skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Another arm-chair pundit trying to fit present to past anecdotes and predicting future... In 10 years of time Google might be self-driven car company which has search as side business or a company selling robots which walks and moves like humans quickly taking on cheap labor jobs. The strength of Google, in my view, is not its current products but ability, desire and enablement to innovate and take risks. This in part comes from its leadership and the culture. How many other companies take on the expensive product developments such as Fiber, city-wide wifi, online office, gmail, Android, home delivery etc - without a definitive business plan? During Bill Gates era, there was a saying in Microsoft that your product pitch would fail if you can't convince executives that your idea would yield another billion dollar business because they thought it simply wasn't worth their time. Even at the peak nobody thought IBM would take risks to start home delivery system or experiment with balloon based radio systems.
> That data is not worth Billions.

I don't know about that; the phone numbers of 600 million users ( and rising ) tied to their identity opens-up the possiblity of correlating geographic graph data.

For example, Joe with a Chicago phone number has six Seattle area-code contacts. That looks like a marketable opportunity, why not advertise him some flights from O'Hare to Sea-Tac?
Flux: software to make your life better
> Being employee #1 of a startup can be one of the worst positions a young developer can ask for. Long hours, high stress, low job security, and for what? 0.5% of a company that, if it survives, will most likely dilute its shares?

One thing that's never really brought up in these discussions because it's extremely poorly understood is that startup employees are the only ones given options (in the financial sense) and options are always more valuable than the underlying asset with the degree of premium based on the volatility of the asset.

Think of it this way, as a startup employee, your optimal strategy is to join a company, work for a year and then immediately quit if the company isn't 5x as valuable as when you joined. Over the course of an engineering career, this gives you approximately 20 shots on goal to hit on a hyper growth company. Once you've hit one, you essentially have to do enough work for the next 3 years that you won't get fired and you're vesting stock that's 10x - 1000x more valuable than what you negotiated. Nobody else is allowed to have the option of buying startup stock at 4 year old prices except employees and that's the extreme advantage.

Unfortunately, engineers are not experts at options pricing (nor should they be) so they tend to devalue the equity portion when considering total compensation which leads to the overall dysfunction in the system.
>>Well, they are getting compensation in terms of free tuition, room and board, etc... these things do have significant value. If they complete school, they get to walk away with a degree without any debt. That's not trivial.

The actual number comes down to around $25,000/year for public schools and $35,000/year for private schools. This is out-of-state tuition combined with living expenses and school supplies. However, it goes down significantly once the student establishes in-state residency.

So basically, these college athletes are making working class wages while learning nothing of significant value. A few of them get into the major leagues upon graduation and the rest struggle with unemployment and underemployment for years. Being involved in college athletics costs them more in the long run than the paltry sum of expenses they get to waive over their college career.
Well, allow me to go into a bit of science detail. The two polar opposites in amplification technology today are Class A and Class D amplifiers. Class A is the classic one, and any audiophile and sound engineer will swear by them on the quality metric. Class D is modern, based on transistors (usually MOSFETs), and while it dumps the linearity, it has a huge advantage in energy efficiency. Only in recent years has Class D become competitive in quality with the lower end of Class A technology, as the linearity of amplification makes a huge difference in high quality systems at higher amplification where the details pop out more.

Class A uses tubes, and works in the simplest and most accurate way by amplifying the complete signal. It maintains the most important characteristic needed to perfection - linearity of waveform amplification. When you try and get extra juice out of it, instead of the annoying clipping you get from digital amplification, you get a nicer sounding and more gradual reaction. The main drawback is energy efficiency. There's a theoretical peak efficiency of 50% to Class A amps, and what's worse is that it's usually less than half that. It makes tube amps that aren't small require massive heat sinks, and increases the BOM.

Class D is totally different. It dumps linearity out the window in favor of energy efficiency. It basically outputs a bunch of pulses, and then applies a low-pass filter to remove the annoying artifacts. While you might say that it's close enough - it isn't for high fidelity systems, especially in production studios, live performance, and audiophile cases. While competitive in quality with the low end of amplifiers (under $200), if you are looking for accurate detail reproduction there is no replacing linear amplification yet. The advantage is that even at the worst use scenarios, Class D amps have over 50% energy efficiency, and usually manage over 90% for higher volumes, making them need far less in the way of heat sinks which allows for leaner designs, and a better price/performance ratio.

The Class D amps will eventually win out. Class A amps have decades of R&D as an advantage, but Class D is improving by leaps and bounds. Eventually, Class D will become "good enough" and replace Class A altogether because of the advantages in price and energy efficiency. But that day has not yet come.

That being said, I use a class D amp for my home set up. It's close enough, and my power bill thanks me monthly.
but there is more future legal problems with that site. They need to youtube it.
It's like you didn't even read my post! Of course many of us who have worked in hardware have had issues with bad parts. The idea that this justifies bricking a piece of hardware when the driver on the controller system is upgraded is ludicrous and dangerous. Your decades of experience seem to have blinded you to basic risk mitigation.
Notes from On-Demand Services Panel  Rutberg
Thanks for your work, seriously, this is one kickass pet project if I ever saw one.
Huh? On Linux getting Oracle JDK is a matter of wget und tar. On Windows and Mac OS you get an installer. If you want OpenJDK on Windows or Mac OS you have to build from source.

For me the real difference is that you don't get Flight Recorder on OpenJDK.
? The author specifically mentions companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. Plus the point isn't that one company will replace Google, it's that Google isn't positioned to take advantage of the next wave of online advertising - digital brand advertising.

And Google is not 3M. They have not proven to any significant degree that any of their research projects will provide lasting value to the company. In fact, almost all of their successful non-search products were acquisitions, not the result of internal R&D. Android was an acquisition; Maps was an acquisition; Docs was an acquisition.
Also, lets not forget Fabric Engine (http://fabricengine.com/)
According to my newspaper reading professor, only college professors who study characters know up to 10,000 characters--and they are badasses. I think 3-4,000 is enough for normal human beings. Anything above that is just downright nerdy.
Yeah, since it's a dynamically typed lang with inheritance and late binding, doesn't performing static analysis on Ruby code to determine whether a method is defined or not, basically require a solution to the halting problem?

I'm under the impression that you have to actually execute Ruby code to find out with certainty where the methods it calls are defined.
> options are always more valuable than the underlying asset

How about this deal: for any publicly traded stock you're holding, I'll give you an option to buy an equivalent number of shares at current market price.

If the price goes down, your option is worthless but I can still sell the underlying. If the price goes up, I can sell for market price, while you net [market-strike] < market.

I enjoy startups. They can be great learning opportunities, but they're typically a losing bet financially. You have to choose wisely.
Last time I checked OpenJDK had no Windows distribution. Given that Oracle bundles adware with their JDK, Zulu means that people like me may no longer have to look at Java as a massive joke.

<gasp> I might even have a JDK on my machine by the end of today.

This is great news for Windows users.
Why not at least have the video available? most people visting your site at this point are probably coming from more affluent backgrounds, thus even if they did get to your site on their phone they likely have a computer and would understand a video explaining whats going on.
I'm designing with genuine parts of course, manufactured at Seeed. The problem is that if FTDI is doing monkey business and gets their driver revoked as many people suggesting on the list, my genuine part worth nothing either, my own customers are screwed over because of FTDI's bad moves.

So I'd rather not use FTDI altogether, if I can avoid it.

I'm yet to see someone who does mass production from ebay sourced components (bad price, not enough quantity). If I get parts from Digikey or Mouser, how can I check that they are genuine? I trust them more, but is there really a logical reason to trust any reseller in this sense? Screwed either way.
It's kind of silly, the major benefit of using Ruby (or JavaScript nowadays) is to iterate quickly. But then, some of their users spend months turning a text editor into an IDE just to waste precious hours on spelling errors.
I've been interested in something like this for a long time, I just with the community was larger, as it is right now there just aren't a lot of comments
Apple slaps down patent troll’s $94M demand
You don't specify why you think it sucks, so maybe I'm coming at this from the wrong angle, but
* don't use the term "girl"!
* hire a professional designer -- it really shows
* switch off debug! http://www.mowish.com/search/movie/looking%20for%20a%20movie...
SpaceX Completes 100th Merlin 1D Engine
That would most likely result in another blood contamination scandal similar to [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_Economy] in Henan China, where blood was mixed in centrifuges to save cost, subsequently infecting large amounts of the affected population with HIV.

But i had that image in my head as well, a big dirty vat of blood somewhere in a dipilated factory building.
Google has a serious problem right now: the new Mobile ecosystem is driving users to vertical search services: individual Apps.

Want to buy stuff, open Amazon Shopping App; want to find restaurants nearby, Yelp is at your service; Take a ride maybe? Uber is your best friend. Same thing could be said for a lot of other stuff, like Airbnb for renting and Flipboard for news(damn, poor Google Reader). What makes things worse is that those kinds of traffic are Google's cash cows.

The point is, in the era of mobile, there isn't a unified entrance for everything, not like the way Google dominates Web. I think that is why Google Now comes to play, to ensure user can access google's search service with a single swipe, but it is hard to tell whether this will work out or not.

Of course, Google has the best technology in town, but the internet is a more diverse places right now. Even though it owns Android and Chrome, it won't become the sole gatekeeper of all information. Google will not become the microsoft of the internet, and maybe this is a good thing.
completely disagree.

a company is measured by its profits, any new venture needs to have a business behind it. xerox parc, ms labs - great hobbies, no monetization. google x? nothing so far. glass is cooling off. car has driven 400k miles - on the same, tightly controled circuit. no commercial products in sight.

i personnally have had discussions with google execs about new business areas where google could easily transform established industries - to be shut down with the phrase "we don't touch any market below 1bn". and that was 3 years ago.

kids these days don't give a shit about google. search happens in the browser url bar, not google.com. search is a commodity. how exactly is google still relevant?
Why is that more likely? Many of my former coworkers have gone there and given that sample the bar isn't particularly high.
> I would very much like to see whatever sources you have for a "public domain software movement"

My "sources" are my personal experience with the public domain software in the 1980s. But what I claimed wasn't a movement that predates the Free Software movement, it was a practice that predates the Free Software Foundation (founded 1985), and that grew as a movement (though that term may be ill chosen -- I specifically didn't mean it in the ideological sense so much as a community and shared practice) alongside the growing popularity of the Free Software movement.

> As such, in the early days people did not think software was copyrightable, or patentable for that matter.

Certainly not the case with copyright. Well, at least not if by "the early days" you mean (as you imply) up until 1980.

> It wasn't really until 1980 when United States Congress added the definition of "computer program" to 17 U.S.C. § 101

Computer programs were understood to be copyrightable previously -- the Copyright Office accepting registrations of computer programs at least as early as 1963 -- and computer software was expressly addressed in the 1976 Copyright Act -- the 1980 revisions you refer to were not the first express inclusion of software in the Act, they were the result of recommendations of the commission created by the 1976 to advise on additional revisions related to what special provisions copyright law should make with regard to new technology.
The concern about mobile search is twofold: mobile ads are less effective than desktop ads, and people search less often on mobile than on desktop. So "owning search on mobile" may not end up being a position of power at all.

I don't see an easy avenue for adopting their search dominance to native ads. Native ads are "in-stream" ads: think Buzzfeed instead of banners. "Native ads via search" doesn't make sense: search is finding content, but is not itself content. Google doesn't have much in the way of content, with the notable exception of YouTube.
Posting rather late here, but that data blows my mind. Are you certain they are counting "debit transactions" properly? Or are they counting all magstripe transactions done by a debit card as debit? I was specifically referring to transactions that require a PIN, which basically removes your ability to do chargebacks.

I honestly can't say I've ever seen someone type in a PIN code on a PoS terminal in recent memory. I also tend to pay attention to this stuff. That's of course not worth anything as a data point, but I'd have expected if they are used 50% more than credit transactions I would have at least noticed it once or twice.

Just to be clear here: A debit transaction is identical to an ATM transaction (from the UI point of view). Just swiping your combined ATM+debit card at a terminal and treating it like a normal Visa/MC transaction is not what I meant. I also (used to) prefer the debit card in that scenario for the reason you mentioned. Then I got financially responsible and realized I was simply taking on more risk than I needed to - automated payments on my Amex work just as well.

Edit: I just re-read the data, and it looks very much like they are treating bank cards with a Visa or MC logo as debit card transactions. If so, the data is extremely misleading as no PIN codes are involved, and your fraud protection is nearly identical to an actual credit card in that case. This would also jive with my personal experience as well.
Ask HN: Yet Another Software Engineer; Help?
I'm writing this fully aware that I will not be getting any replies on this, and this like my other failures is going to stay at the bottom.
I graduated in Computers. In the course study we had C and C++ in the first year, and the Java for the next two years. So I would say in the least I coded in both the languages to certain extent and I liked it. Then after my graduation like all the my friends, I joined a Software Company. The first few months were hectic, I was trained again in Advanced Java and EJB. I thought I would work on Java in my next years, I couldn't have been more wrong.

If you ever worked for an Asian Multinational company, you really don't have a choice midst thousands of other Software Engineers. You are to go and work in the department they ask you to. We in this group work at various tools like HP Operator Orchestrator, ServiceNow[1], Salesforce etc., meaning pre-packed and developed applications. We customize these Tools or applications as per the needs of the Customers.
I was able to learn the tools easily because an expert in one of the tools, and worked on it for 3 years. In the mean time, I lost all my programming skills. I now don't have any programming skills what so ever.I can still write snippets of code, I can visualize and write algorithms in Javascript, but I really don't know any language. I tried to learn Python for a bit, and wasn't successful, I gave Go a shot and failed again.
I'm at one stage of my life, where I really don't know what to do. I know one thing, I don't want to work on these "Tools" for the rest of my life. I want to learn and develop solid applications.
I know some of you are like me, what did you do (or) what method did you follow to go back to development after a stint of bad years?
I really don't have anybody to guide me. All the seniors I work with have no idea what Go is or what Git is.
Help me please, before I completely give up.

Thank you, for reading.

[1] http://www.servicenow.com/
People use Google more than they use Facebook?

This says people spend an average of 40 minutes per day on Facebook: http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/23/facebook-usage-time/

I can't find quite the same statistic for Google, but this says 22 billion minutes / 47 million vistors / month, which is about 15 minutes. Of which 60-some percent is YouTube. http://mediatel.co.uk/newsline/2014/08/07/22-billion-minutes...

Now thats two different countries, but I suspect the numbers are pretty similar.
Seems like there's a few people who don't seem to understand the difference between copyright, trademark, criminal and civil law (op above you included).

The only law broken by the counterfeiters is trademark violation for printing the FTDI logo on their chips. That's it! Everything else they did was legal. Otherwise, Intel and AMD would be bricking CPUs right now.

Reverse engineering is legal.
Emulation is legal.
Creating hardware that's compatible with another vendor's software is legal.
Flashing your hardware with another vendors firmware is legal.
Modifying hardware you purchased from a vendor is legal.
Modifying software you purchased from a vendor is legal.

etc... etc...
Sometimes the most important thing about a new product isn't the product, it's the go-to market strategy. Google hasn't proven it can conquer that last hurdle.

Here's Steve Jobs talking about the challenges with Apple TV and it's go-to-market strategy: http://youtu.be/-pSfOKMEbG0?t=31s
> Singapore is an extremely small, very rich country with hyper population density. I don't see how that's a great example. They should have some of the fastest Internet speeds on the planet.

Why shouldn't at least New York and Bay Area be comparable? Rich and hyper-dense.

--submitted from an 4 megabit connection in SF.
There are other drivers, on other operating systems that are NOT written by FTDI.
The author is right that no one really scratched that itch, at least up until recently. I spent a few years building something in my spare time to try to scratch the itch (and did a fair amount of research on the space) after Upcoming fell into disrepair but couldn't get enough momentum on it.

That said, Sosh seems to now be finally scratching that itch, just as Upcoming is trying to make a comeback.
Some years back I put this feature in both the Digital Mars C/C++ compiler and the D language compiler. It's turned out to be popular and very useful.

Compiler error messages are steadily improving from mere statements of what is wrong to suggestions for corrective action.
> Most users didn't choose the chip just because it's compatible and cheaper. They bought it thinking it's the legitimate FTDI chips with (very specific) guarantees from its manufacturer's datasheet.

Eh....... Lots of people knew/know they are/were getting counterfeit chips. It's certainly shady, but if I were a chinese company making these, I'd simply not use the logo anymore and then sue the pants off FTDI.
NASA is catalyst for hydrogen technology
Hi, would appreciate an invite.....
postjockey@gmail.com
thanks!
I think this is a great sign- there have been so many stories of teenagers committing suicide from public ridicule on the Internet, FB is really helping their users by creating a safer and nicer place to exist online without fear of cyber bullying by taking this action and really devoting resources to save lives.
If it lowers voters' taxes, but increases costs on faraway non-residents/non-voters... isn't that exactly what voters like?

Also, the Legislative Analyst's Office says Prop 218/1996 doesn't affect property taxes, but rather other kinds of property fees. See http://www.lao.ca.gov/1996/120196_prop_218/understanding_pro... – especially figure 2.

Clearly, fixes are going to have to unwind previous statewide and local law... which means convincing people of the causes and solutions, over time. It took decades to enact the bad policies; it'll take many election cycles to chip away at them as well.
Um... how exactly do you think the electronics business works, because it's nothing like what you just described. The vendor is often 3 to 5 times (or more) removed from the sourcing of individual components.
There's no relationship between companies as far as I am aware. I'd prefer it if we weren't mentioned, but that's their prerogative
Somebody tell me why I should believe this guy's totally unsupported anecdotal hand-wavy BS, as opposed to believing Snowden - whose accusations are largely backed up by, ya know, actual evidence?
Random Product Page Generator
I'm in the US, but I'm an immigrant working here.
The fun thing is fiber at rates beyond 10 Gbps over long distances require just as many DSP tricks as DSL. For example
http://www.lightwaveonline.com/articles/2014/09/fujitsu-ntt-...
fun trick. buy your friends name in a new gTLD like frankjones.hiphop /build fun website on said domain/buy google adwords for friends name and direct to site. tell friend to google their name.

great for birthday pranks.
Without the kinds of explicit committments in licensing or API access that no board of directors would ever go for, I have to think they're sowing the seeds for a round of acquisitions.
Verizon injecting unique ID in HTTP headers, even if you opt out
Seriously. Is there a good list of tools that provide it? In Python, the only one I've managed to love is PyDev. Supposedly Atom does it with the "script" package?
Judging from this: http://www.google.com/inbox/ , we have:

* Folder and Rules (with the only distinction of having some pre-populated ones, I think)

* Some smart content extraction from known emails (reservations, invoices, etc...) - probably going to be a privacy nightmare

* Todo and reminders ( what's new about this? outlook/gmail calendar/thunderbird-lightning all do this)

* Snooze for reminders - yeah...