skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: Company imploding; customers at risk; hostile partner
HN: I'm in a bind. I've got a 2 year old company that's falling apart (not profitable, out of money). The CEO, some employees, I own 49.5% together, and the "money" partner owns 50.5%. The partner has taken over financial operations, as he owns the bank account. He's stopped paying most employees and arbitrarily pays vendors.

The problem: We provide critical IT services to companies which service thousands of end users. Some of which include hospitals and police stations. Our service powers a lot of day-to-day stuff. I simply cannot just walk away or shut it down without helping the customers. I'm not exaggerating to say there could be a public safety risk in some cases.

We should have gone out of business a month or two ago, but I personally put in cash to help keep some things floating and make critical payments. I promised every employee I'd find a way to personally pay them if the company didn't.

I want to email customers right now, and let them know the situation. But the partner isn't replying in a useful manner. I told him in no uncertain terms, in October, we'd have to shutdown without more funding. (Fatal Pinch, how appropriate.)

I was thinking of writing customers and CC'ing the partner. Something to the effect of "The entire technical team of <company> has resigned. <Partner> is available if you have any questions. And remember, you can export your data at portal/mydata.". Does that put me at risk?

On a semi-related note, a couple of customers are a custom job, and they'd follow me even if I don't solicit them. And if we just shut down, even with a month's notice, they could easily go out of business. How do I help them without making it look like I'm trying to steal a contract? Just drop them a line saying I now work for <othercompany>?

What should I do?
How does it justify removing his video lectures from OpenCourseWare?
Amazon also is clearly no making profit doing what they are doing either. They can afford it due to the vast scale but for how long?
> Every time I take a ride, I feel bad for how little the driver's getting paid.

Presumably you still eat out, enjoy clean bathrooms, eat fruit, or live and work inside of a building? If American capitalism is a well-oiled machine, unsustainably cheap labor is its lubricant. This debate is well worth having, but in no way is it specific to Uber.
Blumenmädchenkleider Online Kaufen Aus Kussk
While the other companies followed those laws and helped refine them over time.

Is there anything Uber have done in terms of improving user experience that they couldn't have done within the same framework offered to every other business? Maybe something to do with branding of cars? A legal taxi company could have created a great app, had some form of driver/user voting, presumably handled payment through apps?
Ask HN: Would you signup for a one-way trip to Mars?
I fantasized about this since I was a kid. Now it seems (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/09/science/a-one-way-trip-to-mars-many-would-sign-up.html) the one-way trip is seriously being considered.

So, my question is: Would you signup for a trip knowing that you have a short time, say 4 weeks, of life left once you there (assuming everything goes OK)?

Would people who agree to such a thing be psychologically balanced enough, especially on the planed to conduct any missions?

But what a few weeks it would be!
Every time I take a ride, I feel bad for how little the driver's getting paid.

Not to sound glib, but if that is the case why not tip the driver to the level you feel is appropriate?
Nothing wrong with trying to make an informed decision
I wonder how we could maybe put this idea to work as part of immigration reform or the much-discussed work visa topic. After all, moving is tough so not everyone can just up and move for diversity's sake, but if someone is already moving, maybe a requirement should be that they move to communities unlike them?
How to Convert 2D Video to MKV 3D Video
The applications we build are cross-platform games, and the Android-specific code is reduced to the bare minimum and abstracted behind a framework.

The development and debugging is done with the desktop version of the game. We avoid using Eclipse & friends unless we manage to break something at the Android side, which fortunately almost never happens.

We found this approach to be the most productive and less frustrating for our team.
You make it sound so easy. The first issue is, taxi licences are super expensive. Don't get me started on cities that deal out medallions at ridiculous prices. In New York a taxi medallion will cost you about $1 million, how ridiculous is that? The system itself is broken and outdated, currently the system is engineered to benefit the companies selling medallions and those other bolt-ons that come with owning a taxi.

However, I do think that Uber and other services should honour pricing caps in cities that have them, they should also comply with rules regarding insurance and other reasonable things asked of them. But having said that, even if they were to honour pricing caps and get the appropriate insurance for their drivers, it will never be good enough for some cities, take Vancouver as an example.

In places like New York especially, too many people benefit off of the existing cartel like structure of leasing out a medallion, insurance and all of the other costs that tend to add up quite quickly. Things need to change, and I am glad there are companies out there pushing the boundaries and getting the conversation going. Gone are the days of a single company having a transportation monopoly in a city.
That encourages programmers to become a president.
incremental net worth = growth (joy)

negative net worth = brankrupt (misery)
I could swear I read the exact same article somewhere else a couple of months ago.

Anyway, I fail to see how either raising an exception or returning None (which the author recognizes as Python's version of null/nil) is anything at all like an Option value (as opposed to "null-like")...
I think another aspect of improving the problem of ugly comments is figuring out more ways to encourage insightful, constructive comments while making it worthless to post hateful things. HN seems to have figured out how to do this reasonably well, but it's somewhat specific to the community that has grown up around it and that community has shown a willingness to defend itself. How can a similar system work for more general audiences at news sites and forums, much less sites like YouTube where the comments are almost universally horrible?

I think making incivility even worse than worthless would be a start. Make it a waste of the poster's time. Make it so the ugliness can be completely ignored, taking away the influence and attention that the poster seeks. Make it reflect badly on the poster somehow so they will have an incentive to not post their hate.

I always thought these kinds of policies would have to come from the community, but the idea of AI doing some of the work is intriguing. It may seem far-fetched now, but like so many things, starting the work and making progress will probably lead to great advances.

Maybe things like Discourse will make progress here, and I know Jeff Atwood believes just as passionately about civility on the internet as Eric Sink expresses in his post. But those kinds of systems would have to be adopted more universally to make that big of a difference. I sincerely hope that happens.
Detecting Click Fraud in Online Advertising: A Data Mining Approach
They could get into the dodgy car finance business (like many private car companies...)
The sequence isn't necessarily even portable within a system, as the libraries used by your application may themselves call rand() in unpredictable ways. For instance, consider a DNS resolver that generates query IDs using rand(). If the resolver library generates a new ID for retransmitted queries (e.g, when a packet is dropped), any DNS resolution may desynchronize the state of the random number generator.

And, just as if that weren't bad enough, consider multithreading. The order in which threads execute is unpredictable, so, if more than one thread calling rand() is executing at once, the state of the RNG may become dependent on the order threads run in. Long story short, setting a global RNG to a known state isn't a sufficient way to make a program deterministic.
5 years later, not so funny.
Talk to an attorney. Some of the options you mentioned could come back to bite you legally. I'd start there.
I would argue that three 22 year olds on their first startup shouldn't be building a product that can't be validated by the market in one or two years.
Robot Restaurant - http://www.shinjuku-robot.com/pc/?lng=en

I haven't been yet but friends have said it's one of the most wild and crazy shows you'll ever see.
Not really, I work on iOS code much more complex and rarely have to stoop to so many tricks. Due to having to support iOS 6 I still have to use XCode 5 so some of this isn't even available to me. After a while you figure out the problems just from the symptoms. My current project was written by Elbonians who were paid a pittance so there is lots of fun debugging.

That said figuring out bugs in iOS is a major league PITA. I have one now in NSURLSession which is batshit insane.
They can do all these things but choose not to. What's to "work around"?

Isn't this why Uber is competitive on price - because they don't do all these other "onerous" things? I thought that was entirely how they were able to charge so low.
I manage a private combination of communications bulletins and attack monitoring for a couple of smaller communities / organisations that get attacked on the regular (mostly hosting providers and gaming organisations). I've been considering letting it go invitation-only public.
You never know, Goldman Sachs might be a staunch emacs shop.
This is exactly my opinion as well. We don't remove books from the library because the author had moral failings, or even if the author committed genocide. The content has value and should be preserved. The removal of the content from OCW is the step too far. Lewin absolutely should be restricted from further teaching at MIT or on MITx but the work itself should not be considered problematic.
I am not blaming VCs, I am blaming founders for taking VC money when the model they are giving it to you under is fundamentally flawed.

It is debatable if VC model couldn't be made to work better, but if this is how they are going to play the game then you are better off not playing and get on with bootstrapping.
Is the awful side of PhD-dom really that secret? I haven't been to graduate school, but I know tons of people who hated (and a few who really loved) getting their doctorates. And I had professors who openly warn some of my peers. I'm just not clear if I'm lucky, or your opening is a bit hyperbolic.
Beautiful UI. Schelling's models of segregation is a great example of how simulation and data-vis can create insights in the humanities & social sciences.

I made a similar (though much less beautiful) simulation for a workshop in in computational philosophy last semester - but replaced intentional with random movement when uphappy.

http://dave.kinkead.com.au/models-of-segregation/
Is Uber a taxi service? If so, it might be violating some regs.

But if it's a ride sharing broker, there probably aren't any specific regs to cover that.

This is all about the money. Uber is suddenly rich, at least in terms of estimated valuation, and that makes it worth it to put lawyers to work trying to get a piece of that action.

I'm cheering for Uber in this fight. The taxi industry has long been over regulated and much too buddy-buddy with city governments, to the detriment of both the drivers and their customers.

When I lived in Asia, taxis were much less regulated, the drivers had a lot more autonomy, and you could go anywhere for a couple of dollars; it was a fantastic alternative to owning a car.

We have regulated the taxi industry into an overpriced mess that poorly serves the cities, especially the lower income people who can't afford to buy and maintain a car, who would most benefit from a ride sharing service to get them where they're going quickly and cheaply. Just my opinion :)
What happens when you, instead of training the entire network at once, train for a while with a single layer, then add a second layer and train with both layers, then add a third layer and train with all three layers, and so on?
There's a lot of extremely frustrating and stupid aspects to it... but none of those are in any way related to anything discussed in the article, so I find your comment a bit odd. What makes iOS development so frustrating to me is the constant struggle with code signing, device provisioning, Xcode crashes, random failures to install or run programs, and all the craziness around App Store review.
So you can MITM and take over someone's anonymous account, so what? There's no associated personal information, no logins or anything, so you wouldn't even know who owns that account, let alone passwords or emails.

You can view all the posts they've made and make a reasonable guess as to which person it was, I suppose, but that seems like a pretty flimsy argument.
The courts will have to decide whether they're violating local regulations. I don't think it's a foregone conclusion.
I think it's better to quantify it and change the question to 'Is it better to include X non-rapists and Y rapists than to exclude X non-rapists and Y rapists.'

'Is it better to include into the set of Uber drivers, 10 non-rapists and 1 rapists or to exclude 10 non-rapists and 1 rapists.'

Probably the latter.

'Is it better to include, into the set of NYC residents, 5 million non-rapists and 3 rapists than to exclude 5 million non-rapists and 3 rapists.'

Probably the former.
That is not true, Apple map is better than Google's in China, better than Baidu at navigation even. It uses a local map provider's (amap.com) data of course.
Show HN: PyQuote – Beautify your quotes
Bettir is one part logging tool, and one part a team of algorithms, experts, and doctors that will give you feedback on managing your blood pressure on a regular basis.

We'd be thrilled to have you use our Android web app. Feel free to reach out to me at mike@bettir.com if you have any questions or comments.
Go? Don't you mean Elixir?
Apple uses the standard calling conventions for the CPU architectures they use, so there's no real need nor expectation for Apple to document those aspects beyond saying "we use the standard conventions," which they do say if you go digging. In some instances they also replicate the documentation for the conventions.
If you have to ask, the answer is 'no'.
android studio is really good.
but gradle is annoying me.
every gradle-build project force me to download a new gradle-wrapper.
I install the newest gralde in my OS, but it can not be use repeatedly
PyTennessee 2015 Schedule
Having money 'around' tends to make people complacent...people on the outside can't tell the difference between earnings and investment...and this tends to play tricks with people (and their minds( on the inside as well.
...so it only works with the Note 4?
You're definitely going to like The Obstacle Is The Way if you want to go deeper into stoicism.

It is based on that line from Marcus Aurelius's Meditations and it's about turning obstacles upside down.
The schedule looks awesome! I'm buying my ticket just to see K. Lars again.
The source can be seen by using the "How It Works" button.
> Gone are the days of a single company having a transportation monopoly in a city.

Really ? Isn't that a bit short sighted ?
I'm curious, when does this ever happen? College? After college in an internship? A dream with a flaming pie?
The moon’s molten, churning core likely once generated a powerful magnetic field
Can someone explain why Plan 9 matters? I mean this legitimately. How is this differentiated from yet another flavor of *nix? I'm sure it was hot shit back in the early 90s, but I don't see much of an appeal other than as a curiosity like OS/2.
For Europe, Less Startups May Mean More Success
I'm excited since I'm specifically in the market for a lightweight tsdb written in Erlang.
Also the documentation looks quite nice.

But like all the other possible contenders I've found, so far. I am unable to compile this project out of the box. Hopefully the maintainers of this one will be commenting on my github issues.

At this point it I'm getting the feeling I will have to my own half-baked tsdb to answer only my immediate problem, instead of finding the magic do-it-all well written, documented and extensible tsdb in Erlang.
(I'm 2 weeks into Erlang, so it will probably be very terrible).

I've tried (and opened various issues on):
pulsedb: https://github.com/pulsedb/pulsedb
litetsdb: https://github.com/dreyk/litetsdb
etsdb: https://github.com/philipcristiano/etsdb
Yes, idiocy. It likely has more to do with fear of liability rather than political correctness thoguh. I imagine some future student going through "emotional distress" reading works by a "predator" and suing the MIT for millions.
It's more *nix than unix. Everything is a file. UI interaction is done via files. It doesn't cut corners at it - it takes it to the extreme.

It is the logical successor to unix that never took off because unix is "good enough"
Ask HN: Domain Appraisal: luckyscoffee.com
As the title says, wondering if anyone has any domain appraisal muscles that they'd be willing to flex and give me an appraisal for LUCKYSCOFFEE.COM.
Graphic Showing Piece of Content Before and After Using Instant Links Inserter
A division in the company I work for makes a product that addresses unwanted outbound traffic,http://www.novetta.com/commercial/novetta-advanced-analytics...
They fed negative stories about the personal lives of reporters and their families to the media? If you have proof, I'd love to see it. Because that's what the "threat" and the corresponding publicity were all about. It had nothing to do with being able to show someone where they've been, which is common and should be expected with any app that you authorize your phone to give location data to.

Perhaps you should take your own advice about reading more carefully.
In sharp contrast to normal cabbies, who pick up the very first person hailing them without any discrimination, never refuse a destination, always have credit card machines that work, who completely don't expect you to pay them a dime beyond the regulated rate, are perfectly diligent in working with the disabled, and report every last dime that passes through their hands -- or, whey they fail to do these things, are prosecuted by the city with the exact level of vigor used in the current case against Uber. /s

Sometimes it sucks when people ignore the law. So does selective prosecution.
No, I don't want video. Tell it to me in simple words and pictures.

I have two complaints about video:
1) I don't want to enable JavaScript or use Flash. Most video fails one of those. 2) I don't want to spend the time to watch a video. Tell me in words and pictures, in less than a minute. I.e. an "elevator pitch".

I'm absolutely astonished at how many companies have horrible websites. In many cases I can go to Wikipedia and learn much more about a company, much faster, than from that company's website.

Major FAIL!
Special process, working with support@github.com. They have an internal tool that will migrate a special format (which we had to prepare). After 14 tries, we got it right. Mostly. We still couldn't do lots of things we wanted, but it was way better than our first version where we did it all via API calls.
This was the reason Chrome-to-phone was developed, and even now, one of my favorite use cases for Pushbullet.
It's weird. I'm all for punishing sexual harassment, but I just don't see how removing his content from OCW does anything but punish society. It's not like static material is suddenly going to start harassing people.

As you say, they wouldn't remove an author's books in this case. How are course notes and videos any different?

Poor decision, in my opinion.
You need to be young, you need to be a dreamer and you need to have resilience ... I know people who have taken over 7 years. You need to have that time!
I was hoping to provide something more nuanced with the website. For that, you could see my corresponding Twitter account: https://twitter.com/shouldyougetphd
Ask HN: Is this hosting setup 'unhackable'?
Static site hosted on S3 + route 53 DNS mngmnt.
Provided that:
1. Permissions on the bucket are properly setup.
2. Registrar and AWS password is not compromised.
NASA Mars rover finds key evidence for lake at landing site
That's a Chromebook he's doing it on! Acer 11" CB3.
I intentionally found interviewees to bring a variety of perspective. Some are very positive. Carl definitely brings the perspective you offer.
Not sure if you're being sarcastic...but if not: https://get.uber.com/cl/financing/
Exactly. That's why I put this together.
Haven't been in 2 years, but when I ordered a town car and it took a few minutes - definitely not 60. I can't imagine they would follow such restrictions really.
Better integration would work by allowing users to save routes on google maps. Those same routes would show in your list of saved routes on the google maps app, possibly with a cached offline version of the route on your cellphone.
I use the determinism with test cases generating random input data. Every run of a test case generates a random seed based off the system time and reports the seed used. When a failure happens, the seed is fixed using an environment variable. Then the failed case can be reproduced until the bug is tracked down.

This isn't an unusual practice.

The determinism in standard PRNG functions is an important feature not a weakness. Theo is being foolish. If he's unhappy with the way the *rand functions are being used he should just change the code calling into the library to use random seeds derived from a suitable entropy source, not change the library itself.
More like sell scuba training to passengers on the way down then use that money to pay for repairs.
I wouldn't be so fast. Lots of people want to be professors, way more people than there are viable jobs. Some of the interviews bring out that point.
I imagine they wanted a different set of numbers each time, and didn't really care what they were, provided the sequence was vaguely unpredictable. On the face of it this doesn't sound to me like a great reason for breaking standardized behaviour - but you know what they say about people who comment from the sidelines.
> What are the advantages AAA studios have?

Shitloads of money. Massive institutional knowledge of public relations and marketing. Direct lines to Sony and Microsoft. Every kind of benefit of economy of scale you could want.