skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
!Mars != !Space.

Mars is a dusty, barren deathtrap of a rock that's at the bottom of a very deep hole. The only thing to do on Mars is to _be_ on Mars. It's not (plausibly) terraformable, sustaining life there will obvious continuous and hugely expensive technical input, there are no resources there worth going there for, and once you've gone there, to get back you have to climb out of a hugely deep hole.

Meanwhile the solar system is full of places that are easier to get to, more hospitable, more profitable, and which you can get away from. Asteroids. Comets. Ceres. The moon, even. Further afield, the rings of Jupiter and Saturn --- the radiation's a bit rough, but if you can survive there, you've got it made. Hell, if you're into planets, Venus is a better option. Did you know that there are parts of Venus which are a shirt-sleeve (and breathing mask) environment?

Mars is fascinating, and there should absolutely be a science station there eventually, but it's not colonisation material. I certainly don't think it should be a priority right at this moment. With our current state of the art, I believe the Moon to be a much better choice.
Winning Back the Open Web
You aren't being intellectual, not in the least.
Yeah, i think it's important to do the math. And do that math together. Say, 1000 shares @$20. how many companies make it to IPO? let's be generous and say 10%. What are the odds you'll still be there in 4 years - even with the best of intentions 95%? That right there is down from $20,000 to $1900. Also, that's in future dollars, so inflation will eat away another 3-4%. $50 dollars a month more at some other company wins by over $500.

They are not worthless, but it's important to value them accurately.
In the US, relationships don't matter as much. They still matter for your career, but someone will do business with you as a way to start a relationship. In many places, the relationship is a prerequisite to doing business. If you don't have the relationship, you can usually just pay a bribe.

I wouldn't try to link the US' foreign policy to our cultural norms. Foreign policy exists in the realm of realpolitik, and every rational actor would likely behave the same way if they were in the US' place. When it comes to setting the global balance of power, anything and everything is fair game. This is why presidents customarily don't criticize those who come after them.
What can Jevons' Paradox tell us about energy law?
Wide adoption + low barrier to entry + non-blocking I/O = lots of questions on SO.
The premise should be simple I think... pay people competitively with actual money for the work they are actually doing right now. If there is a chance their work could lead to a huge paypay... then give them a claim to a sliver of that payday. Don't cross the streams.
Shameless self-plug - I built a "pastebin scraper as a service" platform, and released it here: https://github.com/shayanjm/pasteye

Took much inspiration from dumpmon, but distributed it so users can choose their own sensitivity settings.
Then who built all your roads? There's plenty of non capitalist activities that go on in all capitalist economies.
I don't mean to sound too dismissive, but this article is bunkum. SO I guess by the author's logic, Michael Bloomberg's net worth is zero because Bloomberg LP never went public? The private market is illiquid, but fundamentals will always trump liquidity. If you own equity, that equity - assuming there is no dilution or deterioration in the fundamentals of the underlying business - is wealth. Employee stock options are a different matter, but deep in the money options are essentially as good as partial ownership. it may be harder to assess valuation in a private market, but it's done nonetheless.
Singularity University: Startup Lab Accelerator by Amazon, Google and More
Well, a lot of people argue that the moon landing was a hoax (without knowing basic engineering) and that the holocaust didn't happen (without knowing basic history). I find it more depressing than baffling.
Yeah, I realize this... Ultimately it's the same effect though (advertisers use your info to show you ads), which is why I didn't make the distinction.
Install wasn't too bad - it required three reboots then I noticed it was the home starter edition so spell check was not included.
Council of Europe Calls on U.S. To Let Snowden Have a Fair Trial
It's not always easy to explain something when you are being interrupted by a loud narcissist after every third word you say. And not tempting to stay in such a place either, I would also minimize the damages and focus my energy on looking for a new job unless the boss deals with the source of the problem.
Here's the thing: honest enquiry is something that should be encouraged. Sea-lioning[1], JAQing off[2] and Gish gallops[3] should not. When you are buried to your eyeballs in bullshit, it's hard to see who is really someone willing learn, and who is just shoveling on more.

[1] - http://simplikation.com/why-sealioning-is-bad/

[2] - http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Just_asking_questions

[3] - http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Gish_Gallop
because they probably spend most of their time in a cubicle thinking that these new-fangled technologies will die someday, and we can all go back to writing crap like we did in 1999.

That is exactly the singular reason I don't pay attention to DHH's brain farts. I guess you got me.
I applaude them for finally doing this but I do wonder if it's too late in that I've gotten hooked on GDocs and Drive based on their ease of use. I suppose for corporate users of Office this is great news.
It's not just a question of how the model extrapolates from the input data itself. The actual input data may be in question as well, because there are always judgments involved in deciding how to measure, what "unreasonable" datapoints will be discarded, etc.

Read, for example, here:

"It is indisputable that a theory that is inconsistent with empirical data is a poor theory. No theory should be accepted merely because of the beauty of its logic or because it leads to conclusions that are ideologically welcome or politically convenient. Yet it is naive in the extreme to suppose that facts – especially the facts of the social sciences – speak for themselves. Not only is it true that sound analysis is unavoidably a judgment-laden mix of rigorous reasoning (“theory”) with careful observation of the facts; it is also true that the facts themselves are in large part the product of theorizing. ..."

http://cafehayek.com/2015/04/theorizing-about-the-facts-ther...
You still haven't shown that there is an importance difference between the New World and Mars that justifies your focus on collectivism.

> The difference between all previous human colonization and Mars is that in the past colonies were at least theoretically self sufficient.

The colonies on mars are only useful as an insurance policy against global catastrophe when they are economically self sufficient.

> The other issue is that human colonization has always been driven by "real" pressures like limited resources, war, or economic expansion. Mars solves none of those.

Right, just like European colonization.
Is the premise of this question valid? I've noticed about a 50/50 split anecdotally. Does anybody know the real #s? (What % of users pay?)
Again, you are missing the important point here. Let me reiterate it. When you evaluate two alternatives, it is not enough to say "A is bad for these reasons" or "B is good for these reasons". You need to actually compare them, i.e. say "on this metric, A is better than B" or "on this metric, A is worse than B".

So if we apply this to your argument, we see that you argue that (most) citizens do not care, so it is hard to gather clout to fire bad private company. Let's assume for the sake of argument that this is true. How this makes government-run prison better than private? If citizens do not care, they also wouldn't care if prisoners were abused in government-run prison. Moreover, if some citizens care, what is easier for them to overcome - a lobby of one private company (which can be, ultimately, fired, its reputation destroyed, and in extreme cases, whole company bankrupt and dissolved) - against which other private companies and lobbies can be also used as allies, or the alliance of state bureaucracy and public employees unions, which can not be seriously hurt (most of their power is constitutionally protected or at least enshrined in the law so hard that you need truly exceptional clout to change it), which have access to vast amounts of budget money and control well-organized and battle-hardened political machine with national support? What is easier to fight - the ones that have the money or the ones that have the money, the law, the executive power, the people, the press and the human resources? I'm afraid the comparison doesn't come in the favor of your point.

>> Third, I do not buy the schlock that is the argument "private entities are always better than public ones."

You do not have to buy it. But if you intent to seriously evaluate it - as opposed to dismissing it without consideration because it does not fit your fixed ideological biases - you have to use proper tools. Such as actually comparing the benefits and disadvantages of both, instead of saying "this is crap, because it is". It is not about always, it is about really thinking about it as opposed to not even bothering.
> It's the blatant disregard to UX and UI where this company has literally pixel for pixel ripped off slack.

I'm finding it hard to parse this sentence. Are you saying ripping off Slack is the blatant disregard, or are you saying Slack pioneered a blatant disregard for UX and UI?
What? Google is pushing it's drive and docs heavily to corporate users. I don't see how shutting docs would help those sales.
Almost every company with a half decent optimization strategy will use similar sites to measure interactions and categorize users. Most of these measurements are things that a site could do on its own (like analyzing how effective a call to action is) but it makes sense time and cost wise to outsource to an expert.

If you're worried about this- use an adblocker or don't go to corporate sites.
exactly..fundamentals will always trump liquidity
Eclipse 4.5 (Mars): Eclipse Ships Tenth Annual Release Train
Timeline JS3 – Beautifully crafted timelines that are easy, and intuitive to use
Can you recommend your favorite protocol OR app for a small dev company where we share files and want to keep a centralized area where team members can chat, using various apps (or web interfaces)? The more robust the better, doesnt have to look amazing!
For me:

Unsolicited automated email = Spam.

Unsolicited semi-automated (i.e. fill in the blanks) email = Spam.

Unsolicited personal email actually written by a human = OK.

Followup to unsolicited email because I didn't reply to the first one = Very rude. Instant blacklist of sender.
I calls them as I sees them.
Many flatscreens nowadays have ports that are facing to the sides, so those people would've had a problem with an angled connector. I'd rather have power over HDMI to get rid of that annoying powercord to the stick :)
Ask HN: Which technology stack do you prefer as a user of web-based software?
Say you want a solution for a problem you have, that is not within your core-business. Preferably you want something free or cheap, that you can install on your own server, as you are a small business or young startup.

How important is it for you, that the software matches your technology stack? Say you are a Rails-shop, would you choose a Rails app over a superior or cheaper PHP app? Is there a hierarchy of technologies, that you apply when choosing a product (e.g. Rails over others, but rather Python than PHP)? Or don't you care, because you use visualization/containerization anyway and don't mind the additional technology?

I am asking this, because obviously PHP + MySQL have the biggest overall audience and is the easiest to install option for most people. On the other hand, I do not like it, HN does not like it and it is ill-suited for long-running stuff.
Same in Germany: A lot of official things can only be done through fax or paper mail even today. And you know what? I’m totally fine with that.
Ask HN: How do you search the internet?
I was discussing research tactics with a couple of friends the other day. Since we all have technical backgrounds, I was surprised to find out that we took different approaches when it came to online research.

Between the three of us I learned a few things and discovered a couple resources I didn't previously know about. I'm hoping that by extending the conversation to a larger audience I'll learn even more.

So, besides basic search operators, what resources and techniques do you use for searching?

A handful that I use pretty regularly:
DuckDuckGo, Google Scholar, PubMed, Google Books search, Wolfram Alpha, Facebook, Twitter, reverse image search, Wikipedia and Stack Overflow.

If you know of any good books or articles on advanced search techniques, please share those as well.
It's trivial to log IRC, but it is hard to integrate server-side log display and search with prebaked clients.
Care to actually add anything to the discussion?
I am not sure I understand Aaron's point in this.

Is it "We should pay people more?"

But isn't that really a question of whether or not you can find people who will work for the salary your offering? If you can't you raise what your willing to pay until you find someone who will right?

Or is it "We should make options always remunerative?"

In which case they aren't really options are they? They are just salary so why not just switch to a fixed + variable salary system like so many folks do. Heck you could even go all pay to perform like sales folks have been paid for ages, "Get this code done, you get paid, don't you don't." I personally don't think that incents the best choices but it can motivate.

If you want to write into your corporate by laws that every round of funding includes a 10% of the shares in the funding must come from employees common stock, and you always divide by 'n' (the number of employees that want to participate) the amount of stock they can contribute, well that is ok, except your converting common to preferred in that case and the SEC is going to ask a lot of questions about that.

There is the perception that founders of unicorns are rich, but trust me, they aren't, what they are is "rich on paper" and when they can't raise any more money and they are running out of cash on hand, the founders stock is going to be worth just as much as the employee's stock, which is near 0. So it will all even out. There are a lot of people who were working in the Bay Area during the 90s (and I'm one of them) that were multi-millionaires on paper at some point, and that same paper because worthless sometime later before it could be converted into cash. Did I "lose" 12 million dollars? No, of course not. I never had 12 million dollars, what I had was a concatenation of increasingly improbable if statements which if the 'true' path was followed to the end, could be converted into $12M. Since not all of those if statements resolved true, the actual result was about $83,000. Lots and lots of people had the same sort of experience.

Aaron, if you're reading, what problem are you trying to solve?
So, a graph and no units. Wonderful. As far as I know we're talking squirrels per cubic meter equivalent production of CO2 lol
Yep, it's clear that neither extreme is useful, and when that's the case finding the balance is tricky.
The latest shitty clause that Valley companies are including in their options contract prohibits you from selling fully vested and exercised shares even if you have a willing buyer.

Apparently companies saw all the employees getting rich from private companies like Palantir and Facebook pre-IPO and considered that a problem to be solved. Check your contract, you probably don't "own" the stock you think you do.
If IPOs are getting significantly delayed and are potentially at risk of not happening at all,[1] we need to change how compensation is structured.

Not sure that this is the best opening argument here. With things like the JOBS Act passing, Reg A+ and such getting off the ground, my hypothesis is that we'll see an acceleration in the rate at which companies are able to get to the IPO stage. If anything, in the short / near-term future, we'll see an increase in value of paper. The whole point of offering equity to shareholders and stakeholders is to have people (ownership theory) who are rooting for and/or willing to work toward group success.

The problem, of course, is that executives at far too many companies use equity like a dangling carrot... demanding more than reasonable time for even a basic ROI for the people whose risks are the riskiest (early employees).
Top 61 Mobile App Testing Tips for 2015 – The Ultimate Checklist
I'm not sure I understand.
Can you explain?

Are you saying people can not understand this data?
The linked article reads like the first draft of Docker marketing copy, but Docker introduces Dockerfiles which shift your thinking in a way that Puppet or Chef failed to do. Of course, Docker, and thus Dockerfiles are still in their infancy, and don't magically maintain themselves but they're still enough of a step forwards to drive adoption.

Docker's currently burning resources trying to force Docker into production before it's ready, because that's where they see a market, and thus where they can make money. It's really not that hard to take a docker container/image and turn it into a bootable disk image to be used on your VM host though.

I'd prefer they spend their time making Dockerfiles more useful, but Dockerfiles are a win where Puppet and Chef failed me.
And if you leave the company they actually cost you money, since you have to pay out of pocket to exercise them (for stock that may end up never being sellable) and you also have to pay AMT taxes based on the latest company valuation.
Definitely the best spreadsheet implementation available today when running on a Galaxy S6 - beats out other Android options as well as Office on Windows Phones or iOS, etc. It's actually really usable which is the first time I've thought that for a mobile spreadsheet.

Very nice.
By this logic, no large company should ever end up on the wrong side of the law, ethics or morality...
The first is a founder pledge that they will do everything in their power to let common holders sell into secondary markets above a certain valuation, say, $500mm.

How many VC backed startups get to that sort of valuation without going public? At the $1bn mark, globally, there are 98[1]. I imagine it's possible there are 50 times that number at $0.5bn, but that's still a pretty small number out of all the startups there are. To fix compensation we need things that are going to move the needle even for relatively small companies.

[1] http://graphics.wsj.com/billion-dollar-club/
I like "the La Brea tar pits" in LA. ("the the tar tar pits")
Heroku Labs: Deployment Pipelines
About 10 minutes.

My flow typically looks like: Github > CodeShip > Live Servers > Update sent back to Github

The vast majority of the time-lag is for the tests to run on CodeShip. Hot deploying the changes (since they're often only small/incremental changes) only takes a few seconds.

And this is usually a MEAN/MEAN-like stack running on CENTOS.
The odds are good. Unfortunately, founders often take a very low salary. That's not necessarily bad, but the emotional effect can be "if I'm struggling, so should you".

It's similar to people who don't take vacation and think it puts them on the moral high ground.
Great, now put it together for me and I'll buy three at $99 each :)
This is off-topic to the content, but I find it... interesting... that a State of the Internet report is a downloadable PDF (behind a registration, no less).
For google docs, sharing is easy, collaboration is stupidly easy. My org has moved to google tools from office and I would say it's for the better. Previously everything was handled through emails and windows network drive (and this from an org with tens of subsidiaries and presence on every inhabited continent). Docs get lost a lot less nowadays. One can scream that content management is old stuff but google made it easy enough for corporate users just to jump aboard without expensive retraining.

That said - oh for the love of god, google docs writer editor is so bloody horrible for anything but simplest of documents and even structuring larger document bases through hyperlinking is awkward.
It makes sense, in a weird way. MMO's are such huge projects that developers are forced to create supporting subsystems to complete it (e.g. Image/asset processing and storage system - Flickr, in-game chat and collaboration system - Slack).

I'm impressed that Stewart Butterfield is able to look at these systems and recognize which ones could be a viable (and successful!) stand-alone product.
He is referring to the fact that Google has closed a lot of apps it made in the past. If you start a Google app, make sure you have a path to get off it.
I like this highlight of collective bargaining:

>the right to contribute to open source projects or veto the release of insecure, privacy-violating or otherwise unprofessional code.

I do find it interesting to contrast it with Steve Klabnik's interview in which he essentially points out that Open Source is by and large, and obviously with some projects excluded, unpaid work that provides massive benefits to companies & their owners for free (and to others, of course).
> companies need to standardize their secondary sale and options repurchase practices

I realize this is somewhat trolling, but like Benedict Evans joked in the recent a16z podcast on this topic traditionally that's a process called... IPOing.

http://a16z.com/2015/06/17/a16z-podcast-the-rise-of-the-quas...
Flags are explained in comment #22:

https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=500922#c...

>Microphone: Is a microphone detected? (Does not mean it is being used.)

>Audio Capture Allowed: Can Chromium use the mic? (This is there for historical reasons, it's always "Yes".)
Worse, even with the %50 pay cut (or worse!) many startups expect you to take, the amount of options you're given are really trivial.

It is possible to value options using black scholes or other valuation metrics. But every time I've run the numbers the present day value of the options is never even 1/10th of the value of the salary you're asked to give up.

I've concluded the only way to do a startup is to be one of no more than 3 founders.

Then, if the shares pay off, the return might be worth the risk.
That's true. It's also open source, unlike MEGA.nz.
> you're still at the mercy / whim of a developer

Well, aren't we all?
Both are true actually.

People have been renting out their homes via CL for over a decade. These "glue" services for AirBnB etc just make that transaction a lot better, and AirBnB takes their cut -- but people could post listings for vacation rentals online forever.

I rented apartments for the weekend in NYC as far back as 2002 off CL.
I think the difference that I would like is to have the offline cache on the phone sync to my playlist history across devices. So, if I'd been listening on the web client, or another device, then I'd like my phone to download all those recently-played songs and just have them available.
Oculus support would be awesome
If we want open software to win, we need to get off our armchairs and compete
Lots of people across broad spectrums do this all the time. It's uncomfortable to publicly admit you don't know something; a lot of people, especially otherwise smart people, try to apply their expertise in one area to another area they have no specialized knowledge in.

Programmers as a group are maybe a little bit worse about this than most other groups (except maybe physicists), because they view themselves as "systems people", and "everything is a system", therefore similar rules apply everywhere: software is buggy by nature, so scientific research must suffer from similar error rates, for example.