skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You can own a business but you cant work for it unless you have a visa. If you write a business plan and can get some funding you would be able to get a H1 for yourself. This is obviously not easy but people have done it. And in a down market, its much easier to get a H1 as the bigger companies arent using up the supply.
Android phones would seem to be in the set of phones with bluetooth and support for third-party apps (as is the iPhone). The iPod Touch is not a phone. ;-)
Consider using Qt - it's cross platform and provides a native look & feel (just like wxWidgets does, but IMO with a much cleaner API).

There's bindings for Python, etc.
Definitely viable!

There's nothing to say you can't be a share-holder in a company - or a director of one you create yourself. You just can't be an employee without a work permit. (although if you incorporate overseas, I think you should be able to pay yourself through that and declare it as income earned overseas. I'm unclear on US law, but that seems universal in most countries I've lived.)

I think you're in the ideal place to take a few of your ideas to market and see if you can gain traction. Good luck with it!
This is a game changer for me. I told myself before that there is no way I would waste money on one of these. Now...maybe. I'm starting to get a feel for what is possible.
$ nano

Seriously? Why don't you just use Notepad.exe? Or MS Paint?
In reply to the "return of the thick client", I disagree with the notion that desktop apps are going to beat web apps. The reason why the original web API failed is because the hardware was too poor and WebKit was too immature. This is rapidly changing though.
Google's new java annotations are rather funny: http://code.google.com/p/gag/
Eversureaqua guide to water purifiers
Water softener and water purifiers reviews with additional information on home water purification systems.
JavaScript implementation of the Schwartzian transform
The 'gravity will be turned off prank', at http://steveblank.com/2009/05/13/gravity-will-be-turned-off/ is even funnier.
At first I was wondering if this was meant to be an April Fool's joke - given the other prank, probably not.
Canned Unicorn Meat: http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/41/unicorn-meat.shtml
Interest in seeing what TechStars Boston looks like?
Glad to see a vimcasts site, more perspectives on vim are always welcome. I saw in the comments that you're using randiant cms, one thing you might want to check out is that the source code for railscasts.com is open source and is a pretty solid video cast site.
If all you're building is web products and you can afford to live for a few months, just start building!! You don't need to have a 'business' to do this. Please don't pay for legal advice or try to incorporate. You can do all of that later when it actually makes sense.
... and why didn't they already launch an iPhone app?
Android support was confirmed by Wakemate before they started collecting pre-orders, otherwise I would not have been one of them.
So Quantum Computing is April fools material now... well i am glad at least it is useful for //something// ;)
Yeah, but the Zeo is impractically goofy. At what point in a relationship are you going to want to strap a sensor to your head in bed?
Yes, it's obnoxious.
Thanks for the comment. I'll definitely try to add some border around the frame (web view). I'm thinking some thing like a leafy effect would be nice (like the ipad mail app, if you have noticed) but i'll see what I can do.

Thanks again.
You can always trust a standards body to screw something up.
Awesome story, this appeared on Salon.com last year:

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2009/06/06/lear_jet_repo_m...
Why NoSQL is bad for startups
I've seen the South Park scientology episode a half-dozen times on Comedy Central UK. On all other points though - yes.
Why Palin Drives Us All Mad
I'm going to go out here on a limb, and vote no. It's not needed - that I can see - and would only serve to clutter.
I'm wondering what technology Netflix is going to use to stream video to their app and how they're going to address studio's security concerns. IIRC, they were using Silverlight because it supported some encryption scheme that made everyone happy.

Hm, looks like Silverlight can run on the iPhone: http://mashable.com/2009/11/27/silverlight-iphone/
This was on HN a while back, and I thought it was a good summary. It doesn't hold your hand on how to actually achieve the effects but it gets you started:

http://flyosity.com/tutorial/crafting-subtle-realistic-user-...
Is Your Company Venture-backable?
if you've been following the starcraft 2 beta, and you know a little bit about professional starcraft 1, then you'll probably find teamliquid.net's SC2 promod (http://www.sc2promod.com/) hilarious
This is terribly bad advice, unless you plan to give away your labors for free.

Things get complicated as soon as you start making money.
I know this kind of engineering costs serious money, but I find it remarkable the amount of self-monitoring it can do, how much it can be reconfigured through a lousy and intermittent signal, and how deep is its ability to low-level reboot from errors.

If only all of my systems could do that...
try "asl"

best one yet!
Július 10.: Budapest Pride
Wow, I'd love a linux command-line tool that does something like that!
guest@xkcd:/$ ping

There is another submarine three miles ahead, bearing 225, forty fathoms down.
Inkling now Leading Company in the Universe and announces plan to buy Google.
I made the IT guy find the 10 lirpa viruses my anti-virus software was picking up but wasn't able to remove. Funny thing; he never found em =/
http://www.freelunchproject.com/
But he's not likely going to make any money in the next several months, so for now he should just build. If he starts making substantial revenue, he can deal with the legal stuff at that point.
Like others have commented here, I believe you can start and own a business in the U.S. even if you are not a citizen. If being an employee of your business is the problem, you may be able to work around that by issuing shares to yourself and paying yourself in dividends. You definitely do not have to be a citizen to own shares in a U.S. corporation.
Whoa, what? From the article:

What’s even more interesting is that this wasn’t a skunkworks proof-of-concept project, Microsoft got the OK from Apple. This is in stark-contrast to Apple’s stance on Adobe Flash, which currently has plans for all mobile platforms except for the iPhone.

So according to Mashable, Apple is indeed allowing a runtime environment, running interpreted code on the iPhone, in direct contravention of the SDK guidelines (unlike Flash CS5, which is compiling native IPA binaries with nothing interpreted at runtime). Very weird.
How about NoSQL to SQL : http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/berkeley-db/sql.ht...
I disagree... it's not about desktop vs. web, but rather native code vs. a teetering tower of questionably repurposed abstractions. No matter how fast WebKit becomes, it will still be a browser and will only offer a limited subset of what the hardware can really do. JIT compiling JavaScript engines and the various media specs in HTML 5 help, but there's still such a gulf.
I wonder if Flash CS5 will extend the iPhone app compilation to iPads as well? Because all the stuff that he's saying is hard for developers to do (nice visual effects and animations) is dead easy in Flash.
Yep, lets all make assumptions on beta-quality code.

Firstly, Microsoft aren't the only ones who don't play well with others. Openoffice, Abiword, iWork and every other office suite on the planet uses its own formats.

Secondly, is OpenOffice OOXML 100% Strict compliant yet?

Finally, it's easy for people to stand by on the sidelines and whinge that a year old bug isn't fixed, or a new feature isn't added. Developers often calculate an estimated time required for development in advance, and for all we know, perfect compliance with the standard now may have been pushed back because implementation would have forced other features to be dropped. From a business/development perspective, this often makes sense.

Next release if they aren't compliant with strict, then yes, its time to freakout. But from a business decision, it doesn't make sense to rewrite code many times before it becomes a standard. And when applications sometimes do so, the end result is a mess, because the browsers then often need to support their broken standard, and the correct standard, or risk breaking compatibility with some websites.

Microsoft had no way of knowing exactly when the standard would be approved, or how many changes would be made. I don't think this is overwhelming proof that they are going out of their way to destroy standardisation.
Poll: Will you buy an iPad?
Alex Brown: "The entire OOXML project is now surely heading for failure"
Bear in mind that Netflix streaming doesn't typically include the latest popular releases (hey, that's what iTunes Movie Store is for, right?) However, they do have a pretty decent selection of titles. At the moment, just over 25% of my nearly 50 queued movies are available for streaming.
The $50 Wolfram Alpha iPhone App Is Now $2
Persnickety artist humor fail.

I've never seen a Google April Fools 'shop that wasn't visibly off just a bit. That's a common, if ironically over-subtle, practice.
I'd like to know how that transition is going for you. Are you having the expected difficulty of explaining a DVCS workflow? Any difficulties converting CVS modules to git repositories?

At work, I'm stuck on CVS. I'd love to use git, but the people I work with don't really know how to use any version control system properly. My commits are the only ones with commit messages. They don't use tags and haven't heard of branches.

I mentioned git to my boss, but he was hesitant because he couldn't get it running on his Windows 7 box at home (we don't use Windows 7 at work, mostly WinXP). I did a quick Google search and found that the problem is with a changed DLL in Windows 7, and that putting the old version of that DLL in git's bin directory should work, but I don't think my boss tried that.
This seems pointlessly speculative, doesn't it?
His third-last paragraph nails it: It's a "consumer device", not a producer device. This particular issue hasn't hurt the iPhone...

BTW: "Nomad" was so appropriate, being appealing to techies but not to normal people.
Airbnb TV Episode 3 - The Enchanted Manor
Seems like it could be an Arabic script to me, which could be used in a language in the Middle East or various other places in Asia, Africa, China etc:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_alphabet#Languages_writt...

Perhaps fooling around at transcribing the text using a web-based virtual Arabic terminal (note the right-to-left characters) would help:
http://www.gawaher.com/index.php?showtopic=3767.html&;

Then paste that into google translate, and choose "detect language" in the "translate from" box :)

But Arabic is tricky with how characters change appearance depending on their context. And I can't find that V-like character with a stroke at the top, second in from the right in the lower word that appears on either side of the door.
WolframAlpha Drops iPhone App Price by 96% to $1.99, Offers Refunds
Just a Thought... : Git, I'm not a fan
With the intermittent communications they have with Spirit, I fully expected them to be on AT&T.
It's a good thing that all the "Ask HN" threads (more generally, all the threads without external URL links) are now aggregated under the "ask" link at the top of most pages, as the feature request thread

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=363

linked to from the bottom of most pages seems to be missed by everyone these days.
Sunshineny seems like a great place to be. I would love one of those in Phoenix. Although I would love it better if I just left.
"Then, using HTML 5’s <video> tag, Silverlight is able to communicate a QuickTime request to the IIS server, which then decodes the MPEG-2 v8 file dynamically and starts streaming it to the iPhone.

This is extremely similar to how YouTube content currently works with the iPhone. Because Silverlight already supports GPU acceleration (a feature that is coming to future versions of Flash Player 10), battery life and overall performance has the potential to be quite strong."

Also from the article.
Someone just fell for the April Fools joke. :-)
Interactive Voice Response
Contact us now! Quality calls envisages in monitoring, consulting, benchmarking. Contact internet services center for quality assure evaluation services.
If I get the 3G will AT&T let me stream my netflix movies over 3g?
If you're a Settlers of Catan fan, check out the DealBase deal on the Isle of Catan: http://www.dealbase.com/Isle-of-Catan/Hotel-Catan-deals/Deal...
I wonder how this is going to work...My 1st gen MacBook (with 2GB RAM) cannot handle my Netflix stream (1.21 MB/s maxed out on Time Warner). It chokes every few seconds.
You can own shares, you can pay yourself BUT you CANNOT work for it. No selling, no programming - nothing.
When you click read a story on HN it kind of "hides." At least it becomes less prominent than the other stories.

I often struggle trying to find links that I have read when there are a bunch of links that I haven't read.
I respect where you're coming from -- just concentrate on building, make it awesome, and everything else can wait -- but that's a good way to end up in an ugly situation, especially since he's a non-citizen. I don't know the rules around non-citizens starting a business in the U.S., do you?

Also: if the business is starting to make money, then that's the ideal time to really concentrate on it. Iterate, iterate, iterate. It's hard to do that though if you have to step away and deal with the legal stuff instead; it becomes a distraction at exactly the wrong time, and you don't even know ahead of time how long it will take to deal with.

There's a reason that YC helps their startups incorporate, even before they have a product to sell. It's best to just deal with that immediately, get it out of the way, and then get to work on the product. (This is also the advice of most of the books I've read on starting or maintaining a business.)

I did it your way, actually, and this year I have a tax bill that I cannot afford. You might say that I should have handled that when I knew that the business had grown that much, and you'd be right, but the problem was that I was too busy making money and keeping up with demand to slow down and deal with the legal and tax stuff. Now I have a much larger problem than I would have had if I'd taken care of this in the beginning.

And I'm a U.S. citizen. I have no idea how it would work for someone who isn't.
Just to clarify, you would need the funding or letters of intent from customers to prove to the USCIS that your business would actually be viable and for them to issue the H1.
I don't disagree, but a <nsfw> tag while browsing at work would be helpful.
Article I wrote: "Offshoring without Outsourcing", would love your feedback
India begins world's biggest Biometric census
Only works for the english version, though. I had to go to google.co.uk, since google.com redirects me to google.cl
Chris Wanstrath on GitHub
You mean SAS as in the products made by bigco sas.com ???

If your talking about writing your own SAS competitor which infringes on SAS patents, thats one thing. But your comment seems to indicate your talking about software piracy, which does not seem to be what this NZ proposal is about.
Location-based service for developer check-ins is here at last
The EU and half of the world forbid or severely limit software patents. This is why VLC (a European team) doesn't pay for codec patents.
"I have met five British Prime Ministers, two American Presidents, Nelson Mandela, Michael Jackson and the Queen. My hour with Steve Jobs certainly made me more nervous than any of those encounters."
This would make the HN frontpage much more useful to me, and also make me see more new stories.

It is pretty frustrating to keep visiting the homepage and 1/3 of it is stuff I know I have no interest in.
Amazing! That's the combination on my luggage.
Maybe not 1st gen, but eventually I know resistance is futile.
Yes, that's correct. I agree it's an opportunity - albeit one with a few challenges. But, challenges are part of what makes it fun!
This is already possible via any netbook or tablet -- via the browser, at netflix.com. I've been watching streaming Netflix videos this way on my laptop for a long while.

Are we honestly going to get hyped up about every last feature of existing services that an iPad application replicates?
Do we say yes if we've already bought? Because I bought 2.
Ways to Make Your API More Successful
mplayer!
Are humanlike robots creepy? Watch this and decide for yourself
yep, they did it in 2008: http://github.com/blog/31-back-to-subversion.

they amended the post since then:

While this post was made in jest originally, head over to Announcing SVN Support to see that we have really, truly built this functionality into GitHub.

Come on guys and gals, we’re not going to make the same April Fools joke twice, that’s just lazy :-)
guest@xkcd:/$ more

Oh, yes! More! More!
Immobilier de luxe Montréal
yep..I'm in the middle of immigration process with my wife. Fortunately, the one place the USCIS and IRS do not look is on your home PC to find out if you've been programming for the startup that probably won't make any revenue until after your immigration process is through.
sadly, 'kill' does not work.
UPDATE: Looks like Openoffice doesn't support saving to OOXML anyway.

So seems the only reason OO implemented it, is to encourage people to save to their own standard. So, from one perspective, OpenOffice are trying to destroy standardisation too (they are trying to force people to use their own standard).

Really, the whole thing is a power struggle to become the dominant format anyway. Since their main competitors are doing dodgy stuff to help force people to move to their own standards, I'd say its hardly surprising Microsoft aren't willing to sacrifice functionality to help competitors.

If OpenOffice were serious about standardisation, they would add support for OOXML saving, but they haven't yet!
Ask HN: Want to join a newly seed-funded startup? 
Our startup has just been accepted to an exclusive seed funding / incubator program similar to YC (which we were a finalist for). We're looking for a 1-2 generalist programmers to join the founding team. iPhone experience is a big plus. Essentially, the company is a mix between a social game and language learning software. We're happy to discuss the concept in more detail over the phone.

The existing team has extensive experience in user experience design, marketing, and business/sales.

Substantial equity will be provided and living expenses (around 3k per month) will be paid with the seed funding.

You’ll participate in this exclusive program alongside the other members of the founding team. The benefits of the program include:
• Regular presentations and mentorship from entrepreneurs, technologists, and investors.
• Advice and counsel from the seed program’s partners
• Access to a collaborative workspace where you can network and work side-by-side with the other startup founders.
• Membership in a tight-knit community of exceptionally motivated technologists and entrepreneurs.
• Opportunity to present your work hundreds of investors and entrepreneurs at the end of the summer for the program’s “Demo Day”.

Requirements
• Experience with Objective C, Cocoa, and the iPhone SDK
• Ability to pick up new technologies very quickly
• Proactive, can-do attitude
• Willingness to spend 8-12 weeks in New York or Philadelphia over the summer
• Ability to work in agile and lean startup environment
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science (or equivalent work experience)

Experience developing games or rich mobile experiences with multiplayer, animation and backend systems is a big plus.

Email me at jessepickard@gmail.com if you're interested.
Sometimes I wish there was a button on HN labeled "Yawn" or "Goldfish" that I could press when someone posts yet another link that just repeats a story that has been posted n times before without any additional detail or analysis.

I am not looking for an option to vote the post down just to sort of register my feelings.

Perhaps the addition of a "Goldfish" score would be a useful adjunct to many posts - maybe it's just the date...
Building Great Client Relationships
I am pretty sure you are joking but here is how to do it with mplayer. See http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML-single/en/MPlayer.html#aal... and below (on that page).

libcaca: mplayer -vo caca yourvideofile

aalib: mplayer -vo aa yourvideofile
Why 18 months to get your green card? Is yours a recent marriage? Is your wife not a permanent resident? Not sure why a spouse-sponsored permanent residence process is estimated at 18 months for you.

I'm going through this with my wife right now and so far USCIS has been very quick. We're just entering month 4 of the process and it looks like we may have it all wrapped up by month 6.
Hide would be great.

or even better a filter option.

Then I could say filter-remove:ipad
As something of a Fry fanboy I get the sense that the Time sub-editors did some serious work on that article. Much of the tone remains but the progress and overall rhythm of the piece seem off-kilter from what I'd expect.
Sometimes I wish there was a button on HN labeled "Yawn" or "Goldfish" that I could press when someone posts yet another link that just repeats a story that has been posted n times before without any additional detail or analysis.

I am not looking for an option to vote the post down just to sort of register my feelings.

Perhaps the addition of a "Goldfish" score would be a useful adjunct to many posts - maybe it's just the date...

am I getting to you?
Adam Carolla Interviews OK GO (audio)
ha ha april fools
No need to read the source to know that these would work as expected:

* make me a sandwich

* sudo make me a sandwich
My wife's employer is sponsoring us for the green card. She is in a category that used to be processed quickly, but is now taking much longer. Meanwhile, she is on H1B, which of course has no provision for allowing the spouse to work.
I see where you're coming from, too. I guess I just worry that by the time this guy takes care of all the legal stuff associated with being a foreigner starting a business, the window he actually has to build is going to close.

And you're right -- I have no idea what happens in terms of his taxes should he actually make money, but I feel very similarly to jhancock, who also commented on the post:

"I'm in the middle of immigration process with my wife. Fortunately, the one place the USCIS and IRS do not look is on your home PC to find out if you've been programming for the startup that probably won't make any revenue until after your immigration process is through."

It just seems worth the risk to me.
I confess that I'm very confused. I did preorder ($5). Today, I got this email telling me the product would be shipping soon. When are they going to charge me the balance of what I owe? This was not explained...
Direct link to mp3: http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/nyc.podcast.play.it/...

Really great interview about work, creativity, success, the music industry, etc. Very informative, with several funny parts.

Some interesting points:

- two of the guys have known each other since they were 11

- before the treadmill video, they had a video on iFilm that got 400K views - that's how they got the idea to do internet video

- record labels are useful because they give you the time, freedom and $$ to do stuff like buy 8 treadmills and spend three weeks choreographing a music video

- the internet stuff doesn't make enough money for their label so they need to find corporate sponsors. Different set of problems
Nope. Only silverlight video streaming works on the iphone. They implemented Apple's http video protocol on the server side. Doesn't need Apple's permission for that. You can't run actual silverlight apps on the iPhone.