skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I see public transport as a public service, like an utility, and I think it should be regulated.

The problem with markets is that they optimize only on profit/price. However, there are things that I (and I believe the population at large) value that cannot be optimized using simple market dynamics with no regulation. For example, I expect there to be taxis on the road, even if the demand is very low. Another is, as I mentioned previously and you agree, insurance. Yet another is cooperation - it is beneficial for a city to mandate that there is only one app/protocol for hailing taxis, whereas for private companies it makes sense to each create its own walled garden and prevent new competition from entering.

Of course, all of the above could be created by carefully-constructed regulation (or appropriate economic incentives), but simply limiting the supply of taxis along with a small number of rules is the easiest way to do it. Ideally, we'll get better regulation; while Uber will probably make us reach that goal faster, I hope the end result is not like Uber.

I'm divided on surge pricing, but I definitely see no reason for surge pricing on "predictable" events, such as Friday night. Even for "unpredictable" events, such as rain or even a hockey game, I think it would be better if people would be able to hail taxis on the street, or on a first-come-first-serve basis. On the other hand, I realize that surge pricing can increase supply, but the very existence of surge pricing can also lead to market manipulation - suppliers waiting until surge pricing is in effect, so that they get a higher fare. In effect, (if I understand correctly) since surge pricing is not momentary (when it starts, it doesn't end until sometime later), Uber is creating a free market distortion itself.
Yeah, the original headline is clearer.
I think a great answer to this question is in this stack overflow answer: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1218390/what-is-your-most...

To answer you second question: yes. I've done quick scripts and giant programs in vim. Also note: I use full IDEs in conjunction with vim where appropriate - I mean, why wouldn't I take advantage of Visual Studio when doing C#, but even then I still regularly drop into Vim (because of the stuff in the above link).
Not in the U.S. At a contract packaging / manufacturing company I worked at, you received only one week (5 business days) of vacation after your first full year of employment.
In other words, a Star Trek replicator will make mincemeat of the idea of copyright...
Americans Have Grown More Supportive of Torture
> they are mind-blowing revolutionary disruptive innovation to this industry.

Why, because you can order and pay through an app? And they can offer lower prices as they're skirting the rules?
I wrote a similar package taking ideas from rails configuration: https://bitbucket.org/utils/config It provides different settings for different environments with templating support to use env vars.
That's an interesting idea, but I hope it's pretty low on the to-do list, since posting a comment with additional links already works well. (A comment can be posted by anyone, voted up or down, or submitted as a separate item.)
Tailored is exactly what IBM wants. They are basically a consulting and services company nowadays, having let go most of their hardware divisions after analyzing their business and deciding they weren't profitable. They will be exceedingly happy to sell you consultants time to tailor the apps for you, in fact, if the app didn't require tailoring, they probably wouldn't want it in their line up.
The main problem with Tier-lists is that it relies on the players to get matchup experience before they really reflect reality.

I'm not a competitive SSFIV player, but lets take Smash for instance. Melee has Yoshi climbing up the ranks in the later years, as the community learned how to put up with Yoshi's disadvantages, and take advantage of some new tech.

Similarly, Brawl had Olimar climb like 15 positions or something. He was considered like C-Tier at the beginning before moving up to top5 by the end of Brawl's run.

Some characters take longer to learn than others. Tier lists change over time, as they are a reflection of the community. The "true" tier list... the one with hypothetically perfect players... will never be discovered. Humans always learn and adapt to each other.

That said, Tier Lists are an excellent tool for learning the metagame and discussing game balance. But within the context of "which character should I pick"... Tier Lists are generally a poor tool. Especially early in a game's life before the community establish's a metagame.
Creating the Pitch Deck That Helped Our SaaS Company Raise $9M
Software Consultant Contracts: Fixed Bid VS Time and Materials
While that liability is nice, I think the world is better off without it. If people know they can't take their vacation with them, they'll actually take it when it's appropriate.

The liability situation is a lose-lose one. You take less vacation because you're comfortable you'll get it and the company gets a liability on the books because you work too hard.

Without the liability, you'll see a lot of people take vacation during layoffs though.
I am on vacation next week but am still the primary on-call.

I will take pages if I'm available or pass/escalate to the next guy if I'm not.

Since I'm on vacation it's understood to be a best effort.

Normally I would switch with someone but it's a busy vacation week so we just figure it out.

I took a two hour call the morning of thanksgiving, for reference.
Run and Share Python Online
Ah yes...the ability to use in a terminal is a huge thing. That ubiquity was not important to me a year ago, but now I'm at a Unix shell so often that I most definitely feel the pain of doing quickie scripting via nano/pico. Hmm, I think you've convinced me :)
> which means git push will shout at you for being behind on branches you don't particularly care about right now.

I think that behavior has been changed in recent git, so by default it only pushes the branch you are on? (And the default is settable either way, even in slightly less recent versions).

But I can see some workflows git-up would be useful for. For me, not useful enough to deal with installing a plugin (with all that entails, including risk of bugs). Plus, while rebase is sometimes what you want, sometimes I really do want a pull, and the consequences of doing a rebase when you wanted a pull can be disastrous and hard to undo, and I'd be scared of a tool that defaulted to rebases everywhere.
Uh, having 20-25 (almost mandatory) days of per year is implemented by law here in most countries of EU. How is that a "wierd" policy?

(By "almost mandatory" I mean that at least here, you must use up your vacation days until end of next year.)
If you're trying to create a distributed, censorship resistant public record then it's a pretty sensible approach to investigate.
For me, I was always annoyed with how tedious it was to edit things. i.e, The gap between what I think vs what I have to do in the editor to get it done. This constant annoyance was what drove me to spend time and energy into learning it. I believe that if you don't care about it, you won't really benefit out of it. Because the whole point of switching to Vim/Emacs is to minimise the gap between what you think and how you do it.

Let me give you an example. You'll be thinking, "I need to change all the arguments to a function." In other editors, you'll press the arrow keys until you get to one end, press backspace key multiple times until you get to the other end. In Vim, I'd do "ci(" which means "change everything inside (" - which is pretty much how I think about what I need to do. A similar but more common example is changing text inside quotes. Again, that'd be 'ci"'.

Not everyone feels the annoyance about this and if you don'tt, hats totally fine. Learning something just because its cool is never worth it. Learn it if you really care about it.

Also read this post by Yehuda Katz about how he started for some ideas. http://yehudakatz.com/2010/07/29/everyone-who-tried-to-convi...
Perhaps the 16-bit sample really did sound better in some cases?

The lowest bits of a D/A converter are the most non-linear. By avoiding them you might get a more accurate waveform overall.

This would explain the people who were confident that they knew which was which, even when they got it consistently wrong. It would depend greatly on the specific D/A converter so you'd expect it to go both ways.
Why is it ok for that paper to dig up dirt on uber, but not ok for uber to dig up dirt on the paper?

Is it because it is done as retaliation? If uber had started to dig up dirt first would that be ok?

Or is it because only media is allowed to dig up dirt? Would it be ok for uber to pay another newspaper to look into the first one?
Maybe I didn't phrase my question right. What I want to know is, as an investor, why should I use your service? Personally, I don't see much value in knowing what my friends are investing in. There are 10,000 stocks, I cannot follow them all anyway. As an investor, the only thing that I am interested in is increasing my returns. Everything else is secondary. So my question is not whether markets are efficient (we'll leave that to the academics) but whether you believe your service, in some way, would help investors improve their returns. If the answer is no, the product, from the very start, will be very limited in scope (e.g. only the investing newbies and other such small segments would get a benefit).

Reporting-wise, I am with you. I think the current models are antiquated, and most of the solutions I see are outright wrong (Hint: If you're looking only at stock prices for returns, you're doing it wrong too).
Two or even three weeks seems very unhealthy to me:

- You need a longer break to seriously disconnect: at least two weeks.

- Around Christmas/New Year you probably want to be around family and friends: one week.

- At least a week distributed over the year to do something fun with your kid, visit that distant friend, etc.

Maybe it's because I come from Western Europe, where getting 5 weeks (25-30 days) off in total is pretty normal. But I cannot imagine not breaking yourself at some point with only two weeks of vacation.

Also, as siblings say. This 'no upper limit' makes no sense. If you give e.g. 25 days people know that that's their right and are more likely to take it then 'it's unlimited, but all the good workers take only 2-3 weeks'.
I don't think the traditional model (in the US, at least) is an ideal solution. MasterCard recently aired a commercial taking advantage of the fact that Americans have so much unused, paid vacation time each year.

The only way for us to come up with a better solution is for people to test things out.
Best collections of videos 'How to build a Startup'
having content areas fly in for almost a whole second is overkill

...except for those cases when it's not. Major context changes such as switching applications benefit from more explicit animations, that physically convey where everything goes or comes from; those can run from less than half a second to about two seconds for more showy "Welcome to product X" screens. If the old interface simply disappears, the user has no clue on how to restore it. That's why you get nifty "minimize" animations in all modern desktop environments that care about more than processor cycles.

In the Material design, animations are also intended to increase affordance by showing what areas are interactive, without requiring the extra chrome of everything having 3D borders.
Writing Middleware in Koajs [Screencast]
Based on the IBM pages at http://www.ibm.com/mobilefirst/us/en/mobilefirst-for-ios.htm... these don't look like full apps that you could use right now.

I guess that IBM are planning to use this as a framework to build custom apps on. And the publicity from this announcement is supposed to help them get more companies asking them for apps.
> There is no value to me, or others, from having the the driver "licensed to carry passengers."

> I think it's entirely reasonable to require Insurance, Background Checks, Car Safety Checkups (from a third party), Drivers Valid License - Basically anything that is in place to protect consumer safety

You contradict yourself.

> I would absolutely not require "The Knowledge" prior to anyone becoming a Lyft/Uber driver.

The Knowledge is not for delivery; it's for picking people up on the street (which is many times preferable to ordering Uber on your phone). I don't want my taxi driver to spend 2 minutes blocking the road while he enters the destination into the navigation app, nor doing it while s/he's driving.
Apple+IBM release 10 iOS apps
actually you are right lol.. I've used this class because was something that in "material design" is not documented... probably would be better use panels and add to well some different effect. I'll open an issue.. (#279)
Monolith: muddying the waters of the digital copyright debate
Is 2-3 weeks off a normal amount of time in the US? I get 28 days off per year in the UK, which is around the standard amount.
> "Licensing to carry passengers" is definitely something I want to see disrupted. There is no value to me, or others, from having the the driver "licensed to carry passengers."

So you're cool with just getting in any old stranger's car? Really?
President Eisenhower’s Address at the NAREB Midwinter Meetings, Jan. 25, 1960
I will need to give this a shot, been using sphinx search for many years now (also recommended)
> Searching for articles with the keyword "hormesis" (a word I first learned in the latest book by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, who is not a person with medical training or experience) on the Science-Based Medicine website is instructive.

No it's not! 3 out of the 7 links relate to homeopathy, which the article explicitly states is problematic:

'Association with the problematic science of homeopathy. In the early 20th Century, people who promoted homeopathic medicine were prominent supporters of the concepts of hormesis.'

Your stance is based on an argumentum ab auctoritate. How about constructing an argument, rather than spewing meta-trash talk?

> a word I first learned in the latest book by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, who is not a person with medical training or experience

Ergo, hormesis does not exist? Non sequitur.

> The concept of "hormesis" is not well thought out enough or well validated enough with careful measurements to be your guide to your personal health practices. There is better health advice in some of the earlier comments here.

The only prescription of the article was to eat less & exercise more!

> Thank you to the several commenters who have already politely pointed out factual and logical mistakes in this submission.

Agreed. It's called 'discussion'.

> "Essentially there are two rules here: don't post or upvote crap links, and don't be rude or dumb in comment threads."

I don't see how this quote is relevant.
Don’t Abandon a Marketing Channel Too Soon–Refine Your Message First
OSX user. I usually have 5-10 different desktops open, each with a random background that changes every half an hour. So whenever I go into Mission Control or create a new desktop, I get to enjoy a new picture. Also, if I catch a glimpse of something cool in my current background on the edge of the screen, I'll take a quick peek via the 4-finger pinch gesture.
25 of the Most Interesting Photos of Earth from Space This Year
http://hashids.org/
Yes, I made one! Enjoy!

https://vagrantcloud.com/therealmarv/boxes/ubuntu-core
there are far more musical plug-ins than one would ever need. I see no loss.
I was reading in the comments on the TPB that Tribler is less secure, but the code and wiki seems to say it is more secure? Perhaps I am confusing security and anonymity...
Databases at 14.4Mhz
What if journalists had story writing tools as powerful as those used by coders?
Are you being serious? Have you ever looked at Yelp reviews?
Watch #TNWUSA live Conference
How is taking 2-3 weeks off leading by example? Compare with the situation here in Sweden: 5 weeks of vacation is mandated by law, and it is very common to have an extra week or two in addition to that.

Also, the employer is mandated to accept that the employee take four weeks of contiguous vacation during summer (these weeks are included in the above).
Are you dotfiles openly available? I have the same set of tools, but still find things are slightly off... would love to compare notes.
Lots of people do. I am sure people asking to learn about design on this site have been directed to dribble.

Actually design is a very ambiguous word for me as a developer. I use it to include application architecture, and user workflows amongst other things, while many other people seem to think its all about the shinny pictures on the front page.
20 days is mandatory where I live and I don't need to take them all if I don't want to (they still accrue). I get along just fine.
At my previous company, they specifically created a policy of no more than five days of rollover vacation from year to year specifically because of an on-the-books obligation of a couple million dollars (500+ employees) due to accrued vacation. Later, they changed that policy to NO rollover without VP level approval (e.g. honeymoons). In states like California that have strong employee laws they had to force all California based employees to burn down their accrued vacation every three months. Quasi-ethical and possibly borderline legal but that is what you have to do when employees hoard vacation under the mattress.
This won't do until you can use keyboard navigation. Think accessibility.
If I worked somewhere that had an unlimited vacation policy, I think I'd probably stop working on Fridays all together. An unlimited vacation policy could be an open invitation for a 4-day work-week (or 3 day or 2 day...)
What is "extremely controlling of people" using their current approach? What is "extremely controlling of people" using their previous approach?
It's sad that works in the US.

Here in Australia you have to give a full time employee a minimum of four weeks (paid), which accrues if unused. So somebody at a company with unlimited vacation would be no worse off of they never took holidays than someone who worked at a company with the regular 4 weeks.
You are doing great work Fez, you are very active/responsive to the issues on github. Anyone involved in the project knows the effort that has gone into it.

I will be using your repo later this month, and will be more than happy to help contribute to your library.
I am still on the fence about the usefulness of Janus as someone starting with Vim. Sure it gets you closer to ST, but is that really the end goal? Why not still use ST?
Deprecated Versions of Azure Storage
Oooh look! –they've done that 'trendy five years' ago thing where you drop the E from the ER at the end of the word.

Count me in!
I've been using vim pretty much full time since around 2000. The one important thing to accept about it: you'll never know all of it. It's just huge. (but you'll never know all of any big dev environment - such is the life of a software dev). To get really good with it, after the basics, I just kept (and still do) in mind that "there's probably a better/easier/faster way to do this". Then roughly once a quarter I'll spend an afternoon figuring out how to do something new, and consciously focus on incorporating it into my workflow. Just like I would with any other tool or technique.

Just because it's "old school stuff like vim" doesn't mean it isn't worth learning. I don't know how it's viewed so differently than say, learning how to use containers, or learning how to do event based programming, or any other concept that slows you down for a little before making you more productive.
As a downside, you don't get access to the audio data.
thanks for the very specific feedback
I've said it before and I'll say it again, unlimited days off (or "open") and zero days off are identical.

If you have unlimited vacation people are inclined to take less and people respect the vacation you take less ("as you can always take more!").

Here's a study[0] (PDF) called "Overwhelmed America: Why Don’t We Use Our Earned Leave?" It is biased (travel association) but interesting nonetheless.

According to this study[1] you need at least ten consecutive days of leave to "de-stress" from work. Short vacations aren't as effective as long ones. In "europe" a two week vacation (10 work days) is common/standard. As opposed to American's "long weekends."

A lot of these "unlimited" places have a "as long as your work gets done" policy, meaning you can take tons of short days off or afternoons off, but almost no extended holidays (e.g. travel abroad, out of state, etc).

[0] http://traveleffect.com/sites/traveleffect.com/files/Overwhe...
From my point of view, that's the way it should be. At my company we make you take vacations. If by the end of the year you have plenty of days left you tend to take a long christmas/new year's break... and in some exceptions move a couple of vacations days to the next calendar year.

The unlimited vacations days, in my eyes, creates considerable pressure/anxiety on workers. If you are in the US and want to treat employees, just go for a fair number of paid vacations days like in most European countries... Germany, France, Austria, Spain, Italy, etc, all have approx. 28 days...
Well, one, because not controlling it could presumably lead to big boom-and-bust cycles as prices rise and fall, and for another, every taxi on the road has costs to every driver, as they cause congestion driving around looking for fares and burn up fuel, polluting the air, etc. Of course the same argument's applicable to private cars, but how many of us spend all day driving around in circles?
As many have said, Hashicorp is awesome.

What I particularly like about their products and their sites is that they take time to properly explain (and explain clearly) how their products fit into your stack, and what their intended use case is. Rather than random "we're working on something that will change devops forever" or similar marketing speak, the Atlas site lays out exactly what their vision for dev and ops is. The "how atlas works" section is brilliant.

I know I'm just repeating what others have said, but as usual, great work.

I think a lot of the work that Amazon has released this past few weeks is trying to get into precisely this space. To be the only company behind your code from development to deployment. I might be wrong, but I think hashicorp is in that space right with them.
Social Media and SEO
I imagine by offering more money

I would gladly work on christmas for 2x pay (especially if I had unlimited vacation I could take at other points)

and if something does go majorly wrong over christmas, your clients will probably understand
Back in 2011 I wrote this about the similarities between being a scientist and being an entrepreneur: http://lab.gilest.ro/blog/of-scientists-and-entrepreneurs/
UserTesting.com $500 Giveaway
very good.
Except "now has a required minimum of 25 (paid) vacation days per year, no matter what country they live in." Well no. If they live in the UK for example they have a mandatory limit of 28 days not 25 because it's the law.
Ask HN: Good business administration software / workflows
I'm working at a small consulting firm (15 FTE) run by students parallel to our studies. We're looking for some kind of business administration software that can be used to keep track of ongoing projects. See who is working on what project, perhaps generating invoices, keeping track of what projects we have done for a certain customer etc. Like a database with that contains our consultants, the projects and the customers (with a lot of fluffy things around it of course).

Currently we're keeping track of everything in excel spread sheets, which kind of work, but is a ugly solution. Invoice are generated manually by one of us etc.

I haven't found anything good yet, and before I dive in and try to write something custom, I'm wondering if HN has any solid advice.

Thanks.