skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Sometimes its as simple as getting lost the 1st time into the app - what button do I press next?

"Onboarding" is critical, and every single step not only Can lose customers but Will lose a certain percentage. Too many steps and your failure rate is compounded. Even losing 10% at each step means losing half after 6 steps.

In an app that requires at least 2 people to work (I work on one of those for a living), I'd guess that the 1st person tries it, finds nobody else online to interact with, and gives up instantly. We solve that by putting an Invite feature prominently in our onboard process. New users connect with someone almost immediately.
In my industry, FDE only means full disk encryption. I've seen that acronym a few times in this thread though. Can someone break that down for me?
Applies in any language. If the non trivial problem is well defined and you solve it, using a distributed computing pattern, e.g. lots of c++ process communicating over a specific transport (say zeromq) using a unified object description (say protobuf) then you get pretty close to this exact same promise. That's essentially how most erlang solutions feel to me at least.

Am i missing something?
1. Except for self-inflicted constraints that don't match the problem domain. Which leads to…

3. OpenGL, Lua FFI, Linux… have nothing to do with source compatibility with C. And everything to do with ABI compatibility. C-with-classes was a preprocessor that generated C code remember? That pretty much guaranteed ABI compatibility, since it was then compiled by the same C compiler.

But what did it matter if the pre-processor where also capable of parsing plain C? It doesn't! We have a C compiler, why not just use that? If stroustrup wanted to, he could have replaced the braces and semicolons by mandatory indentation, Python style, and lose zero backward compatibility in the process. Or at least, no compatibility that actually matters.

Source compatibility was a useless constraint that lead to a painful language. From the user's point of view, the difference between a useless constraint and a bad design choice is nil.

Now I will concede one advantage of source compatibility: learning curve in the extremely short term. If you don't even have a few hours to learn a different syntax, it makes sense. But if your intend to use a language for more than 2 weeks, it's silly to suffer any long term cost just because you don't want to pay that learning cost up front.
I'd agree with almost all of those, the biggest thing I'd say is, as with all startup jobs, risk is a factor you shouldn't ignore, the last point I kinda disagree with for that.
Of 5 examples you managed to get 3/5 having something to do with the NSA or related matters (encryption, which got explicitly tied to the NSA in that exact comment).

I would question why you think this is a "gotcha" given that I know how far back my post history goes (further then the initial Snowden disclosures for example), and more or less gave up on these topic-threads for exactly this reason.

Which circles around to my original point: these threads turn into echo chambers because who wants to spend karma on that?

People are instead ironically aggressive in silencing dissent.
> It is interesting how purity has a very strong allure - maybe our brains are naturally drawn to a reduced state of complexity, and thus energy consumption?

Or maybe complicated more often than not is just not a "carefully balanced mix of grey" but more of a clusterfuck .. and we learned to be wary of it.

Have a look at this: http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy
Gender problem? The valley certainly has its problems nowadays, but I can't see in what sense gender is one of them.
Releasing devo.ps 0.4.0
Reading the article raised tangential questions for me: How comfortable is it for someone who's not a programmer by temperament or interest to get a computer science degree in college? Or, alternately, what percentage of computer science grads simply aren't programmers? I've never really thought about this but now I'm wondering!
As long as the message is nog pushed in people's faces and they can voluntarily give their input this could be interesting for us.

We need to ask our users for which stocks they like to trade in our gamified trading app. And it could also help us learn more about our users (have they trade before? Where?).

You need to know very specifically what you want to find out.
Being a spy was "the coolest thing ever" in TV series and Bond movies where the bad/good guys are easily spotted (they even make grimaces), the spy gets all the flashy cars, pretty girls and never dies... Try talking to a real spy, see how "cool" their life's are, watching their back constantly, being sent to slaughter at any time, etc. doesn't look like a good bargain to me.
Or just one Georgian grandma with a shovel.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/apr/06/georgian-woman-...
New wiki to help you grow a better garden
If the person you're negotiating with isn't a complete push over, they'll say "No. But nice try." right back to you.

Your value to the employer might be no different, but your employer's value to you is much higher. There are fewer remote employment opportunities, and the employer knows the local ones pay much less. So, you're negotiating from a worse position, and you'll probably end up with a worse deal.

Of course, that's their case to make, and you shouldn't make it for them. But, the reality is, your remote work salary is probably going to be influenced by your local conditions.
SQL Server Radio Show 3 – Performance Tuning
Are they entangled, or just potential photons? When splitting light, photons go 'both ways' potentially even though is a classical sense there is only 1 photon that will ever be detected. Recombining them is still meaningful in a wave sense, because each potential photon path interacts with the other when the paths are reunited.
There's not enough information here to provide any meaningful advice.

Unrelated, but define "a few" w.r.t. building an "ad server".
Show HN: Impulse – Dynamic JS Animations for the Mobile Web
I have a sneaking suspicion that neither the accurate detection of binary signals using EEG nor the accurate communication of binary signals using TMS is particularly groundbreaking... in which case, the only thing novel about this study is that the researchers decided to pair the two.

Indeed: to put it charitably, the whole thing is a farce. The EEG part is nothing new (note it's an off-the shelf component from one of their sponsors/employers); and neither are electrically-induced phosphenes [1] which, by the way, in this case (non-invasive TMS) consist of
little more than single, barely perceptible, indistinct flashes induced every time the device is turned on, one for each 'bit' --about the crudest possible way to 'send' information directly into a brain, if you ask me.

But then, once you read their conflict of interest statement, all that ridiculous overselling suddenly makes much more sense.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphene
Still a bad language.
Yup, and then once they are dead something 100x worse fills the niche and people start getting mange or something...
Working for a national security agency does not make you a spy. Yes, Archer is cool, James Bond is cool, Austin Powers is cool, but a developer isn't out there sipping martinis and shooting people. Being a developer at a spy agency is the same as being a developer anywhere else, except that your projects enable others to kill people and ruin lives. I can see why some people don't want to do that when given the choice.
This looks like a great resource, thanks for putting this together. As a developer who's interested in web design/UX design (but not all that great at it), this will be helpful.

If you don't mind, I'll mention it on my blog as well. I've started writing about my process in trying to improve my design skills (http://designwithdave.com), and I think my (few, but growing) readers would find it useful.
At the very least, make the popups non-modal and optional.

There is literally NOTHING I hate more in an app than intrusive modal popups stopping me from getting done what I actually WANT to get done. Unless I really love the app otherwise, they usually generate an urge to insta-delete the app.
Open the Source.-
They are used a lot in Minneapolis.
View JQuery and JQuery Live Events in Firefox Developer Tools
Feds balk at court’s order to explain no-fly list selection process
You should be able to do this entire thing in-browser. Going further, leveraging WebSQL or SQL.js, it should be possible to pump the queries into a client-side database and run queries.

Shameless plug: I built an in-browser tool to generate SQL queries from Excel XLS/XLSX/XLSB files: http://sheetjs.com/sexql/

Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7392665
A tale of Bitcoins and $500 suits
What you are describing is "labor participation rate" which is something that the government does track[1].

[1] http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000
Thanks, we actually looked for a tool like this at the time.. couldn't find something that fit (lots on the web but nothing really for mobile that we could customize etc)
Yeah read his biography too. But this is rocks in the desert, cute but not especially noteworthy. I've put my wet glass on the table and had it slide several inches magically - I guessed right away that is was gliding on a film.

The OP research was just measuring exactly how much wind, how much water was required. Not really figuring out anything. And I get it - taking pictures of it is cool - Big rocks! Moving! But that's a youtube video, not something to spend govt research money on.
I believe it's "Forward Deployed Engineer" ... heard it said that Palantir doesn't like the term consulting and makes up its own titles...
All these things come down to that everyone should give up most of the things they want, and listen to "what's best".

I've yet to see someone make the point that there are solutions, such as using electric self-driving cars as public transport, will work. Assuming of course, the price can be made low enough.

Maybe I'm a horrible human being, but I have a family, and I want space (incl. a garden), NOT living in a big city, and a car. I do not think this is too much to ask. Solutions (and politics) should focus on how to make that possible, not on how to prevent it.
Well, I can't find references/materials on Human-Computer Interaction.

It seems rather strange that there isn't a single reference to HCI in a UX curriculum. I know it may sound like the "hard"/science-y part, but HCI is fundamental - quite a few principles (such as Fitt's law or the 10 Nielsen & Molich heuristics) came from HCI research and stood the test of time - they're still valid, today. Usability testing was also built out of HCI research. Also: cognitive modeling, the focus on the user, and so on.

tl;dr: You should introduce HCI from the start. There's open courseware on the subject. You can't claim to know (or teach) the essentials of UX design without a good knowledge of HCI as a subject.
OpenCon
I lost that episode, can you bring up to speed with OPs claims? Or share a link to the previous discussions?
"Forward Deployed Engineer". It is a title Palantir uses for software engineers that are customer facing.
Well, admittedly, I was kind of assuming that we're "going in" having already ruled out saving healthcare money by causing people to die prematurely. But do you happen to know of a graph or table or something on the fiscal trade-offs between health, life-span, and spending on care, which would demonstrate that even if someone remains in very good health until they die, simply having them alive longer costs so much money that it would be preferable to spend less and have them die earlier?
Tor is used by millions and their HQ is in a YWCA
I hate to be that person, but I would recommend something smaller. I think you'll learn more and get to really own your project(s). I realize that you already have offers though, so between the two, I vote Facebook every time. You won't regret avoiding working in Defense.
Thank you! A quick Google search on that tells me a lot, sounds like a sales engineer meets a consultant.
It's at least okayer than FF putting sponsored ads on a blank page. :)
Did you not finish reading my comment to see the sentence "Learning about the environmental factors is helpful, especially for understanding whole-country-scale epidemiological trends, but full understanding of the causes and treatments of allergies will have to come from studies with genetically sensitive designs"? The article kindly submitted for our discussion talks about correlational observations, that is collections of anecdotes. Anecdotes and correlational observations generate hypotheses, but it is precisely looking at exceptions, especially with experimental treatment-control designs, which will tease out what environmental factors are causative and what factors are sheer coincidence.
So, gonna attack the wet-glass-sliding-on-the-table problem next? Measure the film thickness, glass curvature, weight of glass vs contents? Maybe a paper in that too.
The Mathematics of Herding Sheep
Looks like the incumbent president is trying to get environmentalist votes. Do you think they might be made examples of and handed harsher sentences, just to make her look good?

Edit: I guess I'm not good at inferring gender of names :p
Yes it is popups, you're right about that.. but we tried to take a better approach:

- single question only
- max 4 questions
- strict character limits
- only one question per poll, no long multi-page surveys (we hate those long survey money surveys too)
- etc

Also letting game and app devs customize the look and feel with custom graphics and borders etc so it feels native as possible

ie- better fit for mobile apps and games
True, but you can do it using arcs :)
I miss: profit sharing is just as good as equity.

And: don't worry, you will get your shares.
Lazyload-image
In other words, the industry is thinking short term. Often very short term. They only see what's in front of them. Then next problem to solve, the next developer to hire, the next library to use…

So, the industry makes this analysis: yes, I could spend a few days learning about sum types, but it won't save me nearly as much time in avoided null pointer exceptions over the next month. So, no, it costs too much.

I guess we just have to live with this systemic irrationality. I guess long term thinking is just too much to expect. I guess decades old scientific results are too bleeding edge to risk employing them.

I can only think: not fast enough!
Fine if your only tool is Perl.
I came across this a couple of months ago. It's very interesting and worth a look: I'd urge anyone interested to bookmark the page and try again in a few days.
Is there a large company that a significant number of folks on HN don't think is evil? Amazon, maybe?
How was the existing code "self describing"? That sounds like what people who don't want to write comments or documentation say, that their code is magically "self describing".
Its data science these days. Latest buzzword. Old is new.
Yeah sorry, perhaps I was a little bit harsh but I had the volume up on my speakers! I do however think it's very rude of a web page to start playing audio when it's opened and I'm glad to see that it's been fixed.
As in: inequality in salary, glass ceilings, distribution, harassment and so on. See the last 500 articles on the subject.
Can you elaborate on how the gossip mechanism reveals who you are communicating with?

From my understanding (which obviously could be off) what is sent with the gossip protocol is a verification of the entire key directory, similar to a git commit hash.
Sorry, but just about every time gender and India comes up in the news its because of how poorly women are being treated in India and how often the courts look the other way. Really having trouble imagining that this article is grounded in reality.
I also had a very bad experience with Makerbot and support. They are just terrible.
Welcome to the society of the overly entitled. If something in the world is not exactly to your specific liking, you're allowed and even encouraged to go completely over the top in response in order to demonstrate your disagreement. Death threats are just an opening salvo, that's kid stuff compared to what you should do if you're REALLY peeved about something.
That comes with a huge asterisk. First, guns are much more likely to be used against the person who is trying to defend themselves [1][2]. You can make the argument that people should take responsibility to learn how to properly use guns, but most people will not or cannot. People should also take responsibility to not overeat, not smoke, not get accidentally pregnant/get others accidentally pregnant, and not transmit STD's, yet here we are. This situation can be improved with education, but the reality is that unless handling guns is your job, you are likely to have it used against you then to use it on your assailant.

Second, most rape cases do not happen the way Harris describes. Acquaintance rape happens in 82% of the cases [3], and usually behind closed doors, with no witnesses. There are no dozens of witnesses, or even knives in most of these situations.

Thirdly, there are places in the world where gun ownership and use is minimal, even by the police [4][5]. They have much less violence, murders, rape, etc. than the US, which has very high rates of both gun ownership and gun violence. Specifically, the murder rate in the US is 5.8 times higher than in Germany. Think about that for a second: two first world countries, the US locked in an endless cycle of gun violence, mass shootings, and police brutality, vs Germany (or the UK, or Australia, etc.) Basically, more guns, more problems, as statistics and cold hard facts pretty clearly show.

Personally, I don't think all guns need to be abolished. The police should be armed with proper weapons. But generally, a private citizen that thinks he/she will defend themselves with a personal weapon, is likely deluding themselves about actually being safe, and chances are they are actually in more danger than without a weapon. Therefore, private ownership of guns for non-hunting purposes should IMO be abolished in the US, and the police forces re-trained to use guns extremely minimally.

[1] http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/02/having-a...

[2] http://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2013/mar/25/guns-pro...

[3] http://www.911rape.org/facts-quotes/statistics

[4] http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/justiz/polizei-schoss-2011-se...

[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentiona...
As one who is interested in learning Interaction Design & User Experience Design (hoping to make it into a career in a couple of years) this is a much needed resource. Thanks.

PS: The pop - up registration form on the website is a fine example of how subscription pop-ups should be done. Only when the user feels that he/she is interested in learning from the website, the pop-up comes up.Its placed well in the website and only shows up when necessary.

There are simply too many invasive and intrusive pop-ups on websites these days that immediately come up when opening the webpage. The worst part is that they keep on nagging you until you either give them your email or leave the website. It ruins the browsing experience and comes of as desperate. Its also a shame that well known websites are now doing this and its really annoying.

If your content is good enough, users will subscribe on their own.

[0] A resource which was developed by Theresa Neil and Balsamiq is great for beginners getting started in User Experience Design.

[0] http://www.uxapprentice.com/
HCI itself has little bearing on design even if the HCI community wished otherwise. Fitts' law came from the experimental psychology field...given that HCI didn't even exist in the 50s and 60s. Most of its lessons are codified into easy digest principles. Don't forget Hick's law, which is also useful when designing menus (also experimental psychology).
Hey Joe agree about onboarding..

Actually our flow included invite by SMS, email etc really early on and was pretty simple (we did a bunch of early usability testing)...but still we got very little connect rate, less than 10% of users. Never really figured out the main reason why, just speculation.

I'd be curious what you are seeing in your case... maybe we could have improved it in other ways.
My co-workers have those hours. In at 9, 1 hour lunches, out at 5 on the dot most days. As a consultant, however, I'm paid hourly, so I get to stay late every night.
"The model of a key server with a transparency backend is based on the premise that a user is willing to trust the security of a centralized service, as long as it is subject to public scrutiny, and that can be easily discovered if it's compromised (so it is still possible to compromise the user's account, but the user will be able to know that as soon as possible)."

So it's a central service where we can - eventually - find out if a key changes or is invalid, though not necessarily if anyone just breaks into the service. An attacker can still break in and monitor authentications to gather intel on users. Or they can automate an attack such that the keys are compromised and the attacker gets the access they want while you're asleep at 3am.

"a Monitor could notify the user whenever a key is rotated, and the user should be given a chance to revoke the key, and rotate it once again."

Now the user needs to see this e-mail about their key getting rotated, realize it's a compromise, issue a new rotation, and hope nothing bad happened in the meantime.

"making it so hard to hide a compromised key directory, it would almost require shutting down all internet access to the targeted victim."

This is completely within the scope of many different types of attacks used today, though often you only have to limit it to specific servers.

"The model envisioned in this document still relies on users being able to keep their account secure (against phishing for example) and their devices secure (against malware for example), and simply provides an easy-to-use key discovery mechanism on top of the user's existing account. For users with special security needs, we simply recommend they verify fingerprints manually, and we might make that easier in the future (with video or chat for example)."

So it really is just a PGP keyserver. For users who care about security, do something else to make yourselves more secure.
It's really just a bandwidth issue - VFX studios do this all the time with their renderfarms - textures are the main issue - prod/archviz like Ikea stuff are generally really clean and don't have THAT many textures - whereas in VFX everything's dirty and generally very detailed so you're generally pulling in >300GB of textures per medium level scene.

And at least in VFX everything's generally done lazily so you only read textures as and when you need them if they're not cached already - there's a bit of overhead to doing this (locking if a global cache, or duplicate memory if per-thread cache which is faster as no locking), but it solves the problem very nicely and on top of that the textures are mipmapped so for things like diffuse rays you only need to pull in the very low-res approximations of the image instead of say 8K images and point-sampling them, so this helps a lot too...
Here's one I made a few years ago:

http://utilitymill.com/utility/csv_to_create_table/

You just paste the content from excel or a csv.

It actually tries to figure out the data types and creates a table for you as well.
That was wonderful documentary. I will watch it. Thanks
That page has full of very important documentaries.
While this is true, the author actually uses simple arcs on the path for the rounded corners (most Bezier interfaces are implemented in a path that also supports simple lines and arcs). In fact, there's only 1 Bezier in the path from the article, the wavy line in the very last image. See the addCurveToPoint and addQuadCurveToPoint methods for drawing cubic and quadratic Bezier curves