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I have been contacted twice in the past year by Microsoft rep's who both told me that one of my products is among the top installed add-ins for Excel (they didn't say top "X", just "top" - but I'll take it). I assume they collect this data via telemetry.

What bothered me is that when I asked questions back, I would get no reply. If they are going to collect this data, the least they could do is help developers out with some aggregate data. I've been selling this product for 10+ years, and to this day, I still vacillate on which version of the .NET framework to target.

One-man shop that sells desktop software. I made a few changes to my privacy policy and called it good.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if they were caught off guard on GPDR. There are some who seem to feel that the pending deadline was universal knowledge, but I don't think it was for many of us in the US. I hadn't heard of it until the recent Monal kerfuffle here on HN.

> If the state would focus on higher density living

Contrary to popular belief, the Los Angeles metro area has a very high population density. It's 2nd in the US, and the SF Bay Area is 7th. Both are on par with European metros.

4WD Ranchero?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Ranchero

The recent piece I saw on HN estimated that fishing lines and nets made up ~45% of the waste in the Pacific.

Edit: link - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16654524

Razor pages != razor syntax. I think Microsoft screwed up with the naming of them because, even within the .NET community, I see a lot of developers that conflate them. Microsoft should have named razor pages something different to avoid this confusion.

It's just a simplified MVC model where the controller boils down to OnGet()and OnPost() methods in a code-behind file. The code-behind file, in turn, reminds developers of web forms, but razor pages are really not similar at all.

ASP.NET Core has a lot of flexibility. You can go Web Api / SPA, classic MVC, or razor pages. Each has a sweet spot.

Well, I wish I knew what the 5% are. Maybe I've grown too cynical, but I'd struggle name more than a half dozen movies I've liked in the last 5 years. I did like the first Hitman movie, though, so it's not like I have refined taste.

He's not under oath, [from what I've read] the majority of the committee members have received campaign donations from FB, and some committee members own FB stock. In other words, the market knows that this is a charade.

That site looks like spam - long form copywriting in video format - driving visitors toward buying his books.

That was Joel in his "You Suck at Excel" video.

If true and if cost effective to produce.

2 years? Try 6. According to Obama campaign adviser Carol Davidsen, they farmed the data in 2012 with FB's knowledge:

From https://twitter.com/cld276/status/975565844632821760:

> "Facebook was surprised we were able to suck out the whole social graph, but they didn’t stop us once they realized that was what we were doing."

> "They came to office in the days following election recruiting & were very candid that they allowed us to do things they wouldn’t have allowed someone else to do because they were on our side."

If you cannot fire workers at will, you will be much more cautious when hiring and trying to ramp up quickly. When I read about other areas trying to incentivize startup culture (e.g., France) they try to replicate one or two factors of Silicon Valley's success, they seemingly fail to realize that there is a panoply of reasons why Silicon Valley is what it is.

I won't try to argue that at-will employment is the primary reason, but I do believe that it is an important one.

Buffet seems like a good-hearted person, but nothing about Amazon or JPMorgan leads me to believe this will be an altruistic enterprise. Also, Buffett is 87 and not likely to be involved for too many more years.

To my ears, Elton John has made an entire career out of doing this.

Someone in the LA Times / union thread referred to journalists as "knowledge workers". With Gell-Mann Amnesia in mind, I thought, "Well, that's being generous".

Yeah, that wasn't that brightest thought I've had. I guess I should have said catapult.

Ah, that makes sense. I figured they wouldn't have anything blasting out of the ISS, so I was wondering if it was some sling shot or mini-trebuchet apparatus.

> NASA will give OreSat a free ride to the International Space Station. From there, it will be shot out of the side of the space station to begin its orbit. OreSat will begin falling back toward Earth, but moving at such a high speed that it will pass some 4,000 times around the globe before it descends and burns up in Earth's denser atmosphere.

Anyone know how they propel it out the side?

It's not an extraordinary claim. It's in the news again today:

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-cfpb-acting-director-2...

Most of the DIY's I've seen on this use aluminum cans. You could try that.

> A lot of people in their 50's don't need to work.

I must travel in lowly circles.

As someone in their 50's, that argument makes no sense to me. If I were unable to find a job, you somehow think I'd hold out for premium wages?

At the start of his tenure, Rumsfeld said that the DoD couldn't account for about $2T dollars, so regardless of whether $21T seems plausible, this (first ever!) audit is long overdue.

> Isn't sum(1...n) - sum(1...n-1) just n?

Yes. I meant n^2 = sum(1..n-1) + sum(1..n).

That's it! Makes me realize how rusty at math I've gotten. :/

I came up with it too when I was in school. I was bored and staring at some tiles and noticed that for a square block of tiles with side = n, n^2 = sum(1...n) - sum(1...n-1).

The funny thing is that, since then, I've looked at that formula several times and can't for the life of me figure out I got from the above formula to the the sum of the range formula. I guess younger me was smarter than current me.

I don't think NSFW content is shown by default - it needs to be enabled in your account preferences.

Corruption could happen in any case, but I still agree with having human oversight [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_models_are_wrong