skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
These gadgets might make a nice 'halo' product for a big Nike Town store, however, from a general retail perspective these fairly standalone electronic gadgets are a pain to stock, sell and process when they come back as returns.

They just don't sell the units to justify the floor space or the capital for the stock. Plus there is always someone online that can sell them cheaper without the hassle of a customer cluttering the shop for an hour whilst they evaluate the purchase. Staff are not knowledgeable on such items and, in the time that one gadget is sold, that member of staff could help untold other customers on products that are core business.

I am sure that Nike could take on all comers with 'first mover advantage' with wearable gadgets. They could even do a Facebook and buy out the likes of 'strava'. However, these gadgets don't sell too well through the normal retail channels that Nike rely on for most of their sales.
It's surprising to see it so early, but they probably see the writing on the wall. Once Android Wear and Apple wearables start rolling out, it's going to be a slaughter out there.

Apple and Nike teaming up for the iWatch launch is probably a safe bet now too.
Not being sure your document is going to finish rendering isn't ideal.
A Dozen Things I learned from Craig McCaw
This seems very interesting. Like others have mentioned it lacks details on sharding & clusterting. But it reminds me of RethinkDb (http://www.rethinkdb.com) which does not support SQL. Both of these have similar functionalities (admin GUI, sharding/clustering etc.) but RethinkDb supports joins as well.

Not sure why would RethinkDb be moving away from SQL where every one (e.g. cassandra, hadoop [with hive, prestodb etc.]) seems to be coming back to SQL (like syntax).
Generally you put a honing compound on the blades and turn the blades backwards to sharpen it. It's some work, but it's pretty easy. e.g. http://www.amazon.com/American-Lawn-Mower-SK-1-Sharpening/dp...
Hey Everyone,

I'm the guy who built this, based on my own experience and DHH's comments on the Basecamp2 architecture. It's an attempt to keep things simple and lightweight while still getting many of the UX advantages of newer MVC frameworks.

I've tried a few different hooks for the project:

"Javascript-free AJAX"

"A simpler AngularJS"

"Declarative AJAX"

Any feedback on the best way to sell it would be appreciated.

Also, if anyone is interested in working on the project, there are two major areas left:

- Getting the History API smoothed out

- Making transitions pluggable

Please let me know if you are interested: @carson_gross
Under the syntactical surface, Lua is really more like Javascript than Python.

Unity has support for Boo, which is just a Python-like front end for the CLR. I'm pretty fond of it, myself. I prefer to use it whenever I can, inside Unity and elsewhere. The docs could use a lot of love, but it's still very easy to learn and extremely productive and a joy to write. I rarely touch MonoDevelop / Xamarin Studio; I write Boo in Sublime Text, and find it very satisfying.

Another path I've been tempted to explore is to use Moonscript with Gameplay3D, but Unity is hard to leave.

I could be wrong, but I have the impression that Unreal is too unwieldy for a solo developer, which is how I plan to stay for the foreseeable future.
ANNOYING MONKEY Can be the new HIT game. Coming soon
Details are coming soon, the game is coming soon. :)
The COBOL of the future?
But you can't always have your phone with you. It's not effective for the same use-case when you've handed it to someone else to use the phone or when you're out playing soccer (well some people might keep their phone on them on the field but I don't).
If you're in a position to MITM DoS is trivial anyway.
I'd just call that bad management. Team building requires some skill, including adjusting equity and compensation to build loyalty and keep valued employees. Do it wrong, and you get guys like that who are frustrated and angry.
That's not true at all. Look at the example I asked about -- "what should we do when the forecast says the high temperature will be 27-33, but the high temperature is, contrary to forecast, 35?"

A minor amount of imagination can transform this question into "what should we do when the forecast says the low temperature overnight will be 2-6 degrees, but it's actually -1? If you think the forecast will tell you "whether or not an adverse condition might be experienced", you're likely to do something stupid. A more sensible approach would be "if it's frost season, cover the plants".

Weather forecasts already treat the odds differently depending on (a) what they are, and (b) what events are being predicted. A 70% chance of rain tomorrow might be reported as a 70% chance of rain, but a 10% chance of rain is more likely to be "overreported", say as a 40% chance. They do that because people don't want accurate numbers -- instead, they get mad when the forecast suggests that they don't need to prepare for unfavorable weather, and unfavorable weather inconsiderately happens anyway.
The Government is Silencing Twitter and Yahoo, and It Won't Tell Us Why
Skyera turning $ 3.6 million revenue in 2012, shipping in volume by May 2014
"Employees, many of them young and without significant real-world experience...."

Getting that first job on your resume can be quite a trick.

Just before he emphasizes, with italics, that this is only "compelling in some cases".

Because of the circumstances in which I got dumped into the job market, I started out with a sysadmin job with some programming, which I turned into more programming, but it was not a great start, and it was only through unique coincidence (about the only person in the community with serious Lisp Machine and UNIX(TM) experience) and connections that I got my first really good job.
I always wondered why a devshop I've worked at used Delphi. Now I know. The main code base is handled by one developer.
List of Every Video Game Ever
> Mostly because the execs committed gross negligence, wasted tons of money, and didn't know what they were doing

This was my impression of how things were going even last year when they had that app development contest. It seemed a little desperate, right out of the gate.
It has some impressive specs, though. The 1.2 GHz processor may finally be able to write to a HDD at full USB 2.0 speeds without getting overloaded.
Selling power back to the grid is a rapidly growing home industry which, like any other, should be taxed and regulated. (Emphasis on "like any other", since libertarians will undoubtedly be against the whole principle.)

If you produce something and systematically sell it for profit it's perfectly normal. It's not your kids' lemonade stand or a garage sale we're talking about here.

The challenge is to do it in such a way that still stimulates the practice, not punish it. Simply calling any form of taxation "dumb" is not constructive.

Also, it's not just the simple "Jimmy has a solar panel on his roof" scenario we're talking about here. Collective solar energy initiatives on residential properties are becoming a real industry.
Is F# Ready for Production?
I use a Garmin Forerunner. Before I used an iPhone. Not only is the Forerunner a far more accurate GPS and has better battery life, it's also far more convenient to 'carry' during running, since it's a simple and compact watch. Also, it's easy to monitor your stats at any moment, in contrast to iPhone arm bands.

In the end smart watches will probably eat this market. But the iPhone is certainly not a substitute.
Financial companies force certain employees to take 2 uninterrupted weeks off. This is to reduce fraud--to get the employee out of the system so they auditors can look for irregularities. But if course it's a great way to force otherwise driven people to check out for long enough to reduce burnout.

Some companies also close entirely at times--usually the week between Christmas and New Years, but I have heard of a few places that pick a week in the spring or summer to close.
Cool. Several were new to me. Here's another good one: http://www.morguefile.com/
Learning to Database The Hard Way
I would be careful in using the terminology "JavaScript-free".

What you mean by that is obviously that the user of the library doesn't need to write JavaScript to use your library. But when it comes to web design, here is actually such a thing as writing functionality that works without JavaScript enabled in the browser (often called graceful degradation).

Normally I would not fuss over such a detail, but since literal JavaScript-free/optional functionality is an actual topic in webdesign, I would encourage you to pick a better phrase for your library (which runs and requires JavaScript), as to avoid confusion that the library itself would work without JavaScript enabled.

I like the phrase "Declarative AJAX", although it might be a bit on the technical side of your target audience.
You're reasoning is completely off. Google's Android wearables ensures nobody makes money on wearable OS i.e. software. Google has actually opened the door for companies to now make money on the wearables hardware since the software is standard. While Google launched wearable by focusing on the Now integration, there are still hints that fitness apps will be there at launch of the smartwatches. This is the first time Google and Apple are launching in a new category at the same time, it's a bit premature to conclude that Apple will capture the high-end (although they do have iOS customer captive in their ecosystem)

Nike doesn't figure into this at all. The fuelband never even worked with Android devices (Tim Cook holding a spot on the Nike board for the past 9 years might do something with that). Mike's play is to get out of the wristband business before Apple jumps in while keeping their Nike+ integration with Apple via software and SHOES (Nike's real business) as done previously. However if this new upcoming Nike+ API can be used by Android devices it would represent the first real shift in Nike's strategy
Again, just because the forecast says 3±1 doesn't mean the low temperature will be at least 2 degrees. If your crops will be killed by frost, and the forecast says 3±1, you need to protect your crops. It's really not that different from 3±6; you'll do the same thing given either forecast.
A good client understands why you shouldn't optimize for doing "one narrowly defined task very efficiently"; for the rest, I've tried to resolve matters diplomatically.

Yet — for my own work, I will barely hesitate to build a tool for one narrowly defined task that I know I'm going to have to do repeatedly.

The irony is that, in the latter case, I'm facing an ROI that is capped at 1:1 (see xkcd [1]); whereas in the former case, you're leveraged at 1:N, where N is the number of users (who are doing the narrowly-defined task).

One of the perks of "learning to code" is that you have a programmer on payroll who gives you preferential treatment.

[1] http://xkcd.com/1205/
RAND Corp pays employees extra for days they take off. Though of course it's therefore tracked.
The iPhone's still a heavy, bulky, expensive and fragile thing to take with you to the gym or out running, as are other smartphones. The screen is also not easy to interact with while you're exercising seriously. However, smartwatches or smartglasses with 5s-level-or-better motion sensing and the capacity to run apps independently of a smartphone do have to the potential to make dedicated fitness trackers mostly obsolete, though expense and fragility will still be concerns.

EDIT: This Gruber reaction http://www.cnet.com/news/nike-fires-fuelband-engineers-will-... heightens my suspicion that this is an early omen of an Apple smartwatch launch.
Without having attended a university, I would assume that one of the many advantages are the possibility for mentorship during self-study. Which is a scenario one could replicate in a daily routine.

Certainly, as Frank Zappa aptly said: “If you want to get laid, go to college. If you want an education, go to the library.” But that is all under the assumption that you have enough discipline.
The Charm Hacker
Ask HN: Creating a query builder for end users
Our product is starting to get lots of requests for custom reports from our customers. I've taken some steps to really stream line the creation of the reports and exporting reports to PDF / XLS format. This has really helped and most reports can be created fairly quickly with a very full feature set.

The other day I began thinking about giving users the power to create their own filters essentially creating their own queries through a UI. This isn't so bad because our framework, CakePHP, stores all the relations to the data and its easy to build on top of this.

The tricky part is striking a balance between usability and power. A concern of mine is that this sort of thing might be too complex to our non-techie customer base. Have you done something like this before? Do you have any great examples? How did you handle (or why did you not handle) complex things like: OR, AND, NOT IN, IN, <, >, BETWEEN etc... Specifically I'm interested in your thoughts on building an intuitive and beautiful UI.
Belkin effed up their firmware so badly on the F7D4301 that I got a new one for $35.

The original firmware was slow, buggy and required reboots every day. With Tomato it's one of the best deals I ever got :-) - dual band Wifi, Gigabit LAN, support for USB drives and 3G modems, no stupid blinking lights (I love that) - a perfect home/office router.
The flower-shaped starshade that might help us detect Earth-like planets
Having supported Delphi applications I had to say:

1) It just works;

2) It works in old machines fairly good enough

3) There is a lot of new components/integrations (SQL,DB2,Oracle,WEB,etc)

4) Good reports system

It isn't sexy but do the job very well for most corporate applications.
facepalm That should be "authors should..." Which is BTW an absurdly trivial observation to post in retrospect, on top of it.
I remember the same feeling with VB6/VC6. Sure, with VC6, you could do More Stuff, and theoretically, it would be Better Stuff. But in an afternoon with VB6, I could bang out a good first prototype for SO many projects that in many cases, ended up being "good enough" that we never needed to go back and re-do it "properly" in VC6.

PowerBuilder, though... Man, that can't die fast enough.
I like the one there that calls him a crackpot in 2006 for accusing the NSA of spying by exploiting Windows bugs.

http://attrition.org/errata/charlatan/steve_gibson/gibson_wm...
Good points.

When I built the library it was partially out of frustration at how hard much code it was to build simple AJAX functionality out in jQuery, ember, etc. and that's reflected in the original hook, but, upon reflection, it can come across as both negative and confusing.

I think I'm settling on "Declarative AJAX"...
Delphi is a great RAD tool, but it's also slowly dying and has lower and lower market share, 100% of my income come from Delphi contracting at the moment, and I love Delphi, but its not a great choice if you're just starting your programming career and have to choose the language to go with. I've been sticking to Delphi for whole my programming career (3 years professionaly, 10+ years hobby programming, i'm 24 now), but its more and more occuring to me that I have to learn some new tech ASAP if I want to progress further. Delphi has no proper crossplatform support and it's a big minus. Also it has ridiculous price.
In my opinion, this is the point of the list. It exists to illustrate things that are popular and causing unnecessary harm.

There would be little point in listing harmful alternatives that were unpopular anyway.

Having said that, it's a shame that there is no exposition. In many cases I would value some explanation of why the author takes this position.
50/50 splits can be a terrible idea. If you're stuck with an unreasonable partner, the company can be deadlocked at every decision.
The compiler was lightning fast, and produced fast code. The IDE was fast. It did a beautiful code/visual synchronization that still hasn't been done better. It had good libraries, and did effective programming the large.

Not cross-platform, didn't have automatic memory management, though, and was never going to be able to compete with the advance of free IDEs.

About a million years ago I wrote the Delphi Container and Algorithm Library (DeCAL). Good times :)
OpenWorm: A Digital Organism In Your Browser
Yep. Check still working on same version for OS X.
Was once in a similar situation myself. One path is to identify a future customer pain point that will occur if they continue to use Delphi. You can direct the solution to a language/platform you wish to learn, and work like a dog to develop the new skills and build a great piece of software in this new language.
A better title would be: Open Source webmail client with Gmail-like conversations

It seems like an interesting project and I wish this developer the best of luck in their fund-raising campaign. Their motivation for developing namail is so that they won't be subjected to the advertising in the standard Gmail interface, while keeping the webmail interface.

I would be pretty interested in a Linux client that has an old gmail like interface, but works on downloaded mail. I currently use mutt since it seems to be to be the best offline mail program for my particular workflow.
Google appears to have gotten into the CA game with their Certificate Transparency initiative:

http://www.certificate-transparency.org/

As most of these Google initiatives go, this is open source, and they're encouraging other entities to adopt the technology.
I like the attempt to not require the developer to write more JS, but why didn't you just add these data attributes to "a" tags? The functionality of those tags are thrown away, e.g., the "href", and "span"s aren't semantic.
Tim Cook is on Nikes board...
This is Present
This may be true for GPU drivers, but I would argue it is the exception, not the rule.
Astronomers discover first self-lensing binary star system
Honestly, Google does prevent almost anyone from making money off the hardware as well. I was at an Android OEM when Google first started sourcing their own Nexus line at cut throat prices and Android hardware projects were definitely canceled because we just couldn't compete with Google. Samsung is about the only one that can since they have massive economic advantages due to making most of their own parts. Other Android OEMs make very little numbers or profit.
Given what happened with the NHS data, neither do I.
I'm in my last year of Comp-Sci. I started the program as a self taught adult. I can say that very little I've learned in school has been useful for the internships and jobs I've since had. That being said, I would never trade the CS experience for anything. It gave me context and a greater understanding of the field. I can now tackle harder problems because the program gave me the tools to do so.

But this is all stuff you can learn on your own. Assuming you know how to program already, my suggestion is find out what a local university teaches 2nd year students. Find their curriculum and see the classes they offer.

Typically, 2nd year is when you go beyond the basics of programming and start scratching the surface of really cools stuff like fundamental algorithms and data structures. If you can learn this stuff, you'll have enough context to determine what else you need to learn.

FYI, here's an amazing open source textbook on data structures: http://opendatastructures.org/
You could start with an intermediate stage, with say a query-builder wizard that walks them through the process.

1. What type of report would you like to create? (define the domain)

2. What are you looking for? (define the topic)

3. What limits are there? (define the data boundaries)

4. How do you want it displayed? (report output format like excel, pdf, etc).

See how a select group of customers like it and get feedback on it ... some might immediately say "yes we want something more powerful" or what you have will be just fine. From there you can decide if you want to pursue exposing the query-builder more openly than a guided wizard, and if you want to charge extra for it.
Bootstrap... http://yourstory.com/2014/04/bootstrap-entrepreneur-thumb-rules/
A. Bootstrap till you are bankrupt.
B. Use open source to solve your problems.
C. Don’t follow the herd.
D. Democratize enterprise problems.
E. Never hesitate to sneak inside startup conferences.
G. Sell whatever you have.
I. Attract premium school talent
J. Do not clutter your organization with hierarchy.
K. Pay your employees for performance; not for loyalty.
L. Don’t hesitate to ask reputed industry seniors to consider an advisory or formal role.
M. Always look for partnerships, even with competitors.
N. Become a member of industry associations and try to attend their meetings.
O. Network, Network, Network.
P. Develop a very thick skin
Q. Always have your heart in the right place.
R. Own the defeats all alone.
S. Be always on the move if there’s a scope for getting leads.
T. Travel cheap. Stay low cost.
U. Sell the product and the vision to your family first
V. Talk only with people who appreciate the risk that you are taking in terms of your time and career.
W. Avoid gossip like the plague it is.
X. Always work in black and white.
Y. Be upfront. Straight talk always clears the air.
Z. Lastly, remember that innovation is not only about the product. It’s applicable to everything we do
The problem is the more accurate pricing model won't make people happy. Distribution costs are largely fixed. It matters more how far your house is from the substation, and what the population density is, than how thick the wire is or how many KWh are pushed through it. Including the distribution costs in the price per KWh is a form of price discrimination -- people who need more energy (which implies "need energy more" or "are price insensitive") pay more for distribution than others. It makes those people unhappy, but those people are a minority without the will or political influence necessary to change it.

Charging a fixed cost for distribution would reduce prices for high energy users and raise prices for low energy users. The low energy users are, in general, the most price sensitive. They would become very irate and try to exert political pressure on the power company.

Of course, that doesn't mean we should let them. But it isn't the power company who causes this; the power company is just responding to politics and the market.
My favourite:

* Written in PHP so literally anyone can contribute, even if they have no idea how to program.
Interesting to note that Tim Cook is on the Nike board, while iOS8 is rumored to feature a new "healthbook" type app, plus all those iWatch rumors.
Taking e-mail back, part 4: The finale, with webmail and everything after
I liked the FuelBand, but never bought one. Hopefully Nike either partners with Apple or they make an App.
I takes a lot more than a team of dedicated people to bring something in government into completion. First - there has to be a political consensus within the department to make things happen, then a business case needs to be written and approved. A budget needs to be assigned (where to get the money is another problem), and it needs to be decided that it will be built in-house. Only then, you can actually start building things - the process above takes anywhere from 6 months to a year, sometimes more.
Thats exactly my plan, to learn some basics then further improve skills on minor contracting jobs I get and I feel comfortable to do them in new language. It would probably be C++.
This beautiful electric carriage is tearing New York City apart
Make a game [Awesome Playlist]
Your Internet Security Relies on a Few Volunteers