skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
So curiosity is the primary motivation. You don't have to be first to market. That makes it easier, you can focus on making it better. Or just launch it now, you will get a different experience (e.g. Kickstarter or something). Breaking even and making money takes a long while, so you have to be able to fix the day job first.

Have you tried a lunch and learn to build up a case? Teaching people something new and answering questions is a different type of challenge and allows you to build some support to fix things that seem to be set in stone. Is there any way to do your day to day a different way? What about trying a new tool to record testing results?
What's new in CSS Selectors 4
Those companies start somewhere and these days are certainly driven by technical folks. Even Google was a small team once and yet the business model adopted was to harvest user data in order to target ads. Twitter took a similar route. I think it's disingenuous to attempt to separate 'business' from 'technical leaders', as if the latter have no involvement in the former.

(edited: see rest of thread)
Motorola Moto E modifications for anti-surveillance
Read? Sounds like a sad place but if you're really in a place where you can 'play games on your phone and sleep' then create enough automation to meet what ever goals your manager sets for you, and then start learning more stuff. You might also find organizational dynamics and management books fun to see how they apply in your current situation.

Some of the other folks there might be in the same boat you are, they are also your potential hires if you started your own company in the same area, so get to know them, figure out their strengths and weaknesses, what they are motivated by and what doesn't motivate them.

Talk to the managers and see what they are trying to get done (you mention they micro manage a lot) perhaps you can puzzle out what the group of them have been tasked to accomplish. If you like solving puzzles that can be entertaining for a while.

Look around for things that don't work well (are the printers always out of paper? Phones constantly ringing with no one answering?) see if you can engineer a way to solve one of those problems.

The bottom line is take ownership of challenging yourself to do something productive, don't wait for someone to either tell you what to do or "give you permission" to do that.
There is also FlatBuffers which takes Cap'n Proto ideas and brings it back to Google (http://google.github.io/flatbuffers/).

These encoding formats (or rather their implementation) is based on mimizing copying of data. Deep down they are based on mmap-ing memory areas. Not unlike you see the casting of blobs of memory to packed structures (but with more safety).
You can get the OpenVPN route quite seamless from a client perspective (server is still a pain in the ass to set up).

You can bundle all the configuration for a particular client into a .ovpn file - this includes the client and CA certificates.

I use this on iPhones and iPads, with the OpenVPN iOS app - works great for a family of iOS devices that need access to some geo-locked services.
http://genius.com/Sam-altman-lecture-1-how-to-start-a-startu...

cmd-f: "You'll make more money and have more impact"
Economic world history in one chart
This is an odd place to give car repair advice, but since I just did this job today on my wife's 2005 (same car), I have to say its one of the easiest headlamps I've done. 5 mins total for a low-beam. If the latch were reversed, it wouldn't hold itself out of the way when inserting the new bulb. You'd be trading one problem for a worse one, IMO.

Should you need to do a high-beam, you may need to pull the battery on the (US) driver side, or the power steering reservoir on the other side. The PS bottle comes right off (no tools, IIRC), so it's only the one high beam on left side that's particularly tough.
My opposition to seeking money is that I don't believe there is much of the way of angel investors in Australia, but my main opposition is taking an investment and then having a new boss to answer to. I don't want to chance getting into the same situation by answering to someone who really doesn't know what they're talking about.

With regards to inciting change.. I have tried for twelve months now, they can't be helped. It's not web design, its financial software - they use notepad for tracking bugs and excel for project management.
Errr, "a particular implementation of a thing" cannot be patented. It might be copyrightable (in the US, things with no creative content like a telephone book cannot be protected by copyright).

GMOs are much more like inventions protectable by patents than creative works, like, say, an artificial form of life based on silicon. Not entirely different in principle than building a machine out of different mostly pre-fab parts, the combination of which is an invention.
These are not nearly the most impressive examples of this kind of fortification; as North America was a relatively peripheral area in the 18th century, only relatively small and cheap versions of star forts were built there.

For larger-scale examples:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fortbourtange.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Map_of_Geneva_in_1841.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Coevorden.jpg
Ok, but what does that mean? Change how?
I work at a Fortune 50. Eventually, it'd be great to have something like x.ai "watching" emails fly through an internal SMTP server, and then decide if parties external to the conversation ought to be involved. There's a good amount of effort duplication and projects which fall short of their true potential because the right humans weren't involved.
9 steps to storytelling in business – brought to life
This is pure astroturf. There are dozens of solutions already for this, not to mention most corporations you can just view someone's calendar and pick a time whenever everyone is available.
I really like their short summary of the automated driving problem:

If self-driving cars cut the roughly 40,000 annual US
traffic fatalities in half, the car makers might get not 20,000 thank-you notes, but 20,000 lawsuits.

I'm convinced this is an area that deserves serious thought. I've mentioned it previously on here, but it's quite possible to develop "AI" driving software that make dramatic improvements to the overall safety outcome, but can be dramatically less safe than manual driving in certain (rare) circumstances. As a related example, there was a laptop manufacturer a few years ago who developed a "face unlock" feature, and neglected to train it on people with darker skin. That was unfortunate, but hardly life threatening. In a car it's easy to imagine much worse outcomes.
As a student, you should look into this program: https://www.dreamspark.com/

There are some great cross-platform developments in the pipeline that should allow you to have a native Linux experience approaching VS the future, but you really should use VS if you want the best experience with C#/.NET today. DreamSpark will give you access to free licenses of Windows and VS (and other Microsoft software), that you can install in a free VM host like VirtualBox, so don't let the perceived costs of using VS deter you.

I can't remember if DreamSpark comes with any Azure credits. If it does come with the $150/mo credit that most MSDN subscriptions do, you can use that to run a Windows/VS VM in Azure and just RDP to that. They have templates prebuilt so you can spin up a new VM with Windows and Visual Studio already installed with one click. That's a great way to get up and running very quickly: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudioalm/archive/2014/06/04/v...

My email's in my profile here. Feel free to get in touch if I can help with anything.
> yet the business model now is to harvest user data in order to target ads

This was their original business model. Previous to that they had none and were pretty much considered doomed.
Code Contracts were just released under MIT license on GitHub which (I'd think) will probably positively affect their availability https://github.com/CodeContractsDotNet/CodeContracts

Update: On second thought, I think Code Contracts were already available on the free Visual Studio 2013 Community edition: https://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/1ec7db13-3363...
Animations? That's fancy! wanna help me out with that? :)

Although I agree the messaging is kinda confusing right now because not all of the the features I envisioned is there yet...
Start interviewing elsewhere - anywhere you can find. Even if you don't plan to leave, having another option boosts morale and gives you more confidence to discuss concerns with your current company. It also gives you leverage in negotiating with other places you interview at - even if your local options are limited, maybe you can reach a remote-work arrangement with a company elsewhere in Australia. (Also: don't be discouraged if your first few interviews don't work out. Interviewing is a skill, and like any other skill it improves with practice.)

Take time for yourself and your personal development. While working on your startup at work is extremely inadvisable (see your legal concerns above)...if you feel like the pace at work is slow, do your work as quickly as possible and use the remaining time to move forward in some way. Learn a new language. Solve programming contest problems. Start a Toastmasters chapter at work. These sorts of things increase your sense of personal control over your situation; I cannot overemphasize how important that is.

Isolation is another dangerous trap. Find local developer meetups or board game nights or friendly pickup sports events. Talk with others about your situation. (For the same reason, asking here on HN is an excellent step to take. I'd wager most of us have encountered some variant of your problem. Also, asking people who aren't close friends can be surprisingly liberating, as you don't have as much emotional investment in their response.)

Hope this helps :)
There are - I'm in New Zealand which is a similar but much, much smaller market. You'll need to travel - just as you would in rural New Zealand, you'll have to go where the investors are and meet them.

Wellington and Auckland are the big cities here - I assume Melbourne/Sydney/Brisbane for you? Are there meetups in Adelaide? Go and ask questions!
In spite of their marketing name they are just bluer lights (2850K versus 2700K for 'warm' and 3000K for 'warm white' so midway between those)

GE has some equivalent LED bulbs that they market under the 'Reveal' moniker to indicate they have a 2850K color temperature. A quick search suggests that Home Depot sells them in the US.
I'd say the reason why following spec on status codes has fallen out of favor is because browsers don't do anything interesting or informative with them for most users.

On APIs, I'd say it's a sin to not return proper HTTP headers, but when the end user on a web site sees a File Not Found that's 200 Status OK versus File Not Found that's 404, it doesn't really matter.

And while it matters for things like the Googlebot, over the years developers stopped caring, because delivering an attractive and descriptive status page was more important than delivering an error status and not rendering a page at all.

I'm not saying it's right, but it was largely a ornamental step in the early days of the Web, so I understand why it disappeared. If browsers proactively provided data to users about HTTP status codes, I think they'd be adhered to much more.
Here is the original work "Récoltes et Semailles" from Grothendieck (PDF, French): http://lipn.univ-paris13.fr/~duchamp/Books&more/Grothendieck...

Brace yourself, it's about 1000 thousand pages, sometimes very technical. The post I translated is a very short summary.
That's unfortunate (but good, I suppose) to know!
Yeah, you can easily wear out food.
Once due to life circumstances I was stuck for a few years in a job I hated for much of the same reasons (limited growth, very bored, yet simultaneously very stressed due to ridiculous deadlines). One thing that helped me get by was to have my employer pay for me to learn new things. I really wanted to learn a particular programming language, so gradually over time I built up a compelling case that learning this language would help the business. And it did help the business, especially after my employer paid for me to become an expert. After my life circumstances changed and I was able to move on I had a great new skill on my resume that propelled me to much better opportunities.

So my point is you should try to turn your current predicament into a launchpad for bigger and better things.
My opinion is that you're putting undue stress on yourself with the startup. Your number one problem is that your 9-5 ain't so good and you need either another job or another income stream.

Startup income isn't going to happen over night, so I think your efforts are not worth it given you're already stretched with the 9-5. I would be spending time on looking for either another job or a remote gig so you can give the 9-5 the flick.

Have you considered moving to Sydney or Melbourne? There are a lot of development jobs in these cities that pay well for people with experience.

Don't worry about the start up, I think. It's like worrying about wining second division on the lottery. Only work on it if you find it cathartic. Find another job, move cities if you need to.
Pilot (of smallish airplanes) here. Landing gear failures are almost never fatal unless they make the crew mismanage the airplane into a crash. (Eastern 401 or the one in the Bahamas last month (C6-REV) where the press is hailing the pilot a hero for only killing 1 pax, when the reality is no one should have gotten hurt or even wet if properly handled.)

For an important item, I'll reset a breaker once in flight. Nothing electrical is that critical, and I carry portable AHRS, GPS, and handheld VHF radio.

Few things are worse than fire, so if I have any concern about the electricals, they can all stay off and I'll extend the gear manually with the crank system. Other planes have gear that free falls or has an N2 bottle to blow the gear down.

I don't think any civilian aircraft have had fatalities from a simple gear-up landing.
Actually the onus is on him to find his place in today's world. The eggs of technological progress have been broken. I'm making omelettes. He seems to want to get them back in the chicken. I wish him luck on his quixotic quest.
I think you could accurately say machine learning is a subfield of ai. I think of it as the mathematical toolbag with which many ai applications are built.

(Before he edited his post OP had a comment about the confusion between the terms 'machine learning' and 'artificial intelligence')... Put another way I think machine learning specifically refers to the mathematical ideas used to teach things to a machine, and the ai to the resulting entity which often makes use machine learning techniques(usually in addition to specialized code specific to the application).

I think some people feel that "general intelligence" would require a paradigm that somehow transcends math and algorithms which seem to only result in specialized a.i's. And that maybe it all needs to be tossed out and re-examined with a blank slate. On the other hand, i would suggest that specialized ai software will become more and more generalized until we can't tell the difference. I think it's all about having a sane perspective. In this day and age with machines and gadgets in every room, man-made artifacts teach us how to think, and we teach machines how to think in a recursive interdependent cycle.

In that sense reaching the final goal post means progressively improving our machines to be active communicators and good listeners, to the point where they can learn things from each other. Eventually their interactions will become complex enough that their communications will be unpredictable but still productive on the whole. So we'll leave them on so they can talk. At which point you could call it a society of machines....

Anyway I guess the point is specificity of language seems to be important learning and thinking about AIs.
"a senior/lead software engineer with only about 2 years of professional experience"

Has the term senior lost all meaning?
Definitely sounds promising, I spend a lot of time either seeing up meetings myself or syncing with people who need to invite me to one.
The FAQ actually answers none of the questions I ask myself in considering to try it.

Is it good at dealing with timezones? I always get invited to meetings where people give me the time in their timezone, I have to realize that time wouldn't make sense for them if it was in my timezone etc etc.

The other question is regarding the fact that I don't communicate with everyone in english. There is no mention of how good Amy is when switching to and from different languages. This last one is one of the reasons I never used virtual assistants.
I had a similar feeling making an SNMP MIB processor around the same time (2000?) -- the ASN.1 libraries so complicated. So I wrote my own, which turned out simple and symmetrical just by encoding from back to front instead of the messy front-to-back-and-backpatch everyone else was doing. (And I guess by leaving some things out that we didn't use, like other encoding rules? I don't remember.)

When those vulnerabilities hit I never found out how that code did -- I wish they'd open-sourced it as they'd planned.

So, that particular part (DER? again I forget) seemed tolerable to me. The newer stuff like Cap'n Proto is probably still better.
That does make sense - definitely something to think about.
Mandatum is right, there must be some kind of financing in Australia, it's a huge and prosperous country.

Edit: I found a lot with just a basic web search. I understand they might not want to fund you if you stay part-time though.

Edit again: maybe you can get some kind of government agency to help you out, there are Early Stage Funds, Grants, etc... plenty of help around :)

http://www.business.gov.au/grants-and-assistance/grant-finde...

See also

https://angel.co/australia/investors

If you're not in debt, maybe you can save a very minimum nest egg (1 month of expenses, whatever you need to find a job in case it fails), and go for it, since it looks that the worst case scenario is going back to a job that can't be much worse than where you are now.

I certainly agree with toyg's advice, if you believe in your project, then go for it. Also, your deadline might be artificial (I don't know what you're building), it's good to get an MVP out there fast, but not being first to market might not be a killer.
Maybe... :)

I was a little circumspect because the usual response to any suggestion that a lack of generics might be some kind of problem is - generally - not positive.

But my point is merely that C# has this thing, and Go doesn't. If I knew enough about Go to say instead that it lacks something else that C# has, I'd have done that...
The angular design was so that guns were in place to sweep attackers from every wall. That is, some of the guns are able, without having to be moved, to fire close to and parallel to every wall.

No attacker would be able to rush the wall and remain there in relative safety (given the benefit of covering fire) and set to work breaching the wall.

Note the "Plan of Johnston Fort at Cape Fear", where the angle of the top left point seems to be inaccurate, such that the covering cannon at the base of the upper right point can't quite shoot along the wall of the upper left point.

Also note the Bristol Ferry Fort, with it's not-quite-star design, can't quite protect the small sides of the points, given the angles of the gun ports (if accurate.)

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_fort

Also it seems interesting that the designer of the Ontario Fort has put heavier walls toward Lake Ontario, where ship cannon may be used by an attacker. It was the opposite case in Pittsburgh, where one would expect the main attack by land.
Cool guide, makes me want to learn more about BSD and pf. I've been doing this but with a Linux VPS, iptables and EasyRSA3[0][1].

[0]https://github.com/OpenVPN/easy-rsa

[1]https://community.openvpn.net/openvpn/wiki/EasyRSA3-OpenVPN-....
Code Contracts, the library, has always been free. The static checker, the really important piece, was only available in expensive editions for commercial use.
I edited to reflect that the business model was adopted. It doesn't alter my point.
There's a zillion alternatives to capitalism. Those of us whose imagination got sucked out of our heads, unfortunately seem incapable of exiting a framework like neoliberalism's "capitalism vs. Soviet Union". As if there's nothing to drink beyond Coke vs Pepsi.
>>Their team needs to go get jobs.

I can't speak for everywhere on earth but in this current Bay Area tech job market, I can just as easily parachute into a well-paying, full-time gig at $TRENDY_TECH_COMPANY. You build interesting experience & insight being the first-hire and, if you're actually a skilled engineer, shouldn't have a problem finding your next job in about 4 to 6 weeks if things don't work out.
This was an interview Q on my Google interview. hated it (I ended up using Riemann sums)
I think you're misunderstanding something fundamental about how AI research works. The techniques, tools and ideas can be applied to anything by anyone. If google releases a deep learning framework, it can be used for cancer research or economic planning or anything else. Just because it was developed in the context of advertising doesn't mean that the applications are limited to that domain.

The idea that "some of the greatest minds of our generation are spending their time figuring out how to get people to click on more ads" is a bit of a myth. They're figuring out new algorithms, faster methods and new technological concepts that are being applied to ads first. The truth is that the research divisions of Google, Microsoft, IBM, etc publish a lot of research that isn't related to advertising at all, possibly the majority of what they publish. The best and brightest engineers are interested in engineering and theory, and despite working for advertising companies they tend to come up with good ideas that can be used in a wide variety of applications.
Slightly embarrassed at two years of lurking on HN and the first post being critical of HP...

I've had two HP35s units and they are buggy as hell. Ended up with an old TI86 after trying every calculator in existence.
https://lastpass.com/
I was in a group that did some research in
AI, worked with several famous companies,
met lots of smart people,
wrote and shipped some software,
published a lot of papers,
gave a paper at an AAAI IAAI
conference at Stanford.

Summary: The good papers at the Stanford
conference were really just good cases
of traditional engineering, statistics,
etc. Anything like artificial intelligence (AI)
beyond just such traditional approaches
had next to no significant role.
By then, AI just looked like
a new label for old bottles of wine, some
good, some bad.

The "Open Letter" and the paper it links
to look like more of the same:
The solid, promising work is traditional
approaches in good engineering, statistics,
optimization, etc. The rest
presents severe problems in
specification, testing, verification,
even security.

Maybe the best thing to do with
AI that is not just good engineering, etc.,
that is, software and systems that
are built but not really designed
or well tested,
is at least to be careful about security
and keep the thing locked up
in a strong padded cell and, especially
where any harm could be done,
take any of its output with many
grains of salt and as just a suggestion.

It appears that, bluntly,
we just do not have even as much
as a weak little hollow hint of a tiny
clue about how intelligence works,
not even for a kitty cat.

When I was in the field, an excuse
was that artificial intelligence
was not really our work or our
accomplishment but only our long-term
goal. Hmm ....