skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ugh, that just makes me think that when the NSA will start using "modern graphics" in its slides (since everyone seems to be mocking it over that now) and maybe open source some non-critical spying tools, many will start calling it the "new" (and better) NSA and even start cheering for it.
If the FBI wanted car manufacturers to design seat belts and airbags with murderers and rapists in mind, it wouldn't have taken months of debate to reject the idea. Just because we've entered the domains math and CS, we get months of dithering, contemplating whether or not to force domestic companies to install complex new self-destruct functions into their products.

Al-Qaeda have been using Mujahedeen Secrets — a Windows-based encryption app — since 2007. Legislators should test whether potential new laws can have any impact on such uncontroversially abhorrent software. If, like split keys, they fail the Mujahedeen Secrets test, they can only damage our collective security.
Probably paranoia, unless that large company was a competitive cloud computing business. The TOS [https://cloud.google.com/terms/] has two sentences that pretty well eliminate any risks about the use of data and it also has a few paragraphs about storage.
Great input, I feel relieved to read that my 4:30 (of pure coding work) is good, according a profile like yours.

Personally I'm kinda afraid that some developers out there might be pulling actual 8 hours of overhead-free progress, unlike me. Doing that daily would certainly drain me.
Yeah, sometimes I like to daydream too: what would happen if Poland released to the public their 16bit computer built in early 70s:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-202
The first sentence is (at least to me) obviously untrue -- their have been people clearly and publicly saying this is a serious problem since at least the mid-90's. The book "The Coming Plague" came out in 1995, and discusses almost this exact scenario:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Coming-Plague-Emerging-Diseases/dp...

There is little spending on public health issues, crumbling infrastructure, and, due to ease of travel and overcrowding, diseases spread faster then ever before.
Nonetheless, the American Founding Fathers recognized the core problem and addressed it in a clear comprehensive manner: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." In no way could that be construed as permitting federal requirement that personal communications & records be arbitrarily accessible by law enforcement agents on a "fishing expedition".
Sync GitHub fork repos easily
There is actually an acceptable number of hours, it's somewhere near the number of hours you can work without burning out. For me that is about 5-7 hours a day. Two things I remember, one was an old guy talking about working in a windshield factory, where they made windshields for cars. They had a line. While he was working their they sped it up by 25% and management was happy happy joy joy. The workers were getting run ragged though and after a few weeks the defect rate started creeping up. After a few months the defect rate was so high that they were producing less finished product than when the line speed was slower. Took another year for the plant manager to get fired and bring in a guy who turned the line speed back down.

The other is the first place I worked their were two younger coders and they were being flogged to work 9-10 hours days, basically being given unreasonable deadlines. After a few years they burned out and the company fired them. Twenty years later both of them are still damaged. I did some of the same, hurt my wrist, which is still a little messed up. After that I decided I didn't care I was going to work as much as I though possible and that's that. You only have so many hours a day. Instead of using yourself up, concentrate really hard on not wasting your time.

Me, I've never been fired for not working enough hours.
Yes - they are competing already. HBO Now is out. https://order.hbonow.com/
Jobs was able to nail the coffin shut because of market share, but he certainly wasn't the first to push for removing flash - that belongs to the open-source community. I remember fiddling with debian, trying to get flash installed, and getting the answer "flash is bad for a number of reasons" and given the idea to try to use non-flash sites. When Jobs made the step in 2010, it was not trivial, but he was joining an existing movement.
It would not be a deal killer if I saw this when I Googled your name while researching your background. Depending on the nature of the case, I might even bring it up in an in-person interview as interesting smalltalk, as it definitely sounds like it could be a good story.
Most Internet memes are now illegal in Russia
You can turn the "noprocrast" flag on your profile, it will prevent you to visit HN more than a certain number of times per day.
I don't think he said otherwise.
>>Furthermore, companies seem to pay significantly more just to have you on-site.

That's because they are usually located in places with high cost of living.
My sense is Reno would need the equivalent of "a second UNR" to step up the quality of its job market. Perhaps a regional focus on alternative, post-K12 professional education would make sense? (It could become a center for in-person workshops, testing, etc to complement remote-learning MOOCs – it has the space and transport links.)

Proximity to the Bay Area is a double-edged sword: cultural affinity and talent interchange but also brain-drain.

As long as the skyline is dominated by casinos – while eye-catching in its own way – Reno's external image will suffer from that association. Reno can't compete with Vegas in scale, nor with the spread of state-by-state gambling in convenience, and yet is still hit by the stigma of gambling-as-an-economic-pillar.

Some of the downtown conversions of defunct casino-towers to other uses (like condos) are encouraging. If I were a local civic planner, I'd be tempted to offer a subsidy for any skyline-altering night signage that's not gambling-related. (Tesla! UNR! Aviation! Anything! There's still some risk people would see bright lights and think, "tacky gambling", no matter the actual messages.)
byoung2, thanks for the information. What dates was your video watched on? April 4 or some other day?
Flex is still in active development, it is now Apache Flex.
I've noticed a strange habit in web journalism lately. If the author doesn't like something that's popular, they'll falsely claim it's on the verge of death and that nobody has willingly associated with it for months or years.

Flash and AIR are still flagship products at Adobe. These tools are actually updated more frequently than ever before, probably because developers using these platforms are reaching record numbers, and Adobe can see that in their Creative Cloud usage metrics. Their deliberate strategy of killing the plugin on mobile to pivot their focus into AIR must have paid off. Adobe's development process for Flash and AIR used to be a bit opaque, but they now release new public betas multiple times per month, listen to requests for changes, and disclose the projected development timeline for new features.

I'm sorry if the spirit of the article resonated with people here who hate Flash, but it is utterly vapid clickbait. It's a tired exercise in kludging together derogatory illustrative phrases to paint the chosen target in a bad light, with nothing driving the negativity other than the author's wishful thinking. The author actually admits he has nothing to support his title when he states "this story isn't about how or why Flash is dying: It's about why we have to remember it" and proceeds to spend the next 13 paragraphs whining about how sites like The Wayback Machine haven't archived enough SWF files.

The title (which the article does absolutely nothing to even attempt to support) implies an urgent and imminent threat to the existence of Flash, that perhaps major desktop browser vendors have unanimously agreed to ban the Flash plugin or that they decided to get rid of plugin support altogether. Of course, this is ridiculous, and as long as desktop browsers still support plugins, Flash is not going anywhere.
This is definitely not legal advice, just some personal experience/thoughts.

You're thinking only about your career? How about the mental and emotional toll that being involved in a court case can take? Don't doubt that there is one. These are all costs to you.

This may be too simplistic and quite conservative, but if you are not personally involved in the legal case, nor the actions that were taken which were illegal, then it is the company's problem and not your own. I like to hope the legal system was designed to get to the bottom of the issue, which has already been identified.

From a career or personal perspective, it might be a better idea to stay out of it unless you must be involved, either because it is needed to serve justice or because it is required because you are subpoenaed. Why not let the court decide if that is needed? One thing I know for sure is, if one side or the other needs/wants you bad enough, you will get dragged into it.

On the other side, if you don't need to be involved, it is probably safer to stay on the sideline. Especially if there is any chance that you aren't sure about the legality of the issues involved. Why take the unnecessary risk and burden to yourself? The company probably wouldn't do that for you.

As for your career question - I think most reasonable employers may ask, but would realize that the actions of a corporation do not equal those of an individual working at that corporation. I do think your career can survive being associated with such an entity, even if you have to be involved.

Worst case, change the entry on your resume to make the company name anonymous when applying for jobs... instead of XYZ, Corp, just say "A Major Consumer Technology Firm", etc. I have seen folks do that and it is not totally unacceptable.

Good luck with your decision.
Yeah.

The sad thing about this is that OP specifically asked for career advice, not an open "should I / would you do it".
Yeah. I think many people go to therapy nowadays because they feel guilty for not enjoying their life as much as they think they should. Before people used to instead feel bad about being sinful.

I think what you need to do is fully accept your situation and do what you can to improve it. Look for a new job or have you considered doing a PhD? Learn new things, hang out with interesting people. Does your city have a hackspace? If so use the people there to amplify your creative drive. Working alone is less productive I find.
ZStack's Scalability Secrets Part 1: Asynchronous Architecture
Over the past two months, I've had the opportunity to work from home. I've spent the last six years working in an office environment, with the standard "open" workspace.

Within the few months of working from home, I've noticed a radical change in my day. No longer am I interrupted randomly, while in deep thought. I don't veer off to the break room for coffee, and get caught up in conversations. I don't take excessive lunch breaks to stand in lines at a restaurant. Speaking of, it helps the waistline! I have easy access to my full kitchen at home. I digress.....

Anyway, my team is located in central time, so I reap the benefit of distraction free coding between 2PM and 7PM pacific time.

I typically wake up, sit down at my desk at 9AM, and begin my daily routine of checking email, checking out what's new via HN, catching any meetings with folks in the central timezone, etc. Once lunch comes, I take a break, and begin planning what I want to accomplish in my 2-7 distraction free time block.

So, while I do work a full 8 hours, only about 4-5 hours of that time is spent head down in code.

Point is, I certainly agree working 4:30 is probably sufficient, however, for me, I do utilize the other hours of the day to "socialize" and plan "big picture" with my colleagues via video conference. I feel that if I lost the extra time in the mornings, these meetings would overflow in to my distraction free time.
What do you like doing in your free time? Watching movies, backpacking, reading, etc. Then see if you can make a living doing it or something related to it. Of course that could lead you to not enjoy it anymore.
I'm using Tumblr as a blogging platform mainly because the interface is a lot simpler than Wordpress, I don't think most people reading my blog (which is hardly anyone) would even know it's on Tumblr at first glance. Tumblr is also pretty easy to customize.

All being said, they could do somethings better to make writing long-form content easier (like a larger text entry area).
What is abhorrent about this software?
Ah, well I can't believe that nobody else has said this...but get over yourself a bit. You've been working for a nano second. You appear to be wondering why nobody has handed you a dream job and smoothed your path to life fulfilment.

Most people working have been on tough projects longer than your entire working life.

Life fulfilment and dreams are very infrequently an outcome of your primary income activity. It's ridiculous to even start looking for it and becoming depressed after a year. Of course jobs are boring, even startup ones, most of the time. My work is occasionally interesting and fin, but it's filled with 90% drudgery of meetings and calls and emails I'd rather not do.

If you want to start something cool, then go do it. If you want to join something cool, go find it. Stop navel gazing and start living. Life is what is going to happen to you while you are hiding in the bedroom.
I suggest that you don't testify for the reasons you've mentioned. Even a good company with good people will have a harder time hiring you. When you hire someone and you have to choose between different people, then a normal HR manager will choose the one that is less noisy. They are not looking for someone who does the right thing, but someone who will provide more value to the company than trouble.

The only thing you haven't mentioned that might be relevant is if your silence might hurt someone. Then you have to weight own disadvantage against their disadvantage. Although I'd probably do the moral choice, I don't think it's the smarter one. In real life moral decisions often don't pay off, not even for the people you try to protect.

Also if you have spouse or other people who depend on you (e.g., brothers/sisters) discuss with these people and make a decision together. Your decision will also influence their life.
This would be the high-end http://www.sonnettech.com/product/echo15thunderboltdock.html

This is around the norm https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/Thunderbolt/Dock/OWC/Thunder...

The good thing about a USB-C version would be taking the place of the power cable too.
The smartest thing I ever did was to sell my startup to Simon Khalaf's. Marissa's made a good move here.
Long term? Smaller and cheaper devices means people are even more easily spied upon. Privacy must be handled as a sacred law, because technology will blow past it. We simply leak too much information as a matter of physics.
JSONiq queries on top of MongoDB and PostgreSQL
See also Emil Artin's elegant pamphlet, "The Gamma Function".
My background sounds pretty similar to yours except I was lucky enough to land my first gig outta University at a startup in London.

The work's always been varied and interesting and whilst it has its ups and downs (mainly downs of late) I still enjoy it.

I see a lot of excuses from you on why you can't follow any of the useful suggestions on this page (nothing wrong with that mind) but it does suggest to me that you're at a bit of a loose end but don't want to venture outside your comfort zone just yet...

That's all fine. Don't beat yourself up about it. You say your social skills are lacking, not a problem. You say you're not very smart, again not an issue.

We all feel these things from time to time and we all get depressed. Depression is a marvellous emotion which forces us to confront our situation and realise something has to change.

I have no idea what you need to change but some of the advice given here is great - from attending more Meetups to working on a side project.

There is zero need for you to move to another country. The UK has its fair share of interesting work. Interesting work is not the preserve of academia or Silicon Valley - it's everywhere. If you're feeling adventurous though DO apply for places outside your locality. You'll be surprised how much more potential employers value your skills than you do sometimes...

Either way, have a read of the suggestions here, then re-read. A side project's a great start, the sooner you do it the better. But either way, chin up, don't beat yourself up too much and just have a think about what you want and start taking small steps towards it.

You'll get there.
Make a plan for what you want to do long term. Do you want to start your own tech company? Do you want to open a sandwich shop? Own a bed and breakfast? Sail across the world in a yacht?

Come up with your list of things you want to do.

Most of these things will require money. You are making money right now. Use your job as a way to make progress toward the things you really want to do.
I'm trying to get a better idea of the landscape here.

> Other languages have similar interfaces too: Java, for example, has Servlet API and Ruby has Rack

No mention of node.js. I get the impression that there is less struggle with node because it has a http server built in. Is that ideal, or would node benefit from a WSGI-like interface? Is anybody working on that?

Or, if a node-style built-in server is better for performance and compatibility, is anybody implementing one for Python, Ruby, or Java?
Just wanted to add that in principle the GitLab core team is in charge of GitLab development https://about.gitlab.com/core-team/ It is a bit theoretical since many core team members do work for GitLab B.V. (of which I'm CEO). By the way, does Kallithea have any features that are in GitLab Enterprise Edition but not in GitLab Community Edition?
The Guardian, like other news sources relying on big advertising deals, is not that different when it comes to pleasing advertisers. See http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/media/11425580/Guardian-chan... and http://medialens.org/index.php/alerts/alert-archive/2015/788...
If you find yourself in the position of saying "Hey, I have some free time; what should I read?" I recommend focusing first on what you want to know or do, secondly on determining what book and articles are likely to contain useful information, and only then determining a plan for what to read. Here is the process I follow.

For each subject in which I am interested, I maintain a bibliography. The most common way entries are added here is by discovering references to books or articles in other things I am reading.

When reading books in physical media, I usually draw an arrow by references or notes that indicate books I should add to these bibliographies. When I am done with a book or article, I go back through and add any such references that still seem relevant to my bibliography. (I do this at the same time I am transcribing notes and quotations, files of which are also an important part of my system.) I usually include a brief note on why I believe this work will be of value and where I got the reference.

Where this becomes useful is when I am pursuing some sort of study. I have learned that I study best with some object in view, so even if my study is for general education, I prepare a syllabus that presents objectives of some sort (code to write, questions to answer, etc.).

Once I have the objectives prepared, I use my living bibliography files to create a reading plan. Of course, once I really delve into a subject, that plan usually expands and I add more references into both my general bibliography and reading plan.

This process provides me an apparatus to pursue my interests in a structured way to make the most of my time. I don't worry much about what to read next except in the context of some such study.

I have found that without this sort of structure to focus my reading, I am in danger of becoming a dilettante. I don't have an exceptional memory, and if I read without a structure, I easily fall into the trap of cultivating superficial knowledge without ever getting deep enough to answer substantive questions or do original work.

I do, however, want to encourage serendipity, so I subscribe to and read periodicals in variety of fields. I have also found The London Review of Books and book reviews in leading newspapers to be useful sources of references and lines of thought that I would probably never otherwise discover.
feeling uneasy about a software decision you didn't make is one of the reason many of us switched from Windows to Linux in the first place. It's a little weird seeing people make the same rationalizations I made with Windows.
For a second there it looked like you were saying that (n-1) does not equal n!/n.
Dare to elaborate, cowards? :)
Especislly since the real security is that you can apparently change your email address without a validation email being sent. All they did was add CSRF protection but this still is very bad practice.
It belies the fact that OP prompted the lawyers to subpoena him.
I see. So the benefit is mainly in having more relational structure than in actually crunching numbers. Makes sense.
Thanks for the rec! I'm obviously super biased (ReadMe founder, here), but ReadMe was built for this kind of scenario, spot on. apiDoc is good for keeping the endpoint docs up to date, and you can keep it internal with a password or admin-only access. Search should be improving later this month.
A Secret History of African Decolonisation
Butterfly Messenger
Imagine that there are thousands of people in the same situation as you. Do you want all of them to testify or to keep their mouths closed?
As a European, I'm totally in favor of a mandatory backdoor for the US government. It would do wonders to the development of the European IT industry because many governments and cooperations could not continue using US-based IT products. The amount of hubris required to force a backdoor on a global industry and market is really breathtaking and I think the US would shoot themselves in the foot if they tried doing that. It's not like there is a law of nature that makes software development outside of the US impossible.
Well, it's not just the US; the Chinese are doing it too.
Agreed. I learned a lot (and reinforced what I already knew) from tutoring my friend a few years younger than me while they were going through their CS degree. Also learned the value of being patient. Those kind of skills go a long way when you move up the ranks from junior to senior developer.

You think you understand a topic, but you really know for sure when you end up having to relate it to someone else in an understandable form. Helps immensely to reinforce your own learning and tell you what you need to brush up on before meeting with them for a mentoring session.
Last time posted was almost a year ago, the information is still very much relevent and interesting.
It's actually faster to Google and follow the link than to deal with the convoluted system on Office.com.
The war on drugs is a jobs program. Period, end of story. It reduces the labor supply by keeping a large segment of society behind bars, and it provides employment in enforcement for a segment of the population who we really, really don't want unemployed (veterans and other folks who are too versed in the application of force to live a quiet civilian life.)

It's not good, but I'm not sure the alternative is better.
Is there really any "security" lost ? I mean, last I checked, the NSA had little to show for all the snooping around (other than possible economic benefits).
Animal Charms in the Later Middle Ages