skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ezy,

I understand where you are coming from. I used to think the same way. But once you have used git or Mercurial with their powerful branching/merging capabilities, you will never go back to anything else. Also, it's not that the tools aren't better, it's that git and Mercurial have different architecture which makes branching/merging easy and powerful. I would sincerely request you to not dismiss this 'branch/merge' phenomena. Once you understand their power, you would wonder why you ever managed to live with Subversion (or other centralized VCS).

Searching on Google, I came across this example which will show you how powerful Git really is. [warning: PDF link]

http://ietl.univ-lyon2.fr/sites/ietl/IMG/pdf/Git_merging_by_...
I don't see why it is so capital-oriented. It is certainly better than nothing, but a fairer scheme would also include skills assessment. Otherwise its against the nature of entrepreneurship - venture capital is not a prerequisite to a successful startup, its only one of the helpful ingredients. On such a thing like visa where it is a yes or no situation, it shouldn't just depend on availability of venture capital.
Ah, now I understand the motivation of your comment better. But I think if you read through just the introduction of the paper and consider that it was written in a finance journal and not a CS journal, showing the efficient market hypothesis to be NP-complete was ment to provide an insight into the efficient market hypothesis, not to provide any insight on the the P vs. NP problem.
HBase vs Cassandra: why we moved
it is likely the case that rqmt #1 -- that is, the creation of at least 5 full-time jobs in the US -- will easily be met by most entrepreneurs if they have any shred of competence and/or economic viability.

the rest of your argument is perhaps interesting from a theoretical standpoint, but not likely very relevant from a practical perspective.

it's very simple: create 5 full-time jobs in the US in 2 years time, and you get to stay. if you can't do that, at least get to break-even on $1M in revenue. if you can't do THAT, then find an investor willing to back you for another $1M every 2 years.

the rqmts are quite lenient and reasonable. the fate of the entrepreneur is very much in their own hands (& heads).
Agreed. I'm not advocating that he's having a net positive effect.

Regarding Walmart: cheap goods is a benefit (like I said) but it comes at a cost (like I said). I could say the same about Mahalo. It's having a positive effect on some of their writers or employees (I don't really know much about Mahalo, but you get my point).
Speed up the EB-3 process and lots of people stuck working under a H1-B would quit their jobs and start their own businesses.

Why can't H1-B's do that right now? AFAIK there is nothing stopping them from moving to an EB6. I would.

I don't think that is an argument against speeding up EB-3. I think that should happen as well, but is obviously much harder politically.
As a general user, I love Yelp. But I also have friends who run retail stores, and they have reported feeling violated by the Yelp process, which suddenly has a very large say in the success or failure of the business. There is no "opt-in" option for retail stores, rather, those stores have to pay to "manage" their listing. If Yelp were opt-in rather than opt-out, I suspect they would have never had a lawsuit. (I know this would change a lot of Yelp's site, though, so not sure how feasible it'd be.)
Ahh I didn't even notice that.
Trimming down the Features to get to the Program - Software Project Goals
I might not have been clear on the numbers, but I believe any such restrictions on entry are not good. I don't believe any of them should be requirements.

If someone wants to come to the U.S. and try to create a business and has it all lined out -- let them come! Don't make them get approval from someone with lots of money.
Based on your account, and a glance at the complaint, I look at this lawsuit with a skeptical eye (doesn't mean it isn't valid, but I wonder).

Why?

The complaint alleges one actual incident of alleged wrongdoing, most occurring within the past few weeks. The rest of the allegations are based entirely on complaints reported in news accounts, meaning that the plaintiff's lawyers basically pasted hearsay statements into their legal document. When this is coupled with the fact that their entire legal theory of the case consists of three paragraphs alleging violation of California's unfair competition law, Bus. & Prof. Code 17200, I think it is fair to say that this filing is pretty superficial.

The complaint alleges that "negative reviews would be removed or relocated" for the benefit of advertisers but waters this down by saying "or those pages would otherwise be favorably manipulated, including through [the advertiser's] own input or control." This allegation would literally be true in light of Yelp's business practice (as you put it) of allowing an advertiser to move one favorable review to the top of the review order but, though true, may also be irrelevant unless it is first determined whether the particular business practice of moving one review up is in itself illegal. The remaining allegation that advertisers were threatened is also hedged with the qualifier "implicitly or expressly," which may mean that no overt threats were made and may (of more significance to the class action issue) involve scattered incidents as opposed to company-sanctioned policy.

This story has been out for about a year. Within the very recent past, Yelp just raised another $25M from sophisticated investors. Those investors certainly looked into these issues deeply in due diligence (including the legal issue whether moving one favorable review to top position violated unfair competition laws) and yet still felt comfortable investing. My guess is that this fact suggests that the practices engaged in here were not so systematic as to constitute company policy. Such practices, if they did exist at that systematic level, would be far too easy to expose, if nothing else simply by getting statements from former Yelp employees. Investors are not stupid and would almost certainly have not invested in that type of extreme situation.

This would suggest a flawed sales pitch, as you mention, rather than systematic malevolent company policy. If that guess is right, then Yelp will likely have to change that pitch and may even have to pay out nuisance money in time to settle this action. But it will likely not be more than that. And that is probably the calculus the investors took into account in deciding to plunk their $25M into Yelp in recent weeks.

A lawsuit, of course, must stand or fall on its own merits, but the surface indicators here suggest that this is a comparatively weak case and not a strong one.
From their data sheet it's about 50% efficient, on par with modern large scale natural gas powerplants.

If you also use the heat it generates to heat your home the Bloombox can be up to 85% efficient.
Let's not forget that in some states full-service is required and customer is usually not the one swiping the card. So, the gas station attendant can be an accomplish on this whole scheme.
To be fair, you can turn that round; my reading of what Brian said was that he thought this bill was open to abuse, which could make your reading seem disingenuous.

Neither interpretation's fair to either of you, though.

(I have no horse in this race; living in Europe, the idea of a visa seems a bit anachronistic, really.)
Introducing Web FontFonts
Interesting, literally for "hackers" in the bad sense of the term. I cannot see how this is useful in a normal day to day fashion other than to find computers/routers that are compromisable. Maybe there is another utility for this? The only one I can imagine right now is to see trends on what is out there in terms of webservers and the versions on them for research papers and the like.
Ask HN: Authentication solution for REST?
I'm building a web-based application and I want it to be mostly AJAX talking to a remote REST service. There will be a user registration/login facility and many responses from the server will, naturally, depend on the login status.

What is the simplest solution for this? Ideally, I want the REST service to be easily debuggable from a browser without any additional tools. Is it cookies? Some session tokens? If so, what is the exact algorithm?

I don't think HTTP authentication is very practical, or I'd need to somehow prevent the browser from displaying its generic user/password dialog to the user in my final product.

Any real-world examples, maybe, of how some of the popular web sites do authentication with REST?
Are they bringing the money in suitcases for the purpose of spending it? Wouldn't that be taxed in the recipient of the spending's income?
Marc Weinstein’s Appointment Books
I don't think there's a clear winner yet. The devil is in the details, as they say. A good Stirling engine will beat a lousy fuel cell, and a good fuel cell will beat a lousy Stirling engine. Both are in the range of 20-50% when implemented well, but they both have lots of problems.

Fuel cells, for example, typically have a membrane at their core; that membrane tends to get clogged with crud. Stirling engines, on the other hand, are generally heavy (and thus expensive) and need to use exotic materials to handle high temperatures, which they need to operate efficiently.
Doubtful.

Solid oxide fuel cells are very efficient, but have lousy power density. A big cabinet full of Bloom fuel cells does 25 kilowatts. That's a lot of electricity, but it's only 33 horsepower. You would need two cabinets and a bank of capacitors, for lousy performance. Then you would need a tank of compressed natural gas, which also doesn't have awesome power density numbers, after you spend the power to compress it.

And, of course, solid oxide fuel cells aren't a turn-the-key-and-go kind of power source. They run at 1000C, and take an hour to get that warm, all while burning fuel.

More general concerns:

It's supposed to be multi-fuel, and is designed for third world use. But solid oxide fuel cells are notorious for having problems with catalyst poisoning. How have they solved that?

They mention that it's reversible, in that it can take air and electricity, and produce fuel. This is troubling, in that it is utter bullshit. No fuel cell can do this.

And of course, how is this green? It burns natural gas! It may be greener than a gas turbine power plant, but it still produces carbon dioxide.
Thanks for the advice. Currently I put my faith into the following list of companies:

* GoDaddy - registrar
* Tocici/BuildYourVPS.com - VPS server
* EveryDNS

GoDaddy is by far the biggest pain in the @$$ to use out of these.
Now you don't even need to scan ip ranges to find a target!
If someone wants to come to the U.S. and try to create a business and has it all lined out -- let them come!

Has, what all lined out? There in lies the rub. If you let anyone who declares he is an entrepreneur in, the law will be a joke. Naturally, you have to have some firm qualifiers. As long as it is 5 jobs OR a million dollars in revenue OR investment and you have 2 (or 3) years to do it, I don't understand why that is unfair. 2 years is a lot of time to create 5 jobs. It's not an easy goal, but it's doable.

I say this as someone who intends to go the EB6 route if this passes.
Divining Rod - A rubygem for easy mobile profiling
Need to figure out if a web visitor to your Ruby app is on a iPhone or a Nexus one? Don't want to write your own parser?

We released a our ruby library for profiling incoming web request in Rails. It's super simple and if you don't need "full-featured" mobile solution like WURFL, it might just make your next mobile project a little easier.
C/C++’s enduring popularity
It's a nice and simple enough idea that has a chance at doing well. The girl in the video is talking way too fast. I know there's a lot of content but the idea is simple enough that she does not need to blow through everything.
It's interesting that Asimov chose not to engage someone of his own statute, like of Kuhn or Feyerabend; but instead picked on a nameless English major.
A couple of us are working on a project to help bring this kind of behavior to light http://www.shellcompanyfinder.com/ShellCompanies/Nathan%20My...

We just started on it, so there isn't a lot of data, but it is already possible to start making associations between companies.
The point comes up a lot that this tool could be misused by script kiddies, so I thought I'd address some of those concerns:

- Search results are limited to 50 hosts (if you're logged in, 10 hosts if you're not). This makes it impractical to use for building a botnet or any kind of large-scale operation.

- I take steps to limit anonymous access (ex. Tor not allowed)

- 'net' and 'country' filter require you to be logged in; makes anonymous systematic scraping much harder

- Users detected of scraping get banned (zero tolerance)

The bottom line: this is a tool for penetration testing and market research, not for script kiddies.
My software engineering professor always used Code2HTML for the code samples he posted online:

http://www.palfrader.org/code2html/

While I never used it myself, it produced nicely formatted results.
Yes, that's pretty much that. It's strange how few people seem to understand and accept that.

If you're going to argue P == NP, you have to know damned well what you are talking about, because all the evidence suggests P != NP. You also have to accept some pretty strange consequences of your argument.

If you are going to argue the universe can be described by local theories, you have to know damned well what you are talking about, because all the evidence suggests the universe is non-local. You also have to accept some pretty strange consequences of your argument.

If you are going to argue there is an absolute truth, you have to know damned well what you are talking about, because all the knowledge we have suggests that the concept in itself doesn't even make sense. You also have to accept some pretty strange consequences of your argument.

For most people, arguing there is an absolute truth, is like arguing you can make Houdini-like escapes. You can't and you'd drown. You know that, so you accept the consequence: you don't try an Houdini-like escape. In exactly the same way, people shouldn't try to argue there is absolute truth: it only leads to more confusion about truth and reality.
From what I heard, digital thievery has gotten so hot gas station attendants were being paid for copies of card information. This sort of problem will only grow as society depends more and more on technology. It's my hope that technologists such as we that frequent HN can invent counter measures to these vulnerabilities. Otherwise, it's a real shame. One thing I do, and encourage, for convenience is to use bank debit cards as credit cards for purchases (credit card convenience without fees). However, my suggestion is to set up an extra no-fee checking account with a couple hundred dollars for this purpose. That way a compromised card is limited in its losses.
"skills assessment" is typically a more SUB-jective metric. subjective metrics are more easily misjudged, misinterpreted, and likely more time-intensive to audit (read: subject to abuse by bureaucracy & likely to increase processing times).

raising capital, creating jobs, or making revenue are very OB-jective metrics, and are much less easily abused or compromised (read: determined easily by provable data, likely to not be interfered with or misinterpreted by bureaucrats, and likely to streamline / reduce processing times).

in other words, market data & stats are provable & will likely speed up the process.

there is nothing quite so unfair or undemocratic as an INS official who has had a bad day, is misinformed, or is behind on paperwork -- or heaven forbid all of the above.

we hope to avoid this situation by making the Startup Visa rqmts very easily objective & provable based on verifiable data.
As a network security engineer, it allows me to look at my public-facing IP addresses, and it also gives me an at-a-glance overview for IP address ranges that seem to be attacking me, without the need to fire up nmap, nessus and nikto for a "retaliatory" or "recon" scan.

Just like Johnny Long's GHDB, a list of search operators for Google that reveal sensitive and/or vulnerable services or data, there are both creative/beneficial and malevolent uses for these tools.

Also, "research" is a completely valid reason.
We need href display conventions for new windows and mailto
Situation 1 : You use a web mail client but you still have a desktop mail client installed. You click a mailto link because you think it's going to take you to a web contact form and it launches your desktop mail client.

Situation 2 : You click a link and it opens a new browser tab/window when you didn't expect it or you expected it would open a new browser window and it didn't so you lost your train on thought in the original page.

We need some conventions to stop this happening.
> rich people will be able to abuse this

I'm sure they will. However, rich people are such a minority that in 90%+ of cases this law will be used for its intended purpose.

Rich people can also "abuse" speeding and parking ticket laws(you can speed and park anywhere if you can afford the tickets), tax laws, etc. Just the way of the world. I wouldn't lose too much sleep over it.
Radical left thinks that if the proles go to college, they'll realize how screwed they are and revolt.

Center-left has a misguided belief that widespread college is increasing inequality, never mind the severe social damage wrought by mounting student debt.

Right-wing gets a sorting mechanism for corporations that someone else (i.e. those being sorted) pays for.

So everyone has the illusion that widespread higher education is a good thing, with no introspection as to whether it actually is doing us any good.

My opinion: we should make up our minds about what college is, what percentage of the population should be going (I'd say 10-20%), and allow free public education (no debt) for those who qualify, and grant a dollar-for-dollar voucher if they choose to attend private colleges. Get rid of federal loans entirely, and make student loans regular, dischargeable loans. Then private universities can charge whatever they want and admit whoever they want.
S3 uses a request signing mechanism. Each request is signed by the client and the signature is sent in the headers.

Rackspace Cloud Files uses a token based authorization. Authentication provides a token that is then sent in the header of each request. When the token expires, re-authenticate to get a new token.

The Cloud Files method is a little simpler for the user (IMO), but it also requires an SSL connection to protect the credentials.

Neither of these products allow non-public objects to be viewed in a browser (the browser doesn't send the correct headers).
> I think 5 "full-time" employees is extremely gameable

That's what strikes me. What kind of employee do they need to be? If I employ 5 full time janitors on minimum wage do I get to stay?
thank god I don't live in SF. one of my favorite drinks as of late is a habanero-infused tequila concoction.
You will get better feedback if you write in which area you want the feedback. Design, idea...

I'm no guru but I think orange on orange is not easiest colors on eyes to read.

Login button could say "login".

Interesting idea btw.
the 3 points are an OR, not an AND. you misinterpreted it.

altho the legislation as proposed is not final, it was clearly drafted and stated with each of the 3 potential rqmts being sufficient on their own, not together.
I think http auth is pretty standard for REST stuff; users don't see it, so nobody cares that it is 'ugly'

(personally, I still don't understand why http auth isn't in use in other areas; it brings user authentication outside of your app and into the http server, which makes it quite a bit easier to make other apps written by different people in different languages/frameworks use the same auth.)
I second this, and would include major follow-up launches, too.
XML is not S-Expressions
http://www.prescod.net/xml/sexprs.html
If you do it, post a comment, and I will too, Nate. I need to stop going to Binney's anyways.
I've seen this trend popping up a lot lately. Pooling buying power among individuals to get discounts up the supply chain. It makes great sense.

I think there is a lot of potential here because it is only at a certain scale that some ideas become profitable or even implementable. In the old days, some investors got together and created companies at great risk in order to see if there is a market for a product.

Taking these group buying systems to one more level, people who want a particular product can pool their resources in order to get the product developed. I don't think Venture Capital sees the threat from models like this.

Imagine the CNC market that is getting a lot of buzz for enabling them to be built at home. If you create a company where when 100 CNC products are ordered, then everyone is charged, ALL the parts are ordered and constructed, perhaps in part by one such already existing CNC -- created just this way.

This model enables the consumer of the product to be the investor in the product. Models like this eliminate the need for venture capital in a lot of spaces with currently large barriers to entry.

EDIT: Yep, here's another example, right on the front page of HN. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1149207
there are obvious rqmts to qualify that require time and effort in addition to capital, and a track record of investment over at least 3 years and 6 previous companies.

there are obvious penalties which would be incurred if someone intentionally abused this system.

legislation does not prevent all types of abuse, however we have attempted to reasonably make it unlikely that such abuse would not occur without great cost and risk to the perpetrators.

we believe we have done a responsible job in drafting the legislation to avoid this. exact language will depend on how the bill gets negotiated before final vote.
10 billionth iTunes download going down today
What I don't get is how merely _alleging_ a copyright infringement under the DMCA can lead to the immediate take down of an entire website. If I was to claim Microsoft infringed my copyright, would they take microsoft.com offline for 10 days?
Let's consider this system in the context of the USA, where we have massive amounts of natural gas, but no efficient way to turn it into electricity. Existing turbine systems waste gas two ways: The inefficiency of combustion turbines, and transmission loss. Now, if we were to bolster our existing natural gas transmission infrastructure in order to support fuel cell technologies, we can presume that heating will continue to be provided by combustion heat exchange systems such as gas furnaces and water heaters.

Additionally, there are other ways we can generate fuel which can equally be used in combustion heat exchange and fuel cells. Chief among them is our garbage, much of which can be transformed into raw materials for methane production. Yeah, I know, the AGW folks will be crying foul on this one. I'm going to ignore them for the sake of this argument.

Now, even if you do not eliminate entirely the heavily centralized form of electricity production which we use now, you have dramatically reduced the load on the system as a whole by localizing power production in small modules everywhere. The result: say goodbye to rolling blackouts and cascading grid failures.