skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: Bigcorp wants to acquihire us. Should we agree?
Hello HN, I'm a 23 yr old living outside of the US.
About a year ago, me and my co-founder left our jobs to work on our project full time. We developed a product, failed, pivoted, did successful PoC with enterprise company now a well known tech company is willing to acquihire us for 1M $ per capita (2 founders, we don't have employees nor raised any capital).

Currently we tend to refuse, but I worry we might missing a big opportunity. None of us is business savvy in any way. Odds are we will see nothing out of this venture (this is our first time). On the other hand, I personally want to build my entrepreneurship skills, and if we accept the offer we will have to work there for 4 years, meaning i could start a new venture only at 27.

What do you HN fellows think?
It seems like you already know the answer to your question. There are plenty of other programming-related things to learn besides programming languages, if you don't want to learn (esoteric?) programming languages. Enough to keep you busy for a lifetime.
I think using nice or renice is better practice. Hard throttling is way more inefficient.
Neat!

Now look at: https://github.com/clojure/clojurescript

And try it:
http://himera.herokuapp.com/index.html
I convinced my girlfriend over the weekend to use Signal/TextSecure instead of WhatsApp over concerns like this. From reading the article, it sounded like it COULD have been a failure to implement the TextSecure spec properly, but the article was not conclusive. I would be very curious if someone made that determination if it was a weakness in the spec or a failed implementation.
Yes, the original concept was for the Spanish market but I thought I'd try using it with this anyway.
The thing is, these benefits are very small to most Americans while the costs of metrification are pretty large. Most Americans need to drive to an airport and spent half a day or more flying in order to get to a region where metrification is standard. Imperial is used for thousands of miles in every direction, except for specialized use cases.

In most day-to-day life, people are talking about temperature in terms of weather, not freezing and boiling. Weather in Fahrenheit ranges from about 0 to 120 most places in the US most of the time, making it easy to talk about temperature ranges in decades, whereas Celsius ranges from -10 to 45. There is an advantage here either way?
The Internet penetration in Brazil is 51%. That's actually fairly decent.

I think the most important difference is that in Brazil, if you don't have Internet access, you might at least have a friend who does, or you can go to a cibercafé. In Cuba you don't have that option.
I've used a Time Capsule just fine in bridge mode when cabled to a CPE sending out router advertisements.
If you use it as a bridge, you might want to make sure the TC firewall is disabled (or at least lets multicasts through).
So many submissions, so little comment:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9686325 (1 comment)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9679511

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9676852

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9674037

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9661930 (3 comments)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9657809 (1 comment)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9651459 (2 comments)
> kilograms aren't a measure of weight.

When making obnoxious technical corrections in a discussion, there are two things you must do if you wish to avoid simply being a jerk.

1. Your statement must in fact be technically correct.

2. Your statement must be relevant.

You have failed on #2. The person you responded to said:

This would probably have health implications.

220lb seem more than 100kg

Note that nowhere in there did he say anything about "weight". You are simply assuming that he meant "220lb weight seems more than 100kg weight". He could have also meant "200lb mass seems more than 100kg mass".

You have also arguably failed in #1. Kg isn't a measure of weight in the SI system. It is a measure of weight in the de facto system people use in the real world, and is defined as the weight of a 1 Kg mass in a 1 g field. Even scientists use this de facto system much of the time.
Phone number verification suited for startups
Preallocating memory is usually an opimization for throughput.

Servers can have up to 1TB of ram without becoming overpriced.

But starving 80k users due to low buffering will be expensive in the long run. Way more expensive than RAM ;-)
We use Haskell for most of our backend (and hopefully frontend soon) work at Front Row: http://www.kurilin.net/post/117369543198/haskell-at-front-ro...
I'm excited to see how this plays out.
Ultimately, if it's worth saving then it's probably worth upvoting. Content that adds value to the readership of the site should be upvoted.

There are basic guidelines here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Maybe we can ask whether being better off in absolute terms is better or worse than being better off relatively.

So while technology can multiply effects, let's say, that would mean it can multiply it for all but what it doesn't do is smooth it. Smoothing would take judgement and external manipulation to correct a course.
> Are there any examples of Haskell being used to do anything really cool and useful to the average programmer.

https://code.facebook.com/posts/302060973291128/open-sourcin...

More here:
https://www.fpcomplete.com/business/haskell-industry/
https://medium.com/@folsen/haskell-in-production-bdellium-1d...

> I would simply not bother using because no one uses it and deploying it would be a headache.

It's just a binary you can run on a server? There is also Halcyon:

https://halcyon.sh/tutorial/
Thanks for interviewing with us. We know interviews are stressful and we try and account for that by offering a selection of different problems. Also, if we think someone is freezing from nerves, we’ll offer them a problem to do on their own time after the interview before making a decision. We know we can continue doing more and want to run more experiments around this for our next batch of applicants.

What's interesting to us in this specific case is that you actually did great during the interview. We've done hundreds of them in the past few weeks and we're really excited to talk with you again for the second round.
d3 computes the svg attributes (data) that react renders onto the dom
Anecdotes about Lenat's EURISKO
Heh, spotify did this too, if you had any debugger running then it would just instantly shut down. It probably still does it.
"really cool and useful to the average programmer" is pretty vague and hard to answer. But I'd say that it absolutely does. Namely the ability to build things with less code and have them be MUCH more maintainable in the long run because of strong static types and purity.

Case in point: one company ported a 43k line Groovy app to 8200 lines of Haskell [1]. The resulting Haskell app also was at least 64x faster and eliminated a number of major bugs with the Groovy system. If that's not "really cool and useful to the average programmer", then I don't know what is.

But this is just the tip of the iceberg. Haskell has an awesome library called diagrams [2] for the construction of declarative graphics. It can construct some impressively complex images with a remarkably small amount of code [3]. The pandoc universal document converter [4] is written in Haskell. There's also the classic paper comparing Haskell, Ada, C++, and Awk [5]. I'm sure there are other really cool and useful things that I'm forgetting.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BveDrw9CwEg#t=1207

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_fCUSOn7m0

[3] http://projects.haskell.org/diagrams/gallery.html

[4] http://pandoc.org/

[5] http://haskell.cs.yale.edu/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Haskel...
I'm thinking this is a good candidate (given the size of the island) for Project Loon

https://www.google.com/loon/

of course the Cuban authorities could shoot it down or jam the signal but it might be fun anyway. I wonder how many cubans have devices that could connect to the internet if it were available.
ADP fires back at Zenefits
(apropos of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9679312)

Dear Valued Client,

On June 5 you received an email from Zenefits CEO Parker Conrad making erroneous and irresponsible claims about ADP's intentions when we were forced to block Zenefits' access to ADP's RUN platform. I would like the opportunity to set the record straight and reassure you that we always operate with our clients' best interests in mind.

We suspended access solely because the Zenefits unauthorized method of extracting your data, if allowed to continue, would have put the security of your payroll information and our ability to operate at risk. We would block access of any individual or organization that created these or similar conditions.

Zenefits' approach to accessing ADP's RUN solution extracted sensitive client payroll data, including Social Security Numbers and employee banking information, in a manner that does not comply with ADP's standards for data security. In addition, Zenefits' method of extracting data from ADP's RUN system put excessive demands on ADP's servers, potentially impacting service delivery to all of ADP's RUN clients. Based on the system risks and sensitivity of client data, on June 4, 2015, ADP was forced to block Zenefits from accessing ADP's RUN payroll system.

ADP has seamlessly worked with numerous third party solution providers who deliver valuable services to shared clients. To protect your information and ensure service delivery, ADP maintains high standards for data security and systems integration. Zenefits chose not to engage ADP to find a safe and effective solution, and instead deployed automated systems to circumvent ADP's safeguards, forcing ADP to take immediate action to protect clients.

also: http://www.adp.com/zenefits/downloads/The-Facts-About-ADP-and-Zenefits.pdf
For me it's pretty intuitive, that -1°C and +1°C mean pretty different conditions outside. Anything with - is "cold"/"freezing", anything with + is "warm"/"hot". On the other hand +31°F and +33°F aren't as expressive for the same idea.

Boiling is also a pretty important point (for cooking). So having it at 100 is handy. Water is common in everyday life. Brine? No idea why anyone would use that for common measurements.

Plus, using two digits in the majority of cases is simpler. The bottom line, systems like Fahrenheit end up being used when scientists don't think much about practicality in everyday life. It's good no one is using Kelvin for that purpose.
Zero is an even number.

Two is an even number.

The average of two even numbers is an even number.

Therefore, one is an even number.
Show HN: Badum-tish button
See also: https://github.com/vsedach/Parenscript

TLDR: s-expression syntax for javascript, macros are written in common lisp.
A very good article for anyone interested in SVGs!

TL;DR; There is 3 main ways to animate SVGs: SMIL, CSS, and JavaScript, but today you should go with the JS way.

To me, the most interesting section of the article was the : SMIL vs CSS vs JavaScript . The authors main points in that section are:

SMIL: The current and future state of browser support for SMIL is the main reason why I neither use it nor recommend using it anymore today. [...] I expect SMIL usage to drop even more in the future.

CSS: As for CSS, it can only animate so many SVG properties, not all of them

JS: This is why JavaScript is currently my go-to tool for animating SVG, and my library of choice is Greensock.

I think this CSS/JavaScript comparison is true for much more than SVG: For instance, before having good Flex CSS properties for your layout you would need to use Javascript to do the job for you. CSS is clean but less bleeding-edge than JS.
Founders of struggling startups shouldn't follow Pandora's example, since they could get into a lot of legal trouble - paying your employees less than minimum wage is a violation of federal and state labor laws.
> An inherent problem with Javascript is that it has no macro support, unlike other Lisp like languages.

http://sweetjs.org/

There are macro systems for Javascript, just not native ones.
It'd be fascinating if these people would read about bicameralism and give feedback on Julian Jaynes' ideas.

On the other hand there's the whole issue with the accuracy of people self reporting on their own psychology.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameralism_%28psychology%29
> "Jobs that pay enough for them to afford the internet"

A strong argument for getting the third world online is to help create more jobs. This sounds like a corporate sound bite, but it's a complex issue where job opportunities are a few degrees removed from providing broad access to the internet in and of itself.

In a lot of developing countries the only jobs that are available are supporting existing industries that are heavily dominated by mega-corporations that are much more focused on resource extraction/profits than they are on developing human capital: Clothing industry in India, Tourism in Mexico/Caribbean, Mining Natural Resources everywhere.

While much of the initial profits and use cases for bring a country online are frivolous and tend to mirror 1st world consumption patterns, the internet access is critical infrastructure for supporting a more decentralized economy.

As adoption of the internet, and telecommunications infrastructure more generally take hold, economic opportunities that didn't exist before will start to emerge: Mobile payments in Kenya, Bitcoin merchants in Chile, or even the selling US produced content in Cuba (the "paquete").

Access to decentralized communication networks enables people in developing countries to participate in the economy on more favorable terms and enables people to work and start businesses without having to work through existing gatekeepers (I think this is why people have responded so negatively to the internet.org model).

I would love to see some studies on internet or network driven economic development, maybe as an alternative to Import Substitution.
"It is very upsetting to a subset of our fellow hners that you can't express antisocial ideas consequence-free."

Those who would say that are enemies of intellectual life. Can you safely express ideas outside the Overton Window, for curiosity's sake, on your own time? No, they shout in unison!

But now, for any intellectual worthy of the name, the Overton Window is narrow and constraining. If you fancy yourself an intellectual and you think that the present Overton Window is a big enough sandbox to play in, you are not very much of an intellectual. If noting (for instance) that different people are different is outside of the Overton Window, the sandbox is tiny indeed.
not seeing this in Windows 7. Is this specific to Windows 8 and above?
Yeah, that's the same conclusion that I came to myself. In my past experience the bottleneck is almost always the database but throw in Laravel and it takes some serious hardware just to stay afloat.

I recently started thinking about switching languages and like everyone I know I started with Node.js first. I found myself rapidly infuriated with it and decided to try out Go. I wrote a quick S3 upload demo app just to grok it and I was thrilled with the results. Scala outperforms Go but I like Go a little more for rapid app dev. If you decide to take the plunge do let us know how it goes!
I can't think of a strength program that doesn't have a bunch of embarrassing posturing about becoming a super hulking ninja beast. I found it best to read around and after a while I could figure out what parts of different programs were useful.

In the last few years there have been a bunch of new bodyweight training books published. Convict Conditioning, Your Body is Your Barbell, Your Body is Your Gym, etc. (Apparently these authors are too weak to come up with original titles.) Maybe you can find something written by someone from more of a clinical background.

One thing I will say for Mark Lauren is that his book was the most approachable for me as a beginner. He actually has a beginner program that you don't have to already be very strong to follow. There is an android app as well that was very helpful. The women's version of the book is probably a marketing thing. The publisher is probably right in thinking that many women are unlikely to buy a strength training book unless it is specifically "for women."
I've always thought this was a wrongheaded solution.

I mean, of course, we have these apps that splay themselves all over global system resources in complex ways, and so we need to track down how they've done that, record it, and then replay it later to restore them. It's necessary.

But imagine a well-behaved classical X11 app, running in something like a VM or Docker container. You execute its launcher, the VM spins up in the background, the app launches in the VM, and the app's X11 client connects to the X11 server you're staring at and displays things.

If we truly want to sandbox apps, wouldn't it make more sense to move more toward a model like that—one where you have a discrete "application backend process" running in a sandbox, and you can just chuck around the sandbox itself willy-nilly (freezing it, thawing it, copying it, etc.) because it has well-defined connection-points to the host?
It's funny you mention lack of memory protection in Win9x, because they did have memory protection. They just sadly didn't have it for one critical segment.
> I'm also not sure why you would replace moc with template magic - moc will generally not fail (or will tell you if, say, you forgot to inherit from QObject), whereas template errors are midæval latin on a good day.

Liberal usage of static_assert can make your life much less painful. For the specific case you mentioned, static_assert(std::is_base_of<QObject, T>::value, "Type does not inherit from QObject") gives you a reasonable error message (unfortunately, there's no way to stringify a template argument in the error message (yet?), but your compiler should show you where the class is being instantiated)
On OSX you can use Activity Monitor to use View > Send Signal To Process....
More God for me.

I can rule the world. I alone know God.
What do you mean kudos to their motion guy? Is the iPhone animation not merely just a recorded screencast of the actual app functioning as it does natively? Or have I been had by a ruse -- was the animation made in an animations program?
Because the link between IQ tests and intelligence is more tenuous than most people understand it to be.
Did you miss the use of the word "voluntary" in my comment?

Absent force, a person is free to either accept or reject a given deal.
Interesting. I wonder if this is affected by the recent discovery of the tube connecting the immune system to the brain though?
Yes, it is interesting how regional it is! I lived in Tokyo and in the north, and sumimasen (or suimasen) was basically just used for sorry-thanks (along with all the other excuse-me type situations). Also doumo was the least formal way of saying thanks, not arigato, unless there was some other way of demonstrating appreciation in which case it might be skipped altogether. Some of the people I was with would say sugoi about every 10 seconds and if you did something deserving a doumo you might get a sugoi instead. I wouldn't say doumo in a shop unless I knew the people, and I wouldn't say arigato much with people I was close to. I certainly wouldn't use arigato much at dinner, let alone doumo; with friends it was close to saying "I'm grateful" in English which you only really say if it's at least somewhat important.
Well..just off the bat...

What's your ARR?

Do you read SaaStr? This post is a great intro: http://www.saastr.com/saas-acquisitions-if-you-sell-do-it-at...

What clauses are on the acquisition? What is the vesting? Does it start immediately? What happens if they terminate you after two years? Do you still get the $?

What happens if you say, "That's an interesting offer, and we appreciate it. Let's see what happens in six months?"

Have you tried to contact Corp Dev at other, competing companies and mentioned you had a "substantial" acquisition offer on the table -- under no circumstances mention the name of the company that extended it -- and wanted to see whether they'd be interested in chatting?
I found the "preachy" bootleg strip referred to in the first paragraph to be rather poignant and wonderful.
Gold Fever – A Treasure Hunt for Erlangers
There's a long-running genre of herding things. It is almost always made by UK developers, and is almost always about herding sheep. Usually it's mostly about moving your sheep-repelling character so as to make most of the sheep go where you want to, and usually it's played from a top-down view. Do a Google Images search for "herding game" and you will see a ton of 2D shepherd games. There have been some 3D herders as well.

Lemmings stands out because it's got you herding around something besides sheep. There was a burst of Lemmings-likes on the Amiga that had you herding various other little hapless people, I think there were even a few that gave your little helpless people weapons and made you herd them around to defeat an enemy horde.

Whistler's Brother (Br0derbund, c64/Atari - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lT32TokTYqc) definitely felt like it was an earlier member of the same genre despite you only having to herd one guy around. Possibly because, like Lemmings, it's from a side view.

It feels like I see a Lemmings-like (side view herder, probably without any avatar of the player) every few years. Always from teams with small budgets; nobody has figured out how to justify an AAA herder. I think the last attempt at that I heard of was Core's "Herdy Gerdy" on the PS2. (Which now that I dig up a video of I think I may need to emulate. It looks SUPER CUTE and SUPER CHILL. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SP24_EYuKJE)
Extensive discussion of ADP's statement here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9686175
also http://sibilantjs.info/
The Danger of Software Patents – Richard Stallman [video]
The CEO of a $1B 'unicorn' startup admits we're in a bubble
Bud – A TLS terminating proxy
I hadn't realized Stud had gone unmaintained. Great to see Varnish taking over the project!
We watch cooks country sometimes. I frequently wonder how to change the recipe for our high altitude desert climate that differs from theirs. I'm never quite sure I've done it because the recipe's (especially volume based measurements) and descriptions are less precise than a smart gadget could be. I'm never quite sure the carbonara sauce is cooked or raw. This is why I'm interested, and perhaps part of the market. Cooking for me is about replicating conditions and duplicating an experiment.
It is not a pure superset. With the current app engine, Google takes care of security patches for the language. With container engine, the customer is now responsible for security patches for their language.
Parent post is talking about us and them and I doubt they mean native americans in their "us".
Years ago, I wondered why hypervisor-level pause (and memory snapshots, for that matter) weren't just expected features for game consoles.

These days I can at least hit the Home button on a Wii U game and expect it to work. Emulators are still hogging save-states all to themselves, though.
Tabaholics should really take a look at the onetab chrome extension to temporarily bookmark/store pages.