skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I wanted HomeJoy to work and tried to use the service a few times. What the failure came down to:

1. The cleaners were not professionals. It felt like they were just recruiting anyone who wanted a job. You could really feel this with the lack of passion from the cleaners and the severe lack of quality cleaning. Most of the people complained and were quite rude sometimes. Cleaning is very much a skill as much as it is manual labor.

2. People don't want to let just anyone into their home to clean. Especially for those that have valuables, you want someone you trust who is going to hopefully be your maid for years to come. I wouldn't want someone new every time and for that reason, I used HomeJoy only at our office but even that wasn't enough due to poor quality.

Someone on this thread further explained this well, which is that HomeJoy is at a high level, a match making service. Once you find a match, why do you need HomeJoy? Connect directly with the maid and have them come on your own schedule for a fraction of the price.

I used to feel the same way about Uber. If I found a good driver back in the day I would get his phone # and take him exclusively to the airport. Uber solved this with UberX and by having a wealth of seemingly skilled drivers that made it a true on demand service. Having to book an appointment like HomeJoy seems like it is not a true OnDemand service, just a nicer UI than any other maid connecting service.

AirBnB I feel had a similar problem. For frequent business travelers, finding the right place at the right price is awesome and I would usually try to stay at the same place and connect with people directly. AirBnB solved this with overwhelming demand for the service (the place I like may not always be available) and with their insurance policy and scheduling tools for renters.

In any event, I don't feel like HomeJoy failing is indiciative of a bubble in the On Demand economy. There were inherent principles of this business that made it destined to fail that others in the space won't have a problem with.
"Given how obviously unsustainable this is given the other comments in here"

Huh... I didn't realize HN comments dictated the sustainability of a startup. Who knew we had such power!

Funny thing is, many of the comments pointed out that a streaming service specialized in one culture / genre can be successful (crunchyroll).
Lots of people, including us, are blind to reality. It seems there is no escape.

So laugh at <silly group of people> all you want. You are only laughing at yourself.

Edit: Lawfully purchased monty python DVDs doubly support this point of view.
Yes - even if you're not an entrepreneur
And with this amazing design you can easily loose committed data and have all sorts of other fun problems.
I've just migrated a set of Docker containers on one host from jessie+nginx to alpine+rwasa.

Looking good so far.
I guess my point is that it's such a broad overview of all topics that fall under artificial intelligence that you don't get much of a good introduction to applying machine learning. But point taken, you're right, it is an introductory text.
I think a real value is if you add many service types together in one platform and you can manage all of your household in one website/app. Then you can still get the cleaning lady's number, but you don't want to, because you have a much better overview when you can use the app for all the services you buy.
Reddit Watch 2015
Maybe, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was used to beat on companies like Brennan (who are awesome BTW, I have a JB7).
Bucardo with multi-master is fantastic when a DBA can configure the multi-master and manage future changes. Bucardo requires each table to have proper Bucardo configuration and each table on each host to have the proper schema, since Bucardo does not replicate schema changes.

Compared to streaming replication, during high load, Bucardo sync is also quite expensive for a replication mechanism.

As a service, Bucardo's requirements did not scale for us. It created to many caveats. The limitations of Bucardo for our service became obvious quickly.
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism

https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/
I haven't. But my same question applies - what happens when Netflix decides they want those profits and license all the anime?
I want to support artists and stuff, but the music industry is making it so hard for me to do that in good conscience with their anti-consumer stances.
This one's interesting to me, because it seems like they had done all the right things, had a real product, and worked really hard (I think I remember Graham saying she worked as a cleaner part time during YC).

Without knowing any of the specifics, this seems to be a good correction of a couple threads of thought. Most notably, startups are not a science, and not every business that is technologically lagging will be drastically changed by a modern tech platform.

It really comes down to value. Seems so simple but I think the startup community would do well to incorporate the importance of creating value in their pedagogy.
So Forbes named Homejoy one of the hottest startups of 2013 (and they make a 30 under 30 list). They raise money from top-tier VCs and angels. Adora does quite a bit of speaking (it seems) on growth, regional expansion, and startup inspiration. They expanded to 30+ markets.

But they were really just selling cleaning services for below cost–on the backs of 1099 workers. It's a worse model than Groupon and I can't fathom how the founders or investors thought it would work.

It all feels icky to me.
... Apple builds the platform their apps run on. HomeJoy doesn't build houses, or manufacture sponges.
This is surprising to me. I'm INUNDATED with Homejoy ads all over the internet. I've never used them (which also might have been part of their problem). Perhaps you just live somewhere they don't provide service to yet? :)
I never used Homejoy, as they were pretty pricey. I have cleaners charging me 1/3 of what Homejoy quoted.

That being said, I talked to several (10-15) people who used Homejoy at least once. The responses I got from most of those people was that the cleaners weren't professional. In fact several of them mentioned that cleaners didn't know what Homejoy was. They were sent for cleaning by their contractors. In other terms, the cohort I talked to had a really low NPS for Homejoy.

I think Homejoy wasn't able to nail down that user experience of their real product (i.e. Cleaning) no matter how amazing their on-boarding/booking experience was.

It must be very disheartening for the founders and the team. All the best to the their next adventures!
Then curl / wget are your friends
I don't think it's going to anywhere as popular as 2048. zero's "oh crap I clicked the wrong number ruining my 30+ chain just because I wasn't paying attention for a second" is much more frustrating and more common than 2048's "I filled up 3 rows so I have to take a chance breaking my 1024-512-256-128 row" :P

The "click separate circle to start a new chain" seems a bit risky - when I play the game on my phone, dragging/swiping tends to skip numbers. I'll try implementing the "clear selection" button suggested by the other commenter first.
The best setup for that is not additional cylinders, but to run a 6-stroke cycle - injecting a drop of water at the end of the exhaust stroke, which will expand and generate some extra power.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six-stroke_engine
As far as technical challenges on streaming/hosting in Africa - I remember hearing about Kili (http://kili.io/) on HN a while ago. They do AWS-like infrastructure located in Nairobi, so could make it easy to get started in East Africa. Good luck!
Would pay for Netflix for Asian movies. They have some quite incredible flicks there, but without the language knowledge it's often hard to get access to them.
Free Traditional Catholic Books
Girlfriend :)
Seven Python Tools All Data Scientists Should Know How to Use
Almost any modern desktop you buy (heck even phone) has around 4 cores, it's been this way for years now. After that point the average user doesn't see any particular gain in adding more cores. An 8 core machine really only helps power users. Most users are not running hundreds of threads, look at most your applications, they may have any number of threads running, but only one or two are ever loaded with data. This is the serial world we currently live in.
Depends. I like being able to schedule rides to the airport in advance, so I know exactly when I'm going to be picked up. And the rate will be pre-determined.
I think the Auernheimer case was crappy but object to the notion that it involved criminalizing URL manipulation.
At the end of the day, this is a lesson in unit economics. If you want to make a successful startup, your unit of sale better be super profitable.

Most successful technology companies sell bits, with high fixed costs but very small marginal costs. This means if you grow really big, your fixed cost growth will eventually flatten out but your profit can continue to grow. Facebook, Google, AirBnb, Uber.

If you are selling something in the real world, especially if you are owning the whole process, then your marginal costs are going to be pretty high, which means your profit margin is going to be lower. This is completely fine and a ton of businesses run like this, but these businesses have to be very careful with their fixed costs. You can't grow like your average tech startup because this model is different than most tech startups.

The exact reason they are going out of business is less important than the fact that a business with high marginal costs is very fragile. A slight increase in a high marginal cost can destroy your profit margin, whereas if your marginal cost is extremely low then you are much more resilient.

High fixed costs + low marginal cost = Good

High fixed costs + high marginal cost = Be careful
"Unfortunately, we cannot process any refunds or credits at this time."

Ouch. What would cause them to not be able to offer refunds?
AFAIK Industrial Light and Magic used Arnold for a lot of movies, Framestore used Arnold for Gravity (I'm not sure what they use now), Double Negative uses a whole range of renderers (with layer between their OSL shaders and the renderers) and Weta uses their own in-house renderer Manuka now. Most studios switched away from Renderman as its support for ray tracing was extremely lacking until a year ago. On your list of points:

* Bidirectional path tracing and VCM, surely is nice, but you're absolutely fine with just path tracing. Artists have learned how do to avoid SDS paths and how to optimize their scenes for path tracing. It would require a lot of time to train artists to optimize their scenes for VCM and with the amount of diffuse noise (which is unavoidable) I'm not even sure if it's worth it.

* I doubt the subsurface scattering in Cycles is slower than Renderman as it only supports bicubic and gaussian profiles which are even easier to evaluate and sample than the approximate BSSRDF ;). Their profiles are extremely lacking (and I doubt it's enough these days), but SPI used bicubics and gaussians a few years ago [1].

* I absolutely can't imagine that Cycles doesn't have Environment Map sampling, which is something pretty basic and explained in PBRT. Sure, Cycles probably doesn't have an implementation of "Portal-Masked Environment Map Sampling" by Bitterli, Novak and Jarosz yet, so I'm sure Renderman is better at it, but Cycles is decent at it.

* Same for arbitrary geometry lights, but I'm sure Renderman does a better job at it (although Pixar is probably limited by Solid Angle's patents on importance sampling quads and other stuff, Cycles doesn't have to deal with patents).

* AFAIK Cycles has a state of the art hair shader, but it seems to lack the importance sampling scheme by Eugene d'Eon.

I absolutely agree with you that Renderman is a more complete and faster renderer, but Cycles is absolutely amazing if you keep in mind that it was completely developed by a small team of hobbyists. Cycles isn't meant for production rendering, but it's amazing for hobbyists.

[1] http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2504520
Don't forget the new field of superconducting quantum annealers! I have high hopes.
Getting started with Rails 5's ActionCable and websockets
The actual judgement: http://www.ukmusic.org/assets/general/APPROVED_JUDGMENT_BASC...

But most of the meat is in this earlier one: https://www.judiciary.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/basc...

The main claim made by the music industry in this case was that when the law was introduced no provision was made to compensate copyright holders for the harm it would (allegedly) do them, and that the government failed to demonstrate that it had adequate evidence for claiming that it didn't need to because no substantial harm was done.

(Apparently there is some requirement, when the government brings in a new law, that those non-negligibly harmed by it should be compensated. I do not know the details. I would be interested to know on what occasions if any they've actually done this. I've certainly never heard, e.g., of anyone being recompensed because the government has introduced a new tax on the sale of an asset they hold a lot of -- but that might be quite a different situation because it doesn't exactly involve new laws.)

The judge, to be clear, didn't find that there is substantial harm. Only that the government hadn't adequately established that there isn't. This was a purely procedural matter.

The music industry made a bunch of other claims, on which the judge found in favour of the government. For instance, when assessing the harm done to copyright holders, the government essentially asked the question: would they actually sell fewer copies with a limited-private-use exemption in law than without? The music industry contended that instead "harm" should be measured by assuming that every copy taken is a sale lost. Unsurprisingly, the judge agreed with the government on this.

So it seems at least possible that the government may go away, lick its wounds, come up with a bigger pile of better evidence that a law of this kind will not in fact make any substantial difference to the music industry's profits, and then pass pretty much the exact same law again. I do hope so.

Or they might come up with a smaller easier-to-marshal body of evidence that the harm is really rather small, and pass a similar law that does compensate the music industry just a little.

I fear that actually they'll just drop the issue, though, and leave us with a stupid restriction that most of the population ignores and that no one is realistically going to be able to use to prosecute anyone anyhow.
"The marginal value of content with a strong, dedicated, but niche following to Netflix -- whose branding is mainstream and not targeted to that niche -- may be less than it is to a provider specialized in targeting that niche, which means that the licensing fee Netflix could afford to pay is less."

Yes, I had yummyfajita's question and this does make sense... a "niche" (this is pretty big to be calling "niche" really, but let me discuss the generic case) could afford to charge a bit more of interested customers and focus that stream on somewhat more pricy licenses.

Which, once again, just makes me think that Netflix is, if not "cutting itself off at the knees", at least hobbling itself with such a low flat-rate price. On the other hand it can hardly afford a complicated "full cable"-style offering, but some sort of middle ground may be something they're forced to do someday. Hulu, too, for that matter... even as a subscription service focused on TV it seems to me that the selection is limited by the fact the subscription price is just too low.

In the meantime, as a consumer I have no trouble mixing a nice Netflix subscription for flat-rate stuff and mixing in per-show fees from Amazon, but it's still money Netflix seems to be leaving on the table.
Even the "dead" area of chaos theory is looking much
better now that people at NASA have made a map of the
earth-moon phase space which can give a km/sec or so
free propulsion.

This is fascinating - how can I learn more?
There is no house-cleaning college. This is what "skilled labour" refers to. Driving and house-cleaning is not skilled labour.
Take a look at the code we have open sourced: https://github.com/compose/governor
Indeed. Here's a copy of the deal:

http://eeas.europa.eu/statements-eeas/docs/iran_agreement/ir...

Plus the entire agreement talks extensively about scaling back their enrichment, areas of research, and international monitoring.

Here's a nice easy to consume summary:

http://www.bustle.com/articles/97038-what-does-the-iran-deal...

The OP is either being untruthful about having read the agreement, or has some type of agenda and is intending to mislead. Hard to argue that they're making claims in good faith giving out inconsistent their claims are with facts.
Ask HN: Why hasn't anyone solved password issue?
I have to input my password somewhere at least once a week. Because I use different passwords, I almost always have to reset it. Is there a better solution for this somewhere and I've missed out?
They got in trouble with lawsuits because of the recent Uber employee vs contractor verdict. In addition, they were bleeding cash in customer acquisition so that didn't help too. The lawsuit was the trigger but the bleeding of cash was the fundamental reason.
Is it even possible to guarantee that you won't lose commits with postgresql replication? For many applications, consistency is more important than not losing any data ever. For the other kind of application, you'll need something else.
Anybody know that game where you write a program that can print itself? Are there games where a program interprets code from another language so well it can interpret an interpreter that can interpret its code? (interpreterA is written in langA, it can run interpreterB written in langB, which is able to run enough of langA to run interpreterA)
What I meant is that governance implies some dependencies. Ones that people may not want, which makes it hard to know what dependencies to apply through governance.
Carlypso (YC S14) is hiring a full-time designer
Hey all!

No kidding, the biggest perk of our company - beyond the usual stuff - is the amazing cars you'll get to drive!

We’re looking for a Designer to concept and execute design projects online and off. Your work will cover the a large spectrum: product, marketing, operations, and more to ensure our brand is represented consistently and every aspect of production is the best it can be.

You’ll be involved in projects small and large, from designing merchandise for our customers vehicles to working on beautiful and functional tools to enhance the user experience to overseeing the development of marketing materials, and presentations.

With this much to do, you’ll need to be able to manage multiple kinds of work at the same time. Our ideal candidate has impeccable attention to detail, experience designing for different needs, and a collaborative nature.
You should have:

A strong visual design portfolio

At least 3 years of design experience (product design, agency work OK)

Solid html/css/js Skills

Worked with engineering teams to create pixel perfect production visuals

Experience in print, web, digital, and product design

An obsession with detail, but you can see the big picture

A strong sense of typography, composition, and color

Email or call me at nicholas@carlypso.com or 650 842 0703.

Look forward to chatting with you!

Nick
"They have to raise prices or start offering mix&match packages" makes sense to me. Since they seem to resist this, it locks them out of these sorts of markets. Is that a good idea? Well, that's above my pay grade....
Why is that? You don't think an unregulated casino could stage wins to make it look like it was giving payouts? Or just make up stories?
But the convenience increases the size of the market, benefiting both customers and laborers.

I never ordered from a cleaning service before Homejoy, and I doubt I'll bother with it after Homejoy. It's a useful service to me, but I'm not going to call half a dozen random guys on their cell phones to find one that will work for me.

Similarly, ride volumes are way up after Lyft and Uber come to town. Before, there is a lot of demand that is simply going unfilled.
I would love to own a print copy. Do you have any plans to publish?
> The long-term winners will be companies like Flywheel that recognize this and focus on providing that service to existing operators, much like payment processors.

I don't think this creates a very big moat - that's essentially what Uber started out as (dispatch for private driving companies that already existed); they started letting anyone drive in order to meet demand.

If all the services are interchangable (and now, at least for ridesharing, it seems like they are), the winner will be the app that's used by default.
I would highly recommend Daniel Yergin's "The Prize" if you want to know more about this and other nationalization attempts.

IIRC, it was the British who discovered and worked to extract the oil before oil became such a force in industrialization. When this first happened, oil wasn't that valuable and I believe the usual term was a flat fee per barrel extracted. The agreement was reach before Iran had any form of democratic government. As oil became more valuable in the period before, during, and after WWII, most governments who signed these deals renegotiated these deals once they realized how valuable the oil is. I believe they wanted to be paid based on market price per barrel.

"Legal basis" is a funny term to use when you're dealing with national governments. In truth, there is very little legal foundation for resolving these dispute until recently and even now it's pretty shaky. I mean, who's legal system do you use? It would seem since all this is happening in Iran, it should be Iranian laws. If that's the case, then the nationalization attempt was legal.

What actually happens, however, is that national governments get involved and other forms of leverage is used. I once talked to a lawyer for a major oil company involved with a dispute with Venezuela. The State Department was involved to some extend but at the end of the day, their leverage was their ability to extract the oil. So "legal basis" is usually not something involved in these sorts of disputes because usually the country with the oil has the upper hand in that case.
https://github.com/mame/quine-relay

100 language cyclic quine relay.
Originally posted here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9171514
Agreed, but also I want a business with a name worth protecting to be on the hook when I have a room booked, not just some homeowner.
My problem with Homejoy/Handy etc. is the high degree of unpredictability in the quality of each cleaning. My conclusion is that for something like home cleaning, you want to find a regular person -- not someone new each week.

Our regular cleaner(which I found through nextdoor) recently had to quit. It was enough to upset me for a bit because finding a quality and consistent and affordable cleaner is very hard. Luckily I was able to find another promising cleaner from nextdoor.

When looking for a regular cleaner, one of the things I have learned is that you want a "career" cleaner. You don't want someone who is doing it as a past time to make some extra cash. That might work with Uber/driving but it doesn't seem to work with cleaning that well. If a non-serious Uber driver cancels the ride, you just call another one. If your cleaner doesn't show up, you can easily lose a day before finding a replacement(and hoping he/she delivers).
Wow, what a disaster.
Amazon has a competent legal department.