skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I am locked out of my PC because of Windows 8 Login catch-22
I wanted to use my calendar in Windows Metro. No biggie right? Wrong.

I get forced to create a "microsoft account", I have to come with a random email address, which I do, followed by a password, equally as long and random. I do.
It asks me for my phone, I say no thanks later.

I reboot my PC.

My login has suddenly changed. It displays the email address I just used to setup my calendar. My password doesn't work.

Panic.

I try again, now it has done a remote server checked, determined I have had too many tries and asks me to use an ONLINE recovery sysem OR Enter in my last password.

There was no last password, it is a brand new top of the range laptop. Ofcourse it wont let me enter in no password.

I go online with my 2nd laptop, I click on password recovery.

It asks me for "subjects" and "emails in my sent folder" to verify my ID.

I have none, it is a brand new account.

I just received this in the mail. Notice it is 'unmonitored' and there is are contact details for me to get ahold of someone, seeing as this is apparently all automated.

"Microsoft Account - Unmonitored Automated Email <unmonitored@microsoft.com>
16:06 (11 minutes ago)

We recently received a request to recover your Microsoft account @outlook.com. Unfortunately, our automated system has determined that the information you provided was not sufficient for us to validate your account ownership. Microsoft takes the security and privacy of our customers very seriously, and our commitment to protecting your personal information requires that we take the utmost care in ensuring that you are the account owner."

I no longer have a computer I can use, which my professional life depends on, I might even get fired over not being to use my computer today.

Please let me make this clear - there was no indication at any point the password for my MACHINE was going to be reset to be this new password I was using for an "Outlook" email address I was prompted to create when trying to use the Calendar application, which is why I naturally did not spend time memorizing these details.

WTF microsoft. All this, without warning, because I wanted to try and sync my calendar.

UPDATE - Please if there is ANYONE at Microsoft who can help me access my machine please contact me, I am ofcourse using the same IP address as I did when I signed up for the account, and remember just about all of the credentials I used when signing up. ( I dont remember the password perfectly obviously).

Update 2: RECEIVED 2ND REJECTION
Microsoft Account - Unmonitored Automated Email <unmonitored@microsoft.com> 16:15 (20 minutes ago)
to me We recently received a request to recover your Microsoft account *@outlook.com. Unfortunately, our automated system has determined that the information you provided was not sufficient for us to validate your account ownership. Microsoft takes the security and privacy of our customers very seriously, and our commitment to protecting your personal information requires that we take the utmost care in ensuring that you are the account owner.
Why I Quit My Comfy Silicon Valley Job to Travel the World
> I've only had a mild traumatic brain injury

"only". All brain injuries are incredibly frustrating.

Adding on the advice, if you have others close around you, please listen to them and take their advice even if it's painful. This was positive for me and I'm glad I did it... but man it was painful. I felt powerless and helpless and couldn't grasp the full details of the situation. When everyone around you is saying the same thing, they're saying it for a good reason.

The largest lesson I've learned is that there's nothing fundamentally wrong with someone who has a brain injury. They manage their deficits like any sane person would. Yes, their deficits will show through but that doesn't speak to who they are. That's their injury showing itself and they're doing their best to control it.
Panoramic Views of the Ka'bah
Nvidia made quite interesting SoC, that's why they placed Shield in the comparision. iPad has only slightly boosted iPhone SoC.
And no, the Kemar mannequin is NOT to be used as an aural sex toy. It's totally legit!

http://kemar.us/

"If KEMAR was not part of your life already from 1972, you can catch up with the timeline we made to highlight KEMAR's evolution. Many things may have changed in our lives, but KEMAR remains the same: your faithful friend and up-to-date manikin for acoustic research."

One of its uses is to make your own Head Related Transfer Function by casting a pair of rubber ears (pinnae), plugging them into the head, and recording their response to sounds. They are also great fun to dress up and accessorize at parties. And they give you a totally legitimate excuse for when you are caught walking around with a briefcase full of rubber ears.

The timeline pictures for 2013 show it "assembled, calibrated and delivered as a complete out-of-the-box system" that would be a blast to carry through airport security.

Mark my words: some day, everyone will own one of these awesome things. Kickstarter, anyone? ;)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head-related_transfer_function

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dummy_head_recording

http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/virtual-surround-sound3...

http://www.ee.bgu.ac.il/~acl/Equip/KEMAR.pdf

http://www.gras.com.cn/down/KEMAR_body_model_measure_catalog...

I would love to have seen the wild parties at this conference:

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...
If people can vote on issues, why do we need politicians? Similar reasons imo...
Gatsky addresses this in more technical terms [1], but this is more an issue of long term outcomes if they survive than of survival. Not that this is less important (some people would say it is more important!) -- just different.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8348741
And now everyone is walking around with the internet in their pocket, yet revenue seems elusive to a lot of very highly-valued companies.

Lack of potential users is no longer an excuse, but we're still throwing billions at companies with no revenue model, and billions at companies with a revenue model but unable to get cashflow positive to save their lives.
Problem of the Day is now open source
I always wonder how did alcohol get away with not having to put the calories in it. That would become quite more expensive as well.
Maybe that is the difference... I don't see as doing them a favour, I see it as sharing it with them...

If you have a 250k car, you aren't going to buy one for each of your friends, sure, but if any of them calls you asking to take it for a ride or a couple days, he has no problems giving them the keys, I honestly don't know what else you can do to not make them resent you. He lets his friends have parties in his house (gives them the keys) when he is out on business so they have a nice place to party.

As for us, we open the doors of our house to anyone (Family and friends). We live in a very desirable place, where most people pay in the 1000's to vacation there for a week or two, we open our house for them to stay there if they want (they do). This is while I'm working, so we aren't really talking about doing a vacation together. It's AirBnB for free if you want to call it that. We give them keys, they are free to do whatever they want. Eat our food. Basically as if it was their own holiday home. Again, not exactly sure what can be done to not be resented for it. I guess don't invite anyone there, don't talk about the house, don't say nothing so people think we live in the projects?

As for giving money, I know for sure, even as a percentage, both me and my cousin give much more than at least all of our family members (not sure about friends as it is something I don't talk with them about). He financially supports an orphanage (20+ kids) by himself along with other charitable works he has over there. As for us, we give to Watsi, support various children as well, among other things (UNICEF, local charitable organisation that work with poor families with newborns), and one of the reasons we are trying to save up money is to be able to create and support an halfway house in our future. The amazing thing is, I wrote about the charitable aspects on my previous post, and I deleted it since it seemed like bragging. I had no problem with the rest, since that to me, specially when we really do try to share with our close family and friends our successes, it is a matter of joy.

This is what I mean though. I think people with a bit more success don't mind sharing their stuff (in Portugal), but even so, it seems people take it the wrong way, and resent them for it. Do we resent pg and others that share their resources/time/money with ycombinator startups? No! We admire and are happy they do, but it seems as soon as it is closer to home, the resentment does come up.
They learn quickly (dogs and parents). Most people aren't as allergic as they think they are, and it would have to be pretty persistently dumb dog to keep bothering a hive that continues to sting it. Anyhow unless you aggressively bother most hives, the bees want nothing to do with you even when you're right up close: if you're not a predator or a source of nectar, you're not interesting.

Even my turkeys, quite possibly the dumbest animals I have around, don't mess with the bees any more after their first time!
Solar Power to Provide Abundant Energy Soon
I violently agree with the author.

I have something to add specific to competitive FPSs (or any other multiplayer game with a player results table) like Quake and UT. It's my personal measure of whether an online FPS is any good and there's a distinct difference and it's testable (somewhat objectively if you get many people to do this).

1. Play the game without any prior knowledge - just launch the game and play (obviously, look up the controls first).

Good FPS: you end up bottom of the table with negative points having killed almost no one and probably dying from environmental hazards. In team games your own team is likely to vote-kick you.

Bad FPS: you end up middle of the table and have managed to kill people from all over the table.

2. Play the game after putting in an hour.

Good FPS: you started contributing to the team effort and whilst still near the bottom you get in some kills. You know all the mechanics and none of the high level strategies.

Bad FPS: you finish the game at random positions of the table, even near the top. You don't know all the mechanics.

3. Play the game after putting in 10 hours.

Good FPS: you consistently finish in the middle or higher up - but the point is your position is stable. People playing for the first time pose no threat to you.

Bad FPS: you're still all over the place, sometimes at the top other times at the bottom and you sometimes get killed by people who are playing the game for the first time.

The reason it ties in to OP is that this used to be the norm in FPS games, now accessibility is king.
That's just a small piece of the article:

> So 5 years ago I began a conversation with Steve Jobs at my house in France and I said to Steve: "How is it that for a person who cares about the way things look and feel more than anyone else in the world that iTunes looks like a spreadsheet?"
That explanation deserves a slow clap. An upvote is simply not enough.
Very cool, I did the font one. I found myself first adjusting the leaders based on how well the letter looked to my eye and could easily get into the 80+% range. But when I tried to use my analytical eye by lining up the dimension leaders, I dropped a solid 10 points. Guess I have a fair eye, but no skill. Thanks for posting.
I can't attest the value of this test https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3P9vDAY0U0A

They show how a Moto E is more responsive than a Galaxy S5. Full stack system performance, when doable, gives you this kind of leverage.
Also this:

> People have asked if anyone around me could tell I was having a stroke. “Weren’t you acting weird?” they’d ask, and my husband’s mouth would turn into a thin line, and my friends who joined us for New Year’s would lower their eyes.

How long would that be hanging in the back of his head, eating at him about what he could have done differently?
"but they lack lasting power once you stop playing."

This sounds like a good litmus test for me. If you're still thinking about a game many months after you finish it, then it's probably something more than a mere diversion. In this sense, perhaps, the best game reviews should be retrospective, rather than reactionary on the day of release.
A use case that I found this very useful for is Drupal theming. I like using bower et al with my Drupal themes, and some of these shitty node modules have .info files for unit tests buried very deeply. This 1) kills performance of an in development theme 2) Makes Drupal think there are more themes than there actually are. Thanks for this.
Here's the problem stock is worthless unless you go public or sell the company. It's also double hard to value stock that this point because you have no investors to kind of back up your vision. I would just offer them a fair salary w/good benefits. If the candidate your like says no them negotiate with them, they might bite with stock you never know. I would make is vest over 5 years though.
for the tldr: DRM is so punk rock
On Chrome, the OS can page all those other tabs to disk without affecting performance of the current tab. On Firefox, you're going to feel it.
I was asked to crack a program in a job interview, part 2
Nonsense. Gone home had user score 5.4 in January[1] 5.3 in February[2] and then climbed back up to 5.4 and kept it till now. First #gamergate tweet ever happened in August 28.8.2014 [3].

So, if the gone home is target, #gamergate activity hardly budged its score.

[1] http://web.archive.org/web/20140122201259/http://www.metacri...

[2] http://web.archive.org/web/20140213065923/http://www.metacri...

[3] http://topsy.com/analytics?q1=gamergate&via=Topsy
Ok, apparently I have a 4S. Maybe it's older than I thought.
> expecting a game … actual gamers

What's a "real game" and what is an "actual gamer" anyway?
I'm surprised no one mentioned the ability to use custom ROMs and kernels on android devices with optimized CPU governers and overclocking on demand and how that affects the phone's performance.

Android stock branded phones are packed with bloatware from the carriers. This is something apple actually has a grip on due to how closed their platform is.

I'm running c-rom with lean kernel on my Galaxy Note 3 and running just one of those benchmarking programs, I get results that are a lot better than what anandtech shows. Still not better than apple, but pretty close to them for a last generation phone.

I'll try to run all of the benchmarks sometimes this weekeend and do a post.
I agree on the MMO part. That's why for me MMOs aren't really RPGs. My statement about good RPGs was a little different, though. A good RPG really has different optimal builds, e.g., you can't say that one of the starting characters in Diablo 2 is really better than the others. If one build overpowers the others that's really a balancing issue and a game claiming to be a good RPG has to make sure that this doesn't exist. As you say I also believe that MMOs have the goal to keep players on the treadmill and therefore prefer a changing imbalance over a constant balance.
> This is the worst type of "gaming" and probably exactly why the RTS genre is dying.

I don't know. I play sc2, and after a few or at most a dozen of matches I just have to quit - too much stress. But I quite like it and I return to it every few days. I don't waste as much time as I would on some no-stress rpgs or europe universalis alikes (waiting for positive reinforcement type of games). These are just different kinds of games. Starcraft fills similar niche like chess - relatively quick competive sport. I don't see people running around bashing chess for the use of clock or the fact that you will lose a lot when you play chess.

> If people within 10% of each other means one gets thrashed then it's simply not fun for one of the players.

Or maybe some players like to get trashed 50% of the time if it's in a honest game? Ladder system is there to match people with similar skill and it mostly works. Inventing chess that are less stressful (let's say you can throw a dice to see if the enemy attack worked) wouldn't make it better game.
Top downloaded apps are not the same as top used apps. I'd be willing to bet that many users are completely oblivious to (or simply dont care about) the app store and are perfectly satisfied with the default iPhone apps, I know both of my parents are.
Fortunately, not everything on HN is "an allegory about a startup". We still get some interesting articles on non-startup related material.

Personally, I'm here for the hacking content, not the startup content, although I'm occasionally interested by something from the startup camp.

I've been wondering, and no insult to the startup oriented crowd out there, if it would be possible to add a 3 tag system to HN posts; "startups", "hacking", "other".

The guidelines[1] state "On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups" which, in a naive sense, means that the simplest classification scheme would be the 3 terms listed previously.

This would allow a simple search query such as "-startups" to exclude posts tagged exclusively with "startups", or "-other -hacking" to include only posts tagged exclusively with "startups", or "+startups" to include any post with the tag "startups" etc.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Sure drugs are a short-cut, but you say that like it's a bad thing. What rational person wouldn't want to use a short-cut to get to a desired destination?

Did you do that work on your house with trees you'd taken down with your teeth? Or did you use a bunch of short-cuts, developed over hundreds of thousands of years, from saws to cut wood to hammers that pound nails to an exchange economy that allows you to work at one thing and pay someone else to do another for you (like build hammers etc). How big a short-cut is that!

Civilization is nothing but a huge collection of short-cuts.

Every tech company is in the business of developing and selling short-cuts.

So don't be running down short-cuts: they are what make our lives communal, rich, pleasant, civilized and long.

The issues with drugs are not that they get us to places we'd like to go without the otherwise-arduous work required, it's that they don't necessarily get us there, and they can get us to places that are very difficult to get out of. But the very fact that they can mess you up in ways you can't achieve by reading or meditation suggests they can give us positive effects that can't be achieved in other ways. It's not something I'd likely do myself, but if people are bad places already, suffering from PTSD and the like, it's not unreasonable for them to take the damned short-cut if it has a plausible chance of working.

That said, I'm in favour of legalization, or at least decriminalization, in part to reduce the risks: MDMA in particular involves a synthesis that I'd really like to see done in a quality-controlled environment (there are mercury compounds involved and if the chemist screws up their clients can die, which unfortunately happens, and would not happen if the drug was legal, so I lay those deaths at the feet of prohibitionists.)
Totally agree. If you look at your company, where are your "rockstars"? I don't mean rockstar developers; I mean the most ambitious, most well-connected (and highest compensated) people in your company. It's a trick question: they're almost always in sales, marketing or product because these are the parts of the organization that drive profit.

This is true of almost every company. It's not a secret why Salesforce was the first real SaaS success story: companies are a lot more inclined to spend money to make money than to spend money to save money. Growth is the name of the game; cost cutting is usually only a focus once growth is no longer an option.

That's why I groan whenever I see something like yet another IT operations management platform. Would the company be better off buying a software package to manage their IT, or firing all their IT staff and hiring a managed services provider to fill the gap? Operational cost cutting has a lot of different modalities that are often mutually exclusive, while you can more easily chase down multiple paths for revenue generation.
This is the Planck analysis on the arXiv: http://arxiv.org/abs/1409.5738
Could you make some kind of "music" out of the audio from a Twitter stream of Vine videos?
Can someone explain where there is such a huge gap between the 6 and 6+ when it comes to the Onscreen GFXBench test?
The person is a racist, its not worth arguing with one. They feel that their stance is the only valid one.
The very best of Larry Ellison's insane quotes
It seems to me that if there was ever anything in the cannon of collective behaviour which didn't seem to the participants to be a game, but nonetheless actually happened to have some of the most uncannily engaging 'game mechanics' ever to grace a non-game, it is that decidedly odd phenomenon that is the cargo cult.
Are those really graphically heavy?

When I think graphically heavy I think of games like Infinity Blade. Candy Crush has extremely simple 2D graphics, same with Farm Heroes Saga and Clash of Clans.
And why did you choose such method to measure a good FPS?
hopefully they are documenting their work/processes so a new person can pick it up.
Some bees are calmer than others.

But what I really want to tell is:
> ...bees don't really hang around the hive; they leave and go forage.

When they change, and decide to hang around the hive, don't let anybody at the terrace, or near it in any way. That does not happen often, and does not last for long, but you better stay away for a while.
I can name many friends of mine that talk down towards the iPhone because their <current state of the art android phone> has more cores or ram or ghz, but what does that actually materialize into? If the extra performance doesn't actually do anything for the user then why waste the money on it? Apple has an amazing UX and doesn't need to throw pointless numbers at you to get you to buy their phone.
I think he had good points about games like Thief and System Shock 2 (and Deus Ex, which wasn't mentioned). The games were more open-ended than any shooter today, but more limited than "sandbox" games. They gave you a constrained world with a large number of possible paths, so that you could comprehend the options and make meaningful choices, even replaying to try them again.

The opposite of this would be something like Skyrim, where you are plopped down in the middle and proceed to basically hop around randomly, while individual quests are quite limited, repetitive, and linear (99% of a dungeon quest is pressing forward through the tunnel towards the HUD marker) compared to the scale of the world.
The Woman Who Protected Yahoo’s $27B Windfall from Alibaba
I wonder for how long will Google be able to keep its version scheme for the Nexus program. I guess Nexus 6 and 8/9 will be the end of the road.
I have two hives in the yard. (Palo Alto) We produce 10-20 gallons of honey per year. Fun to harvest - kids love to get hands-on. Fun to give away esp to random strangers.
OT: AnandTech founder Anand Shimpi retires from journalism to work at Apple: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/09/anandtech-founder-ana...
This is a non-obvious point that took me a long time to grok: the way you sell your product is a function of its price, not the other way around. The more you charge, the more high-touch you can get when selling (i.e. with an outside sales force).
"which my professional life depends on"

windows isn't ready for the enterprise
This seems like a viable approach in the future. I hope you are not suggesting that it is OK to send code compiled with a beta version to a client.