skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Oh I totally agree that upper management roadblocks slowed things down and that Nadella is a breath of fresh air compared to Ballmer (though I do have a soft spot for the man). But the seeds were sown by division staff such as Guthrie (and Hanselmann, Phil Haack etc) as far back as 2007, long before Nadella became a rising star, this isn't all as a result of Nadella's Perestroika and Glasnost. That said there may have been informal conversations between Guthrie and Nadella over the years speculating as to how they could change direction.
Any Android client using the new API?
How QuizUp Mastered Android Device Fragmentation
Visualizing word and letter frequencies in a novel without the letter 'e'
Actor Tom Hanks's iPhone App
Designing the Mini-game Sculpt Away for a Clockwork Brain
No you can't. Tapping on the month shows you the days in the month, not your calendar events for the month.
Making Dumb Groups Smarter
I think the greatest push for 1:1 resolutions becoming popular would come from how similar it is to the usage on a phone.
With how popular mobile technologies are, and most consumers are usually consuming their apps in a vertical fashion.
Queues can also allow you to break up load that can/should be distributed to multiple workers as well... it's a natural means of spreading out load.

For example, you may have a classifieds site, where users will upload/attach images to a listing. This doesn't occur at a consistent rate, and you may have 5,10,20 workers or more you can spin up if it gets under heavier load.

Queues let you separate the workload of processing images to different optimized sizes, while allowing the rest of the system to operate normally. This isn't a situation where it's to work around back-pressure but to normalize and distribute load.

Much like distributed databases help in a lot of ways. If you are mostly read, then read-only replicas are likely the simplest answer. If you're write heavy then sharding may be your best bet. Need to distribute processing load that can be async, queues/workers are a good approach.

It's a tool, like any other... It doesn't replace distribution, replication or sharding, it's meant to be used in combination with.
> I'm sure that UI developers would hate this. Having to maintain old UI code, or implement pixel-perfect imitations of it using the new UI code. Needing to worry about how to shoehorn new features into an old UI that was not designed for them. Etc.

Programmers and coders would (and do) get blasted for being lazy if the user has to learn something that can be done automatically with code, no matter how difficult. But when a designer changes the UI, we excuse it as "cost of progress". It's about time that UI design is held to the same standard as functional design.

To be fair, we are seeing a natural progression of an entire industry. First make it work -> make it work well -> then make it pretty -> make it work well AND look pretty. This is pretty much the lifecycle of every other industry, and fortunately the tech industry is finally approaching maturity and starting to think about that last stage.
Actually, that article is full of errors regarding painting, art history, and a lot of his criticisms of PG's take on art history are just plain wrong. Which is typical of painters. Many don't even know the chemical makeup of their pigments or which ones are dangerous and why. Many don't know about how projection was used to do a huge amount of art long before there were cameras.

The reason people use analogies for programming is it's not as common in the general population so we need something they can latch onto that they do no. Music and art are deeply embedded in everyone's knowledge, so they're easy analogies. Math isn't as deeply embedded so it's not as useful unless the person has a background in math.

Even then, I've taught people with solid math or engineering backgrounds that still struggled with programming concepts. Programming is just weird and hard to explain.
Your Variable Comp Plans for '15.  You Probably Need More of Them
Further to the _more efficient way_ point, they're also far quicker, so a very brief murderous impulse has more chance of being followed through with.
Rewriting Cheezburger Saved My Life
I'm going to disagree. My agency helped take one of our clients to #1 grossing in education off the back of mostly facebook and twitter mobile install ads. We had an average of $0.60 to $0.80 downloads with an over 10% conversion to our $30 paid version.

I've also tried some things that don't really work on facebook at all. I think as marketers, we need to be nimble and quickly figure out if a given platform is where our audience lives. Iterate quickly and do statistically relevant test sizes before you commit a massive budget to anything.
Slimta: a lightweight python MTA suite
For small agency(non-enterprise org), only 5 developers can use VS community edition.
Because men.
Yea, good point, we need to change that copy :) Right now we source all our creator users through the Ionic Framework page (http://ionicframework.com/) so most of them know what it is, but clearly we didn't think beyond that!

EDIT: tweaked it a bit for now
This computer can withstand anything
I don't think that removing XMPP was evil/inappropriate, but I don't think MNG is really comparable, since Mozilla (really, Vlad Vukićević) went to a lot of effort to design, implement, and submit APNG for standardization as a simpler replacement. (Sadly, the PNG group didn't bite, and neither did anyone else, but there was a good faith effort.)
Ask HN: How do you deal with the information overload?
Some weeks ago I was feeling overwhelmed so I started an information diet. I feel much better now. After some thought I've decided to limit my news intake to:

HACKER NEWS - top 10 articles of the day and javascript related articles:

http://www.daemonology.net/hn-daily/

https://www.hnwatcher.com/

TWITTER - once a day, no tweeting and following only 10 accounts.

FACEBOOK and MAIL - once a day.

SKYPE - just by appointment.

How do you deal with the problem of information overload?
Thanks for letting us know. It's "early beta" for sure. Will take a look at that!
PR2 Very Close to Completing Laundry Cycle
It's the bias in the media. GamerGate supporters are painted uniformly as misogynists. There is a legitimate argument about press ethics, freedom of speech, and whether appreciating an attractive body is the same as objectification.

>justify some pretty terrible actions

I'm asking that the terrible actions of BOTH sides are reported. There is an awful, hateful minority on both sides, but in the mainstream media, only the terrible actions of the GamerGate side is reported.

(And there is surely legitimate argument on both sides, too.)
Mobile Phone UX has gone the way of automobile and clothing design: changes are driven by fashion as well as utility.
Why not release this well-done client to all android users?
A confused illogical comment criticizing me charging for something I made (that's free BTW) from a guy on a website run by a company that makes money making companies that charge for things (usually).

Okay!
I thought mystery meat navigation described buttons that only non-conventional icons to indicate what they did until you hovered (if even then), thus their behavior was a mystery until you tried them.
Top paying programming languages
We learned this the hard way. After months of development we really didn't use (or know) any tools for proper development so we just wrote code in the most disorganized manner possible, which resulted in shipping far apart with poorly written code. After hiring a consultant on the matter, to introduce dailys, user stories, agile and whatnot,... well the world changed for us. Significantly. For the better, of course.
Great read and really does an awesome job showing not only the tech of what NSOne has built, but the 'why' behind the 'how'. DNS is such a deceptively simplistic service, but I think that's only due to the lack of real innovation in the space. NSOne is doing an awesome job changing that. Thanks @chris and @kris ;-)
How is material design for accessibility?
Google was the entire inspiration for the meme.

Per Google's 10-K [1], they had revenues of $50 billion on ad sales in 2013, and $5 billion in revenue on everything else. If there is a conflict between advertiser interests and end-user interests, the advertiser will win because Google gets >90% of their revenue from advertising.

If you don't pay for advertising, then you're not Google's real customer. They will do whatever they have to do to keep eyeballs on their products, but only if those products help them sell more ads. See Google Reader - it was neither expensive to maintain nor struggling, but it wasn't as advertiser-friendly as Google's other aggregation products and actively cannibalized users from them, so it went away.

[1] https://investor.google.com/pdf/20131231_google_10K.pdf
Never mind the data, where are the protocols?
The job/student gap for computer science
Interesting concept, guessing it's based on the same sort of user data as Amazon "users who liked X, also liked Y" system. Often thought that this would be a good fit for restaurants. i.e. I like Metallica, I'm 32, I like spicy food. Will I like this Korean restaurant?
So I'm not a programmer, but I know these stats definitely ring true based on the demand I have for projects I'm working on and the difficulty of finding good developers. This makes me wonder whether or not it would be possible to get more inner city kids coding so they can a) get good jobs and b) help to fill this need. I know this would be a lot of work, but it would be awesome to find a way to promote coding among inner city kids and to get them onto this kind of track. Know what I mean?
Email me and I'd be happy to send you a free Pro license key.
For better or worse, Tech. companies make software. Every member of the organization from product to design to engineering probably has some passion for innovating. If they didn't want to innovate they probably wouldn't be working on something like android.

Sadly these engines of innovation create sup-optimal products if the product is already at a local maximum for current constraints. They then just endlessly circle the local maximum in a repeating pattern (this is called fashion).

Luckily for these companies, power users and media also like change for change's sake. Helping them hype each new iteration of the product, driving sales, and giving validation (and job security) to the product/design/engineering organization.
(Creator creator here) - Cool seeing this on HN this morning. This tool is meant for Ionic Framework (http://ionicframework.com/) developers to rapidly build UI for their apps. It's still early beta and there are definitely bugs, so any feedback or bug reports would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks for your helpful information!

I think as soon as scala.meta is released, it will be vastly simpler to write your own refactorings (like converting tests using test library X to test library Y). From what I have seen on Parleys, the person behind macros even show-cased such refactorings in a talk at the last ScalaDays.
Yes but the natural tendency to cluster is what leads to meta-game develop. As players cluster, better plays will attempt to find what counters this cluster, what its tactics are and what it is weak too. This leads to actual competition and exploration of the game, and competing strategies.

The bi-monthy(ish) patch cycle prevents this, and just leads to players chasing patch notes.

But I agree with you. The current patch system prevent this from happening. This is why we see such diverse play styles in games like chess, go, and older 1v1 fighters. Since the stagnant nature forces experimentation.
If this client proves popular I might write one for Android too.
How a Design Agency Turned Itself into a 7-Figure SaaS Business
Where in that sentence are "GamerGaters" excluded?
£35 a month will get you four A0 Windows/Linux instances or a single Linux A1 and a single Windows/Linux A0 running full time for the month.

http://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/pricing/details/virtual-mac...
Rush / Zafere Hücum
In a language like C# I agree with you. You have to use an IDE to get anything useful done. Same with a lot of iOS development, and Java.

But, tools have a major impact on people's ability to work. If you aren't used to using a tool it can be incredibly difficult to get started and feel capable. Telling someone that they're at fault when they're basically forced to use a foreign tool to do their job is disingenuous.

I mean, if you went to work somewhere that used Vim only how would you feel if everyone said you sucked because you had a hard time using Vim? That's basically what you did here.
I'm sure all the folks claiming @femfreq made up her death threats will be equally skeptical about this one.
I'm still on KitKat, but I think you can swipe down over the notification to open up a dismiss option underneath the notification.

(at least you can on kitkat, I swipe down over 3 alarms at once and dismiss them all)
Must be good being a particle physicist these days. :)
> In Ruby 2.2, symbols will be garbage collected like all other Ruby objects

This sounds like it must be an oversimplification. What benefit do symbols have over strings, other than immutability? I thought their persistence in memory was a main selling point for using them as hash keys, for instance.
"Why don’t I have a blog, or my own website? Because there’s so much harassment going on nowadays that I’m actually scared to put my thoughts on the internet."

That is a really telling line of thinking. The author wants to be recognized for "doing more than writing code", but is not comfortable being open about her thoughts on a blog? How exactly should that happen? "Anne" put this on your blog -- you are better off with misplaced anger than no blog.

"It’s a humiliating experience to witness that people have so much respect and admiration for an experienced male developer, but there’s no place for you because you’re female and a beginner."

That has nothing to do with gender? Seriously?
Sudo’s Google Penguin Link Removal Guide
A large fraction of Android users around me use one of the swype type keyboards... but that could be because I've been evangelizing it for close to 5 years now to anybody who'll listen... it really is a genuinely better and faster way to input on the mobile.
> There is no evidence that Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven,” one of the most famous rock songs of all time, was ever played on the radio in the years immediately after its release

I can confirm that it did in the early 70's - I recall it because it was one my parents didn't change the station on.
I see your point. I knew the risks ahead of time, and raise you the fact that I received an email about logging in to their site to give them my address and pay for shipping. This was over a month ago. I sent Jason @ Stand Desk and email, explaining to him that I paid via Amazon, and I have no account on their site. And they don't allow you to "sign up." The account must pre-exist. I never received a response from him, so I could pay for shipping.

At this point, it felt like they wanted my money so they could get their ball rolling, but when it came to shipping, they chose not to solidify the sale and allow me to receive anything. I wanted to pay for shipping and give them my address so I can get my desk.

To me, this doesn't sound like good business practice. I understand they're busy, but not returning an email from a paying customer who's wanting to pay even more, albeit just delivery, leaves me to question their goal. It seems like they're trying to buy more time before they send out another round of emails saying "we're delayed again." It's bad enough I've received a couple emails and read several posts about this, and on top of that one about how they miscalculated shipping entirely and upset everybody. Shipping went from $80 to $160 for people across the country. I was perfectly fine with that too, and emailed them saying it was ok, but I wanted an update. That was September, and they promised me a desk in late October, early November. Here we are now, no update for me, and I can't even pay to get the desk delivered if I wanted to.

Somehow this is my fault?
Well yeah but at least it's better than both web and Android app of GMaps. Hope they release an iOS version soon.
The US really needs something akin to the EU's Data Protection Directive[0].

I've seen tons of businesses hide some tiny clause in their T&Cs (page 30, subsection 15, paragraph 11, etc) which allows them to resell your data to whoever will pay. For example the National Geographic Store sold my personal data when I purchased something from them (even with no check-box opt out, etc during checkout), and I've been receiving girly catalogues and credit card applicaton snail mail ever since (with a glaring typo which points right to National Geo's store).

I don't really see that happening (the US getting better data protections) as the US constitution is being largely used to protect business's "freedom [to do whatever the hell they want]" rather than individuals/people as was intended.

I was really hopeful that when the blackmail criminal-record racket started that that might finally result in substantial changes within the US, but nope. Nothing has changed and the blackmailers still operate.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Protection_Directive
I like it, but I don't think I could use it with my headphones (Sennheiser IE80's)?
The Internet never forgets. No app is going to change that because Internet is de-centralized and de-centralization makes it impossible to know if the data was really completely removed or not.

Let's face it: the only way to not expose your personal info is to not share it in the first place (forget silly Facebook, G+, Instagrams and all that stuff). If you've already done that, make sure that whatever you are doing that might lead to doxxing is done with your other identity (although this is hardly fool proof since linking identities can happen in many unexpected places). Worst of all is that that kind of infomation, once it slips, is impossible to contain and you have to cut ties and start over.

Relevant: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
Also templates for Windows Services and other project types that aren't included with the express versions.
I use Fastmail's calendar which they made public a few months ago. I'm finding it just as fast as Google's calendar. For docs I started using Quip which is not as full featured but it offers just enough to make things quick and easy.
It would also be impossible to use for more than one person at a time.
I don't agree. Users understand a browser, and that it contains tabs. I'm sure people will get used to the new way, probably, but it's not something that was in need of innovation. It was well understood.

The new behavior is surprising to people who have used any phone browser before, and it will continue to be surprising to people who use their desktop browsers as a point of reference.
You don't like the new Safari tabs? Have you tried using your trackpad or mouse wheel to scroll them horizontally?

To me, it's the best solution out of all the browsers. Firefox has a scrolling list, but all the tabs are the same size so they go off the screen. Chrome shrinks tabs down until they're illegible. Safari kind of does both, but you can spread them out in an analog way just by using your mouse. To me, it feels great.
>And I would happily give money to a nonprofit who provides this as a free service for women in tech.

Hahahah oh wow never change Hacker News, never change.
WP ECommerce the Original WordPress ECommerce Plugin
yes, like this: https://www.abine.com/optouts.php
I think yours is a different scenario?

The article suggests that developers trying to match business concerns with technical implementation disproportionately takes up time, as each feature was not spec-ed out and described properly in a technical manner.

Accumulating technical debt would be a delay purely on the engineering side. The engineering team is not always to blame, though.
The best part of the repository is the README explanation about how it works.
Being busy is a personal choice unless you are working several jobs to put yourself though college (or in a comparable situation).

"Western laziness consists of cramming our lives with compulsive activity, so that there is no time at all to confront the real issues.” - Sogyal Rinpoche.

I suggest reading this https://t.co/qH9s5Pay0Z (medium blog post on being busy with tech).
Should msvc be the go-to compiler on Windows for C++? I was getting back into the language and was quickly reminded of all the compiler and dependency hazzle, especially when coding for several operating systems. On top of that some older solutions aren't even a good idea anymore, like the whole mingw vs mingw-w64 crap.

Seems to me that from a precompiled binary and build management perspective it's just the easiest way to use whatever is best supported on each platform. Which seems to be clang on MacOS, gcc/clang on Linux and msvc on Windows.

I had to use chromiumembeddedframework in one project and compiling it with gcc or clang on Windows isn't even a choice. Even if there is a way to get it to work, it's a huge project that takes quite a lot of resources to build. Even if it was easy, prebuild is still a lot faster.

With the newest version always beeing free and tools like CMake beeing able to generate projects the only downside I can see is that msvc would dictate the features I'm able to use.
Totally agreed. I don't why it isn't getting fraction of publicity that other less useful and I dare say stupid apps are getting. HERE simply rocks! I will never switch back to crappy web version of GMaps. HERE beats it in both web and Android version. Love it!
I think you're arguing against a point nobody made. The article is about "creating gorgeous UI". The article is explicitly focused on making things that look good. The author does not argue this focus on aesthetics is more important than usability. (Although usability is partially a concern if you consider how much he talks about text legibility.)

I think reasonable people can agree that interfaces should be usable and beautiful. I think it is then also reasonable that someone would want to have a focused discussion on just one part of that.
I'm not sure I agree with his interpretation of his own results. By my reckoning, 4 of the top 5 characters have been continuously in the top 5 for the entire 12-year duration (with Jigglypuff the sole exception and by FAR the most interesting data point in the whole thing).

Sure, some of the bottom places shuffled around a bit in the intervening time, but if SSBM is anything like the other competitive games I play, that's probably only because the people making the list don't really have strong opinions about them. Every competitive player is going to pay attention to who's #1-5 in the metagame, but do you really think they devote as much attention to whether Bowser should be #25 or #26? They probably pick those on a whim based on whatever recent experience they had.

That explains the volatility at the bottom rankings. I don't think it's because the pros are plumbing the depths of the game to find new strategies to move a character from second-worst to third-worst.
I agree, but it doesn't and shouldn't make the buyers the ones at fault. Just as the buyers are accepting that the project may be late or may never, ever show up, which is the case with several, the companies should accept that it may upset some users, and refunds will be expected in full.

To my knowledge, and I'm no lawyer (obviously), but not refunding a buyers money in full for a product undelivered doesn't seem legal.

And even if it were legal, it doesn't mean it's good practice to treat the buyer as the enemy.