skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I sort-of agree with you and sort-of don't. I think there are situations where there isn't a power imbalance.

For example a lot of VC firms won't invest in two companies in the same space. This ensures that they themselves don't have to pick which of their two portfolio companies is a winner in terms of advice, contacts, hiring help, etc. This is "baked in" to VC in a very, very obvious, no-exceptions kind of way.

So let's suppose that Anna is a founder at BoxFlix. And let's suppose that Gary is a VC with ABCD Partners. ABCD led Netflix's series A round (and since it's fictional, Netflix hasn't gone public yet). Gary is at demo day and couldn't possibly ever even HOPE to invest in BoxFlix no matter how compelling Anna and her team and company are; he's already in the Netflix deal. Further let's suppose that Gary primarily deals on the clean energy side of things, meaning that most of his personal/professional (they're often intermixed) contacts won't do Anna any good.

So could Gary ask Anna out on a date without it being inappropriate?

Let's suppose for the sake of argument that he tells Anna all this prior to his asking her out on a date such that she knows Gary and ABCD Partners will never invest in her company. In this case I think it's at the very least in a grey area and quite possibly not inappropriate at all.

Now if Gary conveniently doesn't mention that he or his company could never invest with BoxFlix, it could be argued that he's trying to bait & switch on Anna and that's a real problem.

Or if Gary led the investment in Netflix and sits on the board and remains highly involved in the company that could be inappropriate too, at least for Gary. Anna might not mind, but ABCD Partners surely would.

Disclaimer: I made all this stuff up. I live in Houston, not California and I don't really know anyone out there. If this seems too much like anything that's happened in real life I apologize and I'm happy to change the made-up names of Anna, Gary or ABCD Partners. It's all just to illustrate a point, not to make anyone feel bad.

EDIT: I wrote all this out because the original line is "Y Combinator has a zero tolerance policy for inappropriate sexual or romantic behavior from investors toward founders."

In that I read the word "inappropriate". If it was a strictly zero-tolerance policy (like schools have for guns, fake or real or toy or hand-formed-into-a-gun) then the word "inappropriate" wouldn't need to be there. By definition ALL romantic/sexual advances would be inappropriate.

So that leads me to believe that the folks at YC think it is possible for a VC and a founder to interact in a way that might end up romantic and that it's OK.

The other possibility is that they mean "no VC we invite can ever ask a founder out" but worded it poorly. I'd like to think that the folks at YC are smarter than that so I discount it as a possibility but there's still some chance that's what happened.
Look at what the investor has to lose, in most cases: very little, historically. Bad behaviour has historically been excused for the investor class.

Look at what the founder has to lose in a false accusation: not only will their startup likely not be funded, they may have trouble getting work in any capacity. (Historically, women who have made sexual harassment charges have had trouble getting future jobs.)

She has more incentive to cover it up than to expose the harassment.
I strongly expect that linking to https://www.workhub.com/ from the apps landing page will greatly reduce the bounce rate you will otherwise get.
We (as a country) are trying to do something about global warming are we not? Sure we have nut-job deniers and all that, but compared to many countries that legitimately do not care about "being green", the US is doing rather decently (although arguably still not good enough, but it all has to start somewhere). Holding "power" is not a zero-sum game -- having slightly less power than another slightly more predominant ideology != 'not' having power. Just because we have a democratic president does not mean republicans have no power.

Similarly feminist ideology has made itself into the american public's view of the 'ideal', and anything that opposes it as unquestionably 'bad' -- to say there's no power in that sort of collective consciousness about any issue is ignorant. Just because it's not ideal yet absolutely does not mean it's not in power -- even powerful things take time to reach their full potential. When behaviors like this YC post talks about hadn't had any negative ramifications before, but now do, that's power.
So... they didn't have validation, then?
In Search of a Smarter HBase Client
What's more confusing for a beginner/my mom, telling them to enter their gmail and password or having them log into AWS, create a new bucket, selecting the appropriate region, copy that super long unreadable ID and key, and take into account # of request and any delays during restore?
yeah, but that's not what we're testing. this data doesn't isolate the variable of being kenyan.

the proper experiment would be to take half of the kenyan runners and fat-adapt them, and compare their performance to the other kenyans, as well as their previous selves.

has that study been done?
A good complement to this set of challenges is Dan Boneh's Crypto class on Coursera. The coursera class is more theory-driven, whereas these challenges are more practical... they mix well. https://www.coursera.org/course/crypto
> The best way to avoid discrimination of any kind is to continuously update your skills (technical, social, inter-personal etc.)

That may be a way to respond to discrimination, but it's not a way to avoid it.

Discrimination, by its definition, refers to what happens after one's skills and qualifications are sufficient and comparable to other candidates, and yet other candidates are systematically shown preference.
DIY Standing Desk Plans on Kickstarter
Scaling Elasticsearch Part 3: Queries
You are right; a bare 70% number does not say anything without further analysis. It is hard to separate the effects of lower attractiveness of their jobs to women, the acceptance of women in their workplace, and women's perception of that acceptance.

And of course (and as you know) the reverse is not true, either. The fraction of non-Caucasian members in the KKK probably reflects the fraction of non-Caucasian applicants they get, but that does not imply that hey do not have a bias.
I was considering signing up and just noticed this on their site... Definitely odd. I understand they want to be easy to use and feel seamless, but it defeats the purpose of the password protected private key.

https://www.backblaze.com/backup-encryption.html

> To decrypt your data, you are required to enter your passphrase on our secure website. When you do so, it is passed over an encrypted connection to our datacenter where it is used to decrypt your private key, which in turn is used to decrypt your data. Your passphrase is never saved on disk and it is discarded once it is used. As before, once we decrypt your data on our secure restore servers we then zip it and send it over an encrypted SSL connection to your computer. Once it arrives on your computer, you can unzip it and you have your data back.
People need to learn the difference between descriptive and prescriptive ideas. Observating that Apple isn't diverse in a certain way is not the same as saying Apple is the problem. In fact I don't think most people believe that Apple's hiring practices, or any tech company's in particular, is the real issue for any metric.
But what about the Lightning connectors on iPads and iPhones? They don't have that outside shield but they carry high speed signals.
I'm pretty sure the poster (thijser) is Mathijs Vogelzang based on his username. His HN profile is a few years old and he says where he works on his profile. I'm not saying whether people should trust this or not, but I think you may be being a bit unfair.
>they are in it to make the world a better place

No, saying that you want to make the world a better place, and saying that whatever you are working on makes the world a better place, is entirely (100%) different from actually taking the necessary actions to solving known and common world problems and actually making the world a better place. The level of hypocrisy in tech is beyond ridiculous.
It used to be like that in Brazil until very recently... yeah... not only weird but also very embarrassing and probably illegal these days.
The key with ageism in tech is to move into mgmt.

Where are these abundant management jobs, ready to absorb every programmer over 30? Personally, having had several awful managers who were worker-bee programmers, I find nothing worse than the idea that programmers should move into management. Good managing is a completely different skill set from programming.

You're not supposed to be a code monkey at 30.

What an awful attitude to have. Code monkey? Personally, I was just getting good at about 30.

And especially not having 10 years of experience in a technology 10 years old.

It's been my experience that good products tend to end up living to ten or more years. And new technologies tend to only get deeply explored and solid after something like ten years.
YC isn't about building romantic relationships, it's about building companies. Mixing business and romance is a losing proposition for women, because the latter taints absolutely everything. One of the awesome things about being a guy is that I can look around at, e.g., my classmates from grad school, and be quite sure that their "mental file" of me has a lot more about my intellect and character than about my looks. If someone has my back in an argument about what our team should do, I can comfortably assume it's because they respect my position, not because they're romantically interested in me. These are things men can take for granted that women cannot. And when you allow romantic advances in professional contexts, you make it all that much harder.
Start consulting or doing independent contractor work? Apply to Fog Creek software or Trello, and let us know whether the reality is as good as the marketing?
So here's what I think it comes down to: You're an investor. You're at demo day. There's this female founder, and you think she's hot. You interact with her purely professionally, but you still feel the chemistry, and you think she does, too. You want to ask her out, because you think there might be something there. So what do you do?

You resign from your role as a VC/investor. That's what it's going to cost. Then you can ask her out if you want (still respectfully, and giving her the complete freedom to say no if she wants).

But if asking her out isn't worth more to you than your job is, then leave things professional.
A note on usability to the authors of the sites for open-source projects like this: my personal "user story" case study flows something like this:

1. I read the front page, skim the comment thread, and determine that this is roughly relevant to my interests.

2. I check that it's open source, because if it's not something I can install inside my firewall, my interest is terminated. (I expect this to be a quicker and easier check than almost any other validator, so I do it first.)

3. I search for the word "source" and "github" on the front page. No links? Hrm.

4. I search for the word "source" and "github" on the "get panamax" page. STILL no links?

5. ...? I guess next step is to copy the project name into google and look for the repo from there. But danger, project maintainers, danger: this is a step in the conversion funnel where I simply might get distracted and you might lose me before I make it farther.

In all honesty, I am still going to try things from a binary release before I try building it from source -- I'm no huge exception to the basic truths about onboarding flow needing as much ease as possible. But I'm still going to look to see if the source actually exists first.

In this case, the github can be found by searching for the project name, and also by following some of the documentation links, which jump to a wiki on github. But I want that flow. The "Panamax is an open-source product from CenturyLink" footer line would be a great place for a direct link to the source repo.
Do you believe that this "dick move" is absent in other fields with lots of women? Specifically, do you believe doctors and lawyers ask each other out less than techies?

If "shit like this" is present in every field, it's a poor explanation of why women avoid technology but no those other fields.

Now if you want to rescue this hypothesis, you could point out that doctors aren't a bunch of low status nerds. But that's a naughty hypothesis, so I'm sure you won't go there.
I think what will be more likely is the other direction. The monitor powers the laptop. Most laptops are well under a hundred watts and could easily be charged and powered that way.
You've got it backwards... powering your laptop from the monitor is the killer app, meaning an end to proprietary laptop power supplies.
Please, stop repeating this tiresome excuse. Absolving a company and blaming the pipeline does not help actually solve the problem.

1) There is a "filter" problem, eg bias in interviewing. This is what you are talking about.

2) There is the "pipeline" problem, eg universities and recruiting practices.

3) There is the self-selection problem, eg women / minorities going into other fields because they don't want to deal with the horseshit.

...plus many others, including how the few women are treated after they get the job.

The only cure is sunlight. You optimize what you measure. If we can get tech companies to publish these numbers every year, then maybe they'll start doing something about it.
Ask HN: What is a good free chat software solution for a website?
On my quick google search, I found several websites, including 1 YC alum, olark.

what i found is mylivechat, purechat, jivosite, olark, zopim, onlinechatcenters.

some offers free with unlimited chats (mylivechat, jivosite, zopim, which somewhat are non US company). Purechat and olark are US company which only offers limited monthly chat (30 for purechat, 20 for olark).

Is there things I should be aware of when comparing different chat solution?

any other chat solution that you would recommend?

Thanks.
When is the last time an A-C level exec at a tech company was fired for being insufficiently green?
They mentioned power and that's a flat fee for them, so I didn't mention it.
Interesting how they use QR codes to tie-up the installation flow.
Oh, that explains, thanks :)
I think the downvotes are not born of disagreement (you're not really taking much of a stance here to agree or disagree with) so much as because this comment seems needlessly lowbrow and serves no clear purpose but to fantasize about a world in which even more ugly things exist.
It's deck chairs all the way down.

You rearrange them to the best of ability, get some commendations on how well the chairs are arranged, and get promoted to the next sinking ship before the current one sinks.

If you're lucky you'll become an expert deck chair arranger and get lucrative consulting gigs on how a different arrangement of chairs could have saved the ship.
Ask HN: Why doesn't your team ship?
Our industry is obsessed with shipping. And yet, I've been speaking to a lot of software teams lately, and it seems that everyone feels "behind". They all want to be shipping better software, more frequently.

What do you think the problem is? What's keeping your team from shipping? What slows down the development process?
https://siteanalytics.compete.com/appointmentreminder.org
"This site has relatively low traffic."

https://siteanalytics.compete.com/squareup.com
Jun 2014 Unique Visitors: 1,403,543

Don't you worry about squareup consuming all the oxygen in your room?
The hoops that I went through to find out more. Please don't do that. Put links to most of the info up front, not just the investor elevator pitch. How much do people get paid? How are they paid? Does it have Skrill integration for those who can't use Paypal? Cheques? So many questions unanswered. I give up. NEXT!
Just for fun, what would be the optimal strategy to play this game?

If you have x amount to spare, you could either put all x in one round, or spend x/N in N rounds.

I guess, the probability of winning might be optimal for some N > 1, but I am not able to come up with a formula for it.

Further optimisation of the N>1 strategy could be to stop entering into a round after winning and making a profit.
So it sounds like you still do have to know e.g. what a database is? This isn't meant as something for end users to use to run their own server, but rather meant to make a sys admin's life easier? (Just trying to figure out how this relates to sandstorm.io.)
This will never happen because investors don't strictly invest in ideas. They also invest in people. Pg would fund any Zuckerberg idea, not because of the idea, but because of Zuckerberg's qualities. Or, put differently, Facebook minus Zuckerberg may have failed. Their early years were tenuous, and one wrong decision about what users would or wouldn't tolerate may have broken their momentum.

You can't assess that via the internet. You have to meet them.
AlertR: Open-source alerting system
People die. [1]

People with insurance are healthier. [2]

People who are ill have a chance to die from their illness. [3]

People who are ill can be denied health insurance from private companies [4]

The Affordable Care Act prohibits this practice. [5]

Plans not listed on the exchange are not required to follow the provisions of the ACA [6]

Therefore, there is a chance that someone was on an insurance plan that did not cover their illness or did not have insurance because of an illness who could have been successfully treated if the exchange was open even one day earlier than it was.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death

[2] http://www.nber.org/papers/w17190

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_by_natural_causes

[4] http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2009/aug/18/...

[5] http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/granule/FR-2010-06-28/2010-15278/co...

[6] https://healthunsurance.bangordailynews.com/2013/11/08/indiv...
> We (as a country) are trying to do something about global warming are we not?

Only to the extent that it doesn't get in the way of the hundred priorities ahead of global warming on the list. And all the pollution that isn't associated with a hot-button issue like global warming isn't even on the radar. Coal, for example, is something that's so damaging that there aren't even nut-job deniers arguing otherwise. Yet, during one of the debates of the 2012 election, Obama was arguing with Romney about which of them was more pro-coal.

> Similarly feminist ideology has made itself into the american public's view of the 'ideal', and anything that opposes it as unquestionably 'bad'

People are quite willing to embrace ideals but take little to no inconvenient action to work towards those ideals. Feminists have "power" in the same way environmentalists do. They can win a tiny victory here and there by making particularly egregious acts public,[1] but that's the extent of it.

[1] In 2012, environmentalists in Chicago were successful in shutting down Fisk and Crawford, two coal plants in Chicago that a study showed were costing the public $127 million per year in health costs: http://elpc.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/MidwestGeneration.... Only 598 more to go!
Ask HN: How good are you at judging resumes?
Hey HN,

Can you guys please help me with an experiment I'm running?

You may have seen some of the data-themed blog posts about engineering hiring that I've written in the past (e.g. http://blog.alinelerner.com/lessons-from-a-years-worth-of-hiring-data/ and https://blog.hired.com/what-i-learned-from-reading-8000-recruiting-messages/).

If you've liked them, please help me write the next one! For this one, things are a bit different because I'm actually running an experiment, rather than just mucking about with data after the fact.

If you're actively involved in hiring engineers, it would be awesome if you could participate. In the experiment, you'll be making value judgments (would/would not interview) for 7 engineering resumes.

http://bit.ly/judgefest

Thank you! I'll explain what this is all about and share the results after the experiment is over.

-Aline
The power dynamic of sex influences men's inappropriate behavior. The investor no doubt had a sexual fantasy when he invited the female CEO over to his house and began drinking wine and massaging her. He wanted his investment to be symbolic, to reduce her to a whore. This is misogyny.
Fundamentally, it's better to be an owner than a worker.

Sometimes it takes decades to realize this. It's easier to sucker young people who have lots of free time into working crazy hours under avoidable stupid conditions with a few cheap perks.
If mongodb is in fact a poor choice for their problem set and they made it anyway, you're better off not being there.

If it WAS the pragmatic or correct choice, then I'd say spend a few days or nights getting up to speed with mongo. Learning to use it is not that hard, it's keeping things working smoothly/tuning when you have a huge cluster and many consumers of it that's hard.
I think the S3 number is a floor, not a ceiling. That is, you should expect to be losing that much of data, but, given an unplanned event, obviously a great deal more data can be lost.
This is a really unfortunate comment. The actual points it makes are superficial and, unusually for you, not backed by anything other than anecdote. It's mean-spirited. And most importantly, it's written in a way that can't possibly persuade anyone who isn't already on your side. You're too smart to believe you're trying to communicate here, so I'm left believing you're writing this comment just to stick a fork in people's eyes.

I know this doesn't mean anything because I'm just some random Internet stranger you don't actually know, but as someone who has stuck up for your comments in the past, I've been made to feel embarrassed by this one.

I will, of course, get over both it and, later, myself.
Ithaca, NY has one of these too : )
I have used Guacamole as a solution to supporting remote desktop when the client location's firewall(s) allow nothing except port 80 and 443. Worked perfectly allowing users to connect to multiple desktops with no installation what so ever. Simply the perfect tool for what we needed and setup is a breeze once you familiarize yourself with the documentation.

Definitely keeping this in my mental toolbox!
Layer one is for connection pooling on the application servers, layer two (on the database server) is mostly for control purposes.
Bingo. Every so often, you do ship something and gasp people like it and pay money for it, though. That keeps me on the ship. The moment that becomes institutionally unlikely, I'm gone.
If you can do hosted,http://www.igniterealtime.org/projects/openfire/index.jsp is not too bad, and can be customised
Great feedback, we have GitHub icons in the header and footer, but you are totally right, needs to be text... working on it now! BTW, here is the GitHub repo: https://github.com/CenturyLinkLabs/panamax-ui/wiki
Haywire HTTP Server
That definition works for me.
No cord is the future. At least Intel want to get rid of all cables with skylake platform.

http://www.cnet.com/news/intel-aims-to-eliminate-all-pc-cabl...
توقعات الابراج مع هالة عمر اليوم الاربعاء 13 – 8-2014  «
You're right; I wouldn't call it "feminists" but the "PC Police".
Sure but you're not going to solve the immediate problem of the various imbalances in the tech world in terms of gender equality and general power imbalances if stuff like this continues to remain anonymous. It might not seem like it but by choosing where, how, and who I work for I'm making a deliberate choice. I know that this is a luxury and that not many people have it but I like to put that luxury to good use and not work for anyone or provide my expertise to anyone that is even peripherally related to whoever is in that article.