way.

Right now they're violating the law, don't collect or pay local taxes unlike real hotels, don't bother with ensuring that local rules and regulations are followed.

This will (and should) change soon. Hiding behind the people who rent out their spaces who are "supposed to pay local taxes" won't hold. Customer databases will need to be released to the IRS or local taxes withheld (which [2] indicates they're working on already).

Once they are forced to play on a level playing field, their rates won't be as competitive and their service not as popular.

[1] http://qz.com/190432/airbnb-doesnt-even-own-a-bed-but-its-ba...

[2] http://www.fastcompany.com/3027107/punk-meet-rock-airbnb-bri...
Can people who use non-qwerty keyboard tell me if they have any convenient tricks for playing those html games that almost never let you rebind keys? Having to switch mapping is so inconvenient...

If web gaming becomes a thing I think people should start thinking about a standard way to let people rebind their keys, through the browser or some common library.
Well said. I've tried in the past to articulate the "creator's freedom" that you're talking about. To my view copy middle is the only truly free as in freedom licensing paradigm. But, I also don't think proprietary software is necessarily evil.
"If you copy the code, the license binds and obligates you in the same way it binds and obligates developers who copy the code; there is no distinction."

The distinction arises because of differences in motivation. If I distribute the work, I'm obligated to provide the source. If I have made no changes, who cares? If I was able to refuse to provide the source of unmodified builds, users who wanted the source could just get it from upstream. It's developers who want to make changes and refuse to provide sources that wind up feeling like the GPL is meaningfully restricting them.

"Developers often are users too. And many of the GPLs goals seem to have everything to do with enabling the user to become a developer (or hire one, same difference)."

Very true. That's a freedom it's important to preserve.
Fun stuff. Bryan if this is your site can you add to the plot in the corner a dot with net value change? Assume that all bitcoin "held" are currently worthless, so a holding of 10 btc at the end would be -10*last sale price recorded on the exchange. That would give an interesting idea of which traders "won" the game and which "lost."
Oh, for b) i know a bonmot. Sorry for the image. http://fettemama.org:6502/ed2499a7aa73df6dcefe95fbb649ece3
Hhvm is not a fork of php. To my knowledge it's a radically different codebase that reimplements php's api.
Similar to http://words.steveklabnik.com/rails-has-two-default-stacks ?
john resig- secrets of javascript ninja

absolutely the best
And people disparage them for it, which is nuts. Google had a problem that they determined could best be solved by creating Go. So they did it, and presumably, they've solved their problem. That seems like a perfectly good use of incremental improvement.

Which raises an interesting point: what to people on the outside looks like a paradoxical combination of insane hubris and deep technical conservatism is probably simply what to Google's eyes looks like steady-state, responsible technical problem-solving -- c.f., hhvm and Facebook for a similar approach.
Seriously, let's stop using various 2048 clones to get to the top of the main HN page and get back to work.
The sweet spot that Hack hits is that it combines gradual typing (an idea that hasn't yet seen much real-world adoption) with an incredibly fast typechecker.

This lets you choose the pace and extent to which you want to adopt the safety of static typing, while preserving your dynamically typed code -- and without sacrificing the rapid turnaround of PHP.

That's a unique combination, in my experience.
I am curious too as to how this is the U.S. Government's fault.

To be a money transmitter, it requires that you have a license, and it sounds like Robocoin is trying to mitigate their risk (e.g. losing their license and going out of business) by being able to prove who you are, in case they become party to illegal activity.
> Just so we are clear, you ask why Facebook didn't rewrite 10,000 human-years of code into a mythical unnamed "proper" ...

You don't need to rewrite anything (at least, not all at once.) Personally, I'd have expected you to make something akin to CoffeeScript or ClojureScript that targets PHP, and can "link with" your existing PHP modules (or rather, with their HHVM bytecode representations.) Then treat the PHP code as a constantly-dwindling Big Ball of Mud (http://laputan.org/mud/).
Monopoly? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2y8Sx4B2Sk
Thanks, I will have to look into that if it comes down to Voice becoming unattractive.
The host can't refresh the page, but the guest player can, to reestablish connection. I think if a third person joins it freezes the game, and one of the guests would have to reconnect.
Why is google willfully sabotaging every great product they have all in the name of one terrible one that nobody wants?

Up until about 2010 or so, they were absolutely legendary for their skillful execution of ideas - just the right interface, feature-set, and balance. Time and time again, everything they did they knocked out of the park.

And then, something changed.

Now they are changing what they did right by taking the dumbest moves over and over again - the ones that completely destroys their credibility and alienates their userbase.

Is there a single user anywhere who wants this? I really don't get it.

If google did a survey:

"Are you happy with google voice or would you rather have it in our wacky skype knockoff that you use with our goofy facebook clone?"

I'm trying to think of what it would look like if other companies decided to do a similar thing. It would be like if say, General Mills came out with a terrible wretched artificial sweetener and then decide to put it in every product they sell because well, it's their sweetener - of course they should completely dismantle all of their successful lines in the name of their incredibly unsuccessful one. Duh!

I really hope that they find the John-Scully's who are internally making all these retarded decisions and stop doing what they say - or else they're well on their way to being a has-been. Yet another great company that somehow put a bunch of ivy-league fortune-500 trainwreck-types in charge and then trusted them until it was too late.

In 1999 my friend called Google The next altavista. At this rate, he may be right.
You can get a better deal because of it, but how often do you? Most people do not.

In other words, the current system offers benefits to the best negotiators, and screws everyone else. I'd rather even that out, especially since there will be plenty of competition between car makers anyway.

I don't know that people really get zero-profit or below-cost deals. I'm sure they think they do, but when people say that they're typically (not always, and not saying you're doing this) looking only at the car's invoice price, and ignoring holdbacks.

(For those unaware, manufacturers typically pay out a sum of money to the dealer when the dealer sells the car. This effectively reduces the invoice price of the car but, crucially, doesn't reduce the actual number on the invoice. Thus, you could buy a car "at cost" and the dealer still makes a profit because they get extra money afterwards.)
Ha! Yes. Exactly so.
So by combining code from two different "free" projects the developer would be restricting his users' freedom? Alright. So the developer can't give users that sort of code. The user has to do it himself, that is freedom after all. But doing that, the poor user essentially becomes a developer, and so he cannot distribute his thing to other users. That would be restricting the other users' freedoms. Right?

Or how about this: imagine for a moment I'm not a programmer. I'm just a poor user, and I take some code under GPLv2, fetching it into /tmp as I usually do. Maybe the code doesn't work straight out of the box, so I search a little and find a hack to fix the code (but I'm still not programming it, just applying random advice from the net). Cool, I get the code working, install it into ~/home/ or /usr/local, whatever. After some days a friend finds out I've got this cool software running and he's not so savvy with the computer but he wants that software.

Sharing is caring alright, so I zip up the binary & associated data files and send them his way.

Whoops, I just violated the license.

The license has a death clause that ends my rights when I violate it.

I'm just a poor user, and now the freedoms granted to me are gone. Or did I really have freedom to begin with?

EDIT: Actually, I'm pretty sure I've violated the GPL this way, more than once. Years ago I ran Gentoo as my main OS, and many of my acquaintances did too. Every once in a while the OS kinda pooped itself and friends asked friends to hand them a copy of a working libwhatever.so.whatever or somesuch. Some of these were patched by Gentoo, some of these might've been altered by me too. Sometimes we shared other binaries that had nothing to do with Gentoo per se.

In any case I never gave these people a written notice saying how to get the source, nor did I host the source for three years, nor did I share the source when I copied that binary to a place where a friend could grab it. I was just sharing. The code is free, right?

Now I know better. I no longer redistribute GPL-anything, because screw all these restrictions. It is not free.
Gpl on commerce, in a nutshell:

Sell this software without ability to modify: tyrant

Use this software to create a closed REST API: no problem
Ask HN: Should we buy our own offices if we can afford it?
Our startup in a nutshell:

- Running ~2.5 years

- A very small team (<5)

- ~$1,000,000 cash in the bank

- ~$75,000 revenue per month

- 90% of running costs are salary

Our primary product is fairly mature now, and we don't think hiring to work on it will make sense at this stage, however it does make sense for our second product which we plan to start maybe in 6-12 months time. The next product will be using different technologies so we wouldn't want to hire someone now to work on the current version if we need a different skillset not too far down the line.

We've found a commercial premesis further into the center of our city which is oversized for our needs. It's location is excellent. This property consists of a ground floor and an upper floor. The upper floor is slightly bigger than our current office we rent, and we would plan to move into it and rent out the ground floor. This gives us the benefits:

- Additional revenue from the ground floor renting

- Space to expand when we need to

- A far better location to attract potential employees

- Between $25k and $50k rent per annum if we can rent it out fully

If we can't rent the property, we'll end up paying about 3x what we are now per month to own the property but it wouldn't put us in any financial peril.

We can just afford to buy the property in full in cash right now so no borrowing needed.

Assuming we seek proper legal council, fully understand the obligations of owning the property and costs involved and have it properly surveyed etc, does this seem like a good idea? I've put it towards some other business people and they all tell us it's a bad idea and that money should either be taken out in dividends, or reinvested in the business for growth somehow but we can't see any immediate pressing need to do this nor do we think we're ready to hire yet.
You should join the ietf and w3c mailing lists.

Then you will understand why things don't move faster.
Anything that can bring down dealerships has got my backing. I don't understand why the auto manufacturers wouldn't want to lobby to distribute their own vehicles rather than have the frequently dickish/predatory/incompetent sales/service of dealerships be the local face of their company.
blink blink

um. have you used java?
I couldn't agree more. A single blog post my company's founder spent just an hour crafting got us over 30,000 views and almost over night we went from a couple hackers to a company that people trusted and wanted to work with.
Sure, but you're paying a price in terms of complexity: Many simple sites with PostgreSQL/MySQL can handle being slashdotted without having a cache (unless you're using a heavy CMS such as WordPress/Drupal). If you use SQLite, you might be forced to use Varnish - and there goes the initial idea of simplicity that caused you to use SQLite in the first place.

Having said that, once your site goes truly high-traffic, you'll obviously need some caching. All I'm saying is that PostgreSQL/MySQL can easily handle moderately high traffic if your website is not a heavy CMS.
What mystery tech company is moving into new 10k-capacity San Jose office space?
And then hire five more people to fix data errors.

Most people don't realize that clean and correct data is really, really, really expensive to make.