skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You really shouldn't feel tacky. You offer some great advice. This article from several years ago (http://www.tonywright.com/2008/bootstrappers-beware/) was particularly helpful to us when we were just starting to profitable. Thank you!
This is the kind of person you pay $100k starting to though, to keep them around for a while.

Why??? She's exactly like every other 20-something woman in Manhattan, only they all have better looking tumblr sites!
$100M+ for infringing on Kodak (Wang's) patents with Java Remote Method Invocation. I wonder why they didn't go after CORBA? (IBM too big?)

> Lo and behold, the local jury decided Sun should pay Kodak more than a hundred million dollars.

> Groups with no business focus other than litigating patent suits are affectionately known as trolls – pure litigation entities.

Patent #5,206,951:

Integration of data between typed objects by mutual, direct invocation between object managers corresponding to object types

http://www.google.com/patents?id=3KUXAAAAEBAJ&printsec=a...

Patent #5,421,012:

Multitasking computer system for integrating the operation of different application programs which manipulate data objects of different types

http://www.google.com/patents?id=M44eAAAAEBAJ&printsec=a...

Patent #5,226,161:

Integration of data between typed data structures by mutual direct invocation between data managers corresponding to data types

http://www.google.com/patents?id=wbkXAAAAEBAJ&printsec=a...

Patent list: http://java.sys-con.com/node/46599
Meanwhile in 2010, Flash Player 10 can render 300K 3D particles in software.

Sweet, that has totally been missing from my web experience.
I'm in the same boat with Summit Series. The speaker line-up is amazing.. but there's no way I can find ~$3,000 to attend. :-(

http://dc10.summitseries.com/
If you have an xbox or a windows computer check out http://fuse.microsoft.com/kodu/ it is a really simple game development tool.

It is a visual event based system.

You have a queue of events. You then define relationships. Events at the top of the queue take priority over items lower on the queue. There is also the ability to define multiple queues and switch between them.

Relationships are simple but can be used to build complex systems.
I recall years ago a moderator at Fark.com describing what they called "ghost banning" which sounds a lot like the "hellbanned" you've described. The person would see their post in a thread but nobody else would.
Sounds like an interesting side-channel attack. Or at the least the attack is via a side-channel, even though the observation seems to be via the main-channel.
White House Can't Stream Biden's Speech; So Uses Justin.tv Instead
Super Mario Bros on an 8x8 LED matrix
I probably should have mentioned it myself but disruptive innovation / innovators dilemma / christienssen was exactly what I was alluding to, cheers.
Why Computer Engineer Barbie Is Good for Women in Tech
Cost does not equate with energy.

Back in the 1950's, Freeman Dyson did a study on the cost of electricity. Electricity costs much more to use than to generate. If electricity were free there would be only about a 5 percent drop in the GNP.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/6.02/dyson_pr.html

As for not needing subsidies, there's a significant cost of capital beyond inflation, and there's also some risk due to its being a new technology. These dissuade investors.
Alt key, right under my left thumb.
And I have a helluva lot more respect for Bill Gates than either of them. He's done something worthwhile with the riches.
I don't know, I quite like the utilitarian feel to just leaving it vanilla.
This is the most usable drawing/painting app I've ever tried. There's something in its constrained, simple functionality that's very freeing. I've been playing with this for hours. All I need to do now is hack it to add colors.
It's called a Glitch Attack. A good explanation of the method: http://rdist.root.org/2007/05/07/glitch-attacks-revealed/
I run into this a lot and it's quite frustrating, so I just gave up and started keeping everything in a Keepass database. Works well enough.
I've got an in-development project in this space called PressPack. Send out customised messages to a list of recipients and track what they click through to view. Nothing particularly brilliant about the idea and online asset management has been done before, but it's useful for applications such as that described above.
Hey James, glad to hear from you! Ad Zerk does sound similar, seems like we both had the same itch to scratch :) It is good to hear of another HN'er working on the same problem space. I am sure that our friendly competition will only lead to better products for the both of us.
This is fairly common on large forum sites. The last one I worked for would do this sort of invisible banning because it was pretty easy to put into code and was fairly effective. The banned users saw their posts and thought everything was fine, but probably wondered why their inflammatory comments were not attracting the sort of attention they sought. It tended to cut down on the number of new fake accounts these people would have otherwise created to get around the ban hammer.
UP (University of the Philippines),
AMA Computer University
Sure, but I'm not a designer. Someone isn't ugly just because they have a big nose, for example. I can't explain exactly why it is ugly. But it is in the fonts, the anti-aliasing, the theme that tries to be new but only changes some colors, the terminal tab bar too big...
White balance is super important as well as a shadows to give you good depth and texture to the dish. Leaving those out is like leaving the chicken out of chicken noodle soup.
I think the writer presents interesting, if perhaps over-intellectualized, viewpoints. However, I don't believe him when he says he cannot find a real definition of Fascism. I think that's deliberate, for if he included conventionally accepted definitions, the rest of his article would be non sequitur. I've always understood it to be a confusion on Patriotism, where people align their beliefs behind the _government_ instead of aligning with the principles of their country. Where principles are misunderstood, or rejected, or under attack -- fascism takes hold. The word certainly has nothing to do with athleticism.

In this more conventional meaning, I fail to make the connections that the author makes re: Avatar.
Google Voice returns to iPhone via slick weblication
The sale of Retweet was heavily publicized in all the major tech blogs.

Why are people skeptical about the final bid price? They played the press right and skewed the value, resulting in a bidding war. When there's an artificially perceived value who's to say someone's going to make a rational purchase decision?

For all you know the new owner could be the teenage son of a Russian oil magnate, who's dad bought it for his kid's birthday after he read about it on Mashable. Cheaper than a Ferrari
Neil Postman – Bullshit and the Art of Crap-Detection
SomethingAwful pioneered it, along with a lot of other dramatic moderatory practices ("User was banned for this post", Mods challenging users to do some trivial thing to get banned, bannings for "Mod-sass", etc.).

But even for them it's a rarely (and specifically) used tool in a large suite of techniques: they give public timeouts and probations, bannings just cost another $10 to reactivate your account, permabannings mean you have to pay $10 for a new independent one. Hellbannings are for situations where the annoyance of the user's reaction far outweighs any interest from the community — the kind of crazy users who despite being uninvested in the community, will sue you over it and retain Orly Taitz.
Thanks for submitting the article. This is very useful. I've considered eventually offering a version of Learn You Some Erlang (http://learnyousomeerlang.com) as an ebook. Obviously, being able to use straight HTML would make things infinitely simpler for me.

One concern I have has to do with tags that haven't been covered with this article, namely <pre>, <code>, <var>, <samp>, etc. Does anyone have info or experience regarding these?
that approach is fine for quirks mode

And it is also fine in standards mode - double win.
We also lose a useful term if we define it that broadly, though. It's not only an economic system, but a complete political/economic system that comes with a set of aesthetics and a particular focus on nationalism, a strong state, and a strong leader.

Just government control of nominally private enterprises is much more common than fascist regimes; it'd also include the UK in the heydey of the East India Company, modern-day China, and even to some extent modern-day France.
It seems like there is an official YC meetup at Submerged on March 15 from 5-7pm, although the only details I can find are here:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1138610

Given that there is already an event (with PG in attendance), I don't know if there's any need for a separate HN meetup.
I'm afraid the OP has it right here. From Wikipedia:

What constitutes a definition of fascism and fascist governments is a highly disputed subject that has proved complicated and contentious.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_fascism
University of Kansas
hackers, especially the straight-out-of-college ones need these kind of advices as we lack those social skills, and the best places to get them are from people like you. nice advice, thanks.

PS, the tracking through Google analytics is really brilliant :)
Patent application for patent on patent trolling
As a Canadian I found that Harris Bank is great -- when you sign up for a bank account online, you can check a "I am a Canadian" box and everything Just Works. (I'm guessing this is because Harris Bank is owned by Bank of Montreal.)

I don't think Harris Bank does this for other countries, though, so if you're not Canadian this won't help you.
5 Emerging Social Media Sites to Watch in 2010
IANAL.

Strategically - does the site you are copying have the same objectives as you? Even similar size and age businesses in the same market may have different strategic plans (eg, I want to build a passive income v I want an IPO exit), so copying any of their collateral may push you towards their goals, not yours.

Operationally - Do you really want to be setting the same expectations with potential / actual clients as a competitor? Or do you want to stand out? Again, their terms of service or responses to FAQs may not align with what you want to achieve - save time by copying now, and wake up in 12 months realising you hate your clients because they want all the things you didn't actually intend to deliver.

Googlely - Duplicate content does an SEO disservice.

Legally - A lot of legal boilerplate stuff is basically or exactly the same because it's based, eg, on the wording of legislation. You may get pinged for copyright, if their copy (particularly in the FAQs) is distinct enough. And if a user ever sues or kicks up a legal stink about your service, you won't be able to go to your competitor's law firm and say "Hey - you wrote some stuff for XYZ, I ripped it off, now it's being challenged, can you help".

tl;dr - The risks are greater than just legal. Ask yourself if it's worth the effort.
Apple Developer profile question thinks JavaScript, AJAX, Ruby, Rails are same
Experimental Gmail IMAP interface using oAuth
Ask HN: Review my site Artevolve - Remix and Derive Artwork/Photographs
Anyone else getting tired of the phrase 'dead simple'?
Thing is, the sort of thing that BASIC makes you good at is exactly the sort of thing that Dijkstra was railing against.

The point, as I understand it wasn't that learning BASIC made you incapable of writing code, but that it taught habits that were fatal to the kind of mathematically rigourous thinking that he was trying to encourage.
Price has traditionally been used in things like TED to ensure exclusivity.

However if you look at many of these high end conferences it's the same groups/kinds of people attending all the time making them little more than echo chambers.

Luckily there are lots of alternatives now. BarCamp and friends of course. Reboot and Shift in Europe are also good.
> "Meetings are toxic" is a sweeping generalization, which is obviously false.

Alcohol is also toxic. Does that mean you should avoid alcohol altogether? Nope. But it does mean that you shouldn't spend your days drinking.
Google backlink checker - link popularity checker, check back links on google
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) google domain search
Just a side project I just hacked in the last few days. Think of it as Github, except for artwork. You can use it to store your creative stuff, but also to fork and derive from other users and the site tracks the derivative/fork tree.

Example of derivatives http://alpha.artevolve.com/art/view/321667ea2e7a4db4a2089802...

By the way this is still Alpha as still a lot to be done
Published author?

I am not really in this industry, so I have no idea. I was a published author at 22 and make about that much.
Instantly thought of http://www.the-asterisk-book.com/

I wonder if that was the reason for the post... Does anyone else know examples matching the description?
The movie The Pirates of Silicon Valley does a pretty good job of telling this story.
I don't think the article is worth reading.

According to the author, "Effort Shock" is the phenomenon of realizing something is a lot harder than you thought it was. Then you get depressed about it and give up. This explains failed blogs, failed diets, failed restaurants, etc.

The Karate Kid and other Rocky-esque movies ruined the world because the training montages make it seem like you can go from beginner to expert in a single Survivor song.

I was hoping the author would dig deeper into the subject, but he just repeated the same thing again and again and ended with a plug for his book.
Haplogroups, Haplotypes and genealogy, oh my
Jonathan answered that question directly in his blog:

"My response was simple. "Steve, I was just watching your last presentation, and Keynote looks identical to Concurrence – do you own that IP?" Concurrence was a presentation product built by Lighthouse Design, a company I’d help to found and which Sun acquired in 1996. [...] Steve had used Concurrence for years, and as Apple built their own presentation tool, it was obvious where they’d found inspiration."

(emphasis mine)
3D engine in 10 lines*
I think that part of the ugliness comes from having so many contributors and a culture that is used to things not having a consistent look and feel. On OS X almost all native programs look and feel the same way and the frameworks and tools encourage developers to follow Apple's human interface guidelines. When someone uses another toolkit, such as Qt, the apps just don't feel right. On Linux there is not single toolset and if there are human interface guidelines they don't seem to be followed. So the problem isn't that you need to change a few small things about some interfaces, it's that there needs to be a strongly consistent design that all programs follow.
one might argue that the process of participating in open source projects shouldn't be limited to ./configure; make, make install; complain in blog post.

Furthermore, one might argue that actively participating in open source projects doesn't mean that "svn commit" is the only action you make towards the project.

Folks, consider starting a documentation project for an open source project that doesn't have one, and one for which you are interested in. you might learn more about the project by going through that process.
PhpBB on GitHub
Nokia Files Patent for Kinetically Charged Cell Phone
Right theory, wrong cause.

Our whole society has moved towards a philosophy that children are not allowed to fail. As a result we give people easy "successes" at every opportunity, and don't let people experience the fact that they can fail. The result is people whose self-image is like a balloon - really puffed up but likely to deflate suddenly on facing a real challenge.

Obviously the opposite extreme of beating kids down is not good either. But we need a balance. And we need to drive the message home that some things take work.
Does the JIT take advantage of my CPU?
NYT is trying to make money
I think it's a bit silly that you can take a $0.05 component, implement it in software, and get a patent on it.
From http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1112881

What's usually the biggest mental hurdle for hackers to transition into entrepreneurs?

pg: Coming to terms with the effort required.

Still, it's important to remember that some people work two full-time jobs and barely make ends meet, while others work roughly the same hours and make millions. Working smart is just as important as working hard. I suppose that's a goal of YC's -- to help us work smart while we work hard.
Radix Sort on Floating Point Numbers
I honestly don't think "private gettable String fname" is in any material way better than getters and setters, as your ide can already insert the boilerplate for you. The problem isn't the boilerplate per se, it's forcing you to think about things before their time. Your attention is a scarce resource. The only satisfactory way for the first version is "public String fname", with the ability to later turn that into proper getters and setters when it is needed without the consumers of the class even knowing.

My big point about python is that you can always inject the dependencies, and you don't have to spend any thought beforehand to achieve this. Java could go a long way here with just a few minor changes -- for example, remove "new", you get a new object by calling it's constructor, without any special operators. Allow shadowing of functions. This alone would end the factory madness -- in fact, factories are just an awful boilerplatey way to implement this. For example, if I have a class Foo that needs to instantiate Bar to function, and I want to inject a different bar for some tests (or something), in python I can just:

def make_test_foo():
Bar = DummyObjectConstructor
return Foo()

(this will of course occur only in local scope, so that other potential users in other threads are not going to be stuck with dummy objects against their will)

To achieve the same in java, the way I was taught to was to design in a BarFactory for use when needed. In most cases, it's not going to be needed. But if you don't make it, boy are you going to be in a world of pain when you do need it, and half the world already depends on your class.

What really irks me about this, is that hotspot is perfectly capable of dealing with these kinds of things -- it is a really nice platform for this kind of dynamicity. Sun just used think that poor programmers are going to be confused when you hit them with too many high-level concepts, and refuses to add constructs like this. Which would be fine, except that the programmers invariably go on to develop their own ugly workarounds, like factories, because they need the power.

This I believe to be the big reason why python is so much faster to program in than java. I can program for the now, completely ignoring superfluous architecture when my programs consists of 3 files, with the knowledge that I can safely add it later when needed. The syntax and dynamic typing are just a nice extra.
"IBM today announced that it received 4,914 U.S. patents in 2009, marking the 17th consecutive year it has topped the list of the world's most inventive companies."
Twilio Node.js library
Why are you charging so much? Is this a money-making venture? Are the speakers being paid?
Eigencluster search engine
Basics of regular expression that can make you expert
Non linkjacked version:

http://thehill.com/blogs/hillicon-valley/technology/85481-wh...
I was in China teaching English when the movie "Kung-Fu Panda" came out. I was surprised at the comments. Most people said something like "I liked the movie but it was unrealistic how easily Panda became a Kung-Fu master." I can't see people in North America coming to the same conclusion.

I think people in the "East" tend to know better than people in the "West" at just how much effort is required to become a master at something.
having recently read the documentation for the linux kernel, open embedded, and bitbake, i'm pretty tired of bullshit -- but even more tired of 'TODO' and 'THIS ARTICLE IS A STUB' appearing in web pages that aren't wikis
I'm pretty sure you can change the font size in Ubuntu :) also, if you don't like the default Gnome style, swap your window manager.
I wouldn't do that actually. Just emailing 'your' opinion to some of the developers might actually have the reverse effect.

I do agree that if you complain you also need to come with a solution and a contribution of some sort. You might what to create your own Gnome theme and show the world how it should be done. If the rest of the world agrees with you your theme will be the number one downloaded theme on http://art.gnome.org in no time.
Any obvious use cases for this? (Gmail IMAP or federated login outside the web browser)

Research for their operating systems?
Kevin Marks dug this out originally:
http://groups.google.com/group/webfinger/browse_thread/threa...

I'm guessing this is what etacts are using. I wonder why Google haven't made an official announcement?
Since they also put Perl, Python, and PHP together maybe they are going for "cool" versus "uncool" web developer (I kid, I kid).
Have you seen Compiz-Fusion?
It's really nice. You don't really get the experience until you and someone else work on a pad simultaneously. (You can simulate it by opening the same pad on 2 computers/browsers, setting yourself up so you can see both at once, and typing in one to see just how fast it updates.)
Is there any way to search or filter by tag? Right now you can just look through all the photos, but once you have more photos it would be nice to be able to filter them.
The main point is so you don't have to hand over your password to let programs access your email. Why would a service need your email messages? Maybe to do cool analytics like etacts, or do an improved contact import that prioritizes the contacts by how often you correspond with them.
When I was working at a "pro-audio" company a few years back I remember complaining that "no pro musician would ever want this feature; it's a gimmick". I decided to talk to the product manager about it.

He told me very few of our customers were pro-musicians. They were mostly people who liked the idea of being pro-musicians, but mostly dorked around with the stuff at home. And they liked gimmicks.

I suspect that's the same for this sort of conference. It's not for people doing lean startups, it's for people that like the idea of doing them, but are probably working at cushy jobs telling themselves that next year they'll really take the plunge.

And that's fine, really. There are a lot of markets that wouldn't be viable if they were limited to professional practitioners.
I don't know why your friend didn't know that, but I would imagine most of us here in the UK would know what you meant by that. Not that I use it terribly often.
The biggest problem in my opinion is multimedia support.

I bet there is a market for a $25-50 Linux distribution with Open Office configured to use Ms-Office formats by default, have support for all "royalties required" formats, Microsoft fonts, and have a windows/mac look-alike theme installed by default.
French Unveils Mobile Robot To Assist Elderly
Berlusconi's Italy might also qualify.
Yeah, I do that w/ email too, v. simple & useful panic board.