skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
That's not exactly my point.

Yelp has many easy opportunities to be a shady company and raise its profit margins in ways that are 100% invisible. For example, they could claim that an ad impression got twice as many views as it actually did and there would be no way to call them on it other than a few internal potential whistleblowers.

However, running a blatant extortion scheme where there is inherently a huge paper trail is not one of those things. Any one of the millions of businesses could become a whistleblower simply by posting an email to Hacker News, and Yelp would go from a near billion dollar company to a fraction of that.

It saddens me that if someone accused my startup of doing something absolutely atrocious, illegal, and irrational, instead of giving me the benefit of the doubt, it looks like Hacker News would actually say "where there's smoke there's fire" and start to rationalize how I am likely guilty given zero evidence.
Metaphysical facts are fundamentally unknowable anyway--if you could determine them through some type of experiment, they'd be physical facts. There might be some metaphysical facts you can prove by argument, but I doubt it.

You could even argue that metaphysical statements are meaningless, though you run into problems going too far that way as well.
The business owners I've heard complaining don't usually allege that it was explicit extortion (or they would, as you point out, just record it and stick it online), but many feel like the unsolicited communications from Yelp asking if they'd like to pay have an extortiony feeling, sort of: nice Yelp ratings you've got there, I bet you'd love to keep them, eh?

The step that's of course hard to prove is whether it makes any difference if the owners pay or not. Many feel that it does--- that things like results ordering, review ordering, which reviews are highlighted, etc., depend in subtle ways on who's paying vs. not. Even if that isn't true, the fact that it's kind of hard to tell why Yelp is displaying things the way it does feeds that sort of perception.
If you're not tech-minded, and the developer that you already have wants to use X, you should go with X. This increases the likelihood you have to spend big $$$ changing systems away from a GPL system so you can make even more $$$ from an acquisition.
How To Get Digg, Delicious and Tweet Counts Using jQuery
Oh and BTW, I've been on Rails for about a year and it's been excellent. Support from the Ruby community (blogs, presence on Stack Overflow) has been excellent, and so many of the gems/plugins have been so good. Not to mention, Ruby is a fun language to program in (at least for me).
Neat.

One of the arguments I hear against Python is that while initially things happen fast, the effect does not scale for large applications. Or that Java/C#'s static type checking makes it more scalable.

I'm curious if you have seen any scalability effects. For example, did the Python teams productivity stay consistent or did it taper off the further into the project you got? Did the C# team's productivity go up over time? Stay constant? Drop?

I'd be really curious to see the time series on the productivity.
Let's see, iTunes sells the songs for $1.29 (all new hits) so 30 songs would be $38.70. Now, you were bad and did something illegal so let's go for broke and say you need to pay 10x for being bad so you will not do it again. That gets us to a $387.00 fine. That would be a reasonable slap. $675,000 is some serious overstepping.
Why would they host it on Network Solutions? The unfortunate reality is that we do not always have freedom of speech in fact. Most network hosts are not going to protect you if they're afraid of being sued.

They should be using http://prq.se, the same company that hosts TPB & wikileaks.

Edit: This post is perhaps ill-informed. Network Solutions is 4chan's registrar so they can't be that bad.
From the senate statement; " a minimum of $250,000 -- into the immigrant's startup venture. If after two years the immigrant entrepreneur can show that he or she has generated at least 5 full-time jobs in the United States, attracted $1,000,000 in additional investment capital, or achieved $1,000,000 in revenue, then he or she would receive permanent legal resident status."

My personal thoughts are that it should be possible to start a company overseas, get far enough along to secure $250k in VC funding. Also, I would be surprised to find a successful startup that can't get $1m in revenue within 2 years.

While a VC can control additional investments, they have less control over revenue than most founders. A successful start-up should not be dependent on VC funding after 2 years unless it grows exponentially and needs the funds for growth.

Also the terms after 2 years are less than for an existing EB-5 visa.
I was lucky enough to find a job doing something that I love. Have you given much thought to finding a full-time job where you could do 2D/3D real time graphics? At the very least, you could be satisfied with the work you're doing AND have money to live on. You could even go to grad school part-time and get started on that research you are so passionate about. In any case, best of luck.
Containing Uncertainty
Interesting note:

"Includes a secure website for you to showcase performance & environmental benefits."
NASA Satellites Track Vanishing Groundwater
If I would chart the timedate of when various yc people or companies get followed by the ycombinator account, I bet I would have a lot of information about what is currently happening at the office. But I'm too lazy and I don't really care.
The deadliest, most awe-inspiring of the plagues
With XML or any markup you can ignore the hierarchy and easily strip out everything that's not text, while with Sexp's I'm afraid you can't. In order to extract raw text (or actually strings) from SXML you'd need to read and understand the tree structure, which is not possible with a single-regex run.
Triumph of the Cyborg Composer
Could somebody help with some background on the science?

What strikes me as odd is that you put fuel in the fuel cell. One of the examples they give is using these to charge your hyrbid car. So, by the transitive property, aren't you putting fuel into your car?

I guess I'm trained to think of alternative energy sources like sun and wind, so I'm thrown off here. What's the innovation?

I can see that you're generating electricity locally, which I guess means we could get energy to places without running power lines. But reading the article, that doesn't seem like the point of these.

The article does claim that the energy is more efficient than what you get on the grid. But if that's the case, why don't we just put a ton of these onto the grid and push down the cost of electricity for everyone?
Square: All Hype and Little Value for Small Business
The test is stupidly simple:

Does he build things or rent-seek on what others have built?

Edit: I'm sure he's not all of one thing or another. Just take an average.
Apple Wounded Flash. Google May Kill It.
Mobile Cloud Computing: $9.5 Billion by 2014
That's pretty cool. So all I need to do is to get a friend of mine to register as an Angel, then give him 100k I've got my Visa. A lot of people can raise 100k - this seems like it would cause a lot of immigration to happen.
Metaphysical statements are indeed meaningless if you can't determine them through some type of experiment. That being said, the fundamental laws of our universe could also be considered as metaphysical statements since they "describe the physical", the precise definition of "metaphysical". However, those metaphysical statements can be determined through experiments and that's why they're "useful".
I said they didn't solve the problem. You said they did.

I did not say that they solved the problem for all users. I said that "for some set of their customers", they did in my original post and reiterated that in my second post by saying "for that set of users". The set of users I am referring to is "adults who are not interested in softcore pornography".

I apologize if it is unclear that by "some set" of customers and "that set" of users, I was referring to a set other than the whole set of all customers.

My intent was to demonstrate that Apple's actions have not adversely effected all users equally and introduce the idea that considering the parties who have benefited is worthwhile, because realizing that consequences are not a binary good/bad is essential to understanding complex problems. I could have taken this further in my original post. My mistake.

Additionally, I did not mean to suggest that the general problem of displaying information that doesn't interest a user had been solved. Frankly, I can't imagine a complete solution that does not involve technologies which don't exist. The App Store, as I see it, can never perfectly display only information the user is interested in, so I did not think this is what was meant. In that sense I was conflating "solution" with "improvement", much as one might say Hacker News is a "solution" to finding interesting things on the web, even though it is not perfect, does not work equally well for all users, and makes some effort to exclude softcore pornography.

This could have been clearer had I quoted the sentence that followed in your original post, where after saying "They didn't solve the problem.", you say "The App Store's ability to show you apps hasn't improved." If there is any confusion between "solving" the problem and "improving", it began in your post. Nevertheless, I could have been clearer that I meant the problem had been mitigated and not truly "solved", and then only for the set of users I was indicating. I am not a perfect poster.

Yes, the App Store got better for you.

At no point was I referring to myself as an effected user. I have never in my life used the App Store. I do not and never have owned an iPhone or iPod Touch. I do not own any functioning Apple products.
I think that record labels would be far more successful getting money from people if they would bring suits of this size. Keep under a certain amount and it could even go to small claims court. A few people getting slapped with $675,000 in fines doesn't scare me, but 250,000 people getting $500 in fines might make me think twice because the odds of getting caught are higher.
You can say what you want about open source, but eventually, it will lower the salaries of most developers and put many out of jobs.

Here is why:

Most software engineers get paid a pretty good salary. This is because they know how to build complex projects and applications from scratch. As more and more of these projects are given out for free, there will be less of a need for these types of developers because most companies can already get the hard work for free. However, what they will need is developers to make additions, which does not take as much skill (think of it as more of a mechanic) and will be at a much lower salary. Will there still be a need for high-paying engineers? yes. But there will be much less of these positions available. I suppose this might be the natural evolution of the industry (similar to the auto industry).

Free software has also given people the idea that all software should be free. For those of you running companies that rely on selling software, this will eventually be a problem. This has more to do with piracy than free software, but it is still along the same line of thinking.

I seem to remember an article a couple of days ago about how a game company was trying this new form of "DRM". Basically, you will be required to be online at all times to play the game. Many people (not here, but in another forum) bitched and moaned about how they need to find another business model. The problem is they already have, and this is it. Software as a service.

My point isn't that open source software is a bad thing, just what it will do to the industry (and that developers don't seem to care that they are possibly putting themselves out of a job and future income).
Criminals Hide Payment-Card Skimmers Inside Gas Station Pumps
This kind of AI composer would be just perfect for games, especially indy games. Most indy game developers can't afford good original soundtracks and if there was a service that provided them for cheap...

That's an idea for a stratup.
You did mis-interpret the gist of the bill.

The VC funders have less significantly less control than a employer of a H-1B visa.

Basically they are saying you have a 2 years (max 3 years) to meet the requirements (investment and jobs)of the visa, or go home. A EB-5 visa has a 2 year "conditional status" along similar lines.

A H-1B visa, the employer can terminate your job, and you have 30 days to leave the country. A VC can't do that unless the founders have given up their controlling interest.
Just because there are accusations, doesn't mean that something is true. It's not like they have no ulterior motive for making accusations.
They have created 11,000,000 kilowatts so far.

Are they saying that they've generated 11GWh, or that they've produced cells that continuously generate 11GW?
And in some circumstances it becomes obvious which one they picked:

"City Dumps Money Losing Traffic Cameras"
http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/30/3054.asp
In the Capitol Records case, the jury ordered Tenenbaum to pay $675,000 to several record companies for illegally downloading and distributing 30 of their songs.

##and distributing## There's a monstrous difference here that we should be working nonstop to educate people about.

If we can't get people to understand the difference between simply downloading, and becoming part of the distribution network, we are never going to have a meaningful debate. Both sides will seem completely irrational to each other.
There are two specifics to this bill that I object to.

The first is giving venture capitalists this role in public policy.

The second is carving out visas for a form of entrepreneurship modeled on VC-funded tech startups.

If a business creates jobs, I don't see how it's relevant to public policy that it hits a $1MM revenue threshold or (even more weirdly) a $1MM capital investment requirement.
How is it not valid to say that a guide written by Microsoft is protected by copyright and can't be republished?

If he believes himself that copyright is not intended to protect this type of material, why doesn't he file a DMCA counter notice so that Network Solutions is prevented from taking down his site?

No host is going to put themselves on the hook for some customer's infringement by ignoring the safe harbor rules, regardless of noble intent of the infringer.
Not having used Hg much at all (just a few hg commits and an hg clone), could it be used on top of a non-distributed source control system like SVN?

E.g., take advantage of hg commit and related commands to try changes out on the local repository, and use svn to commit those changes to the central repository?
1. It takes only 1 hour for a post to disappear from the “New” page.

Inevitable for a news site.

2. The Point system sets the wrong incentives
Most people seem to be in it for the points.

This could happen, but I haven't seen many signs of it. Personally, I try to avoid making comments that might get a negative karma score, but I don't much care how high a positive score I get. IMO The points system works well; I especially like the way that negative karma posts are 'named and shamed'.

3. There is no way to search

This is a reasonable point.

4. Using HN as a discussion forum doesn’t work.

Ask and Tell HN threads appear frequently, so this doesn't seem to be a problem. And I find the discussions on HN to be excellent.

5. There is no way to revive old discussions

IMO, this is a good thing for HN. It prevents it turning into a traditional web forum - not that web forums are a bad thing, they just tend to be more insular, and there's more of a split between regulars and newcomers.
Nokia’s Anssi Vanjoki talks frankly about the failings of the N97
Let's hope it will get voted faster than health care...
Anyone having a slightly less fluffy overview? Something between this and a scientific paper. And maybe some code?
They've proposed strict requirements as to who can perform these kinds of investments in order to prevent the kind of loophole you're describing.
Fibrecity: 100Mbps Net connection with 1Gbps bursts
I'd keep shaving at the one thing that draws your interest the most with every spare moment until it's super sharp. Whether it's redesigning a graphics engine with Scheme or otherwise.

In the meantime, work with a friendly startup and start building up your skills/network, or consult to pay the bills. I'd avoid a big company job unless the culture is super.
Free default avatars for your web app
For your car example:

You would have to put some fuel like natural gas into your car. This would be converted to electricity.

The innovation is it would not be converted from fuel to mechanical energy (motor spinning) to electricity, but rather by a more efficient fuel cell. That is a big game changer.
You'll be ejected when you can't raise $1MM in revenue or (worse) capital within three years. For a lot of people, maybe that doesn't matter; the bill doesn't set out any practical way to ensure that visa applicants are bona fide.
It mostly feeds into other negotiations and trade agreements. It is not actionable itself but provides political pressure during almost any other trade agreement.

Canada has been a member of this list for a least the last 2 years and I think longer than that.
http://excesscopyright.blogspot.com/2010/02/annual-301-parad...

I don't have first hand knowledge but am led to believe that this report is often used during trade talks to apply pressure to favour USA in negotiations. (as suggested by the above Howard Knopf and Michael Geist)
Robotic shopping cart that follows you around
> It saddens me that if someone accused my startup of doing something absolutely atrocious, illegal, and irrational, instead of giving me the benefit of the doubt, it looks like Hacker News would actually say "where there's smoke there's fire" and start to rationalize how I am likely guilty given zero evidence.

It's not someone, it's hundreds of companies over a long period of time. Now a class action lawsuit. There are over 4 million hits for Yelp and scam on Google--this isn't a one-off accusation.
You put in a hydrogen source... in this case, likely natural gas. It combines with oxygen from the air in a process that yields electricity, water, and a small amount of CO2.

The key benefit is that the fuel isn't burned. It's converted chemically, so it is a very efficient process.

They have a good flash video explaining it here: http://bloomenergy.com/products/solid-oxide-fuel-cell-animat...
Academia is cult-like, in my memory of it. There's an us-versus-them attitude toward the outside world; in that view, academia is prestigious and involves interesting work, and people in "industry" are doing useless, bullshit grunt work. The difference is exaggerated immensely. It's a self-defeating attitude since most academics will have to leave the ivory tower.

It's an up-or-out system-- and one where promotion decisions often have more to do with politics than merit (although that's the case in most industries)-- that does absolutely nothing to help the "out" find decent alternatives. In CS and economics, they usually don't need help, but humanities PhDs are completely screwed.

Of course, it didn't help this woman that her track record indicates someone with severe mental problems. She probably had no alternatives; McKinsey's not exactly an option for someone like that.
Those requirements are, in their entirety: that you are an accredited investor, and that you've made 2 $50k equity investments within the last 3 years.
Nikola Tesla's letterhead circa 1900
VI: 6 companies, 6 months, 6 percent
Mirror of cryptome.org (minus the zip in question) at: http://cryptomeorg.siteprotect.net/

Most interesting bit:
http://cryptomeorg.siteprotect.net/0001/ms-spy-takedown.htm

Network Solutions placed a legal lock on the domain (also mentioned in article above.)
I'm not sure what the law is called (something about electronic bulletin boards if memory serves me right), but the gist of it is to protect website owners from this very thing; having to vet every content uploaded by individual users.

It was originally meant to protect providers of online bulletin boards, as this was some time before the Web 2.0 kind of user information sharing exploded.
Then why not just have a global speed limit? (Or no limit, for that matter)

It seems obvious to me that different speed limits are indicators of road conditions, and that it should be safe to travel at that speed in a normal car in normal weather conditions.
H1-Bs are also bad. And, H1-B's aside, I'm not sure you actually refuted my interpretation of the bill. I cited its plain text.

My question is, is there some other law or propose legislation that mitigates the impact of this bill? If there is, I'll stand corrected.
Ha, okay so "strict requirements" is not the right way to describe it.

To do what Max was talking about would only require $200K to get in the door, and the willingness of an accredited investor to commit fraud.
http://cryptomeorg.siteprotect.net/0001/ms-spy-takedown.htm

> My Counter Notification is attached.
> [...]
> [Scanned] February 24, 2010 By email and fax to 703-668-5959
Prosecutors with unknown motives:

- Sued randomly chosen executives of Google

- For someone unconnected to them uploading a video to YouTube

- Before Google owned YouTube or had any relationship with YouTube

- For a video that was taken down upon being reported

- By its new owner which promptly turned over information about the uploader to the authorities

And the judge convicted these randomly chosen executives?

How is there even standing to make them the defendants of this case?

It's hard to believe this actually happened.
For hours yesterday the majority the hits to my app engine site were timing out against the 30 second deadline exceeded error, usually while initializing django and the logs said they'd received less than 500ms of cpu time. There were other similar complaints on the message board. It took google a full day to admit there was a problem. I love how easy the app engine is, but this does make me think about migrating.
Thanks alot for the comments and RoR suggestion. I am not sure I totally understand the second piece of the post. Are you stating that we will have to spend $$$ now transitioning to a new framework or were you saying that we would have to transition to a new framework before the big sale?
Switch on Posterous auto-tweet into that stream.

- Also, I'd switch on commenting on the Posterous blog, or else place a link under each article to the HN entry.
Headline only. This isn't going to help you start a submod business.
Have you beat $1MM in revenue within 2 years of starting? We did.

(a) It wasn't easy.

(b) Before we beat that metric, we were still --- by virtually anyone on Hacker News' metrics --- a successful enterprise: growing, in control of our destiny, working on meaningful things, creating jobs.

The metrics in this bill are arbitrary (to put it charitably; there's an uncharitable interpretation too). A Thai entrepeneur who can create 5 viable US jobs should be granted a visa without an "angel investment". A Thai entrepreneur who can create viable jobs should be granted a visa without a postage stamp.
Let's see here:

Spend the next 20-30 years of your life trying to change the way institutions do things and going up against people who want to keep the status quo because it keeps them in power.

Or

Spend a few months preparing to move to another country that matches your values.

Seems like a no-brainer to me.