skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
If you're a radical, islamist, leftist, etc. then maybe you're a target for NSA, GCHQ.

if you're a sysadmin at a telco or infrastructure provider your definitely a target for the NSA, GCHQ.

let that sink in.

infrastructure these days also means AWS, facebook, youtube, twitter. every piece, site, offer that might be used by ISIS, for example.
Very peculiar seeing this news after Notch was so
critical of the OculusVR sale to Facebook.

Well, a lot of the criticism of the Oculus sale was because the product seemed so at odds with Facebook's main products and lines of revenue.

Microsoft, on the other hand, has the xbox and has been publishing games since at least the 1990s, maybe the 1980s?
Show HN: Play Android: Netrunner in your browser
I would add a 4th also based on extensive experience, can the users do anything at all about the situation? Being able to order someone to generate numbers doesn't mean the recipients are permitted or capable of doing anything at all. It shows they "care" but a random number generator is more effective WRT dev time than trying to generate meaningful numbers.

I've seen dashboards get tied up in internal politics. The list of recipients of "quality" dashboard is a line in the sand vs the "quantity" dashboard political group. The recipient list and who controls it is far more important than the data contained in the report. Whats important is who reports to who, and why.

A fifth question is does anyone in the chain of command even remotely understand basic statistics like error bars and standard deviations? If the only purpose of the report is to loudly trumpet when pet division B beats divisions A and C thru G, then a very high std deviation / error rate makes stack ranking give the predetermined "correct" result more often. I've seen this personally in "metrics as a teambuilding exercise" where whats actually produced is a weekly report that every division will get to stack ranking win at least once a quarter to meet the Morale Improvement goal on some exec's goal list. Again a PRNG gives better data than real data, if the goal is to give everyone a participation trophy.
Instagram was obviously a strategic asset, where Mojang sits in terms of strategy I really don't know exactly. Microsoft and games has always been there, but there's also been recent talk of divesting the games branch. I think one thing is clear which is that Mojang doesn't seem to be a games house that has a reputation of producing consistently successful titles, rather it seems like one indie project blew up and a team was built around that to support and iterate on one single concept. So it really seems clear that they're buying minecraft which is a game that is exceptionally lucrative financially. In the past 24 hours it sold $0.3m which gives an annual run rate of $100m+ for just the game. But perhaps more importantly, it gets huge traction with people of all ages, including kids, and both genders. It's really a cross-over product that sits extremely well with parents. The Raspberry Pi for example is indicative of this, they're only half serious now when they say one of the key requirements is that it has to be able to run minecraft, when this thing is used by kids worldwide in and outside of classrooms. Being able to integrate that with the Microsoft brand is a big deal as you can have an entire generation grow up with positive connotations towards Microsoft, as well as a generation of parents, who know that if their kids will use computers and play games anyway, it'd be great if they'd spend it on minecraft. So I guess it's both highly profitable (though 2.5b is quite steep at 100m annual revenue) but also has strategic value in terms of branding, although I don't yet see how exactly they want to integrate it into their existing games branch.
The point is that numbers in themselves means nothing to most people and are actually not actionable.

The purpose of a dashboard is to give instant feedback on something that requires it. (Driving a car, airplane, nuclear reactor, space station, server load) i.e. if something is wrong you should be able to see it right away so you can take action.

The dashboards we see today are more like vanity boards which feed our need for new information but doesn't really serve any other purpose.

A really good read on the subject is this one

http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/smart-analytics-dashboard-mod...
Just because money isn't a priority for you, it doesn't mean you'll refuse it. He got the best of both worlds by letting other people run the business to focus on what he really wanted (indie dev). Believe me, it's MUCH easier to be creative and work on indie projects when you don't have to worry about your bills and your future...
This whole Minecraft thing has been very interesting to follow. I tried the game a few times and it's not really for me but everything around Notch's story is interesting (I bet their going to make a movie about this at some point). Not everyone can be an entrepreneur and I feel that in this case (on a different scale of course), we basically watched a plausible version of how Apple could have gotten started if there was only a Wozniak but no Jobs.

I'm sure there are many here that dream of having their idea be a huge success but aren't really interested in becoming the next Bill Gates or Zuckerberg. They just want to cash out so that they can have their financial freedom and then go out of the limelight and back to doing the same things they enjoy but without having to constantly worry about job security and putting food on the table. Notch achieved this in the most spectacular way possible and I think he handled it perfectly.
I have not looked at the materials but I suspect most or all Western countries using this toolkit are using it for specific investigations where warrants have been issued.

I personally have no qualms with the FBI planting malware as just another form of surveillance (if they have a warrant to search your home and tap your phone, why shouldn't they be able to get a warrant to monitor your computer?). The problem with Gamma Group, and what I suspect is one of the core reasons for this leak, is that they happily sell their product to extremely oppressive regimes and give them personal support, knowing full well that the tools are being used to spy on and find dissidents, protesters, and political opponents.
I think he wants to say that now Lionhead Studios is dead. After awesome hits like Black & White since Microsoft took over they don't release great names anymore.

B&W 2 was a deception so maybe Minecraft 2 is going to be one again.
Minecraft is actually extremely profitable, though. It's rumored that Notch already has a personal income in the realm of $100M/year derived from real revenue, not funding. This is very, very different from, say, Snapchat.
Is the market spoiled? I no gaming historian but I have been playing games since Atari. There's games along the way that have stuck with me,...pitfall, super mario bros., nhl hockey 93 (i know, super rando list). But I also add to that list Fallout 3. If you correct for better underlying hardware, I feel that games are just as good as ever. I don't have the same fascination with games I had as a child but I can still get sucked in. And aren't there still indie games coming out with some amount of fanfare, like Fez and Super Meat Boy?
He is saying "I made a mistake; I have learnt from that mistake and will try to avoid making the same mistake in future".

That's a fucking great attitude and is -to me at least- much better than "I made minecraft and I'm awesome and the success of Minecraft has nothing to do with luck but is totally all those decisions I made because I'm brilliant" which is the kind of thing we hear from a bunch of other devs.
Ludumdare is bigger than Y combinator now.
The same was said about the Nokia deal.
Nice ! Option for png header to include ? Then company logo can be included. :)
There is an absurdly high need for this service, but my god this is a hard task. I think the way to do this is spend 6 months working exclusively with about 10 early stage startups (pre PMF) which are relatively similar in the type of market they're going after. You then help them however you think you can in getting to PMF. Keeping the types of markets similar lets you get to actionable learnings quicker; an important learning for a gaming startup isn't going to be as useful for one built on enterprise sales. The help you provide could be customer interviews/sales/lead generation/landing page testing/anything. But the goal is to try and work out which of the tactics lead to the most progress for each startup, then create a playbook that can be applied to the next batch of 10 startups you help. Then as that playbook becomes more refined you slowly start to productise some of these services to speed up the process and add more startups to each batch. Then a few years down the line you have a low touch software product that will take founders through each of the steps you have worked out are most useful for startups operating in their type of market. This is a slow process for sure, but I think to be successful at this you have to acknowledge how broad the problem is and how little you know how to solve it right now.
>I don’t make games with the intention of them becoming huge hits, and I don’t try to change the world.

>I think that's the essence of being a real game developer.

Really? (to be read with the least amount of snark possible)

I think most game developers have the same sort of mindsets as other people in creative fields, and while the objective is to make great games, most developers seem to have that little twinkle in their eye, the 'what if my game suddenly becomes huge' thought stuck in their head, and ultimately to change the world at least a little.

If you look at people like Jonathan Blow or Phil Fish (who unfortunately needs to hide himself from the world after being constantly attacked), they all seem to have this objective of creating experiences to share with the world.

(There are examples of people who do develop games much like others write their diaries,in a very personal fashion, but I think the majority are out to create hits)
I don't think it was all that unconventional to think computer networking was going to be big in the mid 1980s. Especially for someone like Jobs who was watching the industry and based in Silicon Valley where it would have been more obvious. (Note that he talks about IBM wiring up large companies.) Look at this google ngram for "information age" - already in full swing by 1982. https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=information+ag... -- Note also some pop culture of the time, like War Games where Matthew Broderick orders plane tickets via modem (among other things), or Ghostbusters where Egon declares "print is dead". Even Back to the Future II depicts 2015 having video conferencing and peer to peer payment. (Still waiting on hoverboards...)

Jobs' observations seem spot on and they are, but I think this was already in the consciousnesses for the industry at that time. It only seems out there compared to what "regular people" outside the niche would have said. Or possibly to those of us who are too young to remember the kind of attitudes you'd hear in the 80s. (I barely remember this, but it was definitely there...)

Your pg quotes are also notable for what they got wrong. I read that as a "web browser as dumb terminal" view - not unconventional for its time. As we've seen, first with JavaScript and then with mobile apps instead of the browser, complexity in the client and running code locally is still a good thing. For many tasks the web has lost.
I can dig him wanting to do a Flappy Bird, but there's also something to be said for taking a concept to initial production, and turning it over to someone else to run & improve. Your work then gets into the hands of (hopefully) millions of people, and the change in focus can provide additional inspiration for future work.
Do the solution links work for you? I've never seen a link that doesn't return "Not Found".
It's possible to have a lot of money and be legitimately very unhappy, all at the same time.

The pressure of being as much of a public figure as he is, and the person blamed for anything wrong with the most popular computer game in the world, is probably Not Much Fun.
Now you mention it, it's actually really similar isn't it? I've been following him since I originally bought my alpha version of minecraft and he's always seemed to be the way he portray's himself in this article. A nice genuine guy that just loves hacking away at things.
It's sad that there are so many griefers and haters out there, but there are worse problems to have than being wildly successful.

I pity what people do to society in general with their self-destructive attitudes. We all suffer as a result when we drive people like Notch out of positions of leadership.

You see the same in politics where the truly good and earnest people are also the ones with a conscience and too much self-respect to submit themselves to the abuse of public office.
Software removal tool by Google
Good point, agreed. I think abandoning is a little much though. I guess it would have rubbed me differently if he had said I'll make it open source or hand it off to other developers earlier, etc.
I feel bad for the poor heptagon, which has neither a flat tiling nor a solid. At least on the hyperbolic plane everyone gets to take part in a tiling.
Twitter for knowledge
There are loads of great games that come out all the time now, people just forget about bad games of the past.

And the "worst" games that we see now are at best mediocre if they were coming out 2 generations ago. The bar has gotten higher because so many high-quality games have been released
Coding for Lawyers
Handlebars/Mustache syntax is also widely used. And <% %> might very well confuse people into thinking the contents is raw code, as opposed to handlebar-style directives.

(Handlebars/Mustache restrict what actions you can take on view data substantially - you have to explicitly expose functionality in most implementations)
How Google Authenticator Works
> but it's within an order of magnitude of what I'd pay.

I take it that is in the hypothetical sense or are you capable of closing $2.5 B deals by your lonesome?
How much of a role do you really think that plays in Skype? Honestly, Skype is so widespread that I'd bet the average Skype user (a) doesn't realize it's owned by Microsoft and (b) hasn't really cared about the changes Microsoft made post-acquisition. I could be wrong, but from my perspective it seems that the average Skype user really doesn't think about these things.
This is why we can't have nice things.

I don't know much about Minecraft or whatever issue Notch is referring to in his post. But I'm always struck by how quickly people snap to emotional argument and response, without thinking about the other side of the question, without thinking about how their response will be read or felt by others.

The first step in any dialogue is trying to understand why the other side has said or done what they have, and how that might seem reasonable and right to them. Without that, how do we have any hope of learning anything, or moving to any actual agreement? And yet 98% of what I read presumes that any disagreement must be ignorant, stupid or evil.

I understand many of the reasons why people talk this way, and yes, it's hard to avoid it. But we now have more communication amongst ourselves than at any other time in human history. Maybe it's time to start thinking hard about how each of us can communicate better.

Wouldn't it be great if we could get to a community where some idiosyncratic dude could write a monster hit without feeling himself battered for reasons he can't understand?
> lives a modest lifestyle
Didn't he just buy /the/ most expensive apartment in Stockholm?
Minecraft isn't heavy duty graphics, you just need a simple voxel engine. Your game code could be running in python and you wouldn't know any better.

There is quite good reasons not to do everything in C++ if game designers are involved. Unity uses C# for scripting; only the inner graphics engine need be native.
And now it contains no code duplication, thanks to flagitious.

The discussion about the older version: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7276976
Next steps:

- Replace Mojang/Minecraft account with a Microsoft Account, use it to login

- Minecraft installer comes with Bing

- Minecraft ported to C#, Java version discontinued. Name changed to Microsoft Minecraft 1.0

- Minecraft servers can only be run in Azure, legally
Please tell me where you've been harrassed and insulted by the Postgres community? Sometimes people come into the IRC channel and say something that doesn't make sense and are told it doesn't make sense, and sometimes those people get very upset, but I wouldn't classify that as harrassment. And that's basically the strongest reaction you'll ever get from anyone in the community.
John's guide to earning an income from a Free and Open Source project
What other interesting times do you refer to other than the actual one?
Free software's purpose is not to kill someone, but to give users the freedom to use, share, understand and improve software.
Something Microsoft can not offer.
Same here, our kid hasn't touch other games in a long time (first grader).
Why? As said in the message he doesn't want to be responsible for handling big successes. So this seems to be very healthy attitude.

Hopefully he will open source his next big thing so community might be able to keep it alive.
He did hand it off to other developers. He was still gettin hate for stuff those other people were doing.

I kind of wish that mental health support was better and that he'd had some kind of mentoring to help him deal with it.

Perhaps that's a startup idea: support with all the hate and bullshit that comes your way when you're a public figure. More expensive service would include rapid rebuttal service to quash lies and myth.
Microsoft hasn't done that with any of their other properties in the gaming division. Now Nintendo has quite a few times.
Just like they killed Skype and Office on iOS and Android?
Saying that we're due for another pandemic is quite simply the gambler's fallacy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambler's_fallacy . The odds of a pandemic may well be higher than recent experience would indicate, but pandemics still occur randomly.
It's OK to use credit -- you just need to treat it with respect. Like a loaded gun.
Heh. I built a dashboard and included everything my coworkers asked for.

Oddly enough, I'm the only one that uses it and I've dropped everything they've asked for from it to declutter.
I think it's pretty well known that JK Rowling is a woman. Also, she has recently written some books under the pen name "Robert Galbraith".

Edit: I see above that the poster was referring to Notch. Just a simple case of an unclear antecedent (and being unfamiliar with Notch's and Rowling's recently releases ;) )
Thank you, I was wondering how this could possibly work.
Show HN: Skylight – Cross Platform Tinder for Apartments
> There’s no reason for the development, sales, and support of the PC/Mac, Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS3, PS4, Vita, iOS, and Android versions of Minecraft to stop. Of course, Microsoft can’t make decisions for other companies or predict the choices that they might make in the future.

Linux is absent, but I wonder if they lump that in with "PC".
My next printer will be a 24 pin, wide carriage dot matrix with a tractor feed. Though it seems counterproductive to use a high duty cycle device for the small amount of printing I do, truth is that the racket of an impact printer is a small tradeoff.

It used to be that inkjet would print black with an empty color cartridge. Now, printing something may take hours or days until I get to the store to buy a Yellow...nevermind if I order from Amazon. An impact printer just prints lighter as ink is depleted.

Printing should just work. It doesn't any more. I miss my Star Micronics NX80.
Growing up in the 70s in the UK, we used it for all frying, etc. Everyone did, but switched away at the start of the 80s because the new message was "sunflower oil is healthier".

Lard also makes me retch if I smell or taste it nowadays. The only reason I buy it is to make food for birds (lard + sunflower and other seeds).
Perfect Cofounder Equity Splits
Done, done and done. Well, not necessarily in that order. Living in Iran sometimes feels like living in the future. Unfortunately it's a slightly dystopian future.
Unless Microsoft moves the game away from Java to some other language, I don't see how that would happen. The "Linux client" is just the raw .jar that is wrapped by the Minecraft.exe Windows executable. They both pull down the same assets and Java bits and pieces before running the main process.
Yeah, the recommendation of many lawyers is not to pay or sign. Rather, you get a lawyer, and sign a "modified" cease-and-desist letter in which you 1) admit to no guilt and 2) don't agree to pay anything. By law, you have to react to their letter in some way. If you don't pay, there is a 50/50 chance that they'll let it be, or that they'll take it to court. I'm not really sure how your chances are in court.

Recently, someone argued that their router had a known vulnerability, and the rights holders couldn't prove that their WiFi was not hacked, and that they downloaded the files themselves, so they were acquitted. (http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Filesharing-Klage-weg...)

In my case, there were two factors that made me pay: First, they were in the right. As annoying as it might be, and whatever my positions on "intellectual property" are, it's hard to argue against that. Secondly, the cable connection belonged to a friend, and I didn't want to expose that person to a couple years of legal uncertainty.

If a cease-and-desist letter is unjustified, or in a grey area, I would definitely stand up against it, because I believe I'd have a good chance in court.
Talking about Skype... I was a long time MSN user and ditched it and they forced every MSN user to migrate to Skype. No, I don't miss it at all. What I've done was taking my friends with me to use XMPP.
$3.9M or thereabouts. I suspect that it is threads like these that will make Markus more than happy to fade out of the spotlight.
"she", btw.
Pretty cool. How are you getting the data?
I think the analogy to Wozniak is great. I remember an article some months ago in which he basically said the same: He wants to tinker and hack.

I remember watching some parts of notch's livestreams. I loved the enthusiasm he had. He was a bit like a young boy, trying things, throwing some away, creating games. I'm happy for his decision.
Well, for a centimillionaire. Spending less than 2% of his then net worth (more like 0.2% now though) on his main property was relatively modest. No jets, cars, helicopters, $200m+ London homes.. he seems to spend more time noodling with Dart than spending his money ;-)
I have found wikipedia useful on the basics, especially around form factor, chemistry, and protection circuitry (or not) in lithium. for example, 18650 lithium cell now popular in flashlights, computers and cars that can be very confusing when it is referenced with protection circuitry and 18650 does not have protection officially.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_battery_sizes
How much is this after Swedish taxes?
Advocate that no, but I know people (ok a person, vegan),who I consider sane in all other bits of their lives, who believe the first half of that straw man (if not the timeline bit). Diet and health make people act completely nuts - and things you think are straw men are sometimes things people actually believe.
How Stacks Are Handled in Go
Yeah, the deficiency isn't the most harmful part - its the attitudes that come with defending that deficiency.