skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> More than anything, I think that it resoundingly demonstrates that as a person, you can make a difference, even if you are not rich, powerful, or well-connected politically.

Yes, you just need to be naive enough. The resulting law only allows €1 charges for people under 35 and it does nothing about the other expenses that stifle small businesses:

- the payment of anticipated VAT for the next fiscal year as estimated by the government based on this year's ledger

- the market studies that establish the average income of a similar business in your field and then taxes you according to this hypothetical income if your documented one is bellow average

- certain taxes that have a fixed minimum forcing you to reach a certain income immediately or dig yourself deeper into debt

- an aversion towards bankruptcy - you are usually guilty of fraud until proven otherwise and the legal process is long and costly

- insane fiscal policies like the one forcing retail shops to only have large price reductions 2 months per year, at the season's end, after communicating it to the local authorities and only being allowed to charge bellow the acquisition price in certain conditions, as to maximize the state's return (they reason that reducing the price also reduces the taxes)

While small timers have to deal will all this, big businesses get public money in order to "save the jobs" or protect strategic industries, they get to use the government's resources to secure deals abroad and they get to negotiate with the revenue service when they are caught red handed.

The signs are clear: become an employee or pay the price of your foolishness. You can't fix the system. At most you can provide some PR material for one politician or another and write a self-congratulatory blog post about it.
Latest changes on popular Web APIs
I saw this gist a few days ago:

https://gist.github.com/ImJasonH/c00cdd7aece6945fb8ea

Not sure how less (or more) thorough it is.
The most interesting thing about Sudbury schools to me is not about finding better techniques for teaching but as a sort of control to test the question "Are current educational techniques better than letting the kids do whatever they want?"

If traditional schools were effective, one would expect significant evidence of this when compared to Sudbury schools. That evidence clearly does not exist.
Shane, can you qualify / document what you mean by "By default, Cassandra writes are not durable"? Thanks.
I care about single threadedness and evented paradigm to provide guarantees and simplify my reasoning about things. I know that if I call a function, it will return synchronously, but not necessarily with a callback. I know that my objects won't be clobbered by other threads, etc.
I didn't have any problem with Vista either and I feel your pain, most people I speak with seems to love to hate Vista.

I also have a similar feeling when somebody tells me that Windows 8 was only good for touch devices (I enjoyed it in a HP 8710w and didn't miss the touchscreen at all)
Timing of this article is interesting: Yesterday I watched the prescreening of "The Water Diviner". It is the story of an Australian father looking for his 3 sons killed during the Gallipoli Campaign in Turkey in 1915. As the father of a young son, his story resonated with me.

Young men might have an excuse, but we, older men, should know better. Even when we didn't live through a war, we should be smart enough to understand its realities, its destructive power, its cruelty. We must stop wars before they start. None of it is worth a young man's life.

We should teach our children how ugly weapons are and how valuable life is.
I'm 99% sure that's not the default and you've turned on some option to notify everything.

Otherwise there'd be no point of @all and @here if you were going to be notified anyways.
Very Relevant: http://www.crypto.com/papers/export.txt

(current Penn professor Matt Blaze's mid-90s account of registering as an arms dealer with US Customs to transport an encrypted telephone to Europe)
I chose not to look through the archive... thus to me, you are the one who violated Sony employees privacy.

If the front door is unlocked and you walk in, you still chose to walk in.
In NYC, bike ridership is probably increasing at the expense of subway and bus ridership rather than car commutes (which almost nobody who lives within biking distance of their job does around here unless their job requires an automobile).
I said nothing about monarch's being 'fine people'. I just don't think it's obvious that their minds would be more 'warped' than a person chosen from the general population. I was simply asking for some explanation of this, rather than letting the assumption stand on its own.
Cheap synopsis: MRA tries to make make a cogent case without the overt whining, misogyny, bigotry. Still a privileged rant. Author may be feeling strident in the wake of Rolling Stone's retractions and recriminations.
Hey HN!

I'm hoping for some brutally honest feedback and advice from one of my favorite communities.

Happy to share any background information with anyone who's interested, either about the company or myself as a founder.

Thanks in Advance
Fearing death is utterly irrational.

One simply transitions from being to non-being. In a state of non-being one cannot worry, influence, toil, think, experience, or suffer.

I look at death very straightforwardly: it is irrelevant to me. I will never experience death. I will therefore, from my perspective, never die. My experiences are bounded by my being and non-being, and self-referentially we are each immortal within the bounds of our own experience.

I may one day experience the act of dying, but one does not know one is dying unless one is terminally ill. More often than not one simply either goes to sleep and does not wake, or one goes "gosh, what's that thing that's about to hit my head?".

Of course one might worry for those one leaves behind - but in most cases, this does the living a disservice, as to think one essential in the life of another is egoistic at best, and controlling and damaging at worst.

Hare today, goon tomorrow, and the world will keep turning.
The startling thing about this for me is seeing the "ch" CSS length unit. I've never seen it before!

For others in the same boat, 1ch is the width of the zero character '0'.
Miniscule ATM fees, and wherever there's a network connection, there's an ATM.

Maybe someday, smart contracts (but AFAIK today they are only used for toys).
My interview in 2003 was mostly legit, though one senior manager's 30-minute segment was all BS of exactly this nature. (His initials were GJ and in the four and a half years I worked there, I discovered he was the closest real-world embodiment of the Dilbert pointy-haired boss I've ever encountered)

The most memorable part was:

GJ: Name three examples of defensive programming.

Me: I'm sorry, I'm not familiar with the term; could you define it?

GJ: You know, defensive programming.

Me: I've not heard the term, but maybe I know it by a different name; could you describe it?

GJ: No, let's move on.

Later, I looked it up. He just meant things like `if (p == NULL) return False;`. I knew the concept well, and could've spoken about it intelligently and effortlessly, except I had never heard that particular name for it.

Oh, I just remembered another exchange between us:

GJ: What's the difference between a segmentation fault and a bus error?

Me: [perfect explanation]

GJ, seeming disappointed that he hadn't stumped me: Oh, someone already asked you this, huh?

Me: No, I know this, because once when I was in college--

GJ: Come on, you looked this up before, didn't you?

I wasn't sure how to respond -- I mean, yes, technically I did look it up, once upon a time. How the hell else would I know, derivation from basic axioms?

Anyway, I got the job, but I wouldn't be surprised if this other person was interviewed by the same guy and it left a bad taste in their mouth, too. As a senior manager, he probably
interviewed 500 candidates a year.
DEA Is Seizing Cash Without Warrants in Its Version of Stop-And-Frisk
Couchapps: How to Write a Secure App Using CouchDB as a 3-Tier Single Server
> I assume Uber's business model doesn't rely on contractors tax-dodging or skimping on vehicle maintenance!

Umm. That is a bad assumption. Uber's business model depends on foisting liability to anyone but themselves while simultaneously dodging the regulatory constraints on taxi drivers. So while its not specifically dependent on their contractors tax dodging, making that behavior easier leads to a lower cost of labor so the incentives are aligned all wrong. Basically, Uber doesn't perform any kind of reasonable verification beyond a figleaf on anything and hopes contractors won't cheat in a way that reflects badly on Uber.

This leads to situations like this:

http://www.chron.com/news/transportation/article/How-Uber-dr...

> The city of Houston's criminal background checks have detected numerous crimes by prospective Uber drivers, ranging from aggravated robbery to driving on a suspended license, according to a report prepared for a Texas House legislative hearing Thursday.

> In information prepared for the legislative hearing Thursday, Houston officials said Uber's background checks have problems; Wyoming, for example, is omitted from its search.

> Because Uber's check, done by a company called Hirease, is based on Social Security numbers rather than fingerprints, it can be more easily manipulated, the city says.

Their entire business model depends on their ability to avoid doing things properly. If it didn't, they wouldn't be intentionally endangering their passengers by cutting corners on things like background checks.
It was already published, then taken down. The Sony attackers already had the opportunity to exploit it for any nefarious purposes they intended.

The damage is done. All Wikileaks is doing is making it available, with the intent that journalists will peruse it.

I don't agree with releasing these emails, I certainly wouldn't want my private correspondence published or intercepted. But in this case blaming Wikileaks is erroneous.
>Note that there is also a due process for whistleblowing; there are Inspectors General whose entire professional careers are based on handling allegations of misconduct.

Yeah, because it would have worked great for them, and the public would have learned the facts if they used those procedures...
Yes magic is one thing that makes it difficult to get into a language and to maintain code written in that language, where of course maintaining can mean going back to code you wrote last month.

One of my pet hates in C++ was implicit casting and I'm hearing that Scala does similar, which is putting me off it.
The problem with the Bitcoin "ecosystem" is simply that the people in that ecosystem are the same people who have been attracted to Bitcoin: speculators, opportunists, and wide-eyed idiots.

The biggest problem of Bitcoin is that the problem it solves is not the problem fiat currencies need solving. Bitcoin has no real competitive advantage over traditional currencies, and many drawbacks.
You really want a lot of type annotation anyway. They make error messages a lot more informative.

Scala is, by definition, a superset of Java. It's not ideal, but there aren't really any good alternatives.
> NASA's Asteroid Watch has assured there is no chance this asteroid will hit our planet
Didn't see my favorite on the list: creating the bool 2. I believe there are a couple of methods in the JDK that do

if (dangerousFlag == true) doCheck();
...
foo(dangerousFlag ? bar : baz);
>I am sure the leaks of the Sony documents will reveal the nasty side of Hollywood (which are well known, Hollywood made hundreds of movies on that topic!), but how is that a matter of public interest?

So that Taylor Swift has a new boyfriend is somehow "a matter of public interest" judging from the tons of classic and new media that report such BS, but the "nasty side" of a huge industry that caters to billions of people is not?
This startup has failed. Say it a few times. Take a deep breath. It's okay.

Now move on.

1) Get a regular job, take a year "off" from startups and just recover your sanity. It takes a long time to process the various emotions that come from this kind of intense failure. I've found a year is good for me. For some people it can be shorter, for others longer. Some people never get over it.

2) After that time, start working on new ideas.

3) If any of them look good, try again. If not, you at least have a job.

Money is the #1 problem in relationships, but what if you're the only one in the relationship? It's even worse, because then you're just fighting with yourself, and no matter the outcome, you'll lose.

Bonus for getting a new job? Almost nothing you'll encounter as an employee of an established business will come close to the stress of your startup failing. This will give you a different perspective about the workplace.
Apple simply isn't doing the research, at all. You can see the results in things like Swift (and Swift's insane bugginess).
> Another explanation is the country’s deeply felt Buddhist beliefs, especially that of reincarnation. If you know you’ll get another shot at life, you’re less likely to fear the end of this particular one.

This is a common oversimplification of reincarnation. I had the opportunity to study with a Buddhist scholar in India a year ago who corrected a lot of my misconceptions. Reincarnation is neither reward nor punishment. It's a long cycle with the end goal not being immortality but escape (or exit) from the cycle through moksha[1]. A possibly more accurate oversimplification is "do good, increase karma until you win the game, and stop being reincarnated."

If there's any link between belief or interaction with death and happiness, it's most likely due to simply increasing daily gratitude[2] which does have scientific benefit.

I'm headed to Bhutan in a month and will report back if I learn anything interesting on this topic.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moksha

[2] http://www.health.harvard.edu/healthbeat/giving-thanks-can-m...
I checked both of you in at the registration desk at Better Software. Yay, I got my share of celebrity now :)
I agree with you. I think part of the risk is suspending what you think is right and accept what is in front of you and the possibility that it will work.

It was really the sinking realization that this is truly not going to happen that led me to personally pivot. As of today, it is still not happening. ;)
I've been through divorce in Texas. I know how sexist the system can be towards men. But I have looked into the issues and the politics, and it's clear that feminist policies would have served me much better than sexist ones.

Author's premise that feminism is a propagandistic response to actual sexism faced by men is offensive to all my experience with the facts and the people involved. Thus my conclusion is, this tries to be a high-minded sounding article but it is a hit piece.
Google Chrome Just Killed Unity Web Player
Post it under Show HN, might be better.
>Sometimes stepping through is faster than adding in trace temporarily.

Using trace? ...

Real programmers use print statements...
I am confused. Is "Start" always a 1? Then how can the first chord change also be a 1?
Star Wars' new robot BB-8 on the stage
WOOZ – HTML5 Applications Framework
>"They seem to be paralysed from the inside."

I agree with your assessment but I think it's more than a leadership issue, AMD is in a financial hole in a market where billion dollar investments are needed just to maintain your market position. They don't have the capital needed to maintain relevancy in their primary market (x86 chips) and they definitely don't have the capital needed to gain a strong foothold in the rapidly maturing ARM market.

Their window of opportunity has passed as long as Intel maintains the non-transferable nature of their x86 license. Their downfall was their insistence on pushing out Bulldozer despite the fundamental flaws in its concept. They spent ~5 years pursuing that architecture as their main path for R&D, wasting massive amounts of money in the process. If AMD had scrapped Bulldozer when they first knew it would miss their performance target they would have been able to pursue one of the many suggested alternative routes for the future. IMO, the best suggestions would have been ARM or low power APUs when the original Atoms were the only option and terribly slow.
>Plenty of cars have been made without a three-point seat-belt

And? Who said it's that better? How many died or didn't die anyway?
Lucasfilm Responds to 7-Year-Old’s Request to Let Jedi Marry
"International text input: in OS X, out of the box, é is opt+e, "

In Windows too, English International uses the same key layout and activates the additional keystrokes for accents and non english characters (i.e Alt+e is é, or Alt+n for ñ)
Vijucat's comment (top comment) on this article really reworked my own perspective. I think it's probably the most inspiring comment I've read on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9337863
That's really not compelling enough to learn the differences & break backward compatibility imho
Would you play Russian roulette for ten dollars?

If not, what is it that stops you, and why is it irrational for that same reason to make people not want to die of other causes?
You get to feel good about reducing your co2 footprint too. Top of the list for many people.

(This goes even if you switch from public transit)
Machine Learning toolbox for Humans
> I assume Uber's business model doesn't rely on contractors tax-dodging or skimping on vehicle maintenance!

I'm not sure that's a good assumption.

Nobody is valuing taxi companies at $40b. Part of why they're so appealing from an investment perspective is that Uber's model is a heads-I-win-tails-you-lose proposition. Any time money gets made, Uber gets a big cut. Costs and most downside risks are transferred to the drivers.

That includes risks that the capital costs (that is, buying the cars) and the maintenance costs aren't really justified by the revenues. It also includes the risk that there are too many drivers available.

If I were in Uber's shoes, I would worry about the defensibility of the business model. At least here in SF, drivers often participate in multiple services. For consumers, switching is as easy as installing a new app. If Uber is consistently more expensive, then I could imagine a lot of people switching. One way to keep costs low is to screw the workers as much as possible, and pretending that employees are contractors is a pretty popular way of screwing workers.
Strange as I was just debugging my go code. http://postimg.org/image/prgj1qjzn/

Care to explain me how I'm debugging some la,guage that has no debugger?
Test Drive: Real-Time Prediction in Java with Amazon Machine Learning
No it's to do with how the main BBC and the international BBC are funded. The BBC in the UK has to be non-commercial, it's funded by TV license, and BBC Worldwide is commercially funded, so showing BBC Worldwide content in the UK would probably contravene the BBC's charter.
Startups shutting down without giving back to users. Gratefulness, anyone?
Microsoft Band First Impression
Ask HN: What processes and tools do you use to design software products?
I'm curious to know what processes and tools you follow to design software products?

At our organization things tend to start off with a Google Doc where we spec out descriptions for all the features of the product. Then we describe the various views, and couple them with mockups (either Balsamiq or Photoshop) and explanations of the data you push/pull on each view. We pull everything together into 1 document and refer to it as the master design document.

Are there any other tools you use in your product design process? Any templates you follow?
Butterfield: "It is because people say it is."
We've gone without salary for the last 4 months

Been there, done that. 3 times. It sucks. But I never lost hope. Your startup may be on life support, but you most certainly are not.

Honestly I feel like I'm going to be evicted from the house. My rent is already up, and as of now I have < $1 :).

Talk to your landlord. You may be surprised at the response.

My partner is fine actually, he has rich parents and doesn't really depend on the startup for income. Which actually gives my friends and family the illusion that we're both killing it.

Forget what others think and focus on your own future.

We have almost 0 chance of raising more money, it's much harder to get money it seems if you're in a poor country.

I have NEVER raised money. Every investor I've ever met has said "no" to me. So I bootstrapped. And that has worked out very well. Forget about raising money and instead start thinking about earning money.

So, if you've had a failed startup, how did you know?*

When I was broke and no one was buying anything. 3 times. All 3 times I got a job, recovered financially, and when the time was right, tried again.

I'm 25, I feel like I'm losing at life already.

Fuck. That. Shit. You're not old enough to be "losing at life already". I didn't do my first startup until I was 32 (it failed). So you're already 7 years ahead of me and I'm doing just fine, thank you.

It was okay to be broke earlier, because it's expected.

Forget what's "expected". Just be yourself. Your own expectations are the only ones that matter.

... when almost none of your peers are.

DO NOT compare yourself to others. You can never win that game.

Anyway, I just want any input from you guys.

You have not failed. You have learned. There are 2 things you have that 99% of your peers probably don't: the contents of your brain and the contents of your hard drive. You have already accomplished alot and no one can ever take it away from you.

Get a job. When the time is right, do it again. It's a marathon, not a sprint. You'll be fine.
The title reminds me of a book I used to have years ago called 'Writing Bug Free C Code for Windows'. It was a great and not windows specific all all, covering object systems and all the nooks and crannies of the language. It was on par with some of the Lisp books I have regarding coverage of language features. Highly recommended for those interested in what you can do with C, but I'm sure it's impossible to find these days.
You just proved how you either didn't read the article, or read it and completely missed the point as the author directly addresses what you're complaining about.

It's very telling (and actually directly proves the author's point) that the best criticism you can come up with is the author's identity (i.e. a personal attack, i.e. an adhom) rather than a concrete problem with his ideas.
FBI seizes equipment, alleges plane hacking
The Quest to Make Massive Gaming Worlds Realistically Complex
Female programmer denied job because of her 'unprofessional' attire
How about attracting financially successful (not hobbyist) developers who can drive new use cases for the platform?
Lead Product Designer Wanted – Blockspring
yikes: https://wikileaks.org/sony/emails/emailid/101702
HDD (Hype Driven Development)
Pretty much. I never look at the keyboard, and rarely mis-type. If I do then I don't need to look at the keyboard to correct myself, as I know the position of every key, I just backspace and hit the key I intended to hit in the first place.

And, as another commenter also mentioned, I don't use the layout that's printed on the keys anyway, so looking at the keyboard would not help.

None of this is particularly uncommon for anyone who can touch-type.
First, I wasn't speaking about a general case, I was speaking about the case presented.

Second, as of Java 8, the compiler knows whether a local variable is "effectively final". In the example given, f qualifies as effectively final. In earlier versions, my point stands that it's simply because the compiler isn't sophisticated enough.
It is to avoid competing with paid private news companies on uneven terms, since they get funding from the gov.
Systems at Facebook Scale (Applicative 2015 Keynote)
The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck

You can heal your life by Louise Hay