skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
TLDR; Show you are willing to put in effort and labor aside from generating ideas/spending/raising capital

Hi Nick -

I can speak for myself. I am a primarily technical, sole founder of a 3+ years profitable company who had to develop the business know-how along the way.

With the ability to see both sides, what I've found is the business-side components are equally as important as the technical components; that is, neither can live without the other. But here's the rub: The technical side is a thousand times more laborious to become proficient at, and there's not even a comparison.

If you're able to take that with more than a grain of salt, it implies while your contributions are equally as important as a technical co-founders to the overall business' success - the technical co-founder is not likely to see it that way because they won't be looking at things in terms of value (which is what matters most from the business man's point of view) but in terms of value + effort.

The way you can make developers feel good about working with you is to emphasize something aside from money (risk) to contribute which shows you will be putting in a substantial amount of effort which then has tangible, measurable results. For example, if you are a good writer and willing to write lots of content for SEO.

You say you are a sales and marketing focused person, so really stress what it is you will be doing work-wise that will compel the technical co-founder to want to work with you. Will you be cold-calling 100 people with a 5 percent conversion rate every day? Will you be spending 4 hours a day using X, Y, and Z tool to come up with keyword permutations for AdWords campaigns? Will you be reaching out to a minimum of 3 potential affiliate / rev-share partners a day to maximize those types of relationships? Show what makes you good at what you do and the effort you will be putting forth to achieve your results.
On iOS the font used to be a horrible script - really hard to read.

Currently it's comic sans (or a clone of it).

I personally fucking love the site and wish wish wish more people would stop throwing weird stuff in websites. I do think the dig at hipsters is pointlessly antagonistic. Isn't there an evangelism guide for people in open source projects?
This characterizes the filter bubble I can get into here, and few other venues, because they are poorly- or entirely un-moderated.
The uproar over this particular experiment seems like a bit much, but it doesn't hurt to start to have these conversations about research on users using the web. There is only going to be more of it going forward.
They say that for some, the fastest way to make it in the music industry is to sleep your way to the
http://www.meltbuzz.com/2014/09/porn-hub-to-launch-music-rec...
Web Scraping in Python
> Some of the interviewees have been developing for over a decade and can't say what a linked list is, let alone contrast it with vector or an array.

Jaw dropping. Some degree of this is acceptable - e.g. I wouldn't really expect a front-end dev to know browser-native DOM manipulation, because everyone uses some sort of shim (particularly jQuery), and modern-modern frameworks abstract away DOM manipulation entirely (think React). But that's a high-level API trade-off, rather than a foundational issue. OTOH it's far more serious when a dev doesn't know about Array.forEach and insists on using $.each for iteration, showing an inability to distinguish between native JS and jQuery.

Part of the problem with JS and data structures in particular is that, AFAIK, there is not even a de facto collections standard. Google's Closure structs[1] might come the closest, but generally brings a lot of baggage. js_cols[2] is pretty good. And then you have what I would consider "fringe" solutions like mori[3]. The bottom line is that even an autodidactic developer starting off in JavaScript land is going to have a much harder time learning about basic data structures than if they started off in Java land, which, while it has it's warts, does have a wonderful standard library for collections[4].

[1] http://docs.closure-library.googlecode.com/git/namespace_goo...

[2] https://code.google.com/p/jscols/

[3] https://github.com/swannodette/mori

[4] http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/collections/index.htm...
Pick an open source project that you like, fix a couple of bugs to show you're serious then talk with the project maintainer(s) and tell them you want to do something that takes 150 hours or so.

The reason for doing something open source is that you can point to it when a future employer asks. If you choose a "brand name" project, you can get a lot of kudos for being associated with something like that.
There's a rather excessive force being used on a population whom, unlike other large scale protests, didn't overturn any car, didn't burn anything, didn't cause any damage whatsoever.

The outrage is remarkably reasonable in this case, and unfortunately it's looking and feeling eerily familiar, to the ​Tiananmen Square June 4, 1989.

More international media coverage would absolutely and definitely help.
this is not about oppressing women, wtf.

this is about sites using the natural trait of men, especially the nerdy types, to get immense joy of being right. not being able to have something stand uncorrected. and to assume all others are idiots and uninformed. which is where the gender angle comes into play, imho by accident.

you don't need to pay them, they'll do all the work, just let them be right, publicly.
For the strict issue of sharing code with others (open to everybody), sure, Github is the best solution

But this is not what the article was talking about, it was talking about collaboration with other file formats, so jumping to say Github is good (on what we already know it's good and does not correspond to the discussion) is a stretch
Email Design Guide
I wrote a PHP vulnerability scanner once. It was pretty simple:

if (isPHP)

echo "VULNERABLE!"
If you're in the Chicago area, you might be interested in an upcoming civic hackathon that we're hosting.

http://drinkndev.com
Exactly! that's why i created it.

Also, i'm planning on build a grunt/gulp plugin to integrate it in the development workflow.
The only pessimism warranted is that people can't differentiate experimentalism from failure. Empirical data on failure is under-valued. Just like how academics never publish all the shit that goes wrong. Tons could be learned/saved from publishing negative results. After all, its all in the interpreation. Having bad empirical examples heightens contrast and differentiation, which is often a good thing.
I agree with most of what is here save for the Perl 5/6 issue. Perl 5 needs a name change of some kind or another (Since Perl 6 isn't going anywhere or changing its name). You can't really write it off as people not "understanding how version numbering works" when the common way it works is by incrementing the major number when a new version is out.
Norwegian Aftenposten also published a pretty good interactive story of the event: http://mm.aftenposten.no/estonia/
It kinda bugs me when time-sensitive articles (like those about software) are published without a date on them. The article does not mention a date when it was written, I assume it was recently. It mentions "2014-09-09 FreeBSD advisory", and the date today is 2014-09-28, so September 2014 is a good bet.
Porn Hub to Launch Music Recording Company
Imo, his/her point would be closer to 'men enjoy to show off and brag more than women do'. Though the word 'mansplaining' was poorly chosen imo
Btw I enjoy the article. Thanks for writing it.
While probably good advice in US it's very sad of affairs it gets repeated. It's not something we should have in civilized society. If people learn to just refuse to talk in routine situations then both trust and ability to investigate goes down a lot. It's also terrible advice in some other countries where failure to cooperate and answer questions could be used against you.
Minified JavaScript Games
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10153682274502588....
The defacto standards for geometric data are driven by the dominate commercial software packages, e.g. ESRI's formats for geospatial information or AutoDesk's DXF for Orthogonal data [ and here I am lumping CAD and GIS under the scope of any universal standard ].

The issue with creating a standard is that to a first approximation every CAD or GIS program creates and operates on a unique set of meta-data...this is what gives each piece of software it's distinguishing features [ sure there are possible algorithmic efficiencies, but these are not an issue that a data interchange standard ought to treat as a primary concern ].

The wonderful thing about standards for 3d data is that there are so many to choose from. [1] There have been massive projects to create standards, and many of them have completed their work, only to see time march on. In AEC, the National Cad Standard was created in the 1980's [2]. It still locks the 3d description of designs to their 2d representation as drawings. The Army Corps of Engineers implements NCS. Their document is 450 pages [3]. To be comprehensible by humans, it is based on the idea:

CAD levels or layers are analogous to
overlays in manual drafting systems
and serve to separate graphic elements
(lines, shapes, and text) according
to the design discipline they represent.

Why, because unlike a computer program, the artifact it describes cannot be assumed to be directly manifested in meat-space without human involvement...e.g. buildings require construction crews and machine parts require someone pour raw material into the hopper and put finished goods on a truck, transport them, unload and install them for their next use...a design for a kitchen renovation doesn't compile into a new cabinet configuration.

So the fundamental issue for developing creating a useful 3d data model is not a document, but a way of creating the data model that is attractive to people who create 3d data models. The prototype is JavaScript not ADA.

[1] With perhaps disputed apologies to Grace Hopper. http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper#Disputed

[2] http://www.nationalcadstandard.org/ncs6/about.php

[3] http://www.saj.usace.army.mil/Portals/44/docs/Engineering/AE...
> And of course, next time we hear of OpenBSD having more difficulties, people will jump about Theo de Raadt being mean. I'm starting to understand where he comes from.

The stuff about the "hipsters" comment is not about being mean, it's about needlessly pointlessly being mean.

This stuff matters. It matters because it creates division for no gain.

Why not just use comic sans and make no comment? Why not use fixed-width?
Sorry. This comments seems inappropriate there are lots of shipwrecks that aren't burried and I don't think there is a reason to say Americans are dumb and want to loot tragic shipwrecks.
* Nah, the BSD guys are removing their dependency on OpenSSL, which is terribly broken for a number of reasons. They are not offering to replace OpenSSL for everyone on every platform. That's not their goal. They've said this from the beginning. But not all is lost for you (the non-BSD guy complaining that BSD codes doesn't work outside BSD). Eventually the code will make it downstream. And they've dedicated a lot of thought to how to do that in a more secure manner than OpenSSL. Inspiring.

* They kept the core functionality intact. Were you going to use heartbeats over TCP? Do you know even know what it is? How many of those on-by-default-workarounds were you using? Yeah they removed features. But for crypto code the lack of a rats nest is a feature.

* They are maintaining compatibility with the old API for legacy code and developing a more sane API. Do you have something constructive to say about how an API might look for interop with your favorite flavor of software? Great! To the mailing list with you!

* This was a tear down of code, not a reimplementation from scratch. But yeah, I agree. People should be looking over LibreSSL much more closely than OpenSSL. Sounds like that's something you would be interested in? ;)

* It's open source? And there are discussions on the mailing list? What kind of public audit did you have in mind?

* Don't really think hipster comments have much to do with LibreSSL's quality?

* Can you point to evidence of the claim that not much has been changed in the last two months? Can you point to things you would have liked to see change?

* No extra tests are needed, as they removed features. As features get added, yeah they're going to need to add some tests.

* They don't exactly sit around in conference rooms and write reports for upper management. Have you checked out their mailing list?

Aren't their packages signed and CVS transported over SSL? It's not like the code/packages are compromised. Otherwise, yeah I agree. It would be nice to have secure hateful hipster notes. ;). Kidding aside there's no reason not to add SSL. They should get on that.

I'm thankful that someone is doing something about OpenSSL, which is a blight. I'm sorry I can't personally afford to do more to help. Criticality is a positive thing, especially with regard to crypto/security code. But aren't you being a little smidge cynical?
I still don't understand why it was burried just because it was a tragedy. Was there some practical concern that bodies might slowly creep out of the wreck onto the surface or that people would loot it?
I also enjoyed the Quora digests until one day the links stopped going directly to the threads but all pointed to a feed page. I assumed this was another dark pattern to boost pageviews and unsubscribed.
There will always be exceptions to the rule. But I believe sam was speaking with respect to high level observations from YC. Statistically speaking he is probably right.
Less big data, more ML: you could build a rudimentary shazam, for either audio or images. Use small samples (~1sec clips, or 10~20% image crops) to match against an existing corpus. Bonus if the audio is distorted &/ the image is skewed/rotated a slight amount.

Not as fun: write a k-lambda [1] interpreter in x64 or ARM. More fun: write it in Python or Go. Not fun at all: write it in Verilog/VHDL.

Big data: I hope you like football! Just kidding, there are other datasets, too. You could simply create a responsive website for exploring the dataset. Or do some interesting analysis. Up to you. [2], [3]

[1] http://www.shenlanguage.org/learn-shen/shendoc.htm#The%20Pri...

[2] [large!] http://aragorn.org/data/sports/NFL/seasons/metadata_since_19...

[3] http://www.wired.com/2012/09/nfl-momentum/
...You used the word `mansplain` which is a loaded word that refers to men patronizing women and is closely tied to patriarchy theory.

It's also quite sexist to assume that men are editing Wikipedia so they can "get some" and show off to women. God forbid someone wants to write about things they find interesting or want to be part of and give back to a community.
Stackoverflow has of a lot of terrible answers that get voted up by people who aren't equipped to evaluate them properly, and closed threads when anyone starts actual substantive discussions. It also suffers from lack of decent rewards for contribution. That's not what I would consider a good community.
Remember the role of axioms, which another poster has explained in a different way. The issue in question (not itself an axiom but one that requires acceptance of axioms) is whether each composite (i.e. non-prime) is uniquely composed of primes.

To prove this for yourself, try assembling a composite number out of non-prime factors. Then, to make sure of your result, decompose your factors into the primes from which they were composed. Finally, restate your factorization by replacing your factors with the primes that compose them.

Example: the composite number 32 is normally factored as 2^5, i.e. four multiplications of the prime number 2. Let's say I want to falsify the idea that all positive integers are either prime or uniquely composed of primes, so I instead compose 32 using the nonprime factors 8 and 4.

Then I factor 8 and 4, and discover that their prime factors are also factors of 32 --

8 = 2^3

4 = 2^2

32 = 2^5

-- so I have proven the original thesis: all positive integers are either themselves prime or are uniquely composed of primes.

The idea I am trying to convey is that the original claim doesn't mean one cannot assemble a composite out of non-primes, only that the composite number is also representable by a unique prime factorization.

More depth here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_factor
This made me think that it would be useful to have different, easily switchable highlighting modes: syntax and symbols when I'm writing, structure when I'm reading code.

Or maybe syntax highlighting for the scope I'm in and structure for the rest.

I often use the folding/nesting indicators when reading code, it would be an extension of that.
> i see no reason why this person cannot be your cofounder.

There's no real reason why anyone you find that can provide you with that service can't be your co-founder, but realistically speaking most of the people you meet won't be terribly interested in becoming a founder. It's a hell of a lot of hard work and it's very risky.

If you can convince him to take an equity stake, by all means hammer out an agreement, but you can get from zero to one even if he doesn't, simply by paying him for a clear set of deliverables.
> this is about sites using the natural trait of men, especially the nerdy types, to get immense joy of being right.

I believe this trait is true, but the word mansplaining is loaded and few people agrees with your use of it.
Recycle That Headquarters
The author actually discusses this a bit towards the end.

Far from it. As early as the first subsection, "A Less Than 0% Chance", Scott writes:

"Now, what happens if you try to come up with a theory that's like probability theory, but based on the 2-norm instead of the 1-norm? I'm going to try to convince you that quantum mechanics is what inevitably results."

So discussing that distinction is the entire point of the lecture, and not some minor point "discussed a bit towards the end".
I mentally blacklisted Quora when it was proudly US only (I'm Canadian). Their reasoning was extremely dubious: something about "cultural differences" and "language barriers" preventing "high quality content".

Foolishly, I gave them another chance when they opened registration worldwide. The second strike was when I found out that they showed the Googlebot different content, à la Experts Exchange.

And the third strike was the heavy handed social integration. Can't post (or even read content) unless you link with Facebook, etc.

It's a shame. As others have noted here I think the web could use an improved version of "Yahoo Answers"; something with a StackOverflow feel. Especially since Google Answers (the one you paid bounties for) went the way of the dodo in 2006.
I once calculated the Mandelbrot set on graph paper. This article makes me feel slightly less dorky. :)
Obligatory xkcd: http://xkcd.com/1171/
A meritocracy is a type of government not an economy. Or possibly I don't understand your question.
It's stated pretty clear on the page, isn't it? But if you are asking if there is an approval screen, than yes, there is. It's a regular OAuth2 token, and I make use of Google Contacts API. Naturally, I don't really have access to your Gmail...
This piece starts out teasing some kind of business or market analysis about Quora, which would be interesting to read, but it almost immediately descends completely and permanently into Drama, some of which seems like it's only really intelligible to people who spend a lot of time on Quora.

It's not a worthwhile read, and we'd be better off discussing Quora based on virtually any other story about it.
1. Think about how much time & budget you have first. You want to make sure you can finish your project and can get it done with the resources you have.

2.1 If you're interested in "big data/analytics", why not look into Cloudera & Datameer, and talk to some people at the World Bank & the Inter-American Development Bank to see what problems you could solve for them?

2.2 Regarding AI, email/tweet some of the people at Deepmind & Vicarious (you can google for employee names) to see what they can suggest.

2.3 Regarding computer vision, try emailing Blaise Aguera or Johnny Lee to see what they consider "interesting" (or just google some of their work).

3. Finally, AND THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT STEP: think about why you're doing this. Do you just want to get it over with so you can move onto something else? If so, pick a project that's relatively simple but difficult (running a marathon is simple but difficult). Otherwise, if you want something meaningful, choose something that will be fun. Choose a question that YOU want answered and that peaks your interest. Curiousity+fun will make the work feel like no work at all. GOOD LUCK!
>It's for your degree.

I'd wager that this - the notion that school is for a degree, abstract from challenging oneself to learn anything is a healthy contributor the apparent glut of 'uderemployed' graduates.

>A few years from now no one will care about your GPA, let alone your final year project.

Perhaps, but they'll certainly have more to gain from someone who cares about doing quality work and is willing to challenge themselves.

Further, it's not an entirely safe assumption that you'll even be capable doing 'the cool stuff later', particularly without having tried.
How could the Greeks possibly have invented special relativity?
Where is their release plan? The files don't say alpha anywhere.

Version control matters when you don't know who actually made the change. Are the changes signed? No. Besides, my main point was a lack of openness about code reviews. They're not public, and there's no evidence they are even done.

An accessible readable website happens to be important to people, and is a legal requirement in Canada. Documentation is important, and there is none on their website. How do we know what changes they made? Documentation is part of software, and they have none. Fail.

If they want to be jerks and bash other projects, they should be able to take crits themselves.

They clearly state in the article that there hasn't been much activity for periods of time. You can see yourself by looking at the project history in CVS.
Well, they take on responsibility as stewards, which means they will be the target of criticisms and backdoor attempts, and will need to meet the demands of downstream demand for fixes, requests and help. They also need to (have already) spend time on understanding the code, development and integration. They need to communicate the problems with OpenSSL and what they've done to other people within the ecosystem.
Tradier at FinDEVr 2014 Conference
Show HN: Namebird – Find high quality, available domain names
Would Edward Snowden still pick Hong Kong to fee if he saw this?
Unfortunately, I don't find that reference very helpful - it's just pages of annotated equations.

What's an example of pseudocode that would actually implement this? Surely you don't load a natural language module in order to parse the pathologist's notes (in the example given in the reference about biopsies)?

(I should also note that the original article is devoid of any technical examples, making it completely opaque to me what it actually entails.)
Dozens of Hikers Apparently Dead Near Peak of Erupted Volcano in Japan
Whilst StackOverflow also has its failings, it isn't deliberately obstructive.

It isn't the perfect model but it is certainly a better one.
Toomim Bros Bitcoin Mining Concern
Alibaba doesn't seem like a software company to me. I mean, yes, they have a website, but so does Nordstroms.
You mean this one: http://xkcd.com/224/
And Coders, don't forget another way to contribute. A group of people is constantly working on better IT backups, e.g. wifi, facts consolidation, map view for resources, etc. https://www.facebook.com/groups/code4hk/
Turnover presumably.

In the UK it means the same as revenue in the US.