skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think the issue here is more that our society in general selects these people for "success" more than those "without pedigree" by virtue of various complicated socioeconomic conditions. I don't think it's an active (or even "unconscious", if you'll permit the flawed adjective in describing a group of people) bias that YC has against any one group or another.

The simple fact is that it's easier for persons with these backgrounds to be less conservative in their entrepreneurial endeavors than for, say, the guy who struggled through a B.S. or B.A. program and who came from poverty. That sort of conditioning lasts for life almost every time. As a result, the population of people who are likely to put together a truly acceptable YC application are more likely to be found in the "pedigreed" group. It's a flaw in society at large, not necessarily with YC itself.
Sorry, that's what I meant. Thanks for the detailed description of what I should have said.
I've always heard that sans-serif fonts are easier to read on a screen and serif ones are easier to read on paper, but I wonder if there's a similar rule for laser vs. inkjet printing.

Fonts with ink traps for small point inkjet printing, and fonts without ink traps for everything else?
Wow, interesting perspective.
That's not Sony's decision I guess
When did software and scripts become known as "robots?"
I should point out, I'm the author of the blog so feel free to ask me anything you want about CoinKrypt, Android malware or anything related.
Thanks, I currently take pigeon delivery though. :) Yeah, I am holding off on preorders until Kickstarter so that people are fully aware of the terms, conditions, risks, etc. Also, I sincerely promise not to pull an Oculus.
Seconded. It's not as bad in Canada where most of the banks and major companies have BB10 apps, but it's still a pain not to have Mint, Netflix, and other apps I would otherwise use on a daily basis.

The problem's somewhat mitigated by the fact that you can now access the Amazon Android app store and run Android apps, but it feels clunky and slow. Definitely not a good substitute.
For anyone who applies before the end of this weekend, we'll be in touch by mid-week next week with decisions on next steps in the process. Final decisions should be made about 1.5-2 weeks after that. We'll move equally quickly for applications that come in next week through to the April 14 deadline.
Advertising your startup at a convention: a case study
I need to find the source again, but it's not about revenue but actual profits.
Valve’s Michael Abrash Joins Oculus As Chief Scientist
I worked a job where this was the case. The "worst" programmers would literally stay late and knock off the easiest fixes. They got credit and were fine.

I once spent 2 weeks solving 4 related weird crashes that everyone complained about. Involved rewriting code that when I was finished removed 4,514 lines of code and never crashed again. I had my annual review 2 weeks later and the scoreboard was brought up. I told my boss I should get paid more for removing 4,514 lines of spaghetti from the software that made the "company nut". He laughed at me. 3 days later the CEO came down, personally thanked me as they were flooded with client happiness and took me to lunch. Some ear bending and casual talk about vision...next day the scoreboard was taken down and I was in charge of "core" functionality.
Instead of writing to the HackerNews posters asking for common sense advice, just quit your job.
This is really cool, but I fully expect you to fail.

Something simple to say like emergent AI can be ridiculously complex in practice. I bet you really have all the experience you claim to have, but I still don't expect you to get very far.

You have quite a few descriptions of how the game will end up, but saying things like "it will be fun and all these other things" dismisses how you're going to make it that way.

I think the coolest promise was that the game would be deterministic.

I'm not sure if you have lots of experience making games, but in my experience games written from the ground up never really become complete games.

If you're not already, you may want to consider hiring a team or getting help developing this so that you can focus on the things you think you can do most effectively or that are most crucial to the final gameplay.

Anyway, I really hope this is going to be all you say it will be.

Good luck. :)
Their traffic saw a massive drop in 2014. Google algo change screw them over?
Working from home not for everyone, but it can still be a 'win-win'
I still maintain that fragmentation is less of an issue than is commonly believed...I think the biggest problem is that unless your app is relatively new, you probably have to continue supporting Android 2.3. Making sure your app works on that ugly, buggy OS is a massive pain.

I gripe about having to support an OS that Apple shipped in Q3 2012. Semi-mandatory Android 2.3 support is a fragmentation problem, especially when you mix in all the crazy shit some handset makers and carriers have done to 'improve' Android.

See, for instance, http://techcrunch.com/2012/06/02/android-qa-testing-quality-...
First, kudos for doing what every one of us should do i.e. value our own time. It is amazing to see a lot of people who just don't value their time.

This mentality that somehow sitting in office for long hours and cranking shit out is just so horrible. I really believe that this has to do a lot with the individual employee/person rather than just management. Yes, I am not counting out the pointy haired bosses and all but to a great extent, it is up to you, the employee, to dictate how long will you be working on a given day. Sure, some of us love sitting in office because we probably have nothing better to do (been there) but learning to value your time is really underrated. People, learn to value your own time and you will suddenly see how everyone else around you respects you for that. /rant

Now, just to add the other side, creating value is a lot more than spending x hours in office. Like you said, you designed a major component of the app which is what matters. Yes, there may be days when you want to crank that stuff out like there is no tomorrow because you are excited about it, go for it. And yes, go work on some weekends if needed for the team (release/critical fix etc). Take one for the team but do it wisely. Let everyone know that you are willing to raise your hand but you are not a doormat.

In your case, since are you doing the right thing, your company does not deserve you and based on what you said, they already don't care about you. So like everyone else is saying and you know the answer anyway, find something better and move on.
I expected a very long death because of the government contracts. Blackberry isn't going anywhere until a different maker has all of the security clearances needed to have its devices on the secure network.

I don't think Apple cares. Probably Samsung or Google will do its best to get those in a few years.
I always find it funny when management lauds developers for aggressive bug fixing. Do they not realize that the developers introduced those bugs in the first place?
As stated by other, the obvious answer is to leave.

What is puzzling to me is that you sound like a skilled and confident developer, yet seem afraid of wading into the job market. Are your local employment options that bad?
Hotel Tonight but for Haircuts?
Would you use a service that lets you schedule an appointment online with a service provider like a barber or tax accountant when you need them?
This is my personal opinion as a software development manager, so take it as just that.

A developer that always leave at exactly 17.00 and adamantly refuse to come in on a Saturday, gives a very clear signal that they don't give a shit about the company, the product or the team. They're there to get paid.

While most employers realize that your work isn't (or should be) your single burning passion, it is very negative for team morale when one of the guys always flakes out when the clock hits 17 regardless of the fire in the kitchen.

I knew a developer who always left at exactly 17.00, because "that's what they are paying me for". On several occasions, he deployed breaking changes to production five minutes before leaving. Other devs had to come in and work very late to get the system back online. While he is technically in his right to leave at 5, he causes his team much grief and as such is not an asset.

The other side of the coin is that lots of software companies, really has little to no control over software development. Especially startups run by young, inexperienced guys rarely have any idea what they are doing. This is a company where crisis' occurs daily or weekly instead of maybe once every couple of months.

They make up for this by rampant overtime, and excuse this with BS about being dedicated and a team player. You know you're in such an organization if they talk about how "that's what the industry is like".

Your organizations work culture seem like that - very long hours and (seemingly) no extraordinary reason for coming in on Saturday.

If that's the case, then leave. There's not much that can be done except a total change of top management.

But if it's a rare occurrence that they call you in on Saturday and there is a good explanation for it, then buckle up and help your team mates.
The Mind Control Program by the U.S. Gov You’ve Never Heard of
2048 Reverse – One
Really, many of the NovaLogic games (Comanche, the Delta Force series, and there were jet simulators and tank simulators as well.) I think they all used the same (or at least, a related family) of voxel + polygon engine(s).
I'm not sure what this proves, though. It didn't exactly work out well for Netscape.

To be fair, the lesson learned there was to not bet your company on a rewrite. Which they are not doing.
Google Naps: a parody of Google Maps
Hi! We (13th Lab) love the Oculus Rift (I tried the DK2 at GDC and it was awesome).

What we're doing with Rescape is pretty different, even though there are some similarities. We're not doing AR (there's no live camera view, we replace all of reality with a game), and it's not quite VR either.

But we think it's really fun, and we would love some feedback on the product (not the article, which of course we did not write). Here's the Kickstarter page: http://kck.st/1p4oK3Y

Thanks!

/Petter, co-founder 13th Lab
"elon musk has a high tolerance for calculated risk"

And perhaps he will be the survivor that is referred to when stories about survivorship bias are passed around. Or maybe he will crash and burn with that calculated risk.

"that's why he's a billionaire and you and i are 2nd guessing him on hacker news."

There are billionaires (or close to it) on hacker news btw.

Of course if one of those "billionaires" went out and said something like that that wouldn't go over to well would it?

Would you like a commenter on HN to say something like "well that's why you are driving a used Yugo and I am driving a brand new Lamborghini that I paid cash for?" as justification for why they know something or are somehow better than you are?
> which lets you print out PDF's onto special paper so that when you write on it with a digital pen, the markings are reintegrated onto the digital copy.

What I do is print out PDF's onto regular cheap paper, mark them up by hand, then run the paper through the scanner. Voila!
Ok, I am over being mad at Facebook. This is huge.

Abrash has been the front facing member of Valve's efforts @ VR.

His "What VR could, should, and almost certainly will be within two years" (1) paper was mind boggling as an Oculus Dev Kit owner.

This is going to be like watching the "Dream Team" come together in one place, and I'm guessing that this ends all speculation about whether or not Carmack sticks around under FB considering the collaborative history between these two.

(1) http://media.steampowered.com/apps/abrashblog/Abrash%20Dev%2...
This was really well written. It says a lot of things that I feel the tech industry tends to ignore.
I had the same feeling after I had to return my brand new Sony Z1s phone due to an ongoing/unsolved touch screen issue plaguing the Z1 and Z1s: http://johnhaller.com/blog/2014-03-06--sony-xperia-z1-z1s-to...
The entire program is based entirely around professional data engineers from the mentor companies coming in to share their best practices with the group, which the Fellows than work to implement in their projects. A number of mentors have told me they will focus on the topics you mentioned. That said I would love to get your take on this too. Would love it if you drop me a line at jake@insightdataengineering.com with any suggestions. Thanks!
Microsoft Office hits number one spot in Apple’s App Store after just 12 hours
You've got a lot of chips on your shoulder it appears. I would advise you to figure out why you hate Facebook so much, and try to come up with a better reason to disagree than the angry place you are coming from.
I really hope you and 6cxs2hd6 are being tongue in cheek. First, this kid clearly has a good head on his shoulders, and is even able to do some pretty cool technical stuff that most of the population cannot. Second, judging someone based on a single action you've seen from them is... less than scientific. By that logic you should be a "short comment writer" :).
I had the exact same experience. Eye-rolled at the title but clicked anyway and was pleasantly surprised to find a really interesting bit of research in the actual article.

Semi-related, I've lost my ability to flag things on HN. Did something about karma levels needed change or did I just lose it at the whim of some mod? (I have a tendency to flag items with headlines like this, although this article is HN worthy).
Sony's digital cameras are very innovative (the RX range and the A7 ranges come to mind)
"The concept of any kind of botnet harnessing smartphones has in the past been overlooked as some kind of pointless exercise - but considering the alternative uses for smartphones could it be the next big thing on the horizon, just waiting for the right person with the right brilliance to make it happen? these little devices walk around collecting data on us, spewing our information, and acting as GPS tracking devices .... perhaps not a botnet for mining, but one that can locate a person on demand. Consider it similar to the RFID id badge systems that let you know where an employee is in the building at any time - but farther reaching. Take it to an extreme - knowing where a victim is at any given time in order to time coordinate various acts of hacking. "
Major props to the MAPS guys for navigating the mess that currently exists to try and get to a more positive outcome for us all.
Bah, my comment on your site went to an error page on submit.

It was: any plans to give an opening for player written AI to function in game - writing your own group companions sounds fun too, could even use a similar codepath as multiplayer
Reminds me a lot of OPC to improve feature resolution in photolithography. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_proximity_correction
ISSUE #1 - Barring unpaid overtime, what are their expectations? You're working 37.5 hours per week (7.5 × 5), which is less than the "standard" 40 (though you're still considered full-time for the sake of benefits, etc.). It's unclear whether your 7.5 hour figure includes "non-productive time" (e.g., lunch, breaks, etc.).

ISSUE #2 - Quantitatively, your numbers may be hyperbole, but they don't bear out your claims. Your co-workers have 3x as many fixes as you, but they only work 2.6x as much as you (assuming 14 hours / day × 7 days / week). By these numbers, they are 15% more effective than you are. (And they're harder workers.)

Fundamentally there's a culture mismatch. You think you have differentiating skills—they don't agree. You think you are more efficient—either they don't agree or that's not their metric. You want to work a 40 hour week—they want people who will kill themselves.

There are a couple options (e.g., going hourly), but I don't think they're realistic given the context. After all, your effective hourly rate is way higher than someone who takes home the same salary but works twice as much. So I agree with the other commentators: find an opportunity that's a better fit for you.
There is no point to play that game, you will loose anyway. Keep with sane hours, find a new job, quit.
Huh? Are you completely and utterly mental?

You were stating what you normally do when you read something saying that it is by Elon Musk on Medium.

To claim that you have a normal behaviour for a given situation would usually presuppose that it is a situation you have previously encountered, more than once.
I've found that the much more annoying and difficult to deal with fragmentation bugs are carrier specific. You will find things like Samsung has changed how you launch the default browser from your app or HTC doesn't follow the spec for getting an image from the camera. These are the kind of bugs that drive me crazy.

My current project runs a test suite (as well as some light adhoc testing) on 6-7 devices (across screen densities and carriers) and that seems to catch most of the issues without spending $20k on a device lab. (We use the excellent Spoon library by Square: http://square.github.io/spoon/)

Screen sizes are not an issue for anyone that's shipped a non-toy app. API levels are not so bad - though you will find yourself using the Support Libraries even in cases when they shouldn't be needed.

BTW: Android provides a weekly report of OS/screen sizes etc that access the Play Store: http://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html Use this (not a random blog post) to make informed decisions for your clients on your minSdkVersion.

Now if you want to talk about a real headache for Android developers, let's talk about Fragments - not fragmentation :)
>Your friend avoids getting help because he's an addict, not because he's offended by the 12 step program.

Completely and totally incorrect. He has tried AA, and was completely disgusted with it. He just thinks if he tries to get professional help again, it will be like AA and he doesn't want that. Quitting on his own hasn't worked out yet, he's tried.

>You would suggest doing nothing in the absence of a perfect solution?

OF COURSE NOT! I never suggested it, I didn't even imply it. I said "Preaching AA as a first step or a cure all is harmful to these people." I didn't say it didn't help some people, of course it does. I am saying if you have an addiction people jump to "AA" like it is a cure all or the only route. They don't evaluate the patient to see what is right for them. Even doctors don't do this to a great degree. There are other non-region based programs out there, they need to be considered on equal footing as AA, introducing the wrong person to AA can turn them off of getting help at all. Right now it is "I have an addition" then the answer is "Oh well just go to AA."

>That is awfully convenient if you're a fan of getting high...

What are you talking about? I don't get high.

> Try going to an AA meeting and saying you're an atheist--you'll find plenty others present.

So some can get past some parts of AA, some also cannot. Big deal.
Breaking News: "Vehicle computer records indicate that the driver took control of the vehicle three minutes prior to the accident."
U.S. safety regulators close investigation into Tesla fires
It is not easy to leave a paying job for some people. In the same way it is not easy to leave a paying job that is crappy. He isn't asking for common sense advise his is looking for some sort advice that will serve as validation to give him the confidence to make this decision. He probably knows what he needs to do, our answers can only serve to assist him in making this decision.
Look for a new job. Your relationship with them can't be salvaged.

Also, this is why you keep a 6-12 month emergency fund, in case you have to walk away or get fired.
So do SAFE securities only ever make sense in a seed round?
eInk DPI and LCD DPI aren't really directly equivalent in terms of readability.

And this is a specialized device that seems much more suited to the type of work it's designed for than an iPad is. The iPad doesn't even support a stylus (except for the big nub stylus, which is really more of a stylized finger replacement).
We went to the moon in the 60's.
Then in the 70's they started pushing metric.
Never been back.
Coincidence? :)
We've used mesh networking during Gezi[0]. But I don't think most people would understand how to use this or will have it installed in case of a general ban[1].

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_protests_in_Turkey

[1] People started using VPN's and most people knows what DNS is now. So, there is hope.
I dont mean any disrespect, but you sound like the same type of manager he has now....

So you have a case where there is a "clock puncher" that is pushing out changes, leaving and then issues occur that others must stay and clean up after.

Would you share if your point of view would be different if that "clock puncher" was your best developer and nobody had to stay late to clean up after his/her mess?
I took a look at it for two seconds and didn't know what the hell was BBOS 12 or 7, never heard of it, never seen it. I'm sure this is what most people think too who's using iOS or Android, they are beating a dead horse and failing to innovate themselves out of the hole they created.
Musk has spoken about electric aircraft. It's inevitable and just a question of batteries.
I found it shocking when I first learned about it. Previously I had thought that articles featuring in the news were actual journalism, not just copy and pasted stuff from company press releases. It changed my view of what the news is.
That just indicates that you make enough money to buy a more expensive car, not that the Tesla is not significantly more expensive (i.e., about double what you are paying).
It looks a lot like Little Big Adventure.
Slow startup time for large ruby applications.
Thanks a lot for the detailed reply, this is why I love HN!

1-2 years back I saw a benchmark stating that PG works better than MySQL on I/O constrained AWS instances, so I didn't expect this ("I've learned something today").
Could Russia Absorb Eastern Ukraine?
Silvrback 2.0
If they improve the usability of BBM a little bit and get wrap some better PR around it, they could pretty easily compete with the other big names in SMS-alternative social networks (Viber, Line, Kik, WeChat, Kakao). As it is, though -- at least in my circles -- the unwieldiness of the additional fun stuff (like Glympse integration) pushed us back to WhatsApp and Telegram.
While that is true, it also means that the 'serious firmware' developed for the car probably has stupid problems.

And it might be safer and cheaper to have the option of fixing problems when you find them, because if you don't have that option, you're forced to weigh the costs of a recall against the risks of the issue for every little thing.
Powered by Android
Does Betteridge's law have exceptions?