skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'd be interested in this, too. It is ridiculous the number of times I sat down with the feeling that there is nothing new to write, only to get up an hour or so later with my hand paining from having written / drawn continuously for pages and pages!

In fact, I am worried that OP, seemingly an accomplished hacker, will not heed my advice and try just typing or maybe OneNote. OP, I spent $2000 on a tablet PC with OneNote + pen to realize that it simply isn't even in the same league as good old writing.

manmukh, one reason this seems to the case is that writing is a slow-bandwidth activity, and forces the mind into what I call "walking mode", i.e., it is well-known that walking fosters creativity by putting one in this special floating / limbo state of mind where new thoughts and new connections arise naturally. Writing seems to provoke the same state of mind by being slow! It is as if the mind goes to take a walk while the hand finishes it's duty of serializing the last bunch of thoughts...:-)
27"! I never saw a monitor that large. I think 22" was the largest. Even TVs didn't go all that much larger than 27", particularly 4:3 ones.

And a Trinitron too! That must have been spitefully expensive to buy...
I think the MVP advice to startups is wrong. It is probably given by investors who would like to see many startups that fail fast and pick winners who survive the first round.

It should be MVP + metrics + quiet A/B testing and iteration for months before launch.
Oh - sorry then. Yes I did - much apologies.
Lol mysql.com was taken down?
thats hilarious
Why are you using the Reed College logo on your website? Your resume doesn't list any activity there. Watch out for legal issues.
Would you suggest they do that during or after trying to deal with said unexpected high load?
Fascinating idea, I would definitely read it. I think that design is often a term that is too readily equated with 'graphic' or 'product' design and dismissed as aesthetics. The reality is that we live in a human-designed world, and the idea that design doesn't have further-reaching implications than which phone you decide to buy is a great one to question. I look forward to reading it.
"Triumph des Willens" was released in 1935, two years after the Nazis grabbed power.
I've never been to this, and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want to go. (When I go to the desert, it's not to be around other people.) However, this whole authority-obedience-fashion-and-privilege episode seems somewhat counter to my previous media-driven impressions of the event.

If you want to do something fun in the wilderness with your friends, you don't need anyone's permission for that.
i think round 4 should have been the way to go from the beginning. a cart is not a sub-resource of the user. the user is just the auth-context for accessing the cart resource. it could be implicit and held by a cookie/session or token passed as a query param.

to get a specific other user's cart, you would query GET /users/<user_id>/carts and then a follow-up GET directly to the cart resource

regarding authorization, just pass a session token in the query string if you're against implicit headers/cookies.
The amount of reposts in the last few months is getting stupid.
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/guardian-ordered-...
> I think that the 'magic' people were simply not prepared for a runaway success.

But they were. Because they were using an invite-only signup to limit the amount of new users they can take in, they could make a reasonable assumption about how busy they could get at rush times.

Besides, the people on the other side aren't robots - at the very least they could've apologised for the late replies and explained about how busy they were. Because they're humans - or so the website claims - and that means they should show a bit of humanity and empathy and whatnot.

TBF I don't really think they hire actual humans, that just doesn't scale. Especially if 90% of their users just want to order food - reasonably predictable input, that.
Your Marketing Isn’t Working Because It’s Not a One Way Street
If done right, this could actually be a pretty brilliant indie game. The first level of the game is you just doing some sort of office-work-related puzzle. The second level of the game, which takes awhile to notice, is the plot unfolding in the background, as you overhear phone calls and conversations related to the emails coming into your inbox.

Think "Gone Home", but in an office.
Password protection for purchases in Google Play can be bypassed
My kids, 5 and 2, have really been into these weird toy unboxing videos recently. They're fine with me from a "ok for kids" point of view, though I don't see the attraction. Anyway, I just wonder if these type of videos will be available.

example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_e8CPuVepA
I disagree. They launched a beta to see if anyone would use it. If no one used it, then they could cut bait and move on.

But people did use it, enough that it caused them to be horrendously slow. This means they should put more money into making it bigger. If there are a few hundred "innovators" (in the Everett Rogers/Crossing the Chasm sense) who were so alienated by bad service during the beta that they will never ever use it again, even when it becomes a good service...well, that sucks but has no bearing on the ultimate success or failure of the service.

If you're going to beta test something, you have to expect it to have a few flaws. That's the point.
I realize that full curation probably isn't possible as this thing scales, but as a parent, this thing will live or die based on the content they allow into the stream.

I love watching videos of people building stuff with my kids. Moreover, I love watching the creativeness that some of the videos inspire in my kids. Unfortunately, to date, I have had to preview most of the content my children see on YouTube so that they don't either see a video review of something that's got the f-bomb every other word, or that the sidebar video recommendations don't bring up stuff that I really don't want my kid watching. And, to be clear, these are young kids.

In my mind, this is all about the content, the creators they allow into the system, and the curation of those two. I'd love to see an algorithmic way to accomplish some of this, but I expect on the front end, it'll require a lot of human filtering.
It's their obligation as owners to know what their portfolio companies are up to. When the big investors who supply capital to these funds ask questions, "We don't know what they are up to" is not a reasonable answer.
Node.js and Cassandra: Better Java to JavaScript Type Support
Browsers shouldn't be making the decision of who to trust or not trust. They should be presenting the information for the user to decide. If the user decides to trust the US government more, that is their choice. The browser should inform, but not make that decision for the user. The only thing the browser should be doing is making it as difficult as possible for that decision to be subverted.
First, they had an invite wall when I signed up. I was ~4000th in line, but they let me in anyway. This was their first mistake.

The bigger problem is that their service is just a simple middle man. They don't provide delivery services, they just choose which service to use. For the examples they gave (food delivery, grocery delivery, airline tickets), it's never going to be worth it to me to have them charge me an extra 25% to pick between the three services that will do that for me (Postmates, Instacart/Postmates, Hipmunk). What's more, SMS makes it more difficult to order. Postmates' interface is much better than trying to text an order in.

It's not that this is just an MVP. It's that this service really only takes away the decision of which other middle man to choose, and there's just not enough value there.
Couldn't agree more. OpenBSD is a great bsd for those that want to understand their system inside and out and feel confident that the code quality is there, but it's just not designed to be an ease of use, low barrier to entry, bsd.
You might not have said the words (and I never said you did, for the record) but you're giving the word "gun" an equal connotation as per your "kill" and "genocide" references. So, you say it's wrong. You say it's violent. That's your prerogative and you're entitled to it. You can dislike the name if you wish, but it's insulting to attack other people's choices of a product name when it doesn't violate any valid and widespread social moral constructs.

So now I'm the problem you say? Well, I could say the same exact thing about _you_. You're the type of person that will take the freedom to own firearms and the right to defend yourself from the people. Guns to me mean security and discipline. My life has been saved by myself or a person wielding a gun on multiple occasions (no deaths mind you), and I think that while the human race is littered with despicable human beings it's incredibly irresponsible for anyone to try to take away our right to defend ourselves.

I'm not dismissing your concerns, and I haven't down voted you either because even though we disagree wholeheartedly I find it's a valid discussion topic. I truly don't mind your criticism and can at some point respect it. What I don't respect is your super heightened moral compass and to a point denigrating a product and it's creator because it doesn't fly with what you believe, either morally and/or politically.
This is a social network for disabled people
What do you hope to achieve with your comment?
Consolekit may have had its issues, but it was init agnostic.

But then seat tracking on any platform where IO devices can come and go while in operation seems like a gnarly issue to say the least.
3D printers becoming viable healthcare tools
Oh come on. You got stats to back that up?

Anyway. Maybe it's going to serve North America?

Here, I drew (on) a fiber-optic cable map for you: http://imgur.com/yoEo9km (first time I've ever used imgur to make a point, heh)

Seems like this is the cable: http://www.siliconrepublic.com/comms/item/24814-us-300m-tran... - that'd be the Republic's `Taoiseach' (prime minister) grabbing a photo-op there.

Here's a news report from the Irish Times about the Apple investment, don't know if it has any additional news but anyhow...: http://www.irishtimes.com/business/apple-s-decision-to-build...
Relax, your kids are normal -- this is a well-known phenomenon amongst children born in the last decade:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/17/magazine/a-mothers-journey...
Because talented people don't care about politics, they care about achievements. They don't necessarily care about how their achievements are used. They just want something they can put their hands on and feel content when they make it work.

The most brilliant minds are often bored by the fact they can't find anything that challenge their skills. You give any problem to talent, talent won't care about the nature of it. Talent will be put to work.

And to be honest, maybe the work they do can be legitimate or might serve good in the end. It's just that you will never know about it, for the simple fact that it's classified.

For example, catching tax evasion or financial crimes is very hard. If you really want to catch those criminals (who have the worst effect on society), you might want to step up the spying game and scan everybody. Catching or discouraging terrorists is difficult too.

The issue is not that you scan everybody, the issue is that those spying tools can be used against inncocents or for the sake or private interests. So of course people will scream bloody murder, but if the NSA has a very well made policy to avoid misuse, and if you don't hear about any big scandal, maybe there's no big harm done.

All in all, civilization works in a hierarchy, and politics will lead people to do things. Moral standards are guidelines, they're not rules. Civilization works towards its perpetuation. I doubt those spying tools are used for private interests. I know freedom is important, but you can't escape the fact that information technologies can give new powers to criminals.

The question is, do you want civilization to be the norm, or would you prefer to have people taking advantage of civilization with the use of technology ? I know the US has a history of liberty, but when it comes to domestic telecommunications, I doubt any government will let people use gadget because it feels "free". You're not free when you use any device, any of those device requires telecom infrastructures, and thus it requires civilization.

In the light of dirty finance, I think I can be be okay with those spying program, because I really want those bad guys to be caught. On the other hand, citizens are both protected and housed by government, so I don't think kids can really complain about their parents peeking in their room.

Of course my cynicism doesn't excuse my arguments, but I like to understand the real reasons behind those programs, and children rarely realizes the real reasons the behavior of their parents.

Freedom in modern western countries requires a lot of regulation and very hard police work. Freedom has a very high cost.
Griffin is a family name. I've looked into it and that particular representation of a griffin predates Reed's use of it.
I loved Gentoo's package management system. I managed to break my system more with Gentoo than any other distro, but that wasn't the package manager's fault—mostly mine and/or package maintainers. I wish it'd gone as mainstream as dpkg and rpm—I prefer widely-used distros these days because I like being able to google any problem and find an answer (I'm well past the days where I found managing my OS to be anything resembling fun) but I miss Portage.

I miss OpenRC, for that matter. Using that is the only time I've felt something like contentment while managing init.
In addition to the legality issue, thanks to Tinder et al there is plenty of free exchange going on; lack of demand for paid sex is my guess.
> standard practice since forever

Within individual process trees, yes. Across all process trees via the init system, not so much.

I agree that it is a very useful thing to do and has been technically possible forever (since spawned processes need to have their inherited file handles over 2 intentionally closed), but it adds a bit of uncertainty and unnecessary coupling when it starts crossing the (admittedly arbitrary) process role boundary.

The benefit of faster startup time is negligible for the typical non-desktop.

> You also get socket activation, for free.

Socket activation has been available for many (10+) years via xinitd, but it is infrequently used for a variety of reasons. For one, it's slow. The time required to spin up a new process to handle the requested information is non-0, particularly in cases where socket activation is most likely to be used (shell scripts, Python/Ruby/Node applications). This is OK for services used only occasionally, but for any frequently used service it is usually unacceptable.

Plus, the overhead of keeping an occasionally-used service running in memory and listening to its own socket is typically pretty low, yet it provides the benefit of knowing exactly what is responding to a given socket.
Did GCHQ illegally spy on you? – Privacy International
Why'd you rely on a very beta web service being offered to the public for the very first time to do what you could have done in 2 minutes?

I didn't make an order, but I fail to see how you could have been surprised by this. They have no idea how much demand they were going to have at launch, and it's not a service that can scale easily.
We had no desire to gain any advantage in the line or 'game the system' in any way. We were simply curious how the line worked.
Samba's smbd forks subprocesses with the connected user's account, so I think this is done whenever possible.
Show HN: Encrypted Cloud file backup
Looks like a known issue: https://github.com/Swordfish90/cool-retro-term/issues/203

The Command key seems to act like the control key.
I couldn't agree more. As the co-founder of an app development company curently working on our flagship I have had a very similar experience. Although I wouldn't call myself an expert in the field it will impact (and I think some app/product/innovation ideas are going to potentially affect a field that you couldn't be an expert in without dedicating your life to it) I was surrounded by people involved in the field. I think the most important part of your article for me is being open to the idea that, with the current tools, a problem might not be fully solvable. Setting out to create something to fill a gap will just result in you imagining that a gap exists where it doesn't. Good product ideas come from the organic realisation that there is something missing from the market, and the best way to do that is to be open to the idea that apparent limitations could be the bounding box of what defines your product/app.
So what the hell do we buy now? HP's quality has hit rock bottom and is starting to dig, Lenovo is doing their best to destroy the Thinkpad brand, Asus is incapable of making a device without at least one fatal flaw... is Apple the only one making laptops that aren't garbage anymroe?
Show HN: Udacity API for Python (2 and 3)
Ha! Thank you for the link. I wasn't worried, I generally figure all kids do "weird" things. I guess I'm more worried they won't be able to see these videos on the Kids youtube, and thus the app won't help me protect them from weirder things they sometimes stumble onto.
The Double Irish is being phased out slowly. Here's a NY Times article: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/15/business/international/ire...

This got announced at the last government budget - I could not make any claims about the economic repercussions one way or the other.
That makes more sense. So to me, the headline reads as "Location can be tracked just by measuring battery usage" when in reality its "Location can be tracked if:
A) they know the tower you are speaking to
B) they have information on how buildings are constructed in this area
C) You move around
D) they have some other crowdsourced info about how much power is required to talk to the tower you are connected to."

I can see this "technique" being used in an episode of NCIS, CSI or similar cop show.
<plot> We need to find this guy, but all we have is his cell number.

Police tech #1 "Sure no problem, I will just connect to his phone and measure the battery drain..... Got him, he is Downtown at 5th and Main- lets go arrest him!!!"
</plot>
> If you work hard on something, people inevitably shit on it. It's human nature. And someone as talented as this creator is probably used to it by now.

This compliment is delivered like an engagement ring in a dog turd.
Indeed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9094791
Do you have a Chrome extension called something along the lines "Avast Online Security"?
Programmatically Specify characters spacing while adding Text in PDF files
These things are seriously blowing up! I've talked to so many parents who mention that their kids are hooked on these things. These kids just watch some random toy be unwrapped then hit the next suggested video for hours. I also hear stories about how then they beg their parents for the toy. They're just really long commercials.

My kids don't seem as interested but it might be they're a bit old for them now. I have noticed that they watch less and less Netflix and more and more weird cartoons on YouTube instead. I have to watch them closely.
Net neutrality and municipal broadband
Why are people from Microsoft looking into Linux (unix?) servers that try to emulate their services? One might think to cause reputation damage, but that sounds almost like a conspiracy theory to me... so then why do they do this effort?

Edit: and the downvotes are because..?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8399461
Protecting Your Smartphone from Government Spies Amid NSA SIM Hack
My son (3) became obsessed with watching these Kinder adverts, to the point where I had to delete the YouTube app and put him in cold turkey until he regained interest in the (brilliant) BBC CBeebies content.

If this app/service can strip out all of that crap I'd pay significantly more than I do for most apps. Easily.
Hmm, not sure it's an MVP - it lacks V.
Just nitpicking:

> Since this is the same electrical current that neurons use to communicate [...]

The neurons change the polarization of the membrane to transmit communication, but in an electric wire the electrons travel (very slowly). I think that they are very different, and I'm not sure if there is a net charge movement. But an electric current from a wire can stimulate a neuron and make it trigger pulse.
On PC, AdBlock works great on YouTube. If you're using a mobile app, yeah, I think you're SOL for now. I also would pay a monthly fee for an ad-free YouTube.
We want to make sure it's light enough to run on netbooks/travel computers.

We've got a Dell Venue 8 with an Atom processor lying around that we're using as a test device to make sure things still run well under CPU constraints.

We haven't looked too close yet at one-directory deployment or running off a USB stick, but I just added a sticky note to our backlog to see if we can do it cleanly.
Obviously preaching to the choir here, but it's good to see big companies, that could 'benefit' (when taking a very narrow view) from shaped net distribution, coming out in support of hardline net neutrality.
Yeah, it seems that that graphic is distinct from the Reed seal. Best of luck then.
Dropping a bomb on teenagers with a robotic airplane from a shipping container in Nevada is not combat.
Yep, to me, all the time.

Number one pet peeve - I can't disable mic auto-volume.

Number two - if you don't run Gnome, you're screwed having to resort to very complex, not-self-documenting command line tools to do the simplest of stuff. How do I change the volume of the box from the command line ?

Number 3 - everytime I plug my laptop's DisplayPort into a TV (used for presentations here), PA routes the audio automatically over the TV. But when I plug it out, the sounds happly continues into the depths of /dev/null, and I have yet to find a way to re-route it to my headphones without killing the PA daemon.

And I can continue. PA works ok only if you if you run Gnome, and you never plug in/out audio devices. It's a horrible software piece, but I'm stuck with it because it's not my priority to write audio daemon replacements.
Virtualized personal assistant services aren't really anything new. This one just had an interesting/novel/awesome (and probably unsustainable) approach to the onboarding, UX, and price model - instead of "hiring" a "virtual assistant" and doing a bunch of sign up forms and paperwork, you just punch an address and card and away you go.

As for why people want a personal assistant to shop for them when they could just use an app, think about it this way:

To get things (even online), I have to:

* Decide what *specifically* I want (brand, item, size, etc.)
* Decide where to get it from
* Obtain their website or app
* (often) Sign up for an account
* Enter a bunch of information to order what I want
* Follow up if it's late or wrong

With this service (or a hired personal assistant) I have to:

* Decide what type of thing I want
* Tell someone to make it happen

Also, I wouldn't call Instacart or Expedia's interface "perfected." Thanks to the way the industry works there's still not a single website where I can say "find me the cheapest flights from point A to point B in date range X" and have it actually do so. With Instacart, I can't just punch in a natural-language grocery list and say "get me decent quality options for each, but make the beef grass-fed please." I have to go through a huge array of brands and potential sources for each item and decide what to get.
They probably don't want to give away too much (like security details of their network), but I think it'd be more compelling with some examples of how to use this for Intrusion Detection.

It's a topic I don't know much about, and I think it'd reinforce the claim this isn't for user monitoring.
The 25 Richest People since the beginning of time