skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
One reason Ruby makes it needlessly difficult to do do great software architecture and sane TDD is the lack of contracts or strong parameters.

It is easy to take for granted that when you have a function like this:

function foo(int x, string y) { int count = x * 100; print y + " " + count.to_string(); }

...that if you send in a string for x or an int for y the function will blow up. And if you are using a compiled language, it will yell at you before you even attempt to run the code.

In ruby the equivalent code would run just fine, even with generally bad input and it is totally up to you (the programmer) to police yourself to write code that doesn't send across bad data.

A ruby programmer (and probably the same goes for PHP and Python), will end up writing a fair amount of tests that simply ensure that the boundaries are enforced properly and sanely in the code.

There is a lot of love about ruby, but if you are going to write safe, dependable, bug free code it is up to the programmer to enforce boundaries, do validations, and so on and so forth and then write tests that validate that they are still correct over time.

Part of the reason this argument isn't so much happening in other languages is in part that there is maybe not as strong of a culture of TDD in other languages, but also simply because some of the problems don't exist in Java, Scala, C#, etc. because of a type checking compiler and stronger boundaries between components.

A lot of the things that we consider "good architecture" are simply the way we name things, the way we put files in folders, and where we place boundaries in our code. We could write everything as a single file that ran sequentially and jumped to different locations (which is largely what happens anyway), but to make things reasonable and understandable we use patterns like MVC, or composition based functional programming, or MVVM, or various OOP patterns, and so on to express program logic and create logical, sensible boundaries in our code.

If you see the world through the lens of naming things, file structure, and conceptual boundaries, you will see this argument about TDD is more about how strong the boundaries in our code should be and where they should live, not whether TDD as a tool is a good thing or a bad thing.

Rails MVC sees the world as 3 tightly coupled things - model, view, controller. And in that tightly coupled world(along with weak ruby boundaries), TDD is painful and probably not worth your time. DHH is right about that 100%.

If you don't structure your project as Rails MVC does, TDD can be a very pleasant way to build your project and have confidence as you change it over time. Ruby is not the best tool for that job, but it can be made to work. In general, the weaknesses of ruby's boundaries will mean this argument will keep coming up over time and will never be solved.
There is more discussion at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7859084, so we'll call this one the dupe.
I am sure they will be able to exert pressure from their investor community on the political community. I'm pretty sure $1.2 billion in VC money is as valuable than all of those VCs exerting political pressure to keep them in markets. ;)

I'm pretty sure there will be no bribes. :P

I think part of my issue is alot of the rules that their contractors bend/break are reasonable.

It is like my issue with AirBnb. There is a good reason for many of the 'short term' rental laws.

We aren't talking about the bullshit Tesla bans here, after all.
>I imagine a world where you can get anything on demand in minutes, and in that scenario Uber is the taxi, UPS, FedEx, etc. at the same time.

And, with that, the feeling that Amazon.com will snap this company up for cash and stock is almost palpable. Forget drones, that's PR stuff for now. Uber is the real PTTH (product to the home) service.
I can tell you, as a person who suffered (and I mean Suffered) insomnia for 8 years, and saw countless docs.. (the cause was stress, and docs don't treat that) .. the role for me is that it makes it work like I am a teen again. I can memorize youtube urls now, with some practiced chunking.
I would argue (as a not-American and not really US fan) that the US is motivated by the same sort of ideology. In this case, it's the oft-repeated American nationalism ('America is the best nation on earth') to the denigration of other countries. As a Canadian, you often see this attitude of 'America is the best, you should be glad to be around us', and an attitude towards other countries of 'they should be glad they get to do business with us'.

Americans aren't interested in your land or people, because then they would have to manage them. Dirt-farming peasants in some filthy third-world country can have their crappy lives, as long as the despots that we deal with (and, often, installed) give us a fair price for the goods they take from you.

The 'better approach for the smaller guys' is probably true in your area of the world, where the US hasn't been able to effect serious political change due to proximity towards European and Soviet (now Russian) powers; in South America, on the other hand, the US has been known to help overthrow elected governments in favour of dictators with more favourable relationships (as they also did in Iran, for example); in that case, I think it's much worse for the little guys vs. a well-run occupation.

Monty Python said it pretty well: 'Apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order... what have the Romans done for us?'
Welcome aboard the Black Pearl Miss Turner! [1]

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6kgS_AwuH0
People who say they don't have a facebook or twitter account are the new people who say they don't own a tv...
Amazon already has a PTTH service in progress and I'm pretty sure they can produce something that matches Uber for this purpose.
Maybe I'm not the only one wondering why I should bother to enable IPv6?
I hope their long-term plan accounts for driverless vehicles!
In DD, "warrant" is short for "warranty"; these are the legal docs that value your assets and receivables and set the factual terms under which the purchase price can be clawed back if you misstate something.

Based on my experience of it, negotiation took a couple weeks, and warrants/reps took sixteen thousand years. My partners went into the process looking like young David Lo Pan, and ended it looking like old David Lo Pan. (I spent the whole process as the weird floating orb of goo with the big eyeball).
I uses the 'ArielNetwork/Fukamachi' style which has a lot of @ reader macros and recommends a one package per file. Although not on all files.
Sounds like a potential SaaS app to me. Companies who want to be acquired at some point may want help in keeping them "acquirable".
I got a similar vibe. It talks about how facebook can be bad for some people, but then basically calls out everyone for being unhealthy. I react to this the same way I react to someone who sees a small part of my life (like me grabbing a shitty McDonald's burger) and extrapolates my entire physical and mental health based on that small point. And that reaction is usually "piss off, you're being really presumptuous."
It just shows I suppose, that despite the complexity or independence of oversight, it's hard to come up with a construct that incentivizes dissent in the national security context.
Oh also it's easy to check if you're logged in on Service1 using CSP. No user interaction, same results
I personally use and love Middleman http://middlemanapp.com
It is more general purpose compared to Jekyll, which is more blog-focused.

It can be anything you want it to be. Responsiveness can be obtained by using a CSS framework. These things are independent of the static generator framework.
There's a debate over whether or not class-based views are a good idea to use. Discussion here:
http://lukeplant.me.uk/blog/posts/djangos-cbvs-were-a-mistak...
I love the contrast between the 1st and 2nd link on HN right now (2014/06/06 10:49AM)

http://gyazo.com/b5fb5ded81f2aab53cd4185c65158afa
> If we'll be talking about strawmen, the idea every SQL query is composed of many concatenated string pieces is the biggest of them all.

I'm usually careful about using such words as "never" and "always". However, I have yet to encounter a non-trivial application built on top of raw SQL where this doesn't come and bite you. Of course you can't statically check your ORM-built query, but just like with static typing, you can still avoid many problems this way.

> Regarding stray commas... please: listOfIdents.join(','). It's not rocket science. Plus, I'm not necessarily advocating you use string functions to build queries, there are many small helpers to be had when you need to build a complex query, but the point is to know when to stop, and not try to completely hide the resulting SQL from the user of such libraries.

That's just one example. I've done complex dynamic queries with joins and aliases, and frankly, that's ugly with an ORM. Without it, it's an abomination. And I'll point that most (all?) ORMs let you use raw SQL.

> If you can't control when and how your database gets called, if you can't control select locking, and transaction isolation levels, if the vast majority of its functions and syntax is out of reach, you can only do the most basic of CRUD operations on SQL.

I'm not the biggest ORM advocate there is, but even I have to admit that persisting a complex object graph using an ORM is way easier than without it. The problems arise (usually) when you combine ORMs with naive developers attempting to get a lot of data out of the database.

I think you dismiss too easily the advantages you get from a good ORM (not that there are many of them), but I agree they're full of performance pitfalls as well (lazy collections being the most prominent one).
A couple of points, without having closely looked at the Uber financing:

1) $11B is the estimate of the revenues of the US taxi & limo market. Uber aims to expand the size of that market, by drawing in people who otherwise would not have taken a taxi or limo.

2) Uber is global today, and can expand much faster than traditional T&L companies given its model. Global taxi & limo revenues are certainly higher than $11B.

3) Using $11B as the estimate of the US taxi & limo revenues, it is reasonable to assume that the market value of all US taxi & limo companies is larger than $11B. This assumption rests on the premise that if one owned all US taxi & limo services, one could generate ~$11B in cash annually. I don't know what revenue multiple is typical in this industry, but I'd be somewhat surprised to learn that it's <= 1. (Not to mention the monopoly licenses, brands, customer relationships, autos and other physical plant etc. that comes from owning these assets.)
Your market valuation puts the average fare in the region of $100, the linked document (page 10) says "The average yellow taxi fare in 2013 was $13.40" so I'm not so sure the market is $20bn, I'd guesstimate somewhere around $3-5bn for the vehicles they mention in the article.
Nope. I know people who are still using it.

I believe it comes down to the team. Who is on it, how the team works together. If there are a lot of people on the team who enjoy working that way, they'll use it. If not, they don't. It lives on.
The only reason you are being bitten by those two points is because the developer is being lazy and neglectful of user experience.

Making those two issues dissappear takes about 6 hours of developer time.
HouseTab | Mobile Payments with a Social Twist
Take it further to the Dymaxion model - half an hour of sleep every 6 hours!
Even though your LLC didn't make money, it made your IP. Your C corp technically has to buy that IP from your LLC - which cost something.

That's likely wrong (at the federal level, at least). Single-owner LLCs are disregarded for tax purposes unless they expressly choose to be treated as corporations, so generally for tax purposes an LLC's owner is treated as directly owning all of the LLC's assets (and as directly earning all of the LLC's income). Contributions to a C-corp are generally tax free (see, e.g., IRC 351). State tax regimes may differ.
This is why I hate social networks for professional work: a nauseating level of self-promotion. "Wow, my repo has twenty stars!" Great, why did you tell us all that? I'm more interested in discussion or insight. Twitter's character limits make that nearly impossible; relegating it to snark, cheap puns, and humblebrags.

We're blind to it here at HN; we worship success and accept that contributing to the noise of it all is a necessary evil so we can build our brand. Meanwhile, everyone's doing the same, hawking e-books/courses/OSS/products/consultancies. It's not communication, it's typing at each other. Now that we're supposed to maintain an online identity, it's utterly exhausting at times.

Disclaimer: I'm an old soul. I much preferred the non-social web because we didn't all seem to be pushing something.
Evidence of fasting having value is interesting, but I wouldn't put much stock in the "wisdom of the ancestors".
> There's not much room for error in a jar.

Article mentions that most of the jars failed.
Measuring Third-Party Risk
NASA Budget Bill Could Include a Poison Pill for SpaceX
You Could Be A Character In Game Of Thrones
Another analogy: if you oppose violence, is it hypocrisy to only teach self-defense to people born with blue eyes?
Evidently it's not derelict anymore... the University of Arizon has owned it since 2011. Lookin' pretty cool!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2
It's a fantastic business model (low liability, high scalability), and if they can pull it off, it will be worth way more than $17B. That's the bet that these investors are making. Same thing with AirBnB (and many many other tech companies).
Why are there no waffles?
There's a difference between revenue and valuation. In this[1] example of taxi companies, valuation is 3x the revenue.

And the great potential of the company will show once they find a way to offer efficient shared transportation services at much lower prices, like [2]. If they do, they'll basically swim in money.

[1]not so great but a good start :http://www.mergernetwork.com/for-sale/nations-only-publicly-...

[2]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7391885
Yer mistake is picking a fight with God.
Although I like using Uber as a customer:

> "Uber is creating 20,000 jobs per month, the company said in a blog post."

Really? "Jobs" as in W-2 forms and health benefits? Or independent contractors?

Not that the latter are necessarily bad, but they're fundamentally different. It is misleading to call them "jobs" in their blog headline, then switch to "partners" and "small business entrepreneurs" in the text.[1]

I understand that traditional taxi drivers don't have "jobs", either, and Uber might be a better client for a contractor than traditional taxi companies. But that's beside the point I'm talking about, which is unwelcome and deceptive PR spin.

[1]: http://blog.uber.com/uberimpact
And then search for "direct access".

Five of the six countries with direct access appear to be Qatar, Greece, Hungary, Ireland and, not surprisingly, the UK.
You point out an obvious problem, but any method of grouping is equally or more susceptible to this same problem. In practice you would probably look try to look either at the stated official beliefs of sufficiently large religious groups, or at polls of people who self-identify as an adherent to a certain religious group. It's certainly never going to perfectly objective.

This is inherent to the very idea of this graph, which is to list religious groups rather than individuals. Any grouping will necessarily group together people who don't share identical beliefs. I'm just proposing one way to do so, because I think the most pragmatically important feature of a religious group isn't the name of the group or the name they use for their deities, but rather who they consider to be orthodox.
Why King George III Can Encrypt
Ah, I shouldn't have said scans. What I meant was why are they only serving these crappy low-resolution images to the public, rather than making the originals available. I hope this was inadvertent rather than deliberate.
Where can I find porn APIs?
Assuming your figures are correct, $11bn in annual revenue allows for a much higher valuation than $17bn. One of the main methods of valuing a company is the "multiples" approach [1], which values the company at a multiple of it's annual revenue, with the multiple typically falling between 5-15.

A commonly used multiple is the price to earnings multiple of the entire industry, which is absurdly high for major tech companies- Google, for example, has a P/E ratio of ~30 [2], and Facebook has a P/E ratio of ~80 [3]. For non-tech companies, the average ratio is roughly 15.

So if we want to use the average P/E ratio, we can say that a very very very rough price for the entire Taxi/Limo market is $150bn.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valuation_using_multiples
[2] http://ycharts.com/companies/GOOG/pe_ratio
[3] http://ycharts.com/companies/FB/pe_ratio
I've been eating one meal a day for 2.5 years now. More about that here

http://nielsolson.us/blog/2012/08/28/my-diet/
Seems to be a bug in HTTP Switchboard extension.
We're a professional services company, so the only asset we really have is our team. I love our team. Eventually I'll move on, but it'll be hard. We hit on some really good ideas for recruiting good people, they worked better than I could have imagined, and so it's sort of a privilege to be able to share offices with our consultant team.

Another distinction between us and a normal acquisition is that we're run as a subsidiary (this is especially ironic because "acquihire" is an epithet in the valley, and all consulting acquisitions are fundamentally acquihires --- but our acquihire left us with an enormous amount of autonomy). Our acquirer was able to do that in part because they'd already acquired two of the best teams in software security before they snapped us up.

Since we didn't get stripped of our identity or processes when we got acquired, there really wasn't much of a difference in work life before/after, and so no jarring shock after the deal closed. We've had much lower turnover after the deal than we had before it.
It also make code review easier, I can easily fit two versions of the same code side-by side on the screen with room for line numbers, blame, and diff characters leaving room for another window for man pages and other commands. Plus it prints nicely without wrapping one file portrait or two in landscape.
Fellow Chicagoan here. Haven't hailed a taxi in over a year.
Yes, but you're comparing a company (Uber) with an annual revenue number ($11B), which is one property of a market.

For comparison, Apple is currently worth around $565B, but its revenues were $176B in the last 12 months. Chipotle is worth $17B, but its revenues were $3.4B over the last 12 months.

A firm's revenue and its value are related, but usually not equal.
I can't speak for Brad or any of my colleagues, but personally I am reticent for obvious reasons to comment on the prospects for Marin Software stock.

That said, I have a pretty deep background in markets and trading, and can think of all kinds of reasons a stock might not move higher in the first year after its IPO while other stocks in the same sector have rallied, none of which include "it's a bad company." A value-minded investor (of which I am not necessarily one, but it's another perspective) would be happier to get the stock at a lower price than a higher one.

No, I was not born yesterday, and yes, I'm happy with the deal even given its attendant risks.
My understanding is the most common response to a successful exit isn't elation but rather a massive sigh of relief. Which just highlights that if you're going to start a company then do so because you WANT build that company. Not because you want to flip it.
"Unlike a lot of other startups that give options to their employees, we’d given them actual shares."

Nicely done and congrats.
They have plenty of money to fight the regulatory situation, and it looks like they're gearing up to do so: https://www.uber.com/jobs/12416

("Urban transportation has looked the same for a long time—a really long time—thanks in large part to regulatory regimes that don't encourage innovation. We think it's time for change. Uber’s legal and public policy teams are helping facilitate that change around the world, and we’re looking for a hustler-wonk to help us develop that will change the world. This is no ordinary, run-of-the-mill gig -- seriously, have you read the news? We’re navigating some very interesting policy waters. Are you ready to dive in?
This position is based in San Francisco or Washington, DC.")
Citations in BibTeX format from DOIs
Why not? Don't you want to attach a bunch of leeches to your stomach and bleed away that flu?
You can get a cab in Manhattan, and maybe Brooklyn, 90% of the time. But, if you head to the Bronx (where I live), it's considerably more difficult. I can't really speak for Queens or Staten Island.

Up until the beginning of the year, 90% of the time you'll be hailing a gypsy cab. The only time you'd get a yellow when leaving the BX was at shift change which is around 5pm/5am for a lot of them. Not that there's anything wrong with a gypsy cab, but you're not supposed to hail them, which ties into a lot of the problems Uber appears to be facing in NYC.

I will say a lot has changed with the introduction of the Boro cabs (green cabs). I don't remember exactly when they were introduced, but getting a cab is considerably easier now.

So, while I agree with what you are saying, I think it's a little Manhattan-centric.
Government researcher misuses supercomputers to mine Bitcoin
I'd say the BBC report is wrong.

Vodafone's report says:

> Under s.5 of the Intelligence Services Act 1994 (“ISA”) the Secretary of State may, on an application made by the Security Service, the Intelligence Services or GCHQ, issue a warrant in respect of any property so specified or in respect of wireless telegraphy. There is the possibility that this power is broad enough to permit government direct access to Vodafone’s network by the Security Services in some instances.

If the possibility exists then you bet GCHQ is using it. Sorry, your own country can listen into your calls :(
An Interview with Steve Souders
You joke, but I have a condition where my iron content builds up relatively quickly, and the best thing they've still figured out as a cure is blood letting.
I use Now and I do heavily use my Google Account (logged in Google searches, Chrome with Chrome sync tied to my account across multiple devices, Gmail, etc.) -- and Now does quite a lot for me. Updates to blogs I visit regularly get shown on Now. I get reminders based on flight itineraries that are in my Gmail (e.g., when my wife is travelling and forwards me her itinerary) without taking any action to make it happen, including notifications of flight delays. It provides travel times to places I frequently travel. It suggests pages I might be interested in based on previous browsing happens -- which seemed wierd at first, but I found some interesting things that way that I might have otherwise not run into.
Ocean Cleanup – Large-scale, passive, and efficient ocean plastic removal
Ahhh, I just came from the Vodaphone comments, and my context switching is slow.

It's true that the legal side is onerous. We like to think that it prevents more trouble than it causes, but reasonable minds may differ.

I still think my question is an interesting one, even if it's not what you were saying. I don't know that there's any public precedent on the matter, but I imagine it's not as rare as one might think given all the different sort of public and private NDAs that exist.