skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Isn't that an issue with every compiled language? I remember always having to cross-compile newlib when I set cross-compiled gcc environments.
I watched most of the FFC. Like Marc Andreesen has said, software is eating the world. YC is getting such critical mass now that entrepreneurs and idealists/pragmatists with world-affecting ideas are now applying for YC. Not necessarily because they'd heard of YC - but because someone they know who cares about them had heard about YC.

YC, in my opinion, is getting to a point where it can help incubate world-changing ideas that don't necessarily sell technology to consumers directly but use technology to enable more efficiency or connection or empathy (or all of the above).

Of all the presentations, Grace's was the best. I loved Grace Garey of Watsi's stories.

About how every Tuesday night, about eight or ten of the world-wide team of Watsi, in every timezone (day, afternoon, morning) would always get together for a Google Hangout to talk about Watsi.

About how she was at a busy bar in NYC with her friends and they were in the waning hours of an online contest to win $10k for Watsi. They were falling behind, and Grace had the gutsy idea to ask the bouncer to make everyone who came into the bar have to vote for Watsi on the contest site on their smartphone. They ended up winning by the scarcest of margins (1%) and the bouncer gonged a bell and the entire bar celebrated. Like Brian and Joe of Airbnb creating their own cereal, it was a gutsy move to make it to the next critical step (raising enough funds for some of the Watsi team to go full-time and all-in). And a little different.

Congratulations to the YC team on making a ripple in the pond!
Still comparing apples to oranges. The most common job for women is secretary (which generated countless headlines). The most common job for men is truck driver not programmer. People always focus on CEOs and company founders being all men, but no one brings up all the people working construction, pest control, mining etc...
It would be incredibly nice if there was a home security system that was actually difficult to defeat.

The existing ones are susceptible to denial-of-service attacks against their communications infrastructure (cutting the phone line, jamming their GSM, jamming the communications between the sensors and the base station.) It would be nice if they were able to fall back to redundant communication lines.

For instance, in my city, there is an ISP which provides service over point-to-point microwave. If the phone line was cut, and the cell line was jammed, this would still be available to report break ins.

Having multiple redundant means of communication also opens the possibility of reporting a break in if communication with the base station is lost. With just one line, the rate of false alarms would probably make this impractical. But with three, you can be pretty sure that someone is deliberately disabling your device.

One final note; whatever you end up doing, get another company to audit your product before it comes to market. Too few companies actually do this, but it is quite necessary. By their very nature, mistakes tend to occur in places you (/your engineers) wouldn't think to look.
It takes a generation to fix the negative effects of development restrictions. Apartment buildings typically go through a life cycle. They start out targeted at high-end residents, because that justifies the initial construction costs, then as they age get targeted down market. Chicago has a ton of reasonably affordable apartment housing, and most of it was built in the 1970's.

It will be decades before the shiny new buildings being put up new in San Francisco are affordable for ordinary people.
I agree, so repetitive as to be flag-worthy.
5 Lesser Used HTML Elements
Redis can behave as a message queue, but it is somehow more complex than a blocking pop. antirez wrote a nice article[1] about it, and I believe RestMQ[2] uses this approach.

[1] http://oldblog.antirez.com/post/250

[2] http://restmq.com/
What is ELF? (top)

ELF is a binary format designed to support dynamic objects
and shared libraries. On older COFF and ECOFF systems,
dynamic support and shared libraries were not naturally
supported by the underlying format, leading to dynamic
implementations that were at times complex, quirky, and
slow.

source: netbsd.org

However you said "ELF has nothing in particular to do with shared libraries..."

Perhaps the concept of a binary format has nothing in particular to do with support for shared libaries. Perhaps that is a design choice. And perhaps ELF is merely one approach to the design of a binary format.

If true, then this choice makes a lot of sense in a world where there is a compelling need to use shared libraries, such as the computing world 20 years ago. But I am not so sure the same holds true in a world where the need for shared libraries is "questionable".

You said "Shared libraries are a small side feature..."

If that is true (cites to articles appreciated), then I would be curious what are ELF's "main" features, and how these differ from the formats that preceded ELF (e.g., a.out). Also I would be curious how frequently ELF's "minor" features have historically been used in practice, as opposed to just adding complexity and taking up space.
I seem to recall that other studies of happiness that experiences matter more than things; to generalize, that experiences matter.

My discontent with working full-time is not that I don't have free time, but that I don't have time to do things.
Apparently Christine failed to notice that the code doesn't respond to the requirements as they're laid out. She would have at least had a better reason for rejecting the Carpenter: she could have said "writes unreadable code that doesn't even respond to requirements".

However, the fact that Christine couldn't even tell that the code was not working reinforces the correctness of her hunch: hypnotized by the unreadable code, neither her or the interviewee could see clearly that it wasn't fit for the intended purpose. And this is clearly a serious issue.

I agree that an interview should be more interactive than that, but one could easily blame the Carpenter for having transformed the answer to a simple question into a long monologue that lead nowhere. I can't help but feeling he got what he deserved, although I'm afraid that, in the real world, his confidence and command of technicalities would have gained him the job on the spot.
Ever played Genesis Shadowrun?
Reminds me of story of "the ant letter". I'd describe it, but I'm interested to wait a bit to see if anyone else has heard/read it. Will describe it later if no one replies. I've not found via Google despite a search.
Two categories: now and future. First, future. This is where most people give advice. Develop your passion and follow it, etc. This is important. You must dedicate time and effort to becoming good at something--hopefully something that pays well or can be turned into an asset.

With regard to startups, I suggest working for a larger company for a short time to learn how larger companies operate, then maybe joining a startup. This step can be skipped if you have your own ideas or drive. Finally, start your own. Building an asset that you own part of is the only way to get ahead in a meaningful way in a shorter amount of time. Note that while doing this, you should max out a 401(k) or other retirement vehicle as a hedge. This may not be possible during certain stretches of the startup cycle, but minimize them.

Now the now. Enjoy your youth. That is the one thing you don't get back. Develop an interest in one or more sports. Exercise. Meet lots of people and date before or until you settle down. Finish your education. It gets harder over time. Travel.
>To think about this problem, consider the most prosaic of objects: a popsicle stick. The stick will bend or buckle, depending on the pressure you apply to both ends. Now imagine a popsicle stick whose ends are separated in time, rather than in space.

I have to admit I don't know what that means. Anyone got a way to describe this?
Well, you can try selecting the right category:

http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=perl,+python&cmpt=q&c...
Mechanical engineering graduate (and 2nd rate programmer) here. And I completely agree, this major is a sinkhole. Maybe 50 years ago when we were still building rockets, planes, and cars to stop the Soviets or what have you, ME was a great major (and maybe 40 years from now when fusion, Mars, and warp drive are all real it will be again). But today in an age of electronics and software, ME is an awful choice for anyone not passionate about cars, engines, or HVAC.

The ME departments in colleges have caught onto its fall from a popularity and prestige and are doing their best to retard the descent with classes like "Scientific Computing", "Microfabrication", "FEM", "Lagrangian Control", "biomechanics", "business in China", etc., that try to emulate the currently useful skills taught in other disciplines. The result is, of course, us students wind up actually majoring in "Engineering Undeclared" and it land us a hodgepodge sampler plate of introductory knowledge that never truly satisfies any market need. We are inferior to applied mathematicians when it comes to calculations, electrical engineers when it comes to modern machinery, computer scientists when it comes to AI and controls, industrial engineers when it comes to falsifying lab reports, doctors when it comes to biology, etc. And if we focused on traditionally ME fields like heat transfer and combustion? We'd have to Hunger Games ourselves for that one position at the local power plant in ten years when the current engineer retires.

So, unless she is passionate about cars and air conditioning, why should we be trying to encourage our daughters into a major that doesn't earn money like finance, have prestige like computers, enjoy purity like the sciences, help people like medicine / social science, pretty like art / design, satisfy her natural affinity for children and cute stuff like education, or even remain stable like law. In some ways, ME is the Titanic after it was hit the iceberg, it's a "boy's club" not because men are trying to keep women out (every department across the land is actually doing just the opposite), but because the captain and his crew are stubbornly going down with the ship while the women and children are on lifeboats so they can live another day.
That's how internet works. One bug that happens once in a million cases and suddenly the service is no longer reliable and cannot be trusted.
Yeah I forgot about social expectations

http://www.npr.org/2014/11/22/365968465/after-backlash-compu...

Still I can't help but feel social prestige is still a stronger factor for females than males
I was just about to post this! Craftsman was the the thing that made me actually grok TDD.
Why Organs-On-a-chip Might Do Wonders for Medicine
That works well for customer-facing software, but I'm not so sure about the general case.

"I make a quality control system for a large factory" (people think about all sorts of boring things)

"I make payroll software" (people feign interest for a moment, then change the topic)
This wrong, if you think about it. Division of labour and using other peoples capital(Equipment).

1 hour of developer time, could be used to leverage 5 hours of cleaner time. And the cleaner would most likely be more efficient at cleaning than you requiring less time.

If division of labour didn't work, then the whole basis of trade is wrong. You might as well do everything yourself.
I think a good interview process would involve suggesting that the solution as given does not meet that interpretation of requirements, and asking the candidate to discuss/adjust, as you suggest. A poor process would fail the candidate outright without discussion or explanation.

You’ll notice, for example, that Christine asking him to try out his code while she reads out the moves doesn’t match the template she provided, either.

JM2C.
@raverbashing, One trade a day, maybe even less.
You clearly work in the web industry =)

perl does one thing hundred times better than (server-side) JavaScript: when you need to get data out of a server that you have no sudo privilege because your boss asked you to get stats on your trades ASAP.

This happens shockingly frequently in finance, and perl (and actually, awk) was the only scripting language that I could safely assume was installed.
Discourse 1.2 released
That would likely make operations on the default float slower than they need to be. After all, the CPU is probably implementing IEE 754: How do you handle it when a NaN bubbles up from below?
It's not consistent. Most of the markers I've looked at manually do not correspond with the buildings on which they are located.
Yeah, people forget that the operating systems that run the world are written in C/C++. C underlies everything.
It's best if you don't think of Dropbox as a backup service. People treat it that way (and I'm guilty of it too) but a file-sync provider is really a very different thing at heart.
Melting arctic
I have to agree. There's nothing you need Perl for, and nothing it specifically offers. Like if you want to do something in Wordpress you can only use PHP, no choice. If you want to code a Linux driver you have to use C. If you want nice features like awesome readability you choose Python. If you want awesome power you use some kind of Lisp or Haskell.

There is not a single (well known) reason for using Perl. Even if it's 10% better and faster than any other language without a unique selling point the cost of switching is just too high in most cases.
Our new Canon all-in-one will optionally run an AP, but it's off by default. I've seen roku APs before but I guess I just assumed they could be turned off or secured.
(1) It's not silent. The entire event was prompted by a crash and apparent shutdown corruption.
(2) It's not "occasional". It's one exceptional event reported by one user.
Apple is of course working on a car
And what should be the result of a divide by 0 in your magical totally ordered float type?
I don't love java. Not at all. All my out of work coding is in other languages - primarily clojure since I can make use of the java I write at work.

However, my company has a risk management system that was written in C++. It's a system of large matrix operations that uses a lot of CPU and memory. Being one of the few neck beards at my company who had ever written C++, I was tasked with translating it to java. In order to guarantee correctness, I slavishly maintained the algorithms, classes, etc. This allowed me to compare intermediate results at each step, but obviously didn't allow for any improvements I might otherwise have done. I was hoping for a runtime differential of 2x over the C++ version which would have been adequate for our needs. I paid no attention to runtime performance, though, since correctness was the prime goal - we're talking about real money in the balance. Once I was satisfied with the numbers, I ran some performance tests. I was shocked to find the jave version ran 40% faster than the C++ version. And this was prior to performance enhancements that I was able to put into the java version added largely by the huge ecosystem that has built up around java/JVM programming.

So, yes, I don't like java, but it's hard not to respect it. Obviously, one example doesn't end the debate about performance, but I'll admit to having been shocked at this result.
Have you tried Microsoft OneNote? http://www.onenote.com/

I can't believe no one's mentioned it yet in all these comments. I've been using it for 7 years and I've never lost data. The worst bug I've hit was the search feature has sometimes not reported every match across all notebooks correctly, but I haven't hit that since upgrading to the 2013 version. Everything's cloud persisted and cached locally, so if you're using it across multiple devices (I use it across phone, tablet, and 3 PCs) you should have plenty of redundancy. OneNote notebooks are single files, so you could map them to dropbox, but I've been happy enough keeping mine in OneDrive.

I use OneDrive because of its superior features over Evernote - fantastic outlining support (shared engine MSWord has been using for years), hierarchical organization (notebooks > tabs > pages > freeform sections), being able to embed arbitrary files, fast global search. Haven't used Evernote in a while though so maybe it's improved on these fronts.
Busy Parents ‘Uber’ Kids Around for a Carpool Alternative (2014)
> What does Perl do a hundred times better than the latest in the JavaScript universe (ES6, Meteor, node.js, etc.)? If it doesn't, that right there is your answer.

Well, for a start, it's relevant for more than 3 months.

Asking for doing something 100 times better is quite a mouthful, coming from a JS developer.
For More Parents, It’s Uber to the Rescue (2013)
I'd definitely suggest your two companies looking to home-brew check out Snowplow as well (https://github.com/snowplow/snowplow). If there's something they would need that isn't available out of the box yet in Snowplow let me know - details in profile!
Author reports that changes prior to app failure weren't synced (that is, the note isn't present at all in the web version). That either implies the sync functionality had failed long before this event (and worse, failed in a manner not apparent to the user) and that corrupting a local copy of a file somehow wipes out the synced cloud copy (which largely defeats the purpose of sync as a backup method).

This isn't a general failure of the application but it does indicate that the sync code is not robust and could result in data loss that, from the user's perspective, is catastrophic.
ECMAScript 6
That's cool. I haven't visited UGU (UNIX Guru Universe) for quite a while. Great site it was back then. Will check it again.
Dropbox is not a backup. Dropbox is a file sync service with some limited backup features. AFAIK it also hasn't actually ever reported profits, but it's well enough backed and dominant enough that it's unlikely to disappear.

What should happen in the case of missing a file deletion until beyond Dropbox's 30-day versioning windows is that you retrieve the file from your automated backups of at least one of the computers that Dropbox is syncing to.
I have some concerns about the tone of this article. First, no software is "bulletproof" - failures happen. Second, making one note with all your important life information creates a single point of failure. This is a bad idea. Third, Evernote came to the rescue with their tech support guys and actually recovered this document! Seems like they provide a valuable service.
That's identical to "<> programming", which gets a boost because python gets disambiguated.
Lea Verou: “AdBlock is morally equivalent to theft IMO”
University Paris 8 ditches Adobe
This is a cut and paste from Quora (as a Forbes contributor)

http://www.quora.com/Why-do-many-software-engineers-not-like...

It contains four pages from two contributors, the first from our own michaelochurch. So the functional bent and OO bashing is no surprise.
For coding type jobs, I have found that relevant personal projects can also help. In the last interview I did a couple years ago, we spent most of the time discussing a relevant one and that was a good thing. When they ask a question like "What do you know about X?" and you can answer "I made an X and this is how it worked" it puts you in a good place.
No, the so-called benefits boil down to the fact that, objectively, no professional Python programmer has ever considered more than 10 seconds a day fighting this, if ever.

This doesn't take the fact that if you consider it to be an aesthetic wart then there's not much that can be done about it. But it does suggest that perhaps you should recalibrate your aesthetic senses towards something that brings so much more to the table than what it might detract.

To give you an analogy, it's like Java programmers complaining that lambda syntax is "hard to undestand". Sure, if you don't put in a little effort to learn it or work with it might, but you're missing out.
Notes from YC Female Founders Conference 2015
Do you know what would really be magical? An on-demand service that provided a guarantee that all of the humans involved were beneficiaries of living wages, unemployment and workers comp protection, health insurance etc. I really enjoy the convenience these services provide, but ultimately that's all it is - convenience. To me, no convenience is worth watching an entire class of people get 1099-ed into poverty, at the expense of the social safety net that so many people struggled to establish.

When I discuss these issues with my peers (I live in the SF Bay Area), I find that many of them share my concerns, to varying degrees. Does anybody know if such a service exists?
I assume the traffic is generated in the form of ads from the people who are selling you the traffic? So you're sort of like an advertising company?
>Fun fact: ASCII actually reserved control characters for this stuff. 1F is the "unit separator" and 1E is the "record separator". There is even a "group separator" (1D) and a "file separator" (1C).

Which means you can't safely use it for arbitrary data (since your records themselves could contain these separators). Most of the time that doesn't matter; sometimes it does.
If you are storing important information anywhere, think twice
Show HN: Validate-asm – an asm.js validator/ linter for high performance JS
If you've got even a little bit of love to give to the world, bud, keep giving, keep living. In time, it comes back.

But don't just rely on Hacker News. Seek out others, in the flesh, face-to-face. Get some help. Don't try to feel okay by yourself. There's nothing wrong with feeling like shit. But there are a lot of people out there who've been through what you're going through and who want to help. Find someone objective to talk to -- a therapist, or a support group -- and keep coming back to them until you get to the bottom of what's going on.

As for me -- my girlfriend of many years is gone. I'm alone, working a job I don't like, living in a fairly expensive town with no friends who live close by. Believe me when I say that I've felt like calling it a done deal. I keep going because there are people out there who've invested in me and who care, because I have a dog who needs me to walk him every damned day, because I do have good people in my life, because I do have work to do even if I don't always like it, and because I've been alive long enough to know that, given time, the wheel turns 'round.

I won't tell you to cheer up. That's bullshit advice. I will tell you to dig deep, find something that matters to you, and stick around.
Evernote has lost important PDFs I've attached to notes multiple times.

Some would show up on my PC but be missing from my Mac and vice versa. If a note has many PDFs (10+) it's almost guaranteed to miss some on either of the two machines. I gave up on the idea of organizing books of receipts, taxes, etc. in Evernote, I just cannot trust it for anything more important than a grocery list.
I think a better indicator would be "Perl tutorial", since that might tell you how many new people are joining.
To be honest, i'm not too sure how trustable that data is, given the odd details like the regional interests and that sharp change in this graph: http://www.google.com/trends/explore#cat=0-5&q=JavaScript%2C...
> Most people have to get on with real jobs so can't devote the time to being the best guitar player in the world or whatever they would rather be.

If only they had enough money so they wouldn't have to worry about those pesky jobs ...