skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Why not? It is just like many other companies that invent technologies that might happen to also be funded by the public. See DARPA.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA
Show HN: Trab, Powerful client feedback tools
The Imitation Game Trailer
Matthias Urlichs wins the thread:

"I'd be for this [removing offending PHP modules] in a heartbeat if it would make people switch to a saner programming language, but that's wishful thinking."
Which is better, Adblock or Adblock Plus?
gov.uk which had a great success, was done by hiring their own people to work on it. I don't see why anyone would think outsourcing is good for public projects.
Stop posting on Freelancer-- leave that for the bottom feeders. Instead, focus on gaining referrals from existing clients and target your networking efforts with prospective buyers.

Recommend reading How to Acquire Clients by Alan Weiss. Also, Strategy and The Fat Smoker by David Maister.
Because it always is. First there are parents, who want their kids to be above average / top of the class. Kids mindsets then turns to competition, as students themselves start to evaluate each other by their grades. And somewhere in the middle of this the system starts throwing in various scholarships and other perks for a fixed number of best students. No wonder people treat it like competition, because it is one.
In the case of competitive seed rounds (like mentioned Optimizely), would be interesting to hear why someone like Sam's money was accepted over others -- any thoughts?
I don't think you can extrapolate from a food court on a military base to a $300M project to rebuild Social Security IT. Don't let your political biases blind you to reality.
every time i see a service promising privacy i laugh. no company can guarantee privacy, and most companies don't know what they don't know.
Using Jenkins? Here's how to get multi-branch updates in HTML
Show HN: Android's emoji symbols as single PNG images
document.getElementById('something').addEventListener('click',function() {})

works on all browsers these days. But we're stuck in our habits.

I don't deny that web development is kind of crappy, but it's just in the nature of it - the reason why iOS and Android are easier to develop for is because there's really only one client for them. Personally, I'll take the multiple, open client approach over the closed one any day, warts and all.
>These hackers primarily steal from DoD companies right?

They target anyone that has proprietary information that they can use to make money. I'm sure there are plenty of DoD targets, but these are outnumbered by private companies with no ties to the goverment.
You, patio11, and others nailed the advice that I needed to hear from this thread: Follow. Up.

As Patrick mentioned, as a newbie to this line of work, I have a slight fear of "annoying" people with follow-up contact that I need to get over.

Thanks to all for the helpful words of advice.
It simply doesn't apply. A black swan is a rare event that is almost certain to happen (or at least one of them will) that will destroy vast amounts of wealth.

Black swan events are unpredictable and have enormous impact. Whether they're positive or negative is irrelevant. I'm reading the comments on this page and it seems many people are confused about the term. If you're interested in the connection to business and startups, check out this book: http://www.amazon.com/The-Black-Swan-Improbable-Robustness/d...

In the very first sentence of the book description, it defines a black swan event: "A black swan is an event, positive or negative, that is deemed improbable yet causes massive consequences."

It's used quite a bit to describe startup success. Paul Graham wrote about this in one of his essays as well. I think the term fits perfectly for this blog post.
Listen and hear your clients
That's exactly right. The staff organizing the project for the government gets advice (bad advice) on the technologies that it should use from approved development firms then make using that technology a strict requirement. These firms are some of the few that have developers that use that technology and win the bid, everybody except the hired firm loses.

Any small competent development team can built almost anything imaginable with 6 years of time, proper funding, and without unnecessary restrictions.

$300 million to develop anything is insane. I can't imagine what happens when the check is cut, "let's hire 100 programmers, 10 managers, 5 accountants, 10 support staff and they'll figure it out."

Maybe there needs to be some kind of "insurance" company that oversees the project and has to pay back a portion of the money if the project fails. I'm not sure if that's reasonable, just an idea. If the project starts going off-track then they start letting people go and find competent replacements.

Plan projects out, have milestones, goals, backup plans. If they spend 6 years and $300 million dollars on a computer system and fail then they were just winging it from the beginning. The managers responsible should be identified and go on a blacklist. Right now it's either "oh well, hopefully we'll do better next time".
Yours is a very interesting use of car analogy.
Nice, I built something like this before too, but with much few feature.

http://myapppage.herokuapp.com/demo?appID=471966214
Are you referring to the HN Freelancer thread or something like Freelancer.com? I was talking about the former.
BitMessage is a pretty neat idea, and this service is only a GUI on top of it.
> The total figures are way smaller than drug sales. But always overblown in the media

Source?
The author gets into that in "dragthat and dragsomethingelse," where they talk about the problem with dragenter and dragleave behaving like mouseover and mouseout, events which fire many times in situations where you generally don't need them to.
I've frequently encountered it as "let's spend a lot of money on making sure we don't waste any money."
Nice read :)

TL;DR:

* Used Skype with early users

* Offered a drip campaign

* Offered a personal assistant to help you get on board
I made f.lux, and this is something I study a lot.

This study was done on rodents, and the problem with the reporting of it is that rats are >100x more sensitive to this kind of light than humans are.

For white light, below about 5-10 lux, it is very hard to measure melatonin suppression in humans. This study finds that rats have significant melatonin suppression at 0.1 lux, which has been known since 1974 (Minneman et al) at least.

Still, don't sleep with the TV on, and don't see bright (room) light within a couple hours before bed, because that will actually suppress total melatonin by a significant percentage.
Oh wow, I hadn't even noticed that! I use the space bar to scroll in "couch mode", because of the lack of scroll wheel on my laptop. Lately, I feel like I'm going to start shaking my fist at clouds.
TechCrunch vs. Reality
I had a feeling this was going on after looking into starting a liquor company with some friends. There are several large manufacturers producing all types of alcohol (whiskey, gin, vodka, etc.) and selling in bulk to bottlers. This is likely how some of the lower end alcohol producers operate, but I'm sure there are plenty who use fancier packaging to upsell their product.
Fontface Ninja
"the greatest transfer of wealth in American history"

...I'm pretty sure that award goes to the enjoyable human beings in the banking and foreclosures industries, followed only possibly by health insurance companies.
It isn't really that "someone like Debian has to" generally - Debian has to as a large part of their reason for existing is providing a stable, reliable, and predictable system: both in terms of content (code and other assets) and license to use said content. If they aren't picky about these things they are not staying true to their stated aims (and a number of their users would be unhappy).
It's actually a bit set on the SIM card, nothing to do with the network. Check out GSM 11.11, 10.3.18
I worked on a high profile government project that had five different vendors involved. FIVE. The inter-organizational management problems were astonishing. I'm pretty sure that by the time I left, managers actually outnumbered technical staff.

The biggest problem, though, was the lack of pushback. The government officials would ask for the moon, and the vendors would promise to deliver it. There was almost no one saying NO - the word that project most desperately needed to hear. Features outweighed core infrastructure reliability, so configuration management was a nightmare.
Wouldn't that require 240mph winds, though?
I would be very cautious in extrapolating these results to humans. Animal are known to have different circadian rhythm processes. Also, cancer xenographs (human tissue in animals) don't exactly have a great track record in terms of generating new cancer drugs.
How do we know you're not the burglarizer posting under the unlocked account ?
It doesn't matter, they are still building a profile on you and selling it. These are called "shadow profiles".
Is Twitch login insecure? It doesn't use https.
While that is very true, should you state your grievances on Facebook, then it makes you easier to target.

All those anti-Israel comments on FB at the moment - bingo, you've been tagged as probably anti-Semitic, potentially a Muslim terrorism supporter and worth putting on a watch list.

Now if you happen to go to a humanitarian demo that is judged to be pro-Palestine then you are highly liked to be filmed (especially in the UK). The contents of those police cameras are later downloaded and processed. Face recognition software cross-references you with Facebook and other public people databases.

Searching....ping....found target...

- Name: <Tertia>...

- Anthropology: Caucasian

- Source: Facebook NSA hook

- Threat score: 1.3

- Upgrading threat score: + 2.5

Auto triggers:

- Flag Homeland Security

- Tag passport

- Watch social security number

- Track internet usage (log level: all)

It is probably an exaggeration as of today, but this is the system that the NSA is aiming for.
Help advance science while mining cryptocurrency
Flight rules for Git – What to do when things go wrong
I needed to buy a MacBook Pro 2013 13" retina for live music performances. The 1000$ soundcard has optimized OSX core audio drivers and Win7 drivers.

Danger: Cynical, heavy stereotyping and biasing comment following...

I can work with OSX, nix and Win boxes, no problem, but OSX' interface isn't optimized for simple tasks like cutting and pasting various folders form one to another, where some of them will be overwritten, as there is no merge option and no CTRL+X short cut. Are they nuts?
Yeah, I can write a shell script to do it, or I can install XtraFinder and also have Folders on top of Files in lists.
But wtf? Is that system designed for idiots and grandmothers?
Oh yeah and I love to pay a shtload of money for kinda outdated hardware components...
Still some things are cool on OSX. It's snappy, fast and it has a decent shell. The retina display is even usable, when installing the 5$ pupil.io to natively switch resolutions for non-idiots (Actually seeing the resolution as xxx X xxx value instead of Small, Middle, Large)

Enough OS bashing for today.

PS.: Windows sux and *nix as well.
Isn't this just re-branding?
Too bad "get your new website out of our organic search sandbox with manual approval" is not one of the features provided.
We are working on adding many more features, and wanted to see features you would like to see built out. We can add more exchanges, offer additional algorithms and offer additional coins and currencies.

Trading is by invitation only. If you want trading access, just pm me or comment below (or send us a tweet).
There's a tension between promoting open-source and wanting to maintain copyright. Another relevant example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7484106
Unfortunate they provide even less information to calculate the plausibility of claimed payloads and orbits then SpaceX. And we all know that SpaceX changed its specs and claims several times, and that none of those specs provide a plausible rocket, if you recalculate it.

I hope Rocket Lab will do better. I just asked them for the missing specs like empty and loaded mass of each stage, maximum and minimum ISP of each stage, maximum and minimum thrust of each stage, burn time of each stage, inclination of launch site, payload, inclination, apogaeum and perigaeum of or proposed orbits.
Updated link:

http://pitchpigeon.com/pr/yzm4mwm4z
The Mediterranean loses more water to evaporation than it gains from rivers and rainfall. It's only at sea level because it's connected to the Atlantic at the Strait Of Gibraltar. Dam the Strait, and the Mediterranean goes down.

That isn't just speculation, the Mediterranean actually was a dry sea, when the Strait closed 5.9 million years ago: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediterranean_Sea#Geology

A better question is "how quickly would the Mediterranean dry up if you dam Gibraltar?" A thousand years? More? Would you have to dam every river that drains into the Mediterranean?
I live in Colorado and the closest retailer of Caotctin Creek is in Wyoming. Thinking about picking some up the next time I drive through Cheyenne. Do you think it's worth it to make a special stop?
GSM relies on some extremely precise timing information that both your phone and the network need to be aware of. You're going to have to do more than fake the signal _strength_.
Management. Business Analysts. "Metawork" in the words of a coworker who used to architect BPM implementations at the parent corporation of my job. Getting consensus from possibly hundreds of stakeholders.

Generally, the disconnect is that management is under the assumption that you can manage your way to success, so they add more overhead to watch and prod at the proceedings. Development is almost always an afterthought in most business projects. The first thing they do? Get consensus, which is generally everyone putting in ideas so that they seem involved—see Atwood's Duck[1]. After you have a ton of often contradictory ideas, you need to have them prioritized. And since nobody managing the project is technical, they need to hold countless "prioritization meetings with stakeholders and implementers." Often times the meetings will grind to a standstill while process analysts and engineers argue over the wording of things. Usually the analyst will tell the engineer that the business has standardized on a set of terms, of which are not the trade names for things. Maybe everyone uses a set of terms which aren't the "correct" wording.

After things are prioritized based on the wrong criteria, they're then pushed off to an engineering group who are tasked with implementing things exactly to spec. Since the definitions are incorrect, they need to constantly circle back and check with the stakeholders to double check. Occasionally checking in will involve a "subject matter expert" who is on vacation, and the only one allowed to answer the question. (Thus stalling that item and anything depending on it.) Others will often say "it's above my paygrade" in an attempt to avoid culpability.

After the project has run long and only has a majority of the features complete, people are reassigned to other projects, and the app is sent to QA to hand-test features. Sometimes it will involve the "stakeholders" sitting in a room for days or weeks, manually clicking their way through the interface. Maybe the project is declared a boondoggle, deleted, and replaced with someone else's pet project.

So yes, not logical.

1: http://blog.codinghorror.com/new-programming-jargon/
> Here's another data point: this 80% of marketshare is reversed when considering profits

Actually, not true. iOS only controls about 52.7% of the revenue share -- however Android has been creeping up every quarter and now places like Forbes and BusinessInsider are predicting Android will overtake iOS in revenue share in not too long.[1]

[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-revenue-android-2014-4
It's very good for the companies that benefit from the outsourcing.
> The same things happens when people try to measure schools.

I think you have this a bit backwards - the cheating is actually the symptom of people trying to measure stuff in schools and then make those measures directly affect social status and future success of students. Cheating exists because the system doesn't reward you for learning the material, but for passing a test.
This is not mentioned in the article, but plate tectonics actually closed the straight of Gibraltar and caused the Mediterranean to completely dry out for a period of hundreds of thousands of years. It eventually reopened with what may have been the largest waterfall ever.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messinian_salinity_crisis
How dare the government ask (and pay for) companies to engage in ethical and socially concious ways! They should be paying bottom dollar and making sure that the service workers make minimum wage just like they do in the public sector!
Exactly. My interpretation of it is "Appearance of risk is more important than actual risk". Letting a small team run loose with unproven technologies appears risky. Using big names with expensive "enterprise solutions" appears low-risk. But really, those expensive tools and complex processes create whole new categories of risk.
Not true anymore -- see my comment above regarding Android revenue share.
The odd thing with that is that the problem became apparent, people discussed it, Mozilla didn't want to (or couldn't for some, presumably legal, reason) change policy, neither did Debian, sometime suggested the name change thing, both parties agreed that this was compatible with their policies, and so it happened. There was no drama between Firefox and Debian: just a problem, a discussion, and a solution.

The way some people presented it as a pitched battle between the Firefox and Debian teams is silly. Both were protecting their standing in some way, both appreciated the other's position, and a solution was found that causes no problems for either of them (aside from a small amount of user training along the lines of "yeah, it is Firefox under a different name").
Here's a family tree of American Whiskeys:

http://www.gq.com/life/food/201311/bourbon-whiskey-family-tr...

If you're interested in American Whiskey production, I recommend the book from whicn the article above is excerpted.
Oh I agree with you

Maybe the whole issue is: a local delete turns into a remote delete, and that's pretty much non-reversible (unless you realize what you did, later)

Maybe they should add something like "You just deleted a lot of files from your DropBox, are you sure, please review and confirm" (if this was done through sync)
Whiskey is not alone in this. A good chunk of American vodka is apparently actually made from ethanol purchased from Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), the same company that distills ethanol for use as a motor fuel.

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-18360315
In 2012, the largest government contractors were:

1. Lockheed Martin

2. Northrop Grumman

3. Boeing

4. SAIC

5. Raytheon

6. General Dynamics

7. Hewlett-PAckard

8. Booz Allen Hamilton

9. Computer Sciences Corp.

10. DynCorp International.

Also in there are companies like Dell, IBM, Accenture, Batelle, Deloitte, Honeywell, AT&T, Rockwell, GE...

Hardly companies run by blind immigrant union women. And lest you dismiss those top ones as "just" defense, note that I've seen presentations by both General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman talking about their work in the health sector. There's something especially strange about booths featuring pictures of fighter planes at epidemiology conferences.
That's brilliant.

How much staff do they need to make sure everything is okay? Oh you have a database? Well you need a DBA on this. Security? Who is making sure the application is secure? Where is the security officer? Etc. etc.

Many of the boxes can only be checked by having more people.
Asked why he didn't share this new approach with the federal government when he was in charge of protecting its most important computer systems, Alexander said the key insight about using behavior models came from one of his business partners, whom he also declined to name, and that it takes an approach that the government hadn't considered. It's these methods that Alexander said he will seek to patent.

Quite the patriot--and one wonders why Millenials have no faith in the senior .gov folks.
Startups certainly don't help themselves in this regard, though. The sheer number that shut down, get acquired etc. means that I don't totally blame government bodies that choose large, established companies.
When you're saying "Our stuff is different than that factory stuff because we don't make it in a factory" and it's actually made in the same factory as everyone else's stuff, it's not "just re-branding".
>'The project was conceived to replace 54 separate components used in the SSA's disability determination system.'

This is the bit that jumps out at me as clear indicator of the sort dysfunction that dooms projects like this more so than anything else.

It's indicative of a the classic exploding scope and fragmented responsibilities leading to an overall lack of accountability that unfortunately characterizes IT in and around Government.

Gershman seems to agree.

"If there's not strong leadership, problems arise with coordinating work between contractors, and there's no one person looking at the system as a single entity -- everyone is making sure their piece is done, and fulfilling their responsibility up to a certain point,"

However, I'm not wholly keen on the the start-ups as a solution direction taken later. It's not that it's wrong, just beside the point unless the start-up savior is specifically targetting culture and process change as opposed to technical implementations.

The 54-armed kraken of a defined by committee project will drown and devour a fleet of confused start-ups lost in the mist of *BE requirements and contract mods just as readily as the Lockheed leviathan.
The way the UK government is starting to do things is to insource project management and then run tenders for smaller components, explicitly shaped so smaller firms have a chance of competing. This seems like a sane approach.
Interesting quote from the article:

> 'You have companies like Lockheed Martin -- they're not web development companies, they don't do work in the private sector, they're not building start-ups,' Gershman said. 'There's very little in the market that forces them to adopt new technologies.'

All of these are true, but I think this glosses over some fundamental structural problems with government contracting. The SSA has almost 60 million beneficiaries, and deals with distributing an entitlement that is extremely sensitive and protected by layers of legal process. 8,000 Social Security checks get lost,[1] and its not a blog post, its national news.

Moreover, a lot of lean and agile processes just aren't consistent with political reality. There's no minimal viable product, there's no invite-only beta testing, there's no iteration, there's no A/B testing, etc. Technical decisions ("let's just roll out to northern Alabama first") become divisive political ones. Purchasing decisions ("we've had good luck with this vendor before") become the basis for accusations of favoritism and corruption.

Perhaps most importantly, there's no failing fast. The private sector accepts the fact that many engineering projects will fail.[2] Good companies take care not to punish failure unreasonably. But in the public sector, failure is just license for those opposed to project to crow: "we shouldn't have been doing this anyway!" If you fail fast, it's easy to pin the blame on you. This creates a perverse incentive to drag a project along so failure happens over years if not decades.

[1] https://medium.com/@jan.curn/how-bug-in-dropbox-permanently-...

[2] Most big IT projects fail: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9243396/Healthcare.go.... Most startups fail. Most internal prototypes never amount to anything. This is just how engineering works.