skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Great post. There's a classic LBL paper about self-synchronization in (I think) time protocols that demonstrates the same conclusion in a more dramatic way.
Show HN: A presentation tool using remark and websockets
In addition to supporting previews of AsciiDoc files, you’ll find that GitHub also does the “rendered prose diff” trick for commits and pull requests that include changes to AsciiDoc files.
My ex-girlfriend was just very nervous about saying "lie" because it's "bad". So "I'm just going to go lay down on the couch" because "I'm not lying!".

Which results in amusing scenarios in which people don't realize that e.g. this song is about sex:
https://play.google.com/music/preview/Txqbmvyo63hydudrvpj3gf...
Very cool project but I fear that this approach will only work for relatively simple glyphs that can be broken down into 3 sections (main, :before and :after) whereas Chinese characters, for example, may take up a few dozen strokes.
Google Chrome – Do Not Track Header Setting
I'm a major supporter of open allocation (I coined the term) as used by Valve and Github, but I'm skeptical of "flat" organizations. It's not that I dislike the idea. I don't think it's really possible.

One of the reasons (at least, in theory) why legible middle management is a good thing is that they don't have to compete with the managed for visibility and work. When you have emergent pseudo-managers (or managerial favorites) who are still technically the same rank but far more influential, they use their influence in competition with the other workers and do a lot of damage: it's not a fair competition, because they take the sexy work and delegate the crap. Most Valley startups tell every engineer that he's reporting to the CTO... but then they get there, and there are 57 people nominally reporting to that CTO, which means that they actually report to the people who have the CTO's ear (and that changes over time).

I like the idea of a flat organization, but I think what you actually need is constitutional management. You need a strong set of principles ("employees are trusted to allocate their time to anything that provides business value", i.e. open allocation) and then you need official and legible managers who are accountable for enforcing them. It's better to know who is in power, so you can hold them accountable and remove them from power if they fail, than have a "flat organization" where power disparities still exist but are subtle. You need checks and balances, you need laws and you need cops but the cops shouldn't be making laws on a whim.

In other words, the optimal point is somewhere between the demarchy of the "flat organization" and the executive dictatorship of the traditional corporation.

Flat organizations, in general, make it harder to define accountability. Look at the case of Ellen Pao, for example. Venture capital partnerships are flatter than traditional corporate hierarchies and rarely have HR departments with any power over the partner level, but are still afflicted by infighting and retaliation. Pao's case is one where (a) she was clearly wronged, but (b) her legal case appears pretty weak (or, at least, lives in undefined territory). It's obvious that a creepy ex-boyfriend (or, more accurately, ex-few-night-stand) took vindictive and inappropriate steps to ruin the internal reputation of a talented female venture capitalist, and that this prevented her from having a successful career at KP. It's unclear whether the firm or its upper management is legally responsible. He was engaging in retaliation, but upper management wasn't; they were denying her promotion based on (faulty, maliciously provided) information about her performance, not her gender. It's unclear who is responsible; clearly, the man in question (since then, fired) is, but he probably doesn't have the money to make her whole. So should Kleiner itself be held responsible? That's really hard to answer. That's a problem with flat organizations in general; they still have politics and they still have good people ending up with bad reputations and vice versa, but the lines responsibility and accountability are less clearly drawn.
Screencast - https://vimeo.com/121222631
I think a great comparison would be between the British tv show "Scrapheap Challenge", and "real world" engineering.

In the show, teams have to compete, over a period of 3 days, to build specific vehicles (e.g. amphibious cars, remote control tanks, light aircraft) out of what they can find in a (well stocked) scrapheap. The vehicles are invariably unsafe, hastily put together, and look you think they'd look after being made out of scrap. Generally however, each vehicle actually performs the task its made for.

If you took any one of the competitors on scrapheap challenge, and dropped them into (say) Lockheed-Martin, they'd undoubtably flounder (at least initially). The skills required to hack together an aeroplane in 3 days, are entirely different from the set of skills required to design an f22.
If you are not producing any academic output, are not producing any commercial output, and are not even producing any patents, all you are producing is high-level handwavy talks, how do you distinguish that from a charlatan?

Ideas in a vacuum are not worth much. I have some random ideas for systems that I think would work better than current systems that people use all the time; stuff I would like to get to some time to develop into something real. However, without actually either rigorously formalizing those ideas and having them reviewed against the current literature, or producing a shipping implementation that demonstrates their feasibility empirically, they're pretty much worth the cost of the paper they are (not) written on.
Not a word about encryption?
I do agree that this is some what of "babu" type mentality but there have to be fundamental changes in the structure/process of computer usage in India. For example, the security measures that can be taken by RBI can easily be worked around as most people go to CyberCafe's to use computers. Not many people own computers. The people running the said CyberCafe's have little to no awareness of what is going on in there. It's not very hard to bypass the anti-virus to insert keyloggers.

To make matters worse, some people simply go to the cybercafe owner and have him fill out all the forms and information as they do not know English. I have also seen one couple giving their CC information to the owner and the owner purchased something via Flipkart.
Yeah, but as Vihart pointed out, Pi = a half rotation, so Pi day is in June. :-)
The Clarity Lab group reuses mature open source libraries for speech recognition, computer vision AND question answering.

They link these into a whole using what appears to be a minimal amount of glue and then proceed to optimize certain components by trying out to make a multithread (hence CPU multicore) or a GPU port for bottlenecks.

In my opinion, a major contribution is a GPU-optimized Machine Learning thingamajig (GMM) that's plugged back into a well known frequently used speech recognition library (Sphinx).

Superficially, one would expect a publication to some AI, ML or Robotics workshop/conference/journal. However, if you spend time digging through the source code you will see that there is zero contribution in these areas. Hence their first publication is to what appears to me to a be a systems research publication. The conclusion of their paper talks about total cost of ownership in datacenters by using GPUs etc.

The amount of marketing and vague biz-dev type speak almost made me discard this whole site as BS, but now I see that if nothing else, they've given away a GPU accelerated ASR library under a BSD license. Cool work, dudes and dudettes.
My dentist is B! She works ~20 hours a week and devotes the rest of her time to parenting. She has an office with two tech rooms and two operating rooms. She went to a good school and seems to do a good job imo. I could care less that she doesn't work frequently. The one pain point is that she does outsource less routine procedures to an oral surgeon (this has affected me once), but her prices are unbeatably low for the area. Were dentists really the best you could come up with? Isn't it one of the most routine professions ever?
Actually they are both the same company:

https://startpage.com/eng/company.html (also look at the logo here)

https://www.ixquick.de/eng/company.html

And both introducing new redesign
Potential to make money. I don't make any serious projects on my own time unless there is a way to monetize them.
Jspm – load JavaScript packages written in any format (ES6, AMD, CommonJS)
You have the additional requirement that you change one character at a time, and end up building a graph of neighbors and doing BFS on it.
Yeah, that's do able. You need to find basically 1 client and hope they're pretty decent. Try services like toptal.com, grouptalent.com etc. The high end type ones are best: search HN for more of them. Tell them your time commitment.

Alternatively look on craigslist.

Make sure you have a good portfolio before you start looking: build some stuff to show off.
>Anyone in the west can easily be idle and afford an OK standard of living.

How?
The importance of user interface, illustrated by the Go flag package
Aliexpress: I was able to do it via my Visa debit card.
There are lots of good reasons to worry about the ability of standard statistical tools to predict the future in the non-linear world of the social sciences.

This article fails to hit its target, though. John Gray mentions other kinds of violence - incarceration, civilian casualties. But he offers no evidence that these are going to be so negatively correlated with casualties in war as to overturn Steven Pinker's thesis. He also talks about proxy wars, but these are included in the war statistics, no?

An actual attack on Pinker's evidence would require getting your hands dirty in the numbers. Instead we get handwavy complaints about the murkiness of official statistics and the opacity of numbers. It's true they are murky, but they are less murky than intuition and anecdotes.
Lenovo t450s
What danger is finder saving a user from that other file managers aren't?

Accidentally deleting a file by pressing a single key

But please don't ask me not to think that making the most used file browser operation to be multi-key shortcut isn't beyond insane.

What do you think is more likely: that other people have different trade-offs and are perfectly happy with the way things are or that they are all beyond insane?

This is exactly the thing that I hate most about this ... 'you are holding it wrong' is the kind of feedback I get from most OSX users.

Some things can be objectively measured, others can't. The funny thing about the 'you are holding it wrong' comment is the absurdity of thinking that there is a right way to hold it. There isn't (or there shouldn't be).
Well you build your site, don't you have backdoor ?
Real World Development Indicators, Version 2.0
Arrested DevOps Podcast: There's Always DevOps in the Banana Stand
Hi Dave! I didn't realize the PlayCanvas engine was standalone like Three.js, I somehow assumed it was linked with the online editing tools you built. Good news! Really impressed with your physically-based shading support by the way.

We went with Three.js because it's pretty versatile and does everything we need in the near future. Superpowers is built in 3 layers: the core (which handles projects, storage and networking), the system (which is basically Three.js + game instance/actors/components) and all the editor & asset plugins built upon the system. The system can be swapped out with something else, and a new set of plugins can be built on top of it, or the existing plugins adapted for a new engine, so the community will totally be able experiment with other engines including PlayCanvas!

We spent a lot of time designing the Superpowers platform so that this would be possible :). In fact, Superpowers could even be used to make movies or write novels collaboratively, with the appropriate system and set of plugins.
Hey, I saw craftstudio (your previous product before), and I fairly liked the way you could create models there. Is that the case with superpowers aswell, or are we limited to modelling using 3rd party tools?

Any plans for shaders?
They don't accept debit cards anymore.
The best part about Pinker's book is he actually uses data to backup his thesis. Gray is just rambling and appealing to emotion.
There are lots of quick attack vectors through USB devices, firewire, and other bus systems.
“Under the Dome”: documentary about pollution that scares the Chinese government
The menu looks a little goofy, but overall the experience of reading the links is now far better on my iPhone 6.
The next proper Pi Day is in a bit over a thousand years, on 3141-5-9.

Of course, if you think that's a bit long to wait for, the one after that is 28000 years afterwards, on 31415-9-6. I'm looking forward to it!
Could still be much better, but looking forward to not accidentally fat fingering the comments link all the time.

I'd be happy to help improve, even working within the constraints of not changing any of the underlying markup. Feel free to message me.

Also what's with the '.rotate180' CSS class in the stylesheet, as much as I love reading upside down, I can't see why thats needed?
This. I favor net neutrality, but I think much of the "moral outrage" comes from a combination of paternalism, self-serving attitudes and petty, pampered middle class arrogance and not a discerning realism. Vacuous and self-righteous sloganeering do not impress me. Luxuries are not a given.

The question that should be asked (which you bring up) from the position of those who receive the service: does it help or hurt them in the here-and-now? Are they better or worse off, on the whole, than they would have been without the service? I also presume this service is being offered in a relatively free market.
Well, we did ask for a mobile version, but not like this!
9984894172
What do you think about Toptal? http://www.toptal.com/

I have a few startup acquaintances that are bootstrapping their startup mostly by churning out decent quality PHP for $30/hr .

They could aim for higher paying tasks, but then the level of challenge would probably interfere with working on their startup.
No! Don't, please! It's sooooo much better on my phone now. I used to have to zoom in and put and scroll all over. Text is wrapping now, so maybe some aesthetics are lost, but usability is 100% better.

Also, this thread is going to get voted way up because the title just says HN: Mobile Site. But not necessarily because the op doesn't like it.
Any alternative for Windows users?
RemoteDebug and cross-browser DevTools: One year later
>We're talking about a conspiracy to hire people for no other reason than to keep them busy so they don't revolt.

No, we're talking about hiring people for this reason, among others.

>This is laughably absurd. What do I, as a company owner, gain by adhering to this conspiracy?

You mean a share holder? Nothing. You seem to be laughably under the impression that the company is run for your personal benefit. It isn't.

>What I lose is obvious: huge waste on salaries for jobs that accomplish nothing.

You explain why companies hire based upon headcount instead of pure cost. It doesn't make intrinsic sense, but that's how it happens.

>This conspiracy does not pass the economics sniff test: it purports a huge artificial externality with no apparent free-riding.

Congratulations, you just assumed away the principal-agent dilemma.
The rejection rate was for non-penn applicants. Any Penn student who wants to can attend.
What's the target group of Markdown editors with preview?

I love Markdown and use it a lot, but do people really wonder what their headers and bullet lists are going to look like?
What cloud storage provider do you prefer or are you rolling your own infrastructure?
GCHQ Builds a Raspberry Pi Cluster
Hey kamac! Right now we don't have a cubic model editor plugin but it's something I'd love to add back from CraftStudio (or to see the community contribute) because it's so easy to make things with, either for prototyping or just to make blocky games :D.

I've also been toying with the idea of making a "Superpowers Minecraft modding edition" when Minecraft 1.9 comes out with an actual 3D model + skeletal animation format (everything has been hardcoded until now), so that could go hand-in-hand.

EDIT: Missed your question about shaders. We do plan to have a material editor and postprocessing shaders!
Steering a Driving Android Phone Over the Web via Speech Recognition
This article is a bit over the top and has a lot of non-sequitors, but the statistical critique of Pinker's book by Nassim Taleb the author linked to is excellent: http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/pinker.pdf
The US system of authenticating the transaction vs the card/user seems to work pretty well. The US rapidly adopted online commerce and payment. Consumers, overall, have nothing to worry about. Since the merchants and banks are responsible for fraud on credit cards, they seem to be a bit more on to of things.

N=1, but with Wells Fargo, my credit card gets blocked now and then due to suspected fraud. Once it was due to a cloned card being used. Bit of an annoyance getting a new card (they're no Amex, who'd always overnight me a card, no matter where I was), but otherwise I had zero financial worry. Compare to my debit card. Not one have I even revived a warning about it, let alone a block. Even when I gave it to someone to use and take cash out on in another country.

EU and others seem to be rushing to implement strong auth, but as a consumer, screw that. Use machine learning and law enforcement to deal with it and let my experiences be unencumbered. Spending 2 minutes to authorize merchants seems like a large annoyance.
Take a drive through any low income urban area or trailer park. Huge numbers of people who don't work. They milk welfare and so forth. The only reason these areas seem to afford a lousy standard of living is because your neighbors would be violent morons. The problem isn't lack of resources. There are large hasidic communities of unemployed people who mostly milk benefits and they have built rather nice neighborhoods.
Pretty sure they were thinking about implementing AI. You'll often see computer scientists running roughshod over engineering best practices for the simple reason that they aren't engineers. And you know what? That's okay!
Except Pinker's data is problematic, cherry picked in a way to support his thesis. For example casualties in the Afghanistan war were not counted because it was labelled as a civil war. He also defines "less violent" as relative to the size of the world population which is at least debatable.
I like having a markdown preview available for the following reasons:
* I can quickly tell if I screwed up my whitespace
* I can experiment with features I'm unsure about (images with links)

I like having a markdown preview available for the following reasons:
* I can quickly tell if I screwed up my whitespace
* I can experiment with features I'm unsure about (images with links)
I am one of the founders of Hack the North (in Waterloo). We completely agree. In fact, last year we didn't offer any top prizes. Instead, there was a "top 10" which got to present their hacks to everybody. This kept the event fun, and not competitive.
Folks who use WordPress or other CMS, and want to (or are forced to) move to statically generated sites?
You can also checkout http://dillinger.io/ for a web-based Markdown editor
I know myself and a large group of students constantly avoid going to hackathons because it teaches you to:

(1) Focus on short sighted goals

(2) reinforce "hacks" as opposed to well engineered code

(3) Not build long lasting projects

I spend 6 - 12 hours a day coding everyday (weekends and all), and I produce (in my opinion) really cool stuff. Producing a quality, bug free, code requires a program to be dynamic, and usually takes weeks to months to code properly. My goal is always to implement a new function every day, one 25 line max function. I actually learn more being consistent, as opposed to being exhausted and hardcoding an address.

I actually (sorry) hate working with the hackathon types, some can code really well in a pinch, but in the end they usually are not reliable and bugs usually go uncorrected. There was a post yesterday about the final 10% of a program being left incomplete, and that's where I feel hackathon types have a tendencies to leave.
Look into the details, it is perfectly reasonable to protect the customer. I started complaining myself when I found it was so difficult here.

I see RBI Governor is competitive and responsible enough (and better than many other developed-country's central-bank governors)

As far as Uber's case goes - they used a work-around to bypass the restriction. It is unethical and illegal to do so. Many other Indian startups are also trying to do the same - and they must stop working around RBI rules.
Bluesmart, the smart luggage startup, announced a partnership with Uber
The author links to a much better critique of Pinker by Nassim Taleb. The basic idea is that Pinker uses data about very thin-tailed processes, like street crime, to make inferences about very fat-tailed processes, like casualties in war.
> He also talks about proxy wars, but these are included in the war statistics, no?

Not in the statistics he used where casualties in civil wars are not counted. Afghanistan war casualties, for example, were not counted.

That said I don't think this critique is very good, Herman's is much better.
Looks much better on my Nexus 4 (Android 5.0) running Firefox. The font size is as perfect as I could want--any smaller would be troublesome--and the consistent size is especially appreciated. Thanks!

However, the left and right margins on the main and Newest pages are too wide in portrait mode. They look okay in landscape, but could be narrower. I would suggest just using the browser defaults.

Thanks for all your efforts!
http://markdownpad.com/
I feel like my mother did something similar on my brother and I minus the experience points.

She would write out all of our chores as well as the fun things we would like to do that day. We would then try to complete chores quickly in order to get to the fun things we chose. From what I remember, we would even race to see who could get a better time at emptying all of the trash cans in the house and things like that.

We also had autonomy in which chores to complete first but she would be sure to explain to us that if we did all of our fun things first, we would then have a huge block of chores which would not be fun.
Mitmproxy 0.11.3 – Client playback: a 30 second example
I don't use facebook and I block their social media buttons. I have less control over friends of mine posting pictures of me on facebook or the fact that facebook is able to read SMS send to peoples phones that have their App installed.

I'm fully aware that people don't care about privacy and abusive corporate practices, which is why it falls on the shoulders of the few that do care to come up with compelling alternatives, that respect users privacy. As you mention those alternatives would probably not be profitable (because you can't rely on ads). If they came in the form of new protocols (just like Email or SMS) and free software to implement those protocols it wouldn't matter as much.