skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
How is that something to be proud of?

In ancient times (only a few hundred years ago, actually), peasants were ruled by kings and nobles. They owned next to nothing. They couldn't choose to change jobs or careers, couldn't choose to move to another place. It wasn't just difficult to find opportunity and turn it into prosperity--it was not allowed.

Then a few people decided that human beings had innate, individual worth, and that no one person was better or more important than any other. They realized that people should be able to determine their own destiny. They realized that no one sitting in an ivory tower or behind a desk should be able to rubber-stamp someone else's life out of existence. So now we have constitutions and democracies and capitalism. It's not perfect--people are still greedy and power-hungry--but it's a million times better than it used to be.

Then in some parts of the world, some people got the idea that the nebulous idea of the greater good outweighed what was good for any one person--the "greater good" being determined by a few intellectuals or bureaucrats--and that individual rights were rightfully trumped by the rubber-stamp of a government wonk. As a result, tens of millions of people were stamped out of existence, and millions died fighting wars over it. Some of those governments failed, while others linger to this day.

And yet, there are still people today who want to take us back into the dark ages, where a bureaucrat sitting behind a desk can tell you where to work, where to live, whether your illness is worthy of healthcare, whether you're eligible to live or die, whether you're allowed to have a family, whether you're allowed to seek a better education...

What is wrong with you?!

Someone needs to put together a multi-volume set of horror stories from those who have lived under communist and socialist rule. But even that probably wouldn't convince these leftists that it's a bad idea, because they always think, "Yeah, but we can get it right This Time." As if human beings--the ones who comprise the government--have changed for the better. The arrogance and hubris is off-the-charts, always thinking that they know how to fix the systems that have allowed the evil impulses of humans to flourish and slaughter millions of innocent people.

Maybe we should buy a few islands, throw them together, and let them fight it out to make their utopias. After a few decades, they'd be ready for freedom again.
... all of which I've seen play out at big companies, too.

Yes, having poorly-perfoming individuals in key roles can hurt a startup much more than a big company. But the experience of working for the startup in that case sucks no more than working for the big company.
This is also a decent path to take before fully migrating to Typescript and get type checking :)

Does anyone know if you can use ES6 code side by side with ES5 without any issues?
Personally I use Ctrl-S for tmux for the command key, since I use Ctrl-A in vim. If I really need to send a signal I can Ctrl-s Ctrl-s, but otherwise this works fine.
It is sometimes surprising how accurate some of Stallman's dystopian visions were and it is frightening because some of them have not become true. Yet.
Jinni is going away: export your ratings
The scope for accidents it too high. Get a strong gust of wind where you groundplant and you've given your drone away which is covered in you fingerprints.
toilet is not portable and can't be set of remotely.

still over-engineered. look how it's done:
https://youtu.be/Wp2CEJb4oyY?t=71
If only it was not awful javascript.

Also, I've come into many situations where webgl doesn't work in some particular situations, would it be a a combination of OS, webgl driver support or web browser.

I guess it should work and will as time passes, but as long as there is nothing else than javascript, I won't bother.
Companies usually build services similar to Cloud Test Lab internally.

Facebook (which has to deal with more than 4 billion installs combined for all its apps) has written about their tooling infrastructure here: https://code.facebook.com/posts/924676474230092/mobile-perfo...

I wonder if Amazon has something up its sleeve... (EC2-esque for Android).
One instruction set computer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_instruction_set_computer
we are clearly not meant to work in groups of several hundred. And yet—for reasons having more to do with technology than human nature—a great many people work for companies with hundreds or thousands of employees.

The size of the company has little relation with the size of the groups you work in. I've worked for a couple of companies with around 8-10k employees and a couple more with around 1000 employees, and all those cases I've always worked in groups of 2-20.

Also, having a (good) boss is great. They handle all the shit work (like sales and customer relations) and run interference so that you can do you real job.
I agree with the general sentiment of your blog post but one claim caught my attention as not justified when it should be:

>Just as people’s salary is not an acceptable topic of conversation amongst colleagues I think negative opinions about clients should be similarly off limit for casual conversations.

The badmouthing of the client can get out of hand and become detrimental to your relationship with them. I have seen this happen. That employees shouldn't discuss their salaries is a piece of accepted wisdom but does experience support it? Personally, I can't say it does, but then again, it is such a rare freak occurrence you can hardly discern any trends. I suppose that under the conditions of a strong general taboo on it people talking about how much they make may already signal trouble; does it, however, create trouble where the taboo is weaker (e.g., in Europe)?

I am not urging to abandon the taboo on discussing your salary simply because I can't find a good reason for it but I would like to understand how it came about and whether the conditions
that created it still apply.
You are all a bunch of pussies who's afraid of talking face to face but go all Rambo when you got computers and network cables between you?
People who advocate euthanasia and socialist health care programs are effectively increasing mortality rates. In countries where euthanasia is legalized, mentally ill people are already being killed.

When a bureaucrat sitting behind a desk can use a rubber-stamp to tell an elderly person, "Nope, no treatment for you this time, you're done," there's nothing to stop more and more people from being denied treatment. Eventually even younger people with mental illnesses or genetic disorders will be eliminated--all to avoid overcrowding and overloading of the health care system, of course.

It's for the greater good. Don't you want to be a good citizen? Reduce your burden on society, today!*

*Cremation fees not included.
"If I were starting Atlassian today, I wouldn't have stayed here"

- Scott Farquar, CEO of Atlassian

http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/557248/atlassian-ceo...

Besides, Atlassian is now officially a UK company.

Australia is indeed a rich country. Lots of funding is probably available. Laws seem simpler than in Europe. I don't know whether Scott is comparing Australia to UK/US or to other more latin countries like Spain or France.
When a person says "Not to be x, but", being x is exactly what they are doing. It's wilful self-delusion. Either fully own and accept your decision or, if that's problematic, consider that maybe it's not a good decision and consider an alternative course of action.

If a CEO/hiring manager decides employees that become depressed, get sick, are involved in an accident, whatever are to be shown the door rather than offered help or assistance, fine, that is their prerogative. But don't pretend it's not a shitty way to treat a person.

And employers wonder why so many people absolutely despise their jobs. Treating a person like a piece of equipment that can and should be replaced immediately if a part malfunctions or it isn't performing optimally is an excellent way to ensure an oppressive and hostile work environment. But then you get to crack the whip and scare some "motivation" into the workforce, and maybe that's exactly what you wanted to do. Just don't expect a grateful and productive staff.
Uh, wait, does the US have a "startup visa" now?
I've read many parts of this tutorial, it's very good and explain thoroughly how opengl works. It's both simple, short, doesn't go into too much detail, but provide the essentials you need to know.

The most attractive aspect of this website is that it's oriented towards opengl 3.3 core profile, so it's really up to date, but now I admit I don't understand how vulkan will change that.
Ask HN: Tech News Weekly Roundup?
I need to get my compulsive tech news checking under control. Simply, I need to do a better job of turning off and focusing my attention.

Does anyone know of a weekly digest, or slow news for IT? A site I can go to or an email digest that's focused on quality and low throughput?

On the flip side, how do you get notified of major, just released vulnerabilities? Currently my primary source is Slashdot, HN, etc, but I assume there's some email service out there...

---Alex
Inspired by this thread and your post, I decided yesterday to try at least a 24 hour fast. After a breakfast shake yesterday, I played tennis and went about my normal activities. I eat a fairly ketogenic diet, so the hunger wasn't too distracting, although I felt very laid back in the evening.

This morning, I woke up about an hour earlier than usual with a great feeling of energy and focus. No real hunger. I'm going to push it a little further as long as I feel good. Thanks.
This is a personal anecdote - my dad used to run a company that sorted second hand clothing. He had a huge warehouse, where people would stand in one place and literally pick clothes out of one basket and then sort them into several smaller ones, by colour or type. The atmosphere in the warehouse wasn't exactly perfect,but employees could talk to each other and they had a radio playing music. Based on some observations, he introduced a complete ban on casual talking and he took away the radio. Sure, for the employees it must have been much worse. But the productivity increased by 50% - an average amount sorted per day per employee was 400kg, after the change it went up to 600kg, which in the scale of things made a HUGE difference at the end of the month. The company could process a lot more with the same number of people. And yes, sure - people would get unhappy and leave, but it being rather easy manual labour - there were always 50 other people willing to take the position.
I'm not defending my father, I think the way he ran the company was horrible for the employees, but it's just the personal anecdote showing that working in a nice/friendly environment doesn't necessarily make you more efficient. They could chat, so they spent time chatting,not doing what they were paid to do.
Unix people and technical people in general have a hard time grasping how ordinary people would feel about such a task.
Sure it does. There's a problem in that there's not enough quality labor willing to work for peanuts and then watch their life get destroyed when a major medical event happens.
I'm kind of fascinated by this topic. I believe on balance, the big blue bin is a positive thing. But it's a complex engineering equation. More recycling coming in but with an increase in wastage. How much of that wastage is necessary and how much can be eliminated with smarter sorting machines or better policies or consumer awareness? It reminds me of complex software performance optimzation where you need to balance CPU, ram, disk access to make sure that 'obvious' improvements aren't ineffective or even counter productive.

I'm not sure I appreciate the "do-gooders mess it all up again" vibe in the middle of the article, but the US has always had a weird relationship with recycling for whatever reason.

I'm glad to see food recycling raised as a solution, they do that where I live and it makes a lot of sense compared with having it decompose to methane in landfills (though some landfills do try to capture the methane and then burn it for ebergy its better to get it at source).

A carbon tax (ideally one covering other GHGs like methane) would probably sort out the recycling market along with the million other markets it would fix, but the time for the obvious and sensible solution is not quite nigh, though since even the oil and gas corporations are advocating it now in Europe it may not be too long now.
This is a great list. I am fine with companies asking for work samples, but these should be paid. The closer you can test candidates for what they will actually do then the better the result for everyone.
"Another possibility is to follow the urgings of the environmental community by expanding recycling programs to include composting — the banana peels and grass clippings degrading in landfills that by some estimates have become the nation’s third-biggest source of methane gas contributing to global warming. Composting is partly credited with the success of such cities as San Francisco, Portland and Seattle in increasing the share of the waste stream that is recycled each year."

Composting seems like a big win but how is this easily accomplished is urban areas?
Chilling testimony where the OPM director is being grilled.

Apparently this information was accessed due to mere OPM incompetence. One has to wonder how she's not fired yet:

http://adam.curry.com/enc/20150618193418_opmdirectorkatherin...
Nice to know they're not magic after all :) Very inspiring.
The Early Years of Computational Geometry – A Personal Memoir (1999) [pdf]
In your knee-jerkiness you have missed the point. The point is that people who believe in life after death may not desire to live longer. Regardless of whether there actually is life after death, what people believe about it affects their decisions.

This is probably not the place to argue about the existence of God, but I will say this: your reasoning is circular. "There's no rational justification for it, so it's not true; and since it's not true, there's no rational justification for it." You have made up your mind already, so you don't even realize when you beg the question. In fact, many people do see rational arguments in favor; just because you disagree with them doesn't make them irrational. And your stated arguments are, in fact, irrational.

Food for thought.
There are many practical uses for drones, but this is not one of them.

First, the drone must be outside to be able to escape quickly. That's a problem, as consumer drones aren't designed to spend weeks sitting outdoors. Even if a drone was weatherproof, it would need its batteries topped-up from time to time.

Second, you will not have access to your phone or other signaling devices if you are getting busted. It would be very hard to trigger the drone surreptitiously.

Last, police are going to notice a drone flying away during a bust. And they won't be happy about it. For all they know, the drone could be carrying a bomb. This escalates the situation and makes a bad outcome much more likely.

If you want a better use of drones, here's one: First response. Place drone "nests" every 500 meters in urban areas. Cell towers might be convenient locations. When ShotSpotter[1] detects gunfire, dispatch the closest drone to the scene. It can arrive within 20 seconds, record footage, and relay it to police. Currently, police and medics wait for backup before going to the scene of a shooting. But with drones to send the all-clear, they could treat victims sooner, saving lives.

Future upgrades could even allow tracking of suspects. This would make it much harder to get away with firing a gun in a city.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunfire_locator
True. There are a fair few packages in raco, but I think Chicken's eggs[1] may be a better bet for 3rd-party support just yet.

[1] http://wiki.call-cc.org/chicken-projects/egg-index-4.html
How is your interview process? people would rather get a job using their skills within a few days, rather than go through an inappropriate interview process that does not select them

This is just a guess, of course :) Is your HR/interview/hiring process easy for people to go through, who can do and have done the job?
Making you sell what I want: Story of an Ebay XSS
> have shown what can be accomplished

That was never the proper question. The proper question is what's the relative difference in the magnitude & probability of success, between the different regions. This matters, because success is so extremely difficult to achieve in startups already.

> outcomes are more binary in the US - that's mostly a Silicon Valley cultural thing.

It's an investor thing, not a cultural thing. If the business doesn't reach an exit, then the investor (nearly always) gets absolutely nothing, no matter how many millions the company is profiting per year. Tech startups generally never pay out dividends. All that money goes back to the employees and other expenses. Nothing to the investors. Never exiting = equivalent to the company imploding as a completely failure, from an investor's financial perspective.

> stay domestic and contribute to building up the tech scene there.

If startups want to build up their ecosystem, the more effective approach is to go to where the money is, get the money, and THEN take that money and success back to their home community. Exactly as the Skype guys did for Estonia, or as many founders have done for Israel. #1 get the money #2 bring it back. 2 optimized steps, not a single step.

This small town concept of just guilt-tripping the poor desperate founders to never leave their home town out of loyalty simply hurts everyone. It's backwards thinking like this that keeps the smaller towns smaller and less successful.
Earth Surface Temperature Analysis(1951-1980..2015)
In case anyone is wondering how they empty the underground trash containers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhbhvdvTWUg
Still not sure what you mean. If a startup's main customers are consumers, they can't make sales by having connections. Although if it's one of those where, effectively, the consumers are the product and advertisers are the customers, then I can imagine some of that back-scratching going on between companies.
In Seattle, compost is a separate bin (green) and is picked up every week with trash. Restaurants in the city have to provide separate garbage, recycle, and compost containers, must sort it themselves before disposal, or use all-compostable end-user waste (like Taco Time Northwest).

Prior to January, composting was optional but composting service--that is, having the green bin of any size--was mandatory. Composting itself became mandatory, primarily because restaurants were just chucking the food waste, and if the trash hauler sees a bunch of food getting crunched up with the trash bag, a red tag will be left on your garbage bin. (There used to be fines but Seattle Public Utilities hit its composting target so fast, the $1 "oooh you dun did it now" fine has been suspended.)

My anecdotal experience is that it works rather well if you're prepared. I keep a small, charcoal-filter-in-the-lid compost bucket in the kitchen, lined by compostable bags purchased from Bartell's. When the bag gets full or too smelly, I drop it in the compost bin just outside my back door. Once a week, it goes out to the curb with the garbage with minimal fuss. The medium-sized bin I have costs ~$7/month.
The age of consent needs to be lowered and here are the reasons why
If you disagree with this practice, you're free to choose from one the competitors which engage in the same collection activities.
Running a technology company from Australia is totally insane (this is coming from some who has done exactly this for the last 15 years). Unless you have a family reasons for staying then leave right now.

On the positive side Australia is a great place to live, just a massive up hill struggle as a place to build a technology based business.
8-10 directs reports is already too large in my opinion, at least to me, exactly because of the amount of effort it takes to follow all of them up sufficiently. I've had teams with that many direct reports, and it sucks for me and it sucks for the people reporting to me if there's not then a team lead or similar exactly because it drains time. I don't see cutting the time I spend on people as viable at all.

The threshold might very well differ from person to person, but in my opinion, if you can't afford to schedule 30 minutes per person on a weekly basis (whether or not you actually end up using the full amount of time) without feeling it is too much, then you can't afford to manage that many people directly, no matter how many people we're talking. For some that might mean 10 or even more works, but in my experience as the team size grows the amount of time you need to invest per person grows as well as interpersonal issues and communications gets more complicated.

> Very cute.

Maybe, but it's not meant to be - I'm very serious on that point. When I do 1-on-1's with reports, if I'm the one doing the talking it's a sign we've spent more time than necessary and the meeting is at an end.

That might also be part of the reason why I have a different attitude to them: If a report doesn't have anything to bring up, the meeting is over in 5 minutes. But in my experience at least, there's a big difference in what comes out when you bring someone into a meeting room for 5 minutes (or on a private call), and specifically ask them in a one on one setting if there's anything they'd like to bring up, anything I could help with, what personal development they'd like doing etc..

I'm sure that for some people that's not necessary and they get people to open up without creating that setting all the time, but my experience with my own managers too is that managers in IT (probably applies elsewhere too, but I've only ever worked in tech companies) are notoriously bad at creating good environments for this. And I need to keep a very close eye on myself too, as it's not a part of the job that comes naturally to me.

That is where the ceremony comes it. It's not for the people who are great at getting everyone to talk. It's for everyone else - including a lot of people who think they're great at getting people to talk.
Seperate bin collection which then the city picks up. Like this: https://www.stadt-zuerich.ch/content/dam/stzh/ted/Deutsch/er...
There's the E-3 specifically for Australians, I've been told it's fairly easy to get but I am not sure how it applies to founders.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-3_visa
> but at least those are pretty much separate from any complex calculation/logic.

Yes, but in imperative languages (with meta-programming) you can disentangle mixed IO and logic even without changing the code (or if it's in a third-party library). The advantage is that it allows you (not always, but sometimes) to support even larger tests in this way.

Getting those tiny, one-function unit-tests to run predictably is not hard in any language; you just make them smaller and smaller and mock everything else. The tricky bit is making larger tests run predictably, and a flexible, hackable runtime has the advantage there. That's precisely where meta-programming shines.