skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
How We Raised $450K On Kickstarter
An in depth breakdown of how we raised $450K including the tools we used and the decisions we made.
It sucks but it's a great marketing gimmick.

If Joe Blow managed to lift his fat finger to click and scroll - he'll be eligible to read more exciting stuff and eventually be opted-in and be sold to.

From the other point of view - scrolling down requires minimal brain cycles (i.e. where is the next link to click?) - and people love doing that to absorb the whole content without thinking.

Sort of like getting a free massage.
No, "automatically unboxing the promises that are returned" does not give Promises "the full power of Monads", because you cannot represent a Promise for a Promise for a value. Promises/A+ breaks parametricity.
I agree with all of these points.

As much as Dijkstra liked to cry foul on goto, there are some instances where they really can make imperative code more readable [1]. State machines are a fine example of this. In languages that lack goto but do have tail call optimization (such as many functional languages), you can safely substitute mutual recursion. Then functions become your states, and transitions are tail calls. Lambda is, after all, the ultimate goto [2].

Edit: forgot the links -_-

[1]: http://web.archive.org/web/20090320002214/http://www.ecn.pur...

[2]: http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/5753/AIM-443.p...
I don't believe Flickr keeps and returns to you the same videos you sent it; OneDrive may, but I don't know.

If yahoo shuts down Flickr tomorrow, it's users are screwed. If Dropbox shuts down tomorrow, all my pictures are on a handful of drives. Again, major difference in how it works.

Dropbox turned down buying Everpix last year, who had been an extremely promising photo management startup---because DB we're working on this. Most relevantly, the author of this article gives lip service in the first few paragraphs to the idea that design is how the system works, then reviews them based on the surface UI. He doesn't seem to look at the sync protocols of sync-focused apps!
This looks great! I wanted something sim(ilar|pler) for inspecting psd iOS mockups (to extract size/font info, etc). This is clearly geared towards web, but looks like it would work well for any sort of design.
I really enjoyed this post and it reminds me of another related post from several months ago that got a lot of attention in the design community:

http://insideintercom.io/the-dribbblisation-of-design/

tl;dr - Good design is supposed to be about solving users' problems (not just aesthetics), but recently design has become more and more about impressing other designers with your snazzy new cutting-edge interface rather than actually solving real user problems.
It's not about the price they're paying for power (peak hours from the power company's perspective), it's about the peak usage of their data center.

As the article (correctly) says, the capital costs are dependent on your peak usage. If you have 1000 servers using 400kW at peak, you need sufficient air conditioning to extract 400kW worth of heat, and backup generation capable of producing 400kW. It doesn't matter if you only use 100kW 16 hours a day - the capital costs are the same.

I'm suggesting that Glacier could live entirely in non peak periods, meaning that the capital costs are unchanged and the demand curve is flattened.
It's not the libertarians specifically, it's the idea that governments are incapable of improving anything, which has much broader support.

The EU ban on this practice has been effective. Whatever it is that makes the US government incapable of enforcing a similar ban, it's clear that it's not because goverments as a rule are incapable of such things.
Sure, but consumers don't care or know (for the most part) what a storage array even is!
If you look at those benchmarks, for the same db queries on the same db backend, throughput and latency can differ by an order of magnitude. We're talking the difference between 200 or 2000 requests per second, or 50ms vs 500ms latency. That's not a rounding error.
+1 your point, but I'm not clear what you're implying about the relationship between lawyers & social workers. (said as someone who works every day with lawyers and has very close relationships with LCSW+ social workers)
Both my son (6) and daughter (5) are avid Minecrafters. I got them the game at Christmas, and in 4 months, they are both still extremely enthusiastic, spending hours a day building worlds.

They are both learning to read because of it, since they sometimes need to search for items from the creative mode search bar, as well as when they hover over an item to see what it is, and for my son, he's also typing queries into the minecraft wiki, google, and youtube, to get answers to his questions when I'm still at work and can't help him. This is a six year old.

They're also learning to add and subtract, as they use up blocks to make things, or add items when mining.

Watching them build, even the youngest one, reminds me strongly of watching a mechanical engineer running Pro-E or SolidWorks, as they quickly and effortlessly change orientation and position to place a new block or to inspect what they just built. It's become 2nd nature to them, with no hesitation as they pan around in 3D like a Mech Eng with 5 years experience.

I am amazed at what this game is doing for them. They are leaps and bounds ahead of where I was at their age.
"acquired"
I think of it the other way: if it's easy to write code that "understands" your code, then it's probably easy to understand your code, because you can encode (ha!) your understanding precisely enough for a computer to execute it and accurately enough to pass tests.

I don't quite buy the contrapositive, though: I easily understand small functions that touch well-named global variables, as long as it touches maybe 1 or 2 of them, but we wouldn't call such a function particularly "testable". At some point, poor testability and difficulty in understanding correlate, but we can easily exhibit entire classes (ha again!) of easy-to-understand-but-difficult-to-test code.

If we had a catalog mapping test/testing problems to design smells, perhaps we'd find it easier to argue our position more convincingly. A bunch of us keep meaning to write that catalog, but I haven't seen it yet. :)
I've heard that driver's ed in Germany is quite comprehensive and rigorous. Heck, even the yearly car checks are thorough (hey, you don't have a standard German first-aide kit in your car? Fail!).
As with all language constructs, it's not a problem if you're judicious.
It looks cool but please please please add a number to the "Speed" slider. There's currently no way to tell how many WPM I'm reading at.
So if AirBNB didn't exist there would be an extra 1000 units available... (I'd estimate you're realistically looking at 100 units tops)

825,000 people, assume 2.4 people per unit meaning SF will need ~340,000 housing units with a population growth rate of 0.9% each year SF will need an additional 3060 units.

So if we get rid of every AirBNB unit SF could potentially meet 1/3rd of it's additional supply for 1 year. aka. big fucking deal, what are you going to do next year?
Right, but how many mathematicians does it take to build a bridge? Probably just a few engineers, and the process is probably very standardize. That architect probably isn't using much math in his/her design. Software is similar: there is some math involved, but it is often abstracted away and you might not ever be exposed to it.
Ultradns Dealing with DDOS Attack
"Right now Avocode is focused on the web but we would like to offer the same experience for mobile developers too" - Question 12 http://avocode.com/faq.html
This (excellent, provoking, well-worth-reading) article was posted a week ago on Quora (https://mokriya.quora.com/Designer-Duds-Losing-Our-Seat-at-t...), interesting that only the Medium version made it to Hacker News.
Happy birthday BASIC programming language
No, it won't make your heads explode as some would like you to believe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BASIC

FreeBASIC http://www.freebasic.net/

QB64 http://qb64.net/

RFO BASIC http://laughton.com/basic/

BrowserBASIC http://pewtersoftware.com/browserbasic/

FNXBasic http://fnxbasic.com/

GAMBAS http://gambas.sourceforge.net/

RapidQ http://rapidq.phatcode.net/

Panoramic http://panoramic-language.pagesperso-orange.fr/

VB.net

NaaLaa http://naalaa.com/

CoolBASIC http://www.coolbasic.com/index.php?lang=en

Jabaco http://jabaco.org/

BASIC4GL http://www.basic4gl.net/

DarkBASIC http://www.thegamecreators.com/?m=view_product&id=2000&page=free

BlitzBASIC http://www.blitzbasic.com/Products/_index_.php

BCX http://bcxbasic.com/

Brutus2D http://brutus.pewtersoftware.com/

GFA-BASIC http://gfabasic32.blogspot.com/

XBASIC http://www.xbasic.org/

XBLite http://www.xblite.com/

OxygenBASIC http://www.oxygenbasic.org/

ThinBASIC http://www.thinbasic.biz/projects/thinbasic/thinBasic_1.8.9.0.zip

others http://basic.mindteq.com/

Learn: http://petesqbsite.com/
This is like trying to exert control over the airspace (e.g. for airplanes) on your property. It is completely unworkable.
You only need to know where on the disk the binary is. Once you know that, you attack the binary directly, by randomizing a 16-byte chunk of it. The effectiveness of that attack depends on a lot of factors, but remember that X64 binaries aren't the only thing that XTS needs to protect.

For that matter, you can trigger vulnerabilities in the kernel or even application code, by surreptitiously randomizing offsets into metadata that they depend on.

What's clear to a cryptographer is that no scheme that provides serious non-malleability should have this property, but XTS does. What's maddening, in a theoretical sense, is that you can't really put this into formal terms, because --- as I've been saying --- nobody has provided a clear definition of what security guarantees XTS is supposed to provide.

No amount of use-tamper-use breaks a cipher that resists CCA2 attacks, because every attempt to tamper produces a hard failure. That's what CCA2-resistance means: attackers don't get to adaptively choose ciphertext (or really, choose any ciphertext at all). In practice, cryptosystems resist these attacks by authenticating ciphertext.

For what it's worth, the article we're commenting on is clear that CBC is inferior to XTS for disk encryption. I take no responsibility for readers who read random selections of the article and come to their own conclusions, although if you look elsewhere on this thread that has clearly happened at least once.
You may want to read up on Pablo Escobar and how much money you can make from a product that people want, but which is illegal.
Almost sounds like Heartbleed in the TCP stack...

Additionally, because the undefined on stack memory may be overwritten by
other kernel threads, while extremely difficult, it may be possible for
an attacker to construct a carefully crafted attack to obtain portion of
kernel memory via a connected socket. This may result in the disclosure of
sensitive information such as login credentials, etc. before or even
without crashing the system.

I'm sure there's some great branding opportunities around 'tcp_reass.c'...
These Online Tools Can Help You Test Code Snippets Easily
See, when you say "shiny toy" you imply someone gave you the toy - you use it, but can't make it and don't know how it works. But we invented all we have, so we can rightfully be proud of it.

(I am aware you didn't invent that saying (I don't know who did), but you used it without thinking about how stupid of a saying it actually is.)

> and yet our brains aren't that far removed from our ape ancestors.

OK, that's just so ridiculous as to verge on absurd. Our brains are so far removed from an ape that you wouldn't know we were related if all you could observe were actions (rather than form and shape).

> are not well-suited for considering really-long-term abstract uncertain problems that require altruism to solve (e.g. the environment as the tragedy of the commons

Any yet somehow we have solved that over and over. And humans are the most altruistic of all the species - witness how we rush to help when there is a disaster, or how much charity we give - or that we invented of concept of charity in the first place!

> or solid agreements between nations to dismantle nuclear arms).

We haven't done that because we don't want to do that, not because we can't. And we don't want to for very good, thought out reasons, not because of some brain lack. You might disagree on the reasons themself, but you can't claim there were no reasons.

> Overcoming that bias, to see humanity in its current state as basically a selfish tribalistic society, is challenging.

And presumably you have done so? And you have one of these flawed brains? You seem to have a contradiction here. Not that I agree with your analysis anyway. You are trying to use tribalistic as a negative but it doesn't have that meaning. And we are not selfish, we are competitive. Selfish would imply hurting others for no gain of your own and while some individuals do that, as a whole we don't.

> that generally we devalue human lives with increasing distance from our own birthplace, country, class, time, etc.

We don't devalue them because they are far, but rather we don't believe we have the ability to do anything about their lives, so we ignore them. The closer someone is to you the more likely you are to help - is that your point? But people don't help more because they are more similar - people help more because they have more ability to do so.
Selling Your Company? Prioritize Dollars Over Prestige
I agree. I think you've overstated how many people take that position, but I agree. By the same token, I find it unfortunate when a person turns "TDD doesn't work for me" into "TDD is a bad idea", which DHH has certainly and explicitly said in his articles on the topic. His title "TDD is dead" simply makes one group of people cheer mindlessly and another group roll their eyes. It doesn't help the conversation.

That said, I understand meeting extremism with extremism. I don't think it works, but I understand it.
Wow! What a weirdly expansive/narrow view of fields you identify/don't identify with.
I no longer remember exactly how, given it was so long ago. But for some number of years prior to 1982 I had coaxed my parents into getting me a subscription to Popular Electronics. They often had "computer" articles where one could build one's own computer from discrete components and a CPU. This was the days when an 8080 or a Z80, a breadboard, and a few misc. TTL logic chips could almost suffice to build an actual computer.

Then for Christmas of 1980 or 1981 (I no longer remember which) a Sinclair ZX-81 was under the tree. If it was 1980 I would have then been 13. The ZX got a bunch of usage, but being chained to it's audio cassette tape interface for storage (read: didn't work so well....) meant most of the usage was pure play, like printing 1-100 to the screen and so forth. Which when one is 13, and "programming" a computer for the first time, seems magical.

1982 plays a key role because in 1982, my parents (well, more my Dad, but) decided to get an Atari 800. Auspiciously the reason was so that Dad could automate the weekly task of computing the score-sheet for his bowling league (he was secretary of the league at that time, and one of his tasks was calculating up the weekly averages, scores, handicaps, etc.) Well, Dad wasn't (and still isn't) any form of a computer programmer, so the reality was that I was "volunteered" to write the program that would automate the league calculation work.

That "task", which I gladly took up, so I voluntarily volunteered myself, would be how/why I got my "start". And I've been at it ever since.

In any case, I'd probably have taken up the craft one way or the other, it just so happens that this way turned out to be the how/why.
Why are you buying our $300K Product?
That looks cool. Could you explain a bit more about how the formal verification part worked? What kind of prover do you use? Are the HSMs the specification, and you want to make sure that the rules behave as specified by the HSMs, or do you specify some higher level properties on the HSMs? I couldn't figure these out scanning through your website.
I'd like to hear any details of the rumours you're talking about. We looked carefully at this bug and couldn't find any potential for more severe impacts -- even the kernel memory leakage is hard for remote attackers, since the memory is leaked to the local side of the connection, not the remote side.
Yes, I focus on my per-file runtime in the post, and I mention David's suite runtime in one sentence at the beginning. They are not meant to be compared. David's file runtime is four seconds. This is unacceptable to me. This is unacceptable to other people who replied to your tweets. This would double the length of my high-speed TDD loop, which would make those portions of my TDD process take twice as long.

Yes, it would've been clearer for me to specifically address both suite runtimes and both unit runtimes. You know what else would've been clearer? All of the 2,000 words or so that I deleted from that post while I was editing it down into its final form. This is just how writing works. I don't think that it's misleading as written.

Of course, I've already told you, on Twitter, exactly my reasons for rejecting both four-minute suites and four-second test files. They're not in the post, but you know the reasons. You know that I wasn't selectively attacking a subset of his argument, because you know that I do have an answer for test file runtime. And yet, for some reason, here we are!

(For anyone reading this later, the tweets in question are gone. Lately I've been deleting all replies, as well as trivial non-replies, for Reasons.)
Heartbleed-style vulnerabilities aren't rare. At a security conference several years ago, someone dumped a full image of a running core router with one of them.
No, it has far more in common with the other recent OpenSSL bug -- use-after-free resulting in data potentially getting spliced into the wrong connection.
A friend of mine used to rant about cellphones in theaters, and thought theaters should install jammers (as in, he was actually surprised that none had done this yet). The fact is, they're a primary communication device for many people. Who knows when you might receive a call that you have to take (for certain jobs or with situations concerning family or friends), or when you need to make a phone call (see the Aurora shooting or the recent one in FL for violent examples, but even a heart attack or some other medical emergency). Jammers just aren't a good idea for 99.999% of the situations people suggest using them.
I don't see why it's like that at all. Am I not allowed to create a small faraday cage in my garage, and inside that test out a cell phone jamming device? Why does it matter if there's literally no measurable effect on the surrounding property?
I'd believe the same endorsements from someone who makes their living primarily off working code, rather than selling edu. material promoting test-heavy coding.

That said, rapid "all's still well" feedback is awesome when you can get it.
Ask HN: Alternatives to FeedBurner
Are there any good alternatives to FeedBurner? Google has not upgraded the product in years. (Aside: What's more, it is not even served via HTTPS and to me seems like the only Google service that uses your Google login but still does not force HTTPS.)
Mentor Program in IT for a middle schooler in Atlanta
Hi, I have been searching for a week without any success for a mentor-ship program during summer break for a middle school student who wants to be a software engineer, in or around Atlanta. If your company has any program even if its once a week, please let me know.

thanks
~a
Whatever happened to the Mueller wave disc motor? Does anyone know? It seemed very well-suited as a range extender motor in a series hybrid. Surely there's a Chevy Volt driving around with one somewhere...

EDITED to add: they seem to have run out of funding without producing anything commercializable: http://newenergyandfuel.com/http:/newenergyandfuel/com/2013/...
The two things that really stand out for me are the graphics and the mood. In addition to having a polished look, the game has an evocative soundtrack. The tagline "Death is not a setback..." got my imagination going and drew me into the world of Life Goes On.

If you have a moment and others haven't already asked the same question, I'd like to know which technologies (i.e. Unity?) you used to build the game and a bit about how you learned game development.
I find this claim fairly annoying, since the free Flickr service only allows me retrieve my photos in a very down-sized format. Or did they change that in the past few years?
> it's engineers that come up with new, innovative products that solve real problems

It's _humans_ that come up with new, innovative products that solve real problems. The profession those humans choose vary.
I was actually discussing this post a few days ago with one of my UI/UX designer friends, and he made an interesting point - On news forums like Hacker News we see a lot of failure stories from engineers and marketers about how and why their product or marketing campaign failed, usually ending with some lesson about product-market fit and understanding your users.

But my friend posed the question, Why don't more designers talk about their design failures? For example, Julie Zhou (Director of Product Design at Facebook) has written some awesome blog posts on Medium about her design process, but what if she also wrote an essay about "Why Facebook Home Failed"? What if Mike Matas (Design Lead for Facebook Paper) wrote an essay about "Why so few people are using Facebook Paper"?

(I have no stats on the % of "failure stories" that are written by designers vs engineers vs marketers, but anecdotally it seemed to ring true to me.)

So why is it that designers don't like talking about their failed designs? I thought about it long and hard but couldn't think of a good reason why that might be. Would love to hear your thoughts on the matter!
For texts that are suited for skimming, perhaps less interesting texts, I can see tools like these being useful.

But I hope you're not reading novels this way. Increasing the speed might help you finish more books, but to what end? Should books also be one of those areas in life where we constantly have to perform and stay on top? If I read Pride and Prejudice I'll do it for my own enjoyment, at whatever pace I like. I kind of like that no one is timing my reading.
I've worked at several offices for them around Houston, including Sugar Land, Katy, and San Felipe, which appears to mostly not have private offices. A facilities guy there once told me that they actually have a total of 78 offices just in Houston.
It's hard to imagine Drew not caring about design, or not understanding the things you've mentioned. Dropbox succeeded over other competitors mostly because of its fantastic design and user experience. Is Dropbox simply so large now that it's becoming just another typical big company with dysfunction typical of big companies? If so, that's unfortunate. I wonder if YC could amass some wisdom about how to stave off such problems after companies grow really large.

Thanks for chiming in with an inside view, by the way.
Just the sort of tool I'm after! Been using Gimp to open PSDs but it's quite finicky and error prone. I can't justify myself a Photoshop license just for inspection purposes.