skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
And PayPal's API is heaven compared to what the banks provide. Here in Canada, Moneris, PSIGate, Beanstream, etc., are so freaking terrible and developer-unfriendly - and customer unfriendly! - it's incredible.

I'm selling a fairly small e-comm web project to a new company that will be doing "adventure tours" right now. They'd been told by their bank to use Moneris (probably Canada's biggest POS company), but of course, they were experiencing all sorts of hurdles getting approved because they were told "travel companies are risky", etc. They couldn't process any payments before their website went live, because Moneris insists on inspecting everything. Etc.

I told them to use Stripe. Like really strongly advised it. And they kept coming back with stuff like, "Okay, so, would you advise that we apply with Stripe now so that they can approve us due to the apparently more risky nature of our business?" And so on. My responses were always, "I don't think that's going to even be a thing you have to think about."

And it hasn't been.

Another Moneris story: I had a customer all set up with integrated payment processing through their gateway. Then we were informed that they needed to a security scan on the server. They outsource this to some other company.

So they run this scan, and it fails - and why? Because the server is equipped with all kinds of countermeasures (firewall stuff, port scan blocking, whatever - that's not my area of expertise). So they tell us that in order for their scan to pass, we need to disable all of the security measures that are currently protecting the server.

You really can't make this shit up. After that experience I swore I would always, always try to talk my customers out of using the banks and to use Stripe instead. And it's working.
Genetics also plays into it quite a lot. If you had the wrong genes you would still be drinking that much or possibly even more.

That said, even irrespective of shitty genetics or good genetics, depression or stress will make it very difficult to get out of that hole.
And who, it must be said, is not a member of the government either.
First: employer based health care, as weird as it is, serves a role as collective bargaining. Losing the sick person is good. Losing the sick person and a couple thousand healthy people is bad (or at least less good).

Except that many large employers are self-insured anyway, they only have an insurance company contracted to administer claims, but the employer pays.

So, unfortunately the company then has an incentive not to employ sick people and old people.
One short remark: There was a lot of good in that
lecture. But generally the theme is, that when have
2-3 founders and are growing to 10-15 people, the
situation is, in just one word, desperate.

Let's consider that: Yes, the subject is a startup
that is intended to grow to be worth $1+ billion.
The field is information technology.

Okay, but at 2-3 people up to 15, whatever the
potential is, what is there is, in two words, still
a small business.

Now, what can we say about starting and running a
small business?

Well, the US, coast to coast, border to border, in
cross roads and villages up to the largest cities, is
just awash in small businesses. We know about many
of them quite well, e.g., grass mowing (the guys
that mow grass in my neighborhood arrive with about
$70,000 in capital equipment and 3-4 people), pizza
shops, Chinese carry out shops, red/white checkered
table cloth, red sauce Italian-American restaurants,
auto body shops, auto repair shops, barber shops,
kitchen remodeling, residential construction general
contractors, suburban paving, masonry, a dental
practice, a family medical practice, an independent
insurance company, a SOHO law firm, a CPA accounting
firm, and, actually, many more that are B2B and less
well known, e.g., wholesale plumbing, manufacturer's
representative, electrical engineering, and more
generally a huge range of big truck/little truck
businesses.

With this background, I come to the main

Point: Now these businesses are often sole
proprietorships, file taxes as a Subchapter S, are
not Delaware C corporations, do not have a board of
directors, have no one with an MBA, and have never
watched a lecture such as Altman's. And, commonly
they stay in business. And mostly there is usually
no air of being desperate.

E.g., for one point of difference with Altman's
lecture, one bad hire does not kill the company.
And hiring a good person does not take nearly as
long as a year.

Okay, once a company has done well and grown to,
say, 10-15 people, fine; if then the company has
promise of growing to $1+ billion and many
employees, terrific; then let the growth begin. But
first step, make it through the stage of a small
business, and that should not necessarily be wildly
different from running, say, a pizza shop.

So, since I'm eager to learn, where is this little
point wrong?
It is only a matter of time before these outfits are replaced by decentralised, actual peer-to-peer networks, either running off blockchain technology or similar decentralised databases, with no house take and the only option for government being charges against individual operators. There is no network lockin effect when drivers can easily install a competing app and drive for no commission to anyone else.
Any way to have it read from a list of IP's or URL's?
Would take entirely too long to have to do it one at a time in an organization.
Love the fact that this has a throwback Sony Sports yellow color.
Vulnerability in NSS that allows arbitrary certificate forgery
They are about as similar as Python and Ruby. Everything from the names of operators to the stance on mutability, to the more obscure corners (Compiler macros, reader macros, etc).
What would Fastmail do for you?
National Intelligence Estimate: The Chinese Cultural Revolution (1967) [pdf]
I disagree. People were saying the same thing about Facebook and Diaspora but that never actually happened.
It's in 1.4: https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-b2g30_v1_4/, commit 5f35498d4aa1.
That is true, if you don't control where the Mac can contact a DHCP server.
Procedural Locomotion: Automating human walk cycles using machine learning
Design Patterns: Factory Method
"functional" is a low bar - impairment in memory and cognition creeps up on you, and it's possible to boil like a frog until the onset of liver failure and permanent neurological damage (eg delirium tremens) dispels that illusion.
> Agreed, and it's shocking that this Washington Post article does not raise these points at all

Dude, the Washington Post is owned by Jeff Bezos. Of course he's going to attack Apple and Google for their phones, while his phone kind of flopped.
I agree that it is silly to think that not drinking is actually a risk factor for heart disease. I was never trying to support that claim. I was just trying to point out the institutional biases that may be at play when AHA makes recommendations about alcohol consumption.

I would also like to point out that the very AHA page you linked to states "The incidence of heart disease in those who drink moderate amounts of alcohol (no more than two drinks per day for men or one drink per day for women) is lower than in nondrinkers." So there may be a potential benefit there that AHA acknowledges.
I think the person I'm replying to used a lot of flowery language to say "Why can't you people just learn self control?" Invariably - because it's certainly not the first time I've heard it - there's an attached "(like me)" on the end of it. Next up: "I've never really understood why depressed people don't just try and make an effort to be happy"
I hadn't really thought about it before but it strikes me as kind of odd that a taxi/limo/uber with one passenger would be allowed to use the car pool lane... given that the driver wouldn't otherwise be going there.
That's what I was thinking. If you let random machines on your network hand out DHCP addresses you've got bigger problems.
Sinofsky was brought in as President of the Windows division after the failure of Vista, during which he spearheaded (among other things) Windows 7 and IE8, both to extraordinarily great praise.

Yes. He was divisive. Yes. He had failures. But really what you should do is take this for what it is: a successful person talking about success. The real trap is not that he is divisive or wrong about the future, it's that he almost certainly suffers survivor's bias.
Well he is a member of the government but not the governing party (just their stooge)
...and nothing stopung Sybil attacks from forging quality records/reviews/feedback, or bad actors (criminals, kidnappers, rapists, et c) from participating.

No thanks. Did you ever stop for a moment and think that perhaps people use Uber for a reason beyond "they developed an app"? It's the standard of service, silly.
No, it isn't. There are several different kinds of drinks in England. Again, you seem to be talking about a subject you clearly know nothing about.

For example, you thinking that England uses imperial measures for its shots. It doesn't.
"Burn out" can be serious stuff. Often it has the clinical description of depression or even clinical depression,
and the second of these two can be life threatening. E.g., stress is a common cause of depression, and a startup CEO under constant, severe stress is at risk of depression.

One issue is, too many high achievers actually have a case of perfectionism and/or obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and those conditions can lead to stress, depression, clinical depression, and suicide. Treating OCD is not easy.

How do I know? I learned the hard way and "paid full tuition". The OCD case was not me but was my wife. Trust me; I know far too well just what the heck I'm talking about.
That's because diaspora sucked. The distributed social network is coming.
I came to say that this changes everything since I thought the light came first. Still seemed relevant. (not trolling)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let_there_be_light

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
And God saw the light, and it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness.
There is no cardiovascular benefit for alcohol intake. The only evidence for this is an observational study, which does not prove causation at all and is heavily disputed. It would not be the first time that observational studies are proven wrong in actual trials :

> In recent years we have seen that the results of similar “observational” studies were disproved when subjected to a “randomized controlled trial”—the standard bearer of scientific proof. A good example of this is female hormone replacement. For decades it was believed that female hormone replacement was beneficial. But a randomized controlled trial, called the Women’s Health Initiative, demonstrated that the exact opposite was true. The study was stopped in 2002 because women taking the study pills of estrogen plus progestin were developing heart disease and breast cancer at increased rates compared to those taking the placebo or inactive pills."

http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2011/01/red-wine-good-heart-brai...
I used Emacs for 4 years in school and was pretty comfortable with it. Couldn't use it when I was logged on to some server at my first job. Picked up vim .. use vimperator on firefox. Been using it for over a decade now.
Also, CFL's installed in ceiling fixtures have two problems -- the heat goes up into the circuitry (many CFL packages I've seen said not to install upside down), and anyone stomping around on the floor above will induce vibrations which shorten life.
I think the reason is that the incentive of the carpool lane is to get fewer cars off the road, not to literally reward the act of carrying more than one person in a vehicle. To that end, taxis can use carpool because someone using a taxi is someone not driving a personal vehicle (and parking it at their destination, and driving back home later). If taxis are good enough, people won't buy cars, and fewer owned cars generally means fewer cars on the road.
If it can't be shut down, there's nothing stopping violent muggers or kidnappers from participating as drivers. If there's a feedback system, there's nothing stopping Sybil attacks from gaming it and forging reviews en masse.

You have to trust someone's opinion, somewhere.
Is "transit lane" the same thing as a carpool lane?
Introducing Blaze – HMDA Practice
15 years sober here. Before that I drank like crazy while shipping a bunch of software that you've definitely heard of.

The only way this dumb monkey could quit was to quit altogether. Hey, if you can control your own drinking, that's great. But I know that I cannot.

Also, I'm an atheist in AA. It works for me.

The whole "God thing" of AA stopped me for quite a while. But the whole deity thing is optional, you just need a power greater than yourself and (ideally) a sponsor who can call you on your bullshit. I've heard the name "Jesus" a handful of times, and never from someone running a meeting.
Yeah, and those entry level jobs require training and certification that the company doesn't provide. Guess who pay for you to learn how to operate a CNC lathe?
No comments? Am I brave or stupid?
> and nothing stopung Sybil attacks from...

Nothing except that fact that you and every other customer can choose to not patronize any drivers or services that don't provide the information or assurance that you require.
While Taobao can be a treasure trove, an important warning is that around 90% of the brand-name items are fakes. As long as you're not after brand names, there are a lot of great bargains. If you want to buy geniune imported goods, better use T-Mall or JD.com. Neither of which will 100% guarantee you authentic goods, but the chance of getting fakes is much lower because sellers have to put up large deposits before selling.
OpenVPN on ChromeOS, a Step by Step Guide
Logically, it can also have the opposite effect. If you have all the rights for a product, you have no incentive to improve it, until the patents are about to expire.
What is the anomaly in this mars curiosity photo?
That sounds awesome- you'd get all the safety and accountability of hitchhiking, plus you'd have to pay for it!
A Private Tour of the CIA's Incredible Museum
If we are to believe the foremost principle of democracy, that the government is the people. And the people are to give up their privacy for the sake of security, then so too the government has no right to privacy for the sake of its security. Indeed, a secret government with a people lacking security in their effects, is a government that will soon discover is has no security of its own from its own. For it has separated itself and made its own people the enemy.
Jesus...even when I used to get absurdly hammered on the weekends in my late teens/early 20's at max I'd say that it worked out to 20-25 drinks (fri+sat night)...these guys are basically sustaining that rate through the entire week?
If you're drinking regularly and in large amounts like that, your tolerance for alcohol is going to be quite high, and your hangovers much more benign. If they quit drinking for a few months and then tried to drink like that again, they probably wouldn't make it through the night, and the next day would be rough.
PMs are writing prototypes now? That's a huge change from when I was there (left in '11), when few PMs even had Visual Studio installed.
"The internet poses one of the greatest threats to our existence," Palmer United Party Senator Glen Lazarus said, speaking out against Senator Ludlam's amendment.

I do not understand it. How can people say such things about one of the greatest inventions of the human species, that allowed us as a species to understand one another better?!? What goes in their mind when they say things like this?
Is it possible to update bash on the QNAP? I know you can install an SVN server using Optware IPKG but would this work with the updated Bash? These QNAPs do way to many things with barely any software updates. Its a disaster waiting to happen.
> 2) Party hard, roughly 1 night per week, maybe Friday. This works well for many extremely hard working professionals in NYC. Not sure how well it would work in SV...

Probably one of the best comments I've seen on HN on some of the benefits of NYC over SV.

Back in 1999 my company needed servers set up at a colo in Sunnyvale, so I flew out to the Bay Area. Saturday evening I head over to Fry's Electronics, and unexpectedly run into a friend of mine who had moved out to the Bay Area. We agree to meet later for dinner, then he says let's head back to his office.

We walk in to his office at 9 PM and Saturday. The entire office is there, sitting at their desks. 90% male, if not more. This was their life.

The thing though was - this was not Facebook, this was not Google. I can see doing that amount of work in some years in order to get a payoff. This was a company which it was obvious to me at the time, was going nowhere. It raised about $60 million from Kleiner Perkins in 2000, and has hobbled along since then, with another $30 million of Kleiner money in subsequent years. Last year the New York Times said the company and business "remains something of a work in progress", was "lagging many earlier expectations" and was still a small business. I could easily foresee this at the time.

It's one of the problems. People at Facebook, Google etc. worked all hours in the early years, so every company feels they have to emulate that. But Google's don't come around every day - I was sending e-mail's to Google asking them to employ me back when they were still hosted at Stanford.
It's obvious that many people would trade a few years of very hard work for the spigot of money early Facebook and Google employees got. But between such black swans, you want to have the ability to make a decent living working 40 hours a week, and live in a community where you can have a life beyond your tech job.

It's not working hard versus having a life, it's not wanting to work 60+ hours a week when you're just spinning wheels. I've worked at companies where people started staying until 6, 7, 8 PM for no real reason. Then I learn there is trouble at home with their marriage, they often get a divorce. They stay at work because they don't want to go home and spend time with their spouse. It's what bothers me about SV, work for works sake, everything beyond focused on tech. If you catch a ride on a black swan it's a great thing, but if you don't, there's not much good about it.
Chennai-based GoGrab.in merges with AnyCommerce
Ironically, I get a blank page on my iPhone
The Hipster PDA is 10 years old this month
Thanks, that's a very detailed analysis.
OSX has an official "package manager" already: it's called the App Store.
I disagree re: forking it, I think there's a lot of stuff that continues to be a bit of a pain to manage, but it's a good first start.

I think my approach re: prelude is a bit cleaner. See this: https://github.com/mahmoudimus/.emacs.d

This allows an easy to back up to github while still maintaining easy update access to prelude.
What life is like on psychotropic medications
Whew, reading the first few paragraphs after seeing the title started to scare me. I was afraid they were going to advocate locking data up inside of a proprietary app and only releasing that to the public in place of releasing the raw data!

I ran into this years ago with the IMDB dataset. It appears to be formatted such that it aggressively resists sane parsing. Of course, I expected to want to update the data and whatnot, so I built code to download the data files or updates, parse them, and put them into a Sane Format (in my book, only CSV and JSON qualify right now). Then I wrote a simple tool to take any generic JSON and create tables from it and insert all the data. This just always seemed to be the right thing to do to me. Just hacking the file into a useable format and plunging ahead with analysis seemed like a bad option to me, but I take it from this article that it is the common approach?

It may just be an artifact of the kinds of systems I've worked on (bank, govt) but I'm not comfortable unless 'deployment' consists of executing 1 script which can take a system from absolute barebones (no DB schema, no existing tables, no prearranged libraries, nothing) to production-ready. What if you have a catastrophe and your backups are hosed? What if you want to spin off a new environment for testing? The idea that there has to be existing state whose personal history is assumed to be in a certain state, or that after the system deploys someone has to grab some scripts out of their home directory and remember to apply them (and in the right order) before things can get going just terrifies me. What if that employee gets a brain tumor? I suppose it doesn't matter quite as much if your system being down for 5 minutes doesn't result in a report on the national news and impact hundreds of millions of people, but still... don't most people have a personal investment in knowing their system isn't just an array of spinning plates with a chasm of chaos awaiting an earthquake?
Your attitude continues to be less than stellar. You act like a babe in the woods who has no frame of reference and only innocently asks questions to further educate yourself. From my perspective, you condescend, and continue to do so. You are a member of society, presumably older than sixteen, and so you very well know how pointed this line of questioning can be.

Perhaps my uncalled-for overreaction is due to the loss I've experienced at the cost of addiction, from my own mistakes and mistakes made around me. For me there has been a significant loss of life both in my immediate family and friends.

HN is a pretty weird place to ask these questions, and I understand perfectly well what flippant means- thanks for not being dismissive or condescending.

I admit I may overreact, but only because I find your questions- especially the way you responded to be- to me disingenuous.

Though I should never discourage someone from learning, and judging by my reaction i see why anonymity and text are the right place.

(i can tell that i overreacted, and responded emotionally and strangely. I am bipolar on top of addiction issues and reading this post back to myself it's apparent. I'm being an ass. I'm leaving my post because maybe my broken train of thought can be a bit of a learning experience? i'm sorry i am so rude.)
See: Executive Order 9981
I prefer having a third party to ensure quality and have recourse for disputes (it's nice to know that you can sue a company with $1,500,000,000 in venture capital if something goes really awry).

That said, drivers for these services are going to be replaced by self-driving cars.
Of course there would still need to be either reputation systems or arbitration systems. The reason restaurants usually don't plainly defraud you isn't the threat of litigation, because litigation would cost much more than the value of the transaction. It's because they rely on reputation and repeat business.

Decentralized or massively federated reputation and arbitration networks are possible. Clever people would need to figure out a way to set things up, but it's certainly not a technological impossibility.
On December 10, 2004, the journalist was found dead in his apartment, having ended his eight-year downfall with two .38-caliber bullets to the head.

That's certainly interesting. How do you shoot yourself in the head twice?
I would like to understand why you are voted down.

Fastmail is in Australia, your comment seems relevant to me.
So you have a chef recipe to download and compile the same version of bash on every platform you use?

How do you handle situations where bash is included by default?

Do you remove the package or just push your binary over the top?

If you don't remove it, what happens when a package update then replaces your binary?

How often do you update the recipe to make sure it's getting the latest stable version and applying security patches?