skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Given their size and stage at the time it was likely south of 7 figures or very low 7 figures. Considering their acquirer IPO'd soon after, though, the stock portion probably grew in value significantly.
(No inside knowledge of course, but people's perceptions of acquisition windfalls tend to be skewed higher than reality)
There is a huge difference between anonymous visitor statistics to measure various metrics of performance, and tracking unique digital footprints.
You'd be surprised how sensitive we are to latency on input. Microsoft themselves did studies on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOvQCPLkPt4
Here is a really good article on the topic [1], »Binary Search Is a Pathological Case for Caches«.

[1] http://www.pvk.ca/Blog/2012/07/30/binary-search-is-a-patholo...
My entire build can run in less time than a ./configure script.

It doesn't require developers to run ./autogen.sh, or to have autotools installed (in their correct versions).

It doesn't contain obscene amounts of indirection, where the actual libraries live in a hidden directory called .libs (looking at you, libtool).

It doesn't make you write m4, or Makefile.am files with all these magic incantations. It doesn't make you delve into the guts of these crufty systems when things don't work the way you expect.

If you want build systems to satisfy your use cases, publish some doc of best practices and capabilities that all build system interfaces should provide. If I'm convinced I'll be happy to conform to the interface you need. But there is no way you're going to convince me that everyone needs to just keep using autotools (a specific implementation) forever. I hate them.

I mean, by that logic, why are you doing something new like GNU Guix when everybody already knows/uses APT, RPM, BSD ports, etc? "Just learn [them], get over the fact that they contain backwards-compatibility crud (that you can just ignore, or how does it hurt you?), and stop the FUD."

Or maybe it is worth breaking with the past sometimes, when you think you can do better.
Yeah. Of the bugs identified, this sounds like the most serious, but received the least attention.
The phrasing of Flash and JavaScript are typically disabled by users now because they can prove too invasive is awkward. I guess you must mean that is the typical motivation of people that choose to block, the problem I see is that it can be read to mean that typical users block flash/js (of course they don't).
> After creating the first prototype I realized a number of things. While it was cool there wasn’t enough utility to justify creating another one. The only way I could have figured that out is by making and using this prototype for several months.

I did something similar with LEDs [not a cube, just a board with lights] to alert on various things before just having the Pi power an old wall mounted LCD I wasn't using anymore + a dashboard.

It is one of those ideas that is awesome in theory but its really hard to justify the time/effort beyond "FUN!"
It is related for two reasons: 1) Doing work that is not work is a sneaky way to edge out loved ones outside of work because time is finite and 2) Many people have now commented that something about work-life balance is what they expected from the title, but judgement about work is one of the ways you create work-life balance.

Thanks for the article. The most helpful part for me was the way you binned actions and then acknowledged that some can be tricky to quantify right away, because relationships are important, but sometimes it is hard to tell which ones. Networking for ego is not work, but team building is. I would summarize it as: if it doesn't go in your investor updates now or support something that would be in them in the future, it might not be work.
Not to mention the website wanted to drop a cookie too.

I block cookies by default, and only allow manually selected sites to set them. Even then, the default for allowed is only until end of browser session.

So unless the cookie was something like "irony=true", it should not have been there. (I didn't bother to look what value it tried to set.)
While it seems time-saving, I don't think putting all your eggs in one basket is a good idea when it comes to interviewing. If you bomb the interview (it can happen to great engineers), then you've effectively shut yourself out of every YC company? I'd much rather interview 5 times and be 99% sure I'll get one, than go all or nothing and potentially get screwed.
What can Facebook and Twitter learn from GoogleReader to improve readability
I feel old. This video is a late addition to the quadcopter world. But then again, while multicopters were popular within DIY scene for some time, they only recently went mainstream and started being sold to "normals".
And more broadly than just Alibaba or China, 14 of the 15 posts to this thread so far say the policy is wonderful. Indeed, there is praise that the company is massively invested in talent development. But not apparently enough to bring the guy born in 1969 who's skill apparently evaporated, up to the skill level of someone born in 1971 who is still apparently a maestro (for one more birthday anyway)
Tesla isn't banned from selling cars in Michigan, they're not allowed to sell manufacturer-direct. No one in Michigan is allowed to sell manufacturer-direct.
Thank you very much for the feedback. If I may ask, how do you tackle the short comings of the language such as battling with "freezing" an application to work from an executable on windows?

I find myself bashing my head against the Windows platform way too many a time. (A hangover from my current day job)

Are there any significant drawbacks to using Python? (Other than the usual cries about the GIL and it being interpreted voiced by certain groups in the programming world.)
Big thanks for that. I'll give it a read.

We've hit problems with ack in the past. So I thought we could add more acks to increase confidence. But it's never 100% certainty. I'm sure this paper will help understand the issues.
What Facebook's New “Filter Bubble” Means
CNET SHows How to Take Sharper Photos with a Smartphone
Free software is the way to go :)
If your software is not free, you have no guarantee of what's happening there.
This article is a bit absurd. Any experienced rubyist would tell you Rails sucks at this use case. Node/Go will absolutely kick ruby's ass here every day.
Bash shell script for getting/posting code snippets from/to gist.github.com
The number of vehicles on the road that are older than 20 years is shockingly low, especially American brands which rust considerably faster than others. Even cars from 2000 are rare.

In places where there's no extended winter weather I've noticed the cars are often older, with 40+ year old junkers from the 1980s looking, by local standards, no more than ten years old.
Weather seems like a commonly-stated reason for leaving Ohio. I'm from here, so I obviously take note of it, but I do wonder if people commonly talk about leaving places like Boston and NYC for warmer climates. Those areas seem to have equally miserable winter weather.
Virtual Cancer Walk? Awesome
Do Introverts Make Better Sales People in the Internet Age?
I see value in the support of server accounts.

However, the DHT-based account-less p2p part seems to redoing work Tox has done.

Why not use their efforts and experience? They offer their core separately and Ring could be a client for it.
They knew this would brick people devices, it was brought up in earlier development, and released anyway to damage devices on a mass scale.

This was intentional, and on purpose. We(the public) has proof.
a more UX-ey take rather than "what's the industry up to:"

kale davis' http://www.hackernewsletter.com/

peter cooper's javascript weekly javascriptweekly.com/

ux weekly: http://uxwkly.com

nickd's semi-weekly dispatch https://draft.nu/

ios dev weekly https://iosdevweekly.com/ (basically just
read the design section)

designernews digest, but I feel like I've stopped getting that :(
It's actually the same binary - the tutum agent just downloads it and upgrades it when requested. If you had docker already installed using a storage engine different than AUFS, because the tutum agent installer tries to use the AUFS storage engine (way more stable than "devicemapper"), you won't be able to "see" what you had in your previous storage engine. But the binary is the one from https://docs.docker.com/installation/binaries/#get-the-linux...
That's fine for cops (although then you've still got the problem that the legal system is heavily stacked against the poor), but I disagree that all unions are inherently bad (even for cops, the union could just be limited to salary and benefit and general work environment negotiations). If we're going to make all unions illegal, then we better start enforcing some pretty strong anti-collusion laws. Let's ban trade and industry associations for starters. It is an established fact that companies will collude against their workers, allowing workers to collude against companies does nothing but level the playing field.
The other problem with not taking undervalued work is that your runway is not infinite, while the market's is. So you might just run out of money before you land that client you're holding out for.

And when the end of runway is approaching, you will become desperate, and you will take on a terrible project. Then it will take a really long time before you build up your runway again to the point where you can hold out for better projects.

Basically, hold out, but don't wait too long.
It's an interesting article and I unfortunately don't know diddly-poop about neuroscience, but this statement:

"Yet, some researchers attempting to replicate Roses’ work have failed to find an association between TOMM40 and the age of Alzheimer’s onset. Roses has countered that these groups aren’t performing his research correctly and that the work involves complicated diagnostic methods. 'Because TOMM40 [research] is not as easy to replicate as ApoE4 [research] was,' Roses says, 'the first thing they say again is the data is wrong.'"

sets off my kook detector rather strongly. That is exactly the situation that many false claims find themselves in, and it's exactly the response that the investigators make just before the wheels start coming off.

From other parts of the article, I don't know or even believe strongly that Roses is wrong, but if you're a future scientist in an experimental field, be very cautious about saying things like that.
I used to use Fedora, but the updating process never worked for me so I switched to Arch. I am really enjoying the rolling release model, though it is a bit less stable than Fedora.
Do user metrics make you heartless?
If you're trying to escape the cold, Colorado is not the place to go.
I think as nanotechnology gets better over the next decade and we start seeing fabs that can push out architectures at under 7nm, a lot of implant and contact lenses will finally have a chance to shine. The constraint right now is providing power to small devices on the molercular level as as well as having enough processing power to do things. If you can get a contact lense that is powered through the light in the room or thermal energy from the body, combined with a sub 7nm chip, we'll definitely start seeing some amazing gadgets.
The copter doesn't need to know where it is, just whether it is moving and if so, how far and in what direction. Because the error in GPS measurements doesn't vary much in small time frames, that can be done more accurately than absolute position measurements. See http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_GPS.
​PC sales continue to take a beating
So basically, you've build the entire app yourself, right?

What kind of lang/framework did you use?
Interesting. That hack is not RVM-specific (I use rbenv), but it looks like it has been superceded by the use of RUBYGEMS_GEMDEPS in RubyGems >= 2.4. If you do:

export RUBYGEMS_GEMDEPS=-

then all binstubs will apparently be looked up via the Gemfile.
Students design a facial recognition cane for blind people
I believe 100% in proactive error prevention as a means of building robust programs but, as you say, there are failures that cannot be handled this way; when the kernel fails (as in this case) or when the hardware fails (e.g. spontaneous bit flip error in the memory when not using ECC/ECM) there is no way to handle this. Given that this is the case, you must also make the system robust, and one element of that is being disciplined about communicating program state via mechanisms such as heartbeats. This is not a magic bullet, but produces much better results than a lackadaisical approach. I think that as much or more effort should be spent on system robustness as program robustness because much of the error handling code I've seen at the program logic level is overly complicated and under-tested; when in doubt, call abort() and let the overall system sort things out (and design your system so that this approach works, check out Netflix's Chaos Monkey).
I had a good go at Angular. I felt like it as a decent framework with interesting concepts. I built an app with it.

Next project I thought I'd try Ember. It's very much my way or the highway. Huge amounts stuff learn. Not only concepts, but all those conventions. Very narrowly scoped models to which the whole world will conform (it doesn't, not without tying yourself in knots). The same thing that really puts me off Rails.

I ditched Ember for the project and now I'm using React which I picked up in an hour and it's brilliant.

YMMV. But I can't stand arrogance, and, to my mind, Ember drips with it. That includes renaming things that already have names.
Yeah it's basically just a web based SQL front end. It also integrates with Google accounts very well which was a big plus for us.
CSS might be almost sane.
> Some days I produce massive amounts of value, while others I barely get anything valuable done. I'd like a work place that would encourage me to go home and enjoy myself on the bad days and stay as long as I want on the good days, instead of expecting a regular 40 hour work week every week (I have flex, but on average...).

In the words of Stephen King, "Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work."

Very often the value is in just showing up and doing the work. Even if the work isn't your best work, it's still better than no work. You can always fix bad work later. Even if you throw it away and start again, you've already primed yourself on the problem.
Instagram Surveillance: How Data Analysts Link Photos to Credit Card Purchases
"If you’re constantly willing to learn and adapt you can make anything."
I don't get why people are so keen on the per-hour model. This puts a lot of pressure on you to be fully productive and count hours like a lawyer. It also makes you think you're losing money when you're not billing, and the customer likewise feels the time/money pressure.

I've negotiated fixed-price deals where I'm quite certain I can get the job done in x number of weeks, based on having done something similar before. And that's a quite leisurely x weeks, where I'm not really feeling any uncertainty about any part of the project (ie I know what APIs will be used, business logic seems simple, research is done already). At the same time setting a leisurely schedule also means if there is something unexpected, you can spend a bit more time solving it. Or take a break when you're ahead.

Regarding the customers, being choosy appears to be very important. Anyone who mentions outsourcing to (somewhere cheap) is politely moved on. Anyone who doesn't grasp what they're after (a social network, with an iOS and Android app, and videos, and ...) is quoted a longer timeframe. Customers also need to be made aware of the importance of feedback, as in the agile model. That way they always get what they asked for, and you don't waste time on what didn't come to mind.
RC4 is meaningfully, materially insecure virtually no matter what you do with it. I don't think you're disagreeing, but the nerdal lobe in my brain won't let me leave the discussion without it ending on that note. :)
I can't wait to read about what happened next. Great writing!
This is true. Also, as someone who also works on network crypto boxes: the main VPN protocols are _really_ nasty.

- OpenVPN requires TLS (you really don't want to use static keying in OpenVPN), which is a total nonstarter: the TLS protocol itself has non-stop problems, is completely infeasible to implement from scratch, and does not have any implementations useful for a high-security embedded device. Also, the data channel protocol is ugly.

- DTLS-based VPNs are, well, DTLS-based (worse protocol than TLS, and still infeasible to implement).

- IPsec is comparatively sane if you limit yourself to statically-keyed tunnel-mode ESP with no internal NAT'ing (NAT-T is ok, though). IKE is a pain (and usually requires certificates, which are very hard to parse correctly), and supporting all the zillions of options is extremely expensive. On the other hand, static keying has many pitfalls and pretty much requires a mechanism to send updated keys. Also, IPsec overhead usually ends up being rather high in practice, and e.g. IPsec/L2TP is even worse.

- In practice, anything that requires connection negotiation requires some surgery to support high-packet-loss scenarios. (Loss-tolerant protocols over statically keyed IPsec work decently well at packet loss rates that break most IKE implementations.)

Also, for any given device, you'd usually prefer to support as few algorithms as possible and/or tailor choose crypto primitives that are well-supported on your hardware.

Finally, building a secure VPN wire protocol just isn't that hard. (Key negotiation etc. is very tricky, though.)
IPs are annon, and I respect DoNotTrack from browsers. I think it is quiete fair!
> Tesla isn't banned from selling cars in Michigan, they're not allowed to sell manufacturer-direct.

Which means they're banned from selling cars. They have to use intermediaries to sell cars for them.

> No one in Michigan is allowed to sell manufacturer-direct.

Imagine if the recording industry had successfully lobbied for laws that prevented anyone from selling music directly.

"IndieBandFoo isn't banned from selling music in the US, they're not allowed to sell artist-direct. No one in the US is allowed to sell artist-direct."

This restriction is no less ridiculous.
Also, we added all other keys: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/commit/79bdb63f...
Graphene-coated spiders create carbon nanotube silk
Guild Wars 2 API Drops OAuth2 Support
Prototyping Parking Sensor: A sensor that finds &Tweets the closest parking lots
Save $150 on Food Startup Branding Bootcamp 5.16 in NYC
This was posted on HN a few days ago, which largely discusses how the weather in LA is luring New Yorkers...

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/03/style/los-angeles-and-its-...
(1) What semantic analysis do you use?

(2) The 'follow @Ralleyverse' move is scumbaggy imho, I clicked 'sign me up' but quickly noticed it before the next page loaded. Scumbag move.

(3) It's taking quite a long while ... might edit this post when it works

edit: Results were meh, but that's probably because I rarely tweet anyway. Cool app to use once, but maybe start thinking about ways to have people use it more than once?
At Braintree, we have been working on the approach you mentioned. We’ll soon update our iframe products to allow a merchant to opt-in to only ever receiving cardholder data via the Braintree iframe. With this change, we could actively block malicious JavaScript from rewriting the merchant form by rejecting data not from the Braintree iframe. Things like this aren't a panacea though which is why it’s important for merchants to use technologies like Content Security Policy and leverage as much of the browser security model as possible.
The website is designed in a very jarring way. The transitions should be much more obvious.
Silencing Science
I also think it was correct. People don't like when you say them that they probably would have been a Nazi, too, if they had lived as a german in Germany at that time. Nevertheless, I think it's true and makes one thinking.

It was a worthy comment because it was correct and controversial. Those are often the best.
Yeah, they are not explicitly saying "Tesla" in the law, but everyone understand it's anti-tesla bill. (Exactly like the anti-uber bills in some cities that are generic but target Uber.)
Thoughts on the 2015 BiG DiFIZEN of the Year Award
Zen was ASP.NET MVC, SQL Server, and a big mess of jQuery. TaskTorch is React, Node, and RethinkDB.
Keeping Digital Currency Balanced: A Year in Review at Libra
Indeed I didn't finish my degree and would love to go back and even get a PhD! But.. it doesn't make much financial sense right now, especially when you consider that the earlier you save and invest the better the outcome, so I'm waiting till the time is right.
>Yeah, that's how you make friends. Certainly not into government spying but this is a ridiculous comparison.

I disagree. The wording might not be perfect, but the comparison is sound imho.

Potential friends aren't typically total strangers. You are usually at least considered aquaintances at first. And potential friends don't typically go "looking around" your home on the first visit, either. They're usually quite respectful of your privacy from what I have gathered over the years.

They don't just get up and search for a bathroom, they'll ask you where it is.
42% of Tinder users are not even single
Here's a thought experiment for you. Collect one copy of every restaurant menu written in English. Scan each menu to find food items that are primarily liquid in character. Note the word used to describe it, and the price of the item. Find the median list price for each word.

In your thought experiment, does the median price of a "soup" differ significantly from the median prices of "bisque", "stew", "chowder", "broth", "cream", "potage", or specifically named soups like "bouillabaisse", "gazpacho", "chili", or "pho"?

My hypothesis is that higher-end restaurants purposefully substitute "soup" with synonymous words to avoid the intrinsic association with frugality, and this practice lowers the observed median price of a "soup".

It would be for the same reason that some restaurants don't put $ or numbers with two decimal places anywhere on the menu. It's a psychological trick to prevent you from entering "cost-benefit evaluation mode" before ordering your meal, so you spend more. Compare the following to your own anecdotal restaurant experiences:

- Crab Bisque ..... -9-
- crab soup: bowl $4.00, cup $2.50
The MEMS sensors, high power SoCs and sophisticated battery chemistry in a light/cheap form were all (arguably) enabled by the mass production of smartphones.

Now that multicopters are beginning to ramp up the mass adoption curve and drive innovations of their own will we see this same kind of technological cross pollination happen to other fields with what's being created for multis?

The pace of innovation in brushless speed controllers has been exciting to watch, but I can't think of what other applications there are for brushless motors that accelerate quicker or can change direction nearly instantly. Lots of work seems to be happening in the position tracking arena, with everything from cameras to sonar arrays to lidar being considered and used both professionally and on the hobbyist scene.

I really want to see one of Googles project tango boxes used as a sensor to do real time object avoidance on a quad.
That can be the goal. In my last experiment with this short of going to pure fixed bid, we had a client running an Excel spreadsheets to figure out exactly what they were paying for hour, for each developer even. We finally just gave up and switched them to a pre-paid hourly rate per developer on the followup projects. Some other clients are happy with a retainer that gets them a certain level of work without sweating the hours.

It may just be a shortcoming of the approach that my company tried; we're open for trying again as none of us like clocking time like lawyers.