skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I wonder if there are M&A statistics about how many times acquisitions not just fail (a well known problem), but fail because the market just "cools down."
--- "Microsoft has pitched Yammer’s service–kind of a Facebook FB +5.18% for the workplace–as part of its bundle of document-and-email systems. Since the purchase, however, the white-hot market for such tools has cooled, a factor contributing to a shrinking stock-market valuation for rival Jive Software JIVE -0.39%."

If one was able to predict that, then a build decision would be superior to a buy. Typically, those Corp Dev spreadsheets people work on so much when buying a company assume a certain growth rate for a number of years, and another one after that, etc. but I don't think people plan for the scenario that the "market dies" after acquisition.

It would be kind of like predicting today that Docker-style containers would be abandoned in 2 years. Or that virtual reality would never pan out (Oculus).

The problem is that when markets are hot, people see the lag as insurmountable and deciding for Build looks overwhelming.
Close Popup Window in Chrome Extension
Very sad to see you guys leaving Australia. Best of luck!
An even better real-world example might be manual transmissions, which are now both slower and less efficient than modern automatic counterparts. Some people (like myself) prefer them regardless.
This felt like the main point of the article for me. Geographically it is very relevant to me (and fellow Australians, even if they are too stupid to see through our government's crap).
No. The relationship between the parties has become a landlord/tenant relationship under California law, with the tenant in a month to month rental. The tenant now has all the rights any random person in a month to month apartment rental has, and the landlord has all the obligations of a landlord.

Among other things, that means the tenant can only be kicked out via formal eviction proceedings, and the landlord cannot do obnoxious things to try to drive him out.

Before renting out your place via AirBnB (or by any other means, actually) it is really important to determine how the law where your property is located determines when a renter is just a transient guest that you can kick out at will, and when the renter is a resident and your arrangement has become a landlord/tenant arrangement.
I don't think it's so much about being smaller, more that there is only one set of rules for the whole country and those rules are more strongly enforced. Also, from what I can tell, the driving exam is far more rigorous in the UK.
You need to find out what you can charge your users to customers. Or what things you can add to the product so they will pay. It's not your product anymore, it's theirs. Unless you piss them off and they leave. Changing bunch of things with consulting them will do that.
I am often saddened by how much easier it has been for me to acquire computer science versus mathematical literacy. Embarrassingly, years after a poorly-timed calculus course left me thinking I had to be able to prove the central limit theorem in order to use calculus, the biggest barriers have turned out to be things programming as a discipline has learned to avoid; encouraging varied and/or terse notations, opaque variable naming schemes, and arbitrary use of jargon where simpler terms would suffice.

A friend of mine who is a physicist once complained to me that every time he had to install some scientific software package on his computer, he had to deal with a litany of arbitrary things which seemed to have nothing to do with his task. I countered with my experience learning math and joked that at least programmers are willing to occasionally refresh our idioms and notations to better reflect our mutual understanding.
I really feel like putting up Dosbox, buying a copy of "Advanced MS/DOS", using the Turbo TASM tool and working through that is better training. I think it took me basically a month of evenings to cover that book.

The thing is - when you do that, you'll pretty much be able to form a model for any API you ever see. As a buddy used to say, "It's all ioctl()".

Then go the larger-word instruction sets.
Say Woo for Code that Woorks
I like where you are thinking with the real estate ideas, but here are my thoughts: As long as we have the concept of buyer's agents, then the system will continue. Real estate agents take any buyer and tell them that their service is free to them. As a seller, that's 2.8% that I don't even have a chance to get away from, which is no good.
Then you have to convince the government that the cost of laying the fibre is worth it.

It's the current battle down under right now.
Explaining Prisons with Puppets [video]
you can remove trust by changing your passcode.
The US adopted the English legal system, and changing your name is easy as pie. Mexico adopted the French and Spanish legal systems and changing your name is damn near impossible (from what I hear). I figure that's a feature of those legal systems (and their associated legal cultures), not the US and Mexico.
The anti-intellectuals have the general attitude that language doesn't matter.

This attitude should not be discounted. You'll find fewer proponents of strong type systems than me.

I recently started working with a client who wanted to build a Haskell system in order to do some complex financial modelling. I told them to forget Haskell and build a Python/Django app that will handle 90% of their customers. The only significant bug was comparing a backward discounted quantity to a forward discounted quantity. Haskell wouldn't solve that.

The development effort saved due to not rewriting built-in django apps vastly outweighed any productivity benefit we'd have gotten from using Haskell.
There's a story on "The Daily WTF" that's almost certainly about Epic Systems. Epic apparently uses an obfuscated 60's-era language called MUMPS.

See http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/A_Case_of_the_MUMPS.aspx

I found another article that says Epic prefers to hire fresh college graduates because they're easier to mold into the "Epic Way."
I heard that EMC never raised VC
On enhancements: yeah, that's reasonable, but we also wanted to be able to add some obviously missing methods to things like List, globally available. We've toyed around with a scope declaration on the enhancement, e.g. global, module, or explicit but haven't settled on anything.

Back-tick has been on the list forever and wouldn't be hard to add. Open a ticket. :)
Programmer's Dvorak? This is the first time it's come up in the discussion, we were talking about the regular Dvorak keyboard.

There's hardly any information about Programmer's Dvorak, by the way, not even a Wikipedia page.
What's the difference? Are personal files never ever diagnostically relevant?
anyone remember Gattaca ? well we could end up with data based classification version of that here !
I wish I could add some comments while submitting the speed test. The wifi in my hotel is free, but the speed I'm receiving is only obtainable by using a code provided by the front desk. The normal speeds are quite a bit slower.
If your business has improved the lives of tens of millions of people, which Twitch has, I think you do deserve to become a billionaire or multi millionaire. I figure the rewards for a business are relative to the number of people it impacts.
> I prefer having research funded by public money without seeking a profit.

Now that I read what you wrote twice I might interpret your original sentence wrong. I thought you were implying the work they doing with Google is using public money ("I prefer research funded by public money [done by these researchers to be non-profit].")

You meant you prefer to have public institutions to carry out the research.

Well, in that case, it's only temporary. There are public and private AIDS research, but in the end, the public research is used to seek for profit. Say Google, IBM, Microsoft donates 10B to make this a non-profit research, the end product (the algorithms, etc) will be used by private companies anyway. So I don't see how public vs private really matter if the data and results are going to be publicly known by private company later on for profit.

But if you are going for "pure knowledge", sure, public research would be ideal :D
Tracking Movers and Shakers: Tackling Human Resources News Classification
I'm pretty sure there's been at least one company in Loves Park, IL (by Rockford, west of Chicago) that I'm not seeing on there.
Ask HN: What skill set qualifies an entry level developer?
Hi everyone,

I'm sorry in advance for creating yet another question about entry level developer positions.

That being said, I am heading into 2 back to back dev bootcamps to learn a wide breadth of languages and solidify the basis of further programming learning.

I wanted to hear from experienced devs if the following skill set is of use and would be enough to land be an entry level job at a good company.

Languages I know already: HTML/CSS

Skills already known: Linux server administration, website optimization (more server side and load impact optimization)

I will cover off the basics of the following programming pieces: RoR, proper Bootstrap usage, jQuery, AJAX, JSON, Node.js, MongoDB, Express, RESTful API, Angular, MySQL, jQuery mobile, Appgyver

Skills that I will learn: Git deployment, testing, TDD

I will learn all of this over a 3 month and 2 month period of 16 hour days, 7 days a week. In that time I will probably also produce around 3 good sized projects to show what I have learned on Git.

Basically my question, will the above skill set set me up well enough for an entry dev position at a good company?
^ this. But what is your plan to make this a reality?

My solution: support bandcamp.com (which gives away DRM-free music).
Setting up Haskell is actually pretty well understood nowadays thanks to tons of people going through the flow and posting the latest "how to" here: https://github.com/bitemyapp/learnhaskell . For Ubuntu for example, it's not much harder than installing a few packages from a PPA and adding a line to your $PATH

Cabal does OK for the most part nowadays, but it's definitely still a challenge with the monster projects like Yesod. Supposedly that's a work in progress for now.
Yeah, maybe regulators will be able to figure out how to rein in the second use case without messing up the first. But that sounds pretty idealistic.
I'm the asshole who merges in at the last possible second. It's really annoying that they're doing this as I routinely save 10 minutes off my commute by jumping into lanes that will eventually merge in.
Bonobos are celebrated as peace-loving, matriarchal, and sexually liberated
HP Pavilion p7-1446s Desktop PC | HP Support
>Haskell does still have major "ease of installation" problems in my experience.

Really? I literally just did

brew install haskell-platform
cabal update
cabal install cabal-install

and I'm running the second-to-latest major release of GHC and the latest release of cabal.
Those statistics do not include cases where older person switches lanes into your car and you luckily avoid it.

They also do not include cases where other people cause accidents and go on their marry way while you wreck your vehicle avoiding them.

Like the other poster stated, it's young (novice drivers) and old drivers.

It's also a scientific fact that you reaction time decreases as you grow older.

>Because all the stats I've seen show that older drivers are safer better drivers than young people.

Sure.

http://consumerreports.org/cro/magazine/2012/10/teenagers-an...

http://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/older_adult_drivers/ad...

> Age-related declines in vision and cognitive functioning (ability to reason and remember), as well as physical changes, may affect some older adults' driving abilities.5

> Per mile traveled, fatal crash rates increase starting at age 75 and increase notably after age 80. This is largely due to increased susceptibility to injury and medical complications among older drivers rather than an increased tendency to get into crashes
Don't forgoet that the monopoly comes at the cost that they are required to keep a lot of post offices open in rural areas, which is a very unprofitable enterprise.
Agner Fog : Usability for Nerds
I found the book "The West without Water: What Past Floods, Droughts, and Other Climatic Clues Tell Us about Tomorrow" very informative.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0520268555

The authors describe their paleoclimatology research, what the water in the West has typically been, and how global warming may impact things (for the worse) - with some tips on mitigation.
Should we be concerned that they are looking at our email contents in order to build this system?

We did a lot of research, looked at all the variations of
email that passes through Mailgun
I think the "they don't get it" thing is actually quite a valid reason. I've heard some really ignorant things said in opposition to functional programming. I don't think it applies to the majority of potential users, but certainly a non-negligible percentage.

Examples:
"Immutability is stupid, because if your program is immutable it can't do anything."

"You just end up writing everything in an IO Monad anyway."

"Functions are good for math, but not for coding."
Thanks for posting this! I just read a small portion of Integration and trust me, it all make sense now!
3D printers don't print objects out of nothingness; they require feedstock of some sort. And as the USPS document notes, that's going to need to either be shipped to you or purchased locally.
I'm not sure "non-Abelian braiding statistics" is the only known robust architecture for QC. Topological qubits are, after all, just systems whose natural states are quantum error correcting codes. Those who chose to pursue quantum error correction directly likely also deserve the moniker of "robust architecture".
Gotta love HN for comments like this.
I went into FP from the perspective of a Python/Javascript/Groovy zealot, considered FP to be a silly academic thing with no real world applications.

Took me about a week to be productive in Scala in a functional style. Haskell is a little more complex, but I found that throwing myself in the deep end, while frustrating, was not overly difficult.

The cost of switching to FP only seems high because people don't want to even bother trying. Once you've gotten over the initial bump, FP is (in my opinion) substantially easier to wrote code in.
Ask HN: Anyone hacked their power bills?
I'm interested in the kind of things hackers have done to lower their power bills.

This is keeping in mind that I don't have a budget for much spending as a student.

Are LED lightbulbs the way to go? Does swapping out a 60W globe for a ~5-10W LED really lower your bill much at all? I need to know what kind of affect it could have before I outlay the cost of buying all LED for instance.

How much does lowering your hot water temperate affect power bills? I recently lowered ours from 70-60 degrees celsius by recommendation from a friend, but I'm not too sure how much it is affecting our bill.

We try to switch appliances off at the wall if we're not using them. I have an energy saver connected to the TV that cuts power to the Raspberry Pi and consoles when the TV isn't in use.

I tried to find some articles about cutting power usage but it's the internet and I don't know who to believe. Most of the results were commercial sites that sell power saving devices, so I don't really know that I can trust them.
Really small and really good book: "4 months to a 4 hour marathon". You're further along than the book starts out but a lot of good ideas and tidbits in there (I started with that for my first marathon and it was great. I now run ultras).
You've discovered how to tell if you are in a physics department or a computer science department :)
Out of curiosity, why do you think that's a problem?
It's not about following the law with suspect motives. It's about the fact that following the technical protocol does not give you much defense against unlawful access charges.
Quick question: how many of you are against the flood of illegal immigrants making their way into the US? If you're worried about killing herd immunity, you should really be voicing your discontent over both the GOP and Democrat parties encouraging this with their amnesty plans.

Here's just one incident of an illegal bringing disease into the US:

http://news.yahoo.com/arrest-warrant-issued-man-tuberculosis...
On one hand, the scaly dinosaurs many of us grew up with were a lie. On the other hand, big dumb lizards frankly aren't very interesting.

Feathers on most dinosaurs will take some getting used to, but I think they have the potential to be a lot more interesting. Pop culture has a lot of catching up to do. Even the upcoming Jurassic World movie is planning to show velociraptors with no feathers.

I really hope my daughter will be as interested in dinosaurs at a young age as I was, but if just wish I could show her more accurate dinosaurs.
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she

With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
IANAL, but ...

Courts take a very, very dim view of any act that a landlord takes to harass a tenant, legal or not. Read http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~asucrla/Harassment%20by%20Your%... for example. A landlord who takes any adverse action against a tenant outside the legal eviction process is liable for damages.

Further, those other hundreds of tenants could have a legal claim against the landlord for fraud, since in a lease the landlord has to represent that he/she can deliver the property to the tenant, which is demonstrably not the case.
Domino Data Lab is hiring a Head of Marketing
We make Domino (www.DominoDataLab.com), a software platform that enables data scientists to do industrialized analysis without the engineering headaches typically required to set up, configure, and maintain such functionality.

We are looking for a hands-on marketer to help us accelerate our growth. This will entail both strategic thinking and raw execution, so you should have familiarity with the tools of the trade, along with a high level of energy, cleverness and scrappiness. We're in San Francisco, though we would consider remote work for the right candidate.

Domino was founded by three veterans of the finance industry. We are well capitalized and have gained significant sales momentum since our launch. You can learn more about our product at http://www.DominoDataLab.com.

Please email jobs@dominodatalab.com if you're interested in this opportunity.
Install Wechat on pc without Bluestacks
That is clearly illegal under California law. In addition to exposing the landlord to civil damages, it's also a pretty clear way to get your eviction suit thrown out.

As I posted in another comment, see http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~asucrla/Harassment%20by%20Your%... for the details of the law.
I'd suggest looking for an industry related meetup and attending. Another suggestion would be to contact the startups in the city you know and love directly. Send me an email, it's on my hn profile (as should yours)
Hacks for dealing with specificity
Doesn't $60 million in venture capital make this NOT an example of a bootstrapped company?
TypeScript Goes Light, Moves To GitHub
USPS can be quite profitable if they can set the price of their products. They can't. Congress sets the price. They are mandated to run at break-even. They lose money when Congress reacts too slowly to market condition to set new price.
While it is less like squatting which I should have realized and I'm glad you that pointed out, I wasn't addressing that as much as I should have been. There was an arrangement for X amount of days, which they have overstayed, so I am wondering where California law falls there. Because now they are in a default lease, one exists on the lawbooks. It's enough of a differentiation to possibly give her a little bit more leverage. I wonder what the loopholes are that she could utilize to make life un-enjoyable for them.
This is an artifact of a longstanding issue that they've had with GAAP. They sell non-cancelable non-refundable multi-year services (like domain registrations) and receive cash up front for them. GAAP requires that they book that revenue on a pro-rata basis over time.

This means that if it costs them $200 to acquire a new customer and that customer immediately whips out their CC and buys $1k of domains spread over ten years then, at the end of the year, they "lost" $100 on that customer and have to console themselves by drying their tears on $800 in cash.

It also makes their balance sheet look over leveraged due to the $900 in unearned revenue booked as a liability.
DDR4 memory interface
Harassment of a tenant, even a tenant whose tenancy is under dispute, is a crime in California. Disruption of power is specifically covered under the law.

See http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~asucrla/Harassment%20by%20Your%...
Filler Word Use as a Function of Age, Gender, and Personality
Going on around '09 it was pretty common to have pornography posted with the same type of swirl or other manipulations. It was a game to undo it, using a particular piece of software.
Man asked to leave Denver flight over tweet
The best way to lower your bills is to demand (or allow) the utilities to build base-load power plants, preferably nukes. Since the most rational solution is off the table you are stuck with micromanaging demand instead of concentrating on more productive career or school goals.

I don't know where you live but here in California the local utility has a complex set of daily, weekly, weekend and monthly rates and tiers. The key to lowering your utility bill is to push heavy loads out of the highest rate periods, typically daily like 11am to 2pm, etc. It is all explained (very poorly) on their website. Also, you are given some "base" load for electricity and gas (defined by region) and if you exceed that your rate jumps dramatically. So if you can avoid hitting these limits on a monthly basis you can keep your costs down. Also, nat gas is about 1/3 of the cost of electric so electric heat is very expensive. If you live in an electrically heated apartment make sure that PG&E is giving you the discount for electric heat or you will pay a ton.
Via government mandate/fiat.
Super, but no induction!
The zip line is always free though, so obviously you're going to be going faster then the other lane that is backed up with traffic.
This kind of stuff is pretty much Chauffeuring 101, and it's standard practice for someone engaged in driving for hire (through Lyft or UberX) to know about hack laws.

This kind of stuff is pretty much Retailing 101, and it's standard practice for someone engaged in selling items on the open market (through eBay) to know about business laws.

What's "disruptive" about all of these services is that they enable people who wouldn't ordinarily be willing to go through all the red tape and training to enter a previously specialized business, to do so with a few mouse clicks.

One could argue that all of these services (AirBnB, Lyft, eBay) are targeted at amateurs who want to dabble, but we all know that they make a significant amount of revenue from people who are using their platforms to run full-scale businesses, in many cases without securing business licenses, liability insurance, paying relevant taxes and fees, etc.

I don't know if I'd say that the services themselves are responsible, but they are certainly happy to take profit from high-volume vendors operating outside the law.