skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Hey! Sorry no context. Don't work at the company either. My friend pinged me this morning with their new website and I was blown away given that I know they are using HubSpot CMS.

I have worked with a lot of HubSpot CMS partners and have never seen a site like this before. It sort of got me thinking that rather than using Wordpress + HS tracking code, I should be building site directly into the CMS and get all of the full funnel metrics stuff.

Not trying to shamelessly plug. More of a... holy shit, I didn't realize HubSpot CMS could be this flexible.

Gave me pause.
I'm working my way through the novels that were joint winners of the Hugo and nebula awards. Every book has been fantastic, although The Left Hand of Darkness was the high note of the books I hadn't read before.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_joint_winners_of_the_...
Read: "Galápagos" - Kurt Vonnegut

(re)Reading: "Drown" - Junot Díaz
Would also recommend Christopher Alexander's "Notes on the Synthesis of Form".

Is Zero to One worth the read?
Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety -- Eric Schlosser
The Algorithm Design Manual

My 'technical non-fiction' read to help keep my mind sharp.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00B8139Z8/ref=oh_aui_d_det...

The Disaster Artist

My 'non-technical non-fiction' read to help keep me interesting around non-tech folk. The making of 'The Room,' complete with lots of weird Tommy Wiseau moments and behind the scenes insanity.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BSAZ6LE/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_ttl...

Neuromancer

My fiction read to help keep my mind young.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000O76ON6/ref=oh_aui_d_det...

Edit: formatting
I think the reaction would have been muted by the fact that the project was long gone by the time the details were widely known. And the danger of radiation was also not widely appreciated until the 50s.

I used to work a few years ago in/around some of the Columbia buildings used by the project, where the football-players-trucking-uranium-through-the-tunnels story was well-known. The story ended with: those players all died young, mostly from cancer. Maybe that part of the story is harder to confirm; it was left out of the OP.
Mobile payments: Apple’s next security pitfall?
Rails: Skinny Everything (Part 2 of 3)
Depends on the city. I studied in Bremen and many students asked for the semester ticket first. Even though Bremen isn't that bad for cycling. But it has a well build tram network.
ISPs in Russia are blocking GitHub
What sales figures won't tell you though is how well people are doing who choose not to buy or can't afford those things.

Also, your argument does not account for tomorrows sales figures, which might look very different, as executives from any industry that software has replaced can tell you. Of course that could never happen to us.
The idiom is "toe the line", to stand with ones toes exactly at the appointed spot.

I like the idea of towing the company line though, it takes on a nautical meaning.
Evolution in the Cellular Service
What have you worked on that could not have been done without VC backing?
Godel, Escher, Bach;

This book is dense. But takes three times as long to read as any fiction that length. Most paragraphs require stopping and pondering.

It is my second time attempting to read this book. The first time, was about 6 months ago. Now, being on my second year in CPGE and having been through quite some math, it was more approachable.

Hofstadter invents his own system of formal mathematical logic and his own procedural programming language to explain concepts, without going into what would be considered a more "standard" formal logic system or even the Turing machine itself. He does a good job piecing them together but at certain times I feel like it'd be more meaningful to read the original works on several of the subjects he touches on.

While formal logic certainly predates this book, a lot of the AI and neuroscience research that he describes were (and are) very much active. The book was published in 1979, and its references to AI reflect the time period.

The book is hard to read, especially for prolonged periods of time. It's dense and the concepts are not the easiest to begin with.

Worth reading? Maybe.

Will it expand your thinking? Probably, though maybe not as much as you might expect; due to the broad spectrum of topics covered, it's not as deep as I would like in some areas and spends too much time smoothing over difficult topics in certain fields in order to make "clever" maps between concepts in the fields (though in this aspect he's just being a computer scientist---simple representations that map cleanly across everything! Sadly, the world is not that way).

Very good? Absolutely.
I'm about a quarter of the way through "The Martian" by Andy Weir. It's good, geeky fun so far. Some of the dialog is clunky but the main character is interesting and fun.

I also read "11/22/63" by Stephen King. An interesting twist on time travel with the usual King propulsiveness. Recommended for King fans like me who may not have read him in awhile.

"Geek Sublime" by Vikram Chandra is a surprising mix of "my career in writing" with computation lessons and history. I took a break from it to read The Martian but it's extremely interesting. He's one of my favorite writers and I'm glad he's got something out that might expose him to a different audience.
If you haven't already, watch Silicon Valley (the Mike Judge TV show). There's a whole episode where you see startups trotting out these "Changing the world through [buzzword buzzword buzzword]" mission statements. It's so accurate it's scarily funny.
New Study on Customer Referral Marketing
Have fun running Magento on dirt-cheap shared hosting.
The Turning Point (book) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Turning_Point_(book)
For no more than a few days at a time, not weeks.
Why should you think about Customer Marketing?

It’s an essential strategy for company growth and is used by high-growth companies like Airbnb, Uber and Dropbox.

So you’re not alone if you are considering buying a customer marketing solution in 2014.

You can use customer marketing to build and strengthen your userbase.

Referral programs can drive a repeatable and scalable customer acquisition effort.

An essential strategy to consider as paid efforts like display and retargeting campaigns have steadily rising costs and inefficiencies.

Read more: http://www.referralsaasquatch.com/customer-referral-marketin...
"Toe the line" comes from the British house, where there were two lines drawn down the middle of the room. Each side was supposed to stay behind their line when debating, to avoid bloodshed, challenges to duel etc. The speaker would holler "Toe the line!" when anyone crossed over.

At least that's the legend I know.
Poor article IMO. This is the kind of stuff that parody movies are made of.

This kind of attitude is what gives rise to mono cultural companies where everyone looks, thinks and acts the same. The cultures seem okay but they're brittle in that as soon as someone shows up who doesn't think exactly like everyone else, the whole thing falls apart or the additions are become "problems".

I've worked at a startup and I've resolved that if I do ever build a one, I want a company that is heavily resilient to diversity of thought and where everybody doesn't have to be best pals with everyone else because that is just fucking annoying after a while.
I wanted the title to be a joke also.. Sad it's not. I just moved to SV and I feel like I get these types of pitches all the time. I would rather happily work on interesting stuff and go home to my personal life to unwind without having the pressure to stay at work for "pleasure". Maybe I just don't fit in with what the VCs pump out?
> It's amazing they asked, because you got a clear indication that they will have no respect for your life. Good to know that early.

Its doubly amazing because I told them I'd be busy that day in a previous email. :)

> I mean, every startup I've worked with has behaved in some way like this. But there are extremes. I work for a large company now, and couldn't be happier. I work at least 2/3rds what I did at a startup, and I get paid more.

I prefer small companies. Like, where I work now the IT team is about 10 people. So startups are always tempting. Its just a question of finding the right one.

Right now, I work 5 days a week and handle some backend stuff on Saturdays. I don't mind the hours, I mind my personal time being interrupted without cause. :)
> I hate to point out the blindly obvious, but what if you need the HID device to click on the box?

You just have a timed dialog with allow/block options that defaults to allow the new HID after the timeout.
Does WebRTC strike anyone as too many things in one package?

It's P2P, video, audio, codecs, and a whole slew of other things all bundled up together into the same "standard."

The P2P part is really really useful, but I could see some vendors wanting to break that off for various reasons. You can do that of course but... well... it's sort of like if "WiFi" referred to 802.11 + a bunch of video codecs + a routing standard + transport protocols + ...
It has been fixed a while ago.
> you can walk into a commercial bank (gasp!) and setup revolving lines of credit or expansion capital to fund more growth.

commercial banks are incredibly hesitant to do this even if you've passed the magical 5 year mark. their commercials loans are underwritten by people who are extremely risk averse, and the "commercial bankers" at your local branch are basically the people who aren't good enough for investment banking i.e. the b-stringers who don't understand how a technology business works. they'll just say no. in fact, it's their job to say no. i have my doubts as to how much money they even make with their loans. most of their revenue comes from fees these days.

however - there are thousands of specialized finance firms who will gladly help you, because there is a massive hole in the middle of the money market for these kinds of funds. they will provide you with:

* revolving lines of credit

* commercial equipment leases

* straight up loans

* special insurance

* lots of other industry-specific stuff that a bank just doesn't even know exists

this entire industry has sprang up "overnight" in the past 10 years - the vast, vast majority of new businesses in america are bootstrapped (think restaurant, construction company, small accounting firm, small scale manufacturing/machining, software companies, etc). venture capital and large banks are not involved. this isn't their game. it's "main street".

these specialized firms generally specialize in an industry i.e. construction, technology, food service, etc. and will know at a glance if your business is healthy or not. and don't worry - they'll find you. they have a knack for swooping in at exactly the right time. they also will not require a personal guarantee, which is a huge leg up on the banks, who will make you sign at least 2 or 3 documents saying they own your life.

if you ask me, commercial banks are nearly useless for anything but checking accounts and wire transfers. they're run by morons, or at least people who don't give a damn about technology businesses, which is tantamount to being a moron in the 21st century.
Companies are in the business of making money. They only provide perks because they believe that it makes you a happier employee and that way you will work better and/or more hours. Perks aren't just perks. They are an incentive that either complements or replaces higher pay/better conditions. Never believe that they are giving you free drinks, lunch, gym membership and laundry services because, well, why not?
How to Deploy Play Framework on AWS OpsWorks
> I'm afraid we have to go back to exchanging files over the LAN.

1 horribly infected computer on a LAN can be a nightmare for everyone else connected.
> This article doesn't even mention Fermi!

Or Leó Szilárd, who had the original idea for nuclear fission, supposedly while crossing a street:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le%C3%B3_Szil%C3%A1rd

Quote: "The stoplight changed to green. Szilárd stepped off the curb. As he crossed the street time cracked open before him and he saw a way to the future, death into the world and all our woes, the shape of things to come."

A somewhat hyperbolic description, but still.
You are forgetting Sir Isaac :-)

I don't think he used the word photon, but he did describe light as particles, and had (flawed, but that is science) arguments for that (http://www.studyphysics.ca/newnotes/20/unit04_light/chp1719_...)
You can use directional point to point links to give you basically unlimited bandwidth. The issue with cellphone bandwidth is simply the number of cell towers being kept to low. There are some limits on how close you can space towers but you could for example use one tower per city block.

PS: This is why you can have temperary cell towers for events. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_on_wheels
"Remember" that people on the internet state their opinion as fact without substantiating that opinion with facts.

The parent comment, which at this time is the #1 comment, does not contribute to understanding why the United States and India made this agreement.
Wow, I cannot believe I've never been corrected on this until now. Thank you.

P.S. I liked the imagery of my version better.
Yes, but there's still a useful distinction between USB devices which can be corrupted as described here, and USB interfaces, which would be used by a compromised device but aren't (afaik) themselves subject to being reprogrammed in this way.
Localization probably kills that, since this is displayed to users a not-insignificant amount of the time.

"9" is pretty well universal (I know, not strictly, but for software Arabic numerals are kind of assumed knowledge); "Nine" on the other hand isn't something you know without being able to read English.

(Having been through a pretty big localization project recently... this stuff sucks. So much. All your assumptions start breaking.)
Officially a Lawyer
It's like arguing against people calling it an "ATM Machine" (i.e. an Automated Teller Machine Machine).
Recently finished:

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow -- frankly, I found it kind of boring, and also found the narrator unsympathetic. I'm not sure if the author intended him to be an Unreliable Narrator or not.

Facts, Values, and Norms by Peter Railton -- Gains three stars for combining serious consideration of ethical and meta-ethical issues with a completely naturalistic worldview and a genuine grappling with history and ideology. Loses two stars for being far, far too long-winded and using vague, colloquial terminology and appeals to intuition where a methodoological naturalist can and should appeal to the fruits of science. (Copy-pasta'd from my Amazon review)

Rapture of the Nerds by Charles Stross -- pretty funny, even if it made a transhuman superintelligent supercivilization look kind of... dumb.

Currently re-reading for fun:

The Wee Free Men and I Shall Wear Midnight by Terry Pratchett -- It's Discworld. Go read them. NOW. And read A Hat Full of Sky in the middle.

Then there's been a lot of textbooks I've been reading, which I won't list. Though...

Logical Labyrinths by Raymond Smullyan -- dense, and fun, a graduate-level intro textbook to first-order logic disguised as a logic textbook.
After reading the article, I came back to say the same thing. These passages do not sound like they're coming from a technology site:

"... USBs are nearly impossible to secure in their current form."

"... silently disable a USB’s security feature that password-protects a certain portion of its memory."

Just substitute the name of any other interface - PS/2, HDMI, Thunderbolt, etc - to get a sense for how weird it sounds, e.g., "HDMIs are nearly impossible to secure".
I shouldn't make it sound like I dislike creative perks, but I definitely have a problem when the company tried using those as selling points in lieu of more traditional job perks that I was looking for. Perks that I like are spending accounts, flexible hours, pension, additional work holidays. The company I moved to after turning down those types had ones like: 1 paid day off per year to use volunteering; 0% interest loan on tech purchases (with certain stipulations), 1% yearly salary towards a spending account of my choice. 1 year into the company and I had 30 days of paid time off to use whenever I wanted (within reason... I couldn't go jet away mid launch for 5 weeks)

I'm just trying to say that the fact that they thought going against the grain and being creative in an attempt to match the stories you hear out of Google or the like rubbed me the wrong way.
> some interesting new phenomenon

> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

This clearly applies to this, as votes have spoken.
Amazing and Hilarious Marriage Proposal
GitHub.com is officially banned in Russia by the Government
A further thought: this is another of the fundamental tradeoffs in doing this sort of design work.

In a laggy environment, you can either have dodging work 100% correctly client side, if you dodged it, it didn't hit you, no questions asked . . . or you can have aiming work that way, if you hit it, you hit it, no questions asked.

You can have one or the other. You cannot have both. (And in a server-based setup, you generally get neither).

And I think which you choose (or which you choose to emphasize, if you give both up) will depend on what sort of game it is. In an aiming-heavy, mostly fast-weapon or instant-hit FPS (like maybe DOOM), you should pick aiming. In slow-weapon, slow-ship, combat-flight-maneuver-oriented Descent, the original developers correctly picked dodging.

Which highlights something else: When doing netcode for an FPS, your engineering decisions are game design decisions. Never overlook that.
I can spot Wired articles just by the title now
I don't have my copy nearby. It's a one-off comment about how Galt's Gulch is a childish fantasy. Some things are necessarily the work of many minds working together - nobody can build a rocket or a railroad on their own in a secluded community of genius captains of industry.

edit: I also just realized that I read a pre-release screener - it may have been cut out of the published edition.
First Microbe 'Zoo' Opens, Avoid the Door Knob
In Beijing, local car travel was put onto an even/odd system, so that you could only drive a given car every other day.
You'd have a stronger point if this study was an experimental intervention with binary outcomes. However, what this study was actually doing was fishing for correlations between various blood factors and depression. Thus the small sample size greatly increases the chance that some factor will "just happen" to be more likely in the 32 depressed patients than in the 32 non-depressed ones.

So I stand by "N = 32" as a valid critique of the study.
So is Hacker News on the list of marketing tactics that work, or don't work?
I do, though I don't use it for certain types of things for which it's ill-suited--it's a document store, it's non-relational, it's not really as fault-tolerant as I'd like for certain types of applications.

That said, it's got a really nice query API and is quite simple to get up and running for hackathons or simple home projects. It's got a decent map/reduce story for simple tasks, and overall I don't really see anything wrong with it.

There's just a lot of backlash because some earlier versions did dumb things by default (which were fixable if you consulted the docs), because Postgres can do almost all of the storage things Mongo does and faster (once finally setup and tuned, and if you don't mind losing that nice API [unless you want to set things up with Mongres or similar hacks]), and lastly that all of the cool kids on HN were congratulating each other on how awesome Mongo was and just in general being annoying.

That's it, really.

EDIT:

To misquote Tyler Durden: "You're not your fucking tech stack." Especially when you are working on something that is more of a business problem than anything else.
> Its doubly amazing because I told them I'd be busy that day in a previous email. :)

I think this sounds intentional. They were screening you, looking for employees who wanted to work with them so bad they'd drop everything.

I actually give them some kudos for that in that they were being indirectly honest about their expectations. You got a quick sense that it was a poor fit and bowed out, which is in both parties' best interest.
I would recommend you set up your own VPN so you fine-tune it to suit your need. However, if you can't, then choose VPN providers maintain their servers on their own network instead of renting servers from others. Checkout IPVanish: (http://www.vpntips.com/hidemyass-alternatives/#ipvanish)
I thought it was pretty obvious, but here are some numbers for you. According to http://phx.corporate-ir.net/External.File?item=UGFyZW50SUQ9N... over 300,000 people had installed the Crock-Pot app for iOS by 2010. It costs $3.99 so that's $399,000 in app sales, plus whatever happened in the last 4 years.

Around 75% of homes in the US have a dishwasher. Nearly 20 million dishwashers are sold in the USA each year. http://qz.com/29147/death-of-a-dishwasher-families-around-th... For comparison, only 5 million homes are sold in the US each year, so it's not just that they come with houses and are never used.
Your "Right to free speech" and "Right to read the internet uncensored" are quite closely connected. China actively restricts social media at a government / policy level much more aggressively than is done in western countries.

Regarding right to travel - there are problems in China with internal migrants not getting the rights that locals get. For example, if someone moves to a new city for economic opportunity then they may find it difficult qualifying for education for their children (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hukou_system#Effect_on_rural_w...). There are restrictions on some government officials from travelling outside the country (e.g. http://www.scmp.com/news/china-insider/article/1367723/shaan...) - again these kinds of restrictions probably occur in some jobs in the west, but are less widespread. Similarly there are restrictions on some activists, which are probably more widespread in China - although one would want to be wary of the newsources on this as there is a natural bias.

In western democracies one of the main differences with the Chinese system is that there is significant communication effort around elections and attempting to educate people on the political system. There are parallels within the Chinese system but the western system involves a lot more direct communication. I am not saying one system is morally inferior to the others, but arguments can be made regarding the costs and benefits of the different systems.
Yeah that is correct. Maternal is very different from genetic of course. I was surprised that you of all people would have missed the mark on the heritability of intelligence.
http://hacksagogo.wordpress.com/2014/10/02/shell-shock-os-x-...

Here’s for the crazy ones, the misfits, the trouble makers, the round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently... and are still running Snow Leopard.
What is the value of being part of YC's network? Perhaps it matters if your product/startup is struggling.

You can cold email any YC founder, I think they would be just as likely to help you (work with you) than a fellow YC founder.
I'd say perks are never just perks, especially in larger companies.

Every perk is a line on a balance sheet that someone is justifying. If that person wants to keep their job, that justification isn't "just perks".

The only place where perks are just perks is small companies that aren't startups.
Brilliant solution to a known natural limitation.