skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm a little disappointed how the top post in here presents design almost as an opposite to usability. That's not how it should work and certainly not how Apple got so successful. I think you might mean "aesthetics", that would be an important difference.

Good design is never just decoration, it's not just an aesthetic hull with the "real" functionality hidden behind it. Good design is from the ground up, how the entire experience is structured, including the stuff under the hood. Apple's main strength is in putting a ton of research into how users actually use their devices (textbook "usability") and making sure things are always ranked by importance. There's stuff iOS doesn't do that most Android devices do and it's not missing because Apple can't pull it off, it's because they decided not to waste space/learning-time for the user on something that might, for most people, not be important. Meanwhile, niche functionality is supported through a myriad of apps. That's not minimalism for the sake of aesthetics, that's a really smart usability decision that has payed off over and over for them. For a counter-example, I'm sure Apple was very tempted to make the Apple Watch touch-only but instead included a somewhat clumsy looking scroll wheel because that makes more sense for such a tiny display.

The few places where aesthetics clash with functionality (a lack of physical buttons that might seem reasonable, some questionable font choices,...) tend to get replaced by a more all-around solution (forget about buttons and go straight to touch) or a willingness to identify and fix problems (a new font for Apple Watch and iOS9).

I really don't think we'll get very far by calling out usability, of all things, as an area where Apple lacks. Apple has other problems, they're not perfect. But if they fail, it'll probably not be because of usability issues. It might rather be that people start asking what reason there could possibly be to upgrade to the next iPhone.
Google Maps Is Racist Because the Internet Is Racist
Explain to the client what happened, be honest, and try to be as helpful as possible.

Looking at your LinkedIn history, it looks like you've worked at several places before. Go back to one, connect with folks you know there, and rebuild things for a while.
Focus.

It takes a lot of effort to keep multiple projects in the air. Even something that "runs itself" never really does. I've got Draft going while I work on Highrise, and Draft works very well on its own, but I still have to deal with support requests, downtime, upgrades, refunds, and more.

The guy wants to focus on his other projects. Patrick's never hidden the fact that selling Bingo Cards isn't as lucrative as his other projects. He's super honest and open about what goes down. https://www.bingocardcreator.com/stats Tons of good lessons he's learned that he's now applied to other business via consulting, Appointment Reminder, and now at Starfighter (http://www.kalzumeus.com/2015/03/09/announcing-starfighter/)

Look at 37signals. They decided they needed to focus on Basecamp to make it as good as they want. http://37signals.com/

We all should be shedding more and more stuff in our lives to focus on the bits we want to grow and see further through. Nothing at all wrong about that.
It depends.

If the government think it is a gift, it mostly works, but otherwise they will charge crazy taxes and be annoying to allow it to be delivered (thus the reason why stuff here is expensive, and why my startup had to pay a smuggler to get the now-broken Mac machine)
It seems Scott Forstall was meant to be an major part of the post-Jobs balance of power, but that didn't last long.
That's pretty much what I was thinking. The discovery part of the app would be open but the profile based things would of course need a login.

What ways can you uniquely identify users who aren't logged in?
> What does that have to do with selling BCC?

Nothing at all. Just a general observation.

I just find it interesting that he couldn't apply the very skills he has (which he is certainly talented at - no doubt) to save his business.

I wish he would do a detailed writeup about why. He makes it sound like neglect (only spending a few hours on it last year) and opportunity cost (his booming consulting work), but I wonder if he tried to slow down / reverse the declining revenue and just failed or whatever.
In your parallel code sample, hang2 is only 1000ms instead of 5000ms.

This is very cool though!
Not related to the project, but have you got any suggestions on good materials for Scala learning?

Materials I've read / watched / done so far:

- Martin Odersky's Functional Programming Coursera course
- `Scala in Action`
- 47 Degrees' Scala Koans

I'm currently reading `Scala in Depth`.
I think where we fundamentally disagree is that you believe it's generally possible to design an incentive system which is well-behaved in the asymptote of extreme competition whereas I do not, except under select conditions where the sum total of value provided by an individual is trivially quantifiable and separable from the contribution of his peers (e.g. assembly line work).

"Care must be taken" simply doesn't cut it; the comparison to assembly programming is ridiculous. For most devices it's hard to screw up badly enough to brick them and even if you do you are out, what, a few hundred dollars? Also, the feedback is unambiguous and instantaneous. Screw up a big organization and you are out millions or billions with only vague, ambiguous feeback that arrives years after you institute the policy. Even a comparison to rocket science doesn't come close to capturing the difficulty involved because rockets are designed to be separable into subsystems which obey well-characterized physical laws whereas most creative processes can't be broken down so rigorously.

The hypothetical perfect incentive system is like the hypothetical analog computer which gives you infinite accuracy and precision for free: it only appears to be an exciting possibility if you neglect all of the factors that limit its efficacy in practice.
Fascinating! I'd love to read a blog post or white paper on this.

It does seem like online gaming companies are at the forefront of distributed systems implementation. See League of Legends' use of conflict-free replicated data types, for example: http://highscalability.com/blog/2014/10/13/how-league-of-leg...
Great work! I've been working on a Rust parser combinator library myself ( https://github.com/DanSimon/peruse ), though I've been focusing more on parsing syntax trees than binary formats, and it's really cool to see the different approaches you've taken. I had been planning on working on stream parsers next, but I may just defer to nom since it basically looks like what I had wanted to do.
Upload a video, when cool stuff
Bringing it up to date must be one of those exercises for the reader.
Travel Tips for Travelers by Travelers
Similar to Multi-level marketing pyramid schemes too
> using money he raised by selling his home

Holy cow, that's a brave move!
Umm, I think it was only ~$30k ARR.

"Yearly Revenue: $31,000"

Where did you get $60k from?
I'd comment but am en route back to Japan in about a minute. If anyone has questions, for example anyone contemplating a sale of their own business, my inbox is always open.

I'm going to be blogging a bit about the sale later but have been holding off to wait for it to finalize (handover day was last Monday) and attempting to not step on a forthcoming Starfighter announcement.
thanks for the catch!
Post #5 in http://www.linux.org/threads/mac-linux-usb-loader.3579/ looks like it has instructions that might work for setting up the USB drive without a booting Mac.
Getting parsing done correctly and efficiently is a requirement that pops up over and over. More work in the field is always good. Interesting paper, although I haven't heard of the parsers. I usually hear about yacc, GOLD parsing system, and so on. Like to see comparisons with most common ones for probable use cases in terms of productivity, safety, and performance.

Far as next project, Leroy's people at INRIA did excellent work in verified, LR parsers [1]. I'm not sure that anyone is building on it at the moment. Implementing that in or integrating with Rust might make for one heck of a parsing system. So long as correspondence was proven, it would be the safest one in a systems language.

[1] http://gallium.inria.fr/~fpottier/publis/jourdan-leroy-potti...
I'm not sure how much you paid but taxi service to Sandy Springs from the Atlanta airport should have been a flat rate + extra miles.

Price to midtown Atlanta - $30
Price to Buckhead - $40
That may be a result of low spec, "being years behind" (top European production) or designing for cost economy in mass production. I have noticed that one thing Delco does is to commission custom silicon with a view to saving money as millions of units are manufactured. Since additional complexity has the potential to reduce yield, why not shave bits off an ADC if the precision isn't needed? On a low spec engine, like the TBI 350cid, probably almost all of the inputs can be approximations, so the level of precision and accuracy you'd expect from buying an industrial sensor and off the shelf, discrete ADC is not necessary. And it follows that the sensors themselves should be as cheap as possible as far as it lets the engine meet the mandated goals, including a certain degree of reliability. Of course, I hope that a modern design of DOHC engine facing modern emissions regulations will be fitted with more advanced sensors and controls.

The serial data link for the electronic carburetor control abomination and EFI controls is an example of the thoughtfulness that I meant. They implemented it really early, even quite earlier than the German makes I know about. It was undoubtedly priceless to have at the factory (for those cases where the factory cared - thinking on the shop floor seemed to have been a decade behind management) and would have been eminently useful in the dealership service bay if the techs had decided to make use of it.
Likewise, any tips for learning Scala without knowing/learning Java first?
I wonder what price could have been achieved had it been marketed as "Patio11's Bingo Card Creator" not "a well-established software business creating bingo cards for educational and recreational purposes".

Patrick's 'brand' certainly has value, at least to me (I've learnt much valuable information from him over the years). And while homo economicus knows this brand doesn't change the underlying business fundamentals, especially as Patrick was exiting, I believe it would have created acquisition competition and therefore a higher multiple than Px3.

The missing 'one more piece of information' in this instance may be Patrick's desire that BCC went 'to a good home', someone who saw potential in what it is, not bought it because of who he is.

Either way, he's now had a successful exit! Congratulations (again) Patrick - feels like only yesterday you stepped out of your salaryman role https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1230156
You're kind of missing the point, TheShrek. The point is to prove it can be done.
I just purchased the same laptop. It's really excellent. But I am a little nervous about occasional panics when entering/exiting standby (15.04 vivid, 3.19.0-18).
I really like your approach with trait objects. This is something I would have liked in nom when I started it, but macros proved more useful for my experimentations (less types to rewrite when I change something).

For the streaming part, it is still a work in progress. I need a way to better represent input enabled state machines, otherwise we'll end up with streaming switch based state machines, and they are a security nigtmare.
Can you be successful with an app that’s available in only one market?
They look pretty good -- anything in particular about them that you like?
>the much rumoured Apple Car.

That's a serious rumor? The amount of critical parts in designing a car seems so overwhelming, I don't even see Apple having any real advantage, here. No real overlap with Apple's strengths. Even Google will probably at best just sell their navigation software, not full blown cars. Speaking of Google... maybe an Apple version of Google Glass?
As someone who is a big fan of "don't make me think" (just bought the third edition a few days ago, actually) I can attest that there are things that apple has done/designed that make me think or pause. I Don't think it's core to their philosophy - perhaps it is a part of it, but not front and center. I get snagged on too many things for that to be the case; and it's become noticeable in the past few years to the point of hindrance for me in some cases.

Their keyboards and mice particularly showcase this: they look pretty and sleek, but try using them all day, and then try using a regular keyboard and mouse. They weren't thinking about the human who has to use it, they were thinking of appeal and looks.

You're not wrong about the approachability of IOS; that's no accident, and required a good deal of thought and attention. But I think whenever there is a tie, and they can either improve the aesthetics or improve the usability, they lean towards the former, because it's sexier and will sell.
> Colonists to Venus would not build on the planet's surface; they would, in theory, set up a floating "cloud city" in Venus’s atmosphere. Of course, Venus-bound missions would "require big policy changes at NASA," writes Elizabeth Lopatto for The Verge. But two scientists, Dale Arney and Chris Jones, of NASA’s Systems Analysis and Concepts Directorate at Langley Research Center in Virginia, point out that about 31 miles above the surface, the gravity and pressure is Earth-like, temperatures stay near the more manageable 167 degrees F and the colony would be more shielded from the Sun’s radiation than Mars.

It is easier to heat something than cool something. A permanently flying vessel [which is essentially what Venus requires] isn't safe except as a robotic design. It is a fatal mechanical failure waiting to happen.

There is a reason planes need so much maintenance and it isn't "saving money". A plane that would never have to land or need maintenance would be cheaper.

Sure, the ISS can manage it and you could probably set up something similar on Venus. But it wouldn't be a permanent, expandable settlement like you might be able to do on Mars.
URLs more expensive than land
Should placebos be used in controlled trials of surgery?
I think you're right. I certainly believe good design reflects good usability; but "aesthetics" feels a bit derogatory to me, which is maybe why i don't use it in my vocabulary when I should.
Not familiar with the price point, reference? Pricing at AWS seems to be more like $0.65/hour for one GPU?http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/

Either way, the point of supercomputer.io is that it would be free.(thanks to the contribution of everyone donating cycles). Think BOINC, not AWS. This is not for commercial use.
Hmm, I have complicated feelings about this.

I love Chinese people. I've lived in China for about two years, and speak Mandarin like a 5-year-old or so. I'm in awe of their construction projects, their facility with electronics and software, their can-do attitude, their kindness, etc. They are clearly very strong and getting stronger.

But I don't think it will be a clear case of China surpassing everyone else, at least not in everything. In my opinion, one area of weakness is education. In the US, I more often see children being raised with relatively high degrees of freedom, in ways that instill lifelong curiosity, love of learning, and self-motivated study. Education in China is much more often characterized by extreme stress and credentialism.

In my life I hope to play a very small part in building bridges between China and the US, sharing ideas. I hope we will gradually stop seeing it as a competition, start seeing it as cooperative, and no one will be concerned about who is surpassing whom, at least not on an ethnic level.
Re: Stanislaw Lem. You're right, he definitely feels like he belongs in the Soviet writers context. You can tell the difference in culture, context, commercial preoccupations, etc. when you compare Soderbergh's film version of Solaris with Tarkovsky's version. Both films were enjoyable, of course, but Tarkovsky was much closer to the depth of the book.
Or else we'll look back and wonder how so many people failed to recognize its upcoming upheaval.
They don't need a best English speaker. They need a lot of adequate English speakers. The best English speaker who is Chinese grew up in Hong Kong.
Well according to Patrick's own year in review, BCC is a pretty sizable % of his total annual revenue...

I find it interesting that his goals for 2015 seem to be focused on selling his courseware, etc. on optimization, etc.

This is where the Tim Ferris comment comes from...
They're not even remotely comparable from a reliability or bandwidth standpoint, which is important for high quality streaming content (4k video from Netflix, for example).

These things will matter more as high quality content increases in availability. I also suspect you haven't recently tried to upload any amount of volume (photo albums, videos) on your mobile connection. I'd even consider it dangerous to compare the two, because the only folks I've ever seen consider them analogous are the ISPs themselves and only during takeover conversations, and only in reference to monopolies for service in particular areas (Comcast isn't your only option, you could also use your phone!).

Not to mention how completely untenable it is to play video games on a mobile connection.
He may possibly be a qualified teacher of Haskell, but he's a terrible ambassador for it. A cursory glance through his post history shows him time after time attacking people who dare write about something they like about other languages...all with his smug air of superiority. Want to write a post about asynchronous patterns in your favorite language? He'll be right there dismissing everything you say with some smug comment about how Haskell had it first. I've seen his handle pop up everywhere from Rust threads about Traits to JavaScript threads about async/await. That is exactly the type of personality I found prominent when I decided to learn Haskell, and it is a huge contributing reason to why I won't go back. There are far better ways to evangelize your language than to troll and abuse fans of other languages.
Everything mostly can be done... The REAL point is : Should it be done. IMHO : No! So I don't think I'm missing the point.
Do you have some ideas/opinions who the industry will contain power consumption with big cores? Current super computers running big brawny cores and GPU accelerators are running at 5 GFLOPS/W at best. (consensus that we need to get to 50 GFLOPS/W).
browsers are surprisingly unique to each user; see "browser fingerprinting" https://panopticlick.eff.org/

You could also just use cookies, which is perhaps a more socially conscious way of handing it.
Good point re: keyboard and mouse. Especially the round mouse, just looking at that gives me a funny feeling in the metacarpals.
I'm not sure "saving his business" really applies.

I mean, it's Bingo Card Creator, that's not exactly a $10b market.
It's almost ridiculous to bring up government intervention in labor markets, and I'm not just saying that for effect.

A million things skew the labor market away from the theoretical: people are irrational, information is wildly asymmetric, wages are sticky, there aren't an "arbitrarily large number of firms", the factors of labor (people) aren't liquid or mobile, etc.

To pick 'price floor' from the long list of things that distort the labor market while ignoring the rest is strange enough that I chalk it up to politics any time I hear it.
I hinted at this a while back - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9482269

There is, I think, an awful lot of bullshit that is paraded as fact on HN -- an endless series of aspirational stories of unending success and riches, then segued into pitching a book or web product/startup.

I am a skeptical sort, and just because I think someone is seemingly a nice guy, or a part of the clique, doesn't turn me from the natural skepticism about incredible claims.

People lie. People embellish. Many people can even contrive rationale for why doing that is okay. Human nature.

I'm not trying to be overly negative, but I think these dreamy, sometimes delusional posts can lead people astray, thinking that they're missing out on some great riches that everyone else is claiming to be achieving.
There are theories that our own universe is more likely to be a simulation than "real". e.g. http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html
Go there. See for yourself. It is a trip and a half. Almost like visiting another planet. It's reasonably safe. Not as clean as Japan, but surprisingly orderly while being much more relaxed than Japan. Last time I was there frequently, they opened a new coal fired power plant about as often as they opened a new Starbucks. Now their CO2 emissions are declining faster than expected. Are they bringing nuclear plants online quickly? Renewables? If anyone can, China can. It's the most happening place on the planet, and already driving planetary-scale trends.
Go large.

Do some fraction of something like this
http://blog.jenniferdewalt.com/post/56319597560/im-learning-...

Learn and make a Portfolio and get a lot Publicity at the same time - when you ask for work people could know your name.

Blog or Web-cast then your journey can inspire many.
Flying cars? Not so much. Hoverboard? Maybe!
I've enjoyed reading on Adapteva's work not only for their processor specs but the sheer impressiveness of them iterating so many designs with so little money vs most ASIC vendors. This is definitely not a supercomputer (buzzword alert!) but is a good distributed computing idea. I could see their stuff getting crammed into compute nodes in clusters, too.

Basically, a narrow set of applications that leverage these sorts of chips best and are easily distributed can benefit from this setup. It will probably have more raw performance per watt than most @home setups. Yet, I'd guess lower potential in number of nodes given fewer Parallella users on the market. I hope they benchmark it with many, realistic software that can be compared to other parallel computing methods. This would give us useful information on whether to use something similar for a local site or another @home, non-profit effort.
>> Murray’s primary coding contribution is to planetary terrain, and he had developed a special appreciation for such formations.

So Slartibartfast then: "[Norway] was one of mine. Won an award, you know. Lovely crinkly edges."
Very cute; https://au.godaddy.com/domains/searchresults.aspx?ci=83269&d...

Note that's not the correct spelling.

Domain Squatting is a big business so why not get involved?
This why i dont like you. Because youre illuminous
I jumped immediately to Arch, so can't speak to the situation with Ubuntu, sorry. I did walk through the initial out of the box boot/config of Ubuntu but was not impressed with the Dell tweaks and setup process, so dumped it. I'm definitely happier on a 4.0 kernel.
Neat, I searched and almost bid to purchase my own domain when it goes up for auction.

As it's good until almost 2017 GoDaddy likely shouldn't have offered that; as it's likely I will renew it again.
I was thinking of making the PKGBUILD a github repo though also hoping that we won't need a custom build much longer :)