skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Sometimes, you need to focus on the bueinsuess idea, as noted below, along with the coding.
Also, the coding isn't everything. Coding is a small part, but also is user interface design, from scaling good images, picking easy-to-read fonts, and spelling. People automatically distrust services that have a misspelled logout button for instance. Coding is a small part to a process. Building traction is a final goal, of which coding is a small part. Coding isn't everything for a web startup.
Meaning it's not perfect?
Thanks in turn for your kind words.

Your strategy makes perfect sense for startups that look to take in angel money only or that look to do so at first in hopes of building significant value before approaching VCs down the road, they hope, from a position of strength. This is the going strategy today in the Valley and many of our startups use it.

The issue in dealing with the VCs is primarily a psychological one and I would say that, other than in an extremely down investment environment, most would be willing to let go on something like 2x if the market as a whole for VC investments is not supporting it (the long-term norm is 1x - during the dot-bomb phase, it was more like 3x-5x - today it is somewhere in between). So, yes, I think the issue can normally be argued, and argued successfully, especially if the startup is positioned well and can be selective.

The terms for participation with a cap will vary widely but, in essence, do not come out much differently in practical terms than would a 2x/non-participating type of preference.
I agree. The special skill you need to really do mathematics - creative problem solving - is a very hard skill to develop in anyone. It seems like schools are taking the easy way out by not requiring you to use it that much.
Robin Hobb's new book Dragon Haven: Review
Perhaps I don't understand what they do then? If they sell screen time for advertising and bundle it with my information how is that any different?
Yes. Every time a new Ubuntu release comes out, it's finally the one that has fixed everything wrong with Linux! It's only a matter of time before Linux has a 50% market share of desktops thanks to this release!

And then market share basically stays flat. But don't worry, there'll be another perfect release in 6 months :)
To access those you need to get authenticated and it's only allowed for the logged in user.

The graph api pretty much displays what you will see at your vanity url www.facebook.com/<username> without being logged in or when a user who is not your friend comes to your page.
See also Monty Montgomery (original author of Ogg and founder of Xiph.org) commenting on this Slashdot post:

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/04/30/237238/Steve-Jobs-Hin...

----

"Thomson Multimedia made their first veiled patent threats against Vorbis almost ten years ago. MPEG-LA has been rumbling for the past few years. Maybe this time it will actually come to something, but it hasn't yet. I'll get worried when the lawyers advise me to; i.e., not yet.

"The MPEG-LA has insinuated for some time that it is impossible to build any video codec without infringing on at least some of their patents. That is, they assert they have a monopoly on all digital video compression technology, period, and it is illegal to even attempt to compete with them. Of course, they've been careful not to say quite exactly that."
Don't forget Mapquest, Rand McNally, Multimap, Ovi Maps, ABmaps, viaMichelin...

...the guy can write about whatever he wants.
Understand The Web by Ben Ward
Making Sense of Complexity
As of this very moment, MacOS X 10.6 and Windows 7. Neither of them ship with a video editor of any kind out of the box. That’s right. Of the three operating systems, Ubuntu is the only one that ships with any video editor at all.

Huh? My iMac shipped with iMovie, and Windows ships with Windows Movie Maker.

update: whaddyaknow, windows 7 doesn't actually ship with the movie software, you have to download it (free) from http://download.live.com/moviemaker. Still.
The Pink Floyd Night School
If you found this interesting check out the book "Destructive Emotions: A Scientific Dialogue with the Dalai Lama"

http://www.amazon.com/Destructive-Emotions-Scientific-Dialog...

They talk about this same experiment.
What differentiates you from your competitions? What makes it safe to ship with you? How are you going to get the consumers and the producers?

These are the fundamental questions that I would ask you and addressing them might help you in getting more ideas in achieving traction.
What do you mean by wondering if people would "wake up and face reality" aside from pointing out your superiority to the "unthinking masses"?

How, exactly, would things be if people were 'awake' and 'facing reality', and what are people doing now in your view instead of that?
Warning: This is an 8.7MB, 32 page pdf.
Well in China, that may actually be the case, the government seem to be positioning themselves to compulsory purchase the patents if they can't be amicably licensed or worked around.

But what I was proposing more moderate, that the governments only adopt "Open Standards" as they are known. If there's a patent identified then either the owner gives it up freely, or it is worked around.

This is the exact analogue to current systems where those involved in the standardization agree to RAND fees or the patent is worked around. This does nothing to prevent other patent holders fouling things up, but that's true of the current system too.

To make this work well you'd probably need a patent estoppel system where it is the responsibility of the patent owner to identify standards that infringe their patents rather than the other way round. If they fail to notify in time, then they'd lose the patent or at the very least the right to profit from the network effect of the standard (see this paper for details http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1134000). But it can work without that extra legal support and there's plenty of Open Standards to prove it.
So long, nerds, Syfy doesn’t need you
What's wrong with uShip?
Longer Rationale:

Memes arise because of shared experiences. Lolcats are funny because people think kittens are cute. TV shows provide excellent content because millions of people watch these shows everyday.

We can even imagine why TV memes might be funnier. When you see a meme based on your favorite show, it is funnier because you have three seasons worth of character development.

My personal favs:
http://tvmemes.com/?comic=122
http://tvmemes.com/?comic=119
http://tvmemes.com/?comic=84
MongoDB approach to database synchronization
Spot on.

The problem space being addressed is more complex than what it looks like. Customer perception of reliability is everything. Shipping companies have made their offerings as reliable as banks. There's numerous safeguards in place to protect the customer in case of an accident and you have professionals handling your valuable items.

Perhaps an ebay-like system of feedback will help eliminate some of the wariness that accompanies a total stranger delivering your package, but even then the event of loss, theft, and damage will be much higher than it is with the existing shipping companies. That alone would make it difficult to get this idea off the ground.
Waiting for Godot more like. Are you comfortable with the idea that you might never get financial stability and might live the rest of your life and then die, having never pursued your passions?
"Civilization" is putting it a little strongly. Patents have 18-year lifetimes, and the mpeg4 patent clocks have all been ticking for at least a few years now. In a historical perspective, this too shall pass.
BP spends millions lobbying as it drills ever deeper and the environment pays
The Surprising Science Of Motivation. ~ Daniel Pink
Why doesn't it make sense? Drug dealers spend megabucks moving drugs. A largely anonymous network of couriers with no idea what they're carrying would be ideal. They wouldn't move a ton at once, they would spread it out over many smaller shipments. Since the oversight is zero and the cost is so low it would be worth whatever extra hassle it might add. Imagine an undercover fedex that didn't ask questions. I'm sure you'd be the go-to network for a while until you got shut down.
Right, 2% is unlikely to change anyone's business model.
Halliburton in spotlight in gulf spill probe
That would be convenient, but Jobs did not say it was MPEG LA assembling a patent portfolio to go after the OGG family.

OGG poses no credible threat to H.264 and is not currently used by anyone with enough assets to make a lawsuit profitable. The business case for an OGG patent pool is to be in place when someone with deep pockets infringes.

I'd put my money on one of the patent holders that got solicited for a possible pool being an Apple friendly and tipping Apple off.

But back to the original article: Surely H.264 is a patent "mine field", but it is a mine field with a map. You buy your license and you are clear to go.

Absent from the article is any description of how the OGG developers performed some sort of systematic patent search by people knowledgeable in patent law and compared them against the various format specifications and current algorithms.

The developers not deliberately injecting patents isn't enough. You have to ensure you are not infringing all of them before you can use it if you are a target with deep pockets.

I'm against almost all patents, but the OGG response doesn't do anything to convince me that OGG is patent proof and the Apple/MPEG LA villainy talk is irrelevant.
I don't agree that drug-induced panic attacks implicate biological causes. In the end, everything has a biological cause - a brain cell is just a biological thing, nerves are just a biological thing. What happens in their interaction is what matters.

Not saying that there can not be biological causes (malfunctioning nerves/brain/whatever), but it doesn't exclude the possibility of "logical" causes.
I think the rise of 'free' services and websites presents a set of quite dis-empowering problems for users.

Previously, after buying something, if we were unhappy in anyway we'd always be able to 'vote with our cash'. It was recognised that we deserved to be compensated if our experience of a company fell short.

Modern (free-to-access) sites obviously aren't free, we pay for usage by giving attention (via eyeballs or behaviour). However, this exchange of value isn't as tangible as it once was when we had to pay money for a service.

Maybe moving to a paid-for model might actually be better for consumers / participants - because we'd be able to make more explicit demands?

At the moment we can stop using the service - but the assessment a user makes is probably quite often weighed up against this illusion of 'zero-cost'.
It might be that Apple joined MPEG LA after 2005 (when the PDF is dated) since their only patent listed in the pool was issued in 2007.
Dwight Merriman's presentation on Replication at MongoSF:
http://www.slideshare.net/mongosf/mongodb-replication-dwight...
You've got to target a different kind of customer than those players. How about if you toss out "safe secure and reliable"? You were apparently inspired by packet switching networks, so why not follow their lead: don't guarantee delivery. If you can get your prices low enough you can certainly find whole classes of customers that could accept an 80% delivery rate. Junk mailers might love you, for a start. And lots of goods are so cheap these days that some lossage would be acceptable to save a lot on shipping.

But the bigger point is to identify a particular sort of customer who you can serve.
Older people who move around have half the mortality rate of their peers. Well that proves something. No chance of mixing up causation there.
The iPad’s Dirty Secret
More likely their marketing push is starting to have effect.
The lack of tabs didn't surprise me, but the way the iPad OS poorly handled memory management did.
Shutdown does belong on it's own. It's something most users will use all the time, unlike the rest of the system menu stuff. It's weird that it's on the right though, since they put the window close button on the left. To me, that's fundamentally inconsistent.

Then there's my Chrome browser which stubbornly maintains the window controls on the right.

No I wouldn't say it's perfect, but I do find it very clean and elegant. It certainly holds its own with Windows 7 and Mac OS.
Think you definitely need to combine it it with some social / hobby sites for it to have half a chance of being used. It can't compete as a courier company.

Start ups are actually businesses that are starting up, not software applications or websites. The way to test this is find 1 customer.
I think the point is that postural support muscles have special metabolism that does good things when they're active (generating force) for extended periods of time. A chair that molds you into the shape doesn't make the muscles work.
Yeah, mine too. I'm almost motivated to go look why... but not quite.

I looked for a 'View as' menu item prior to reloading, but very interesting that a reload fixed it.
This is something I'm skeptical about in this article. I know that I can sit in such a way as to give my spine an S curve. However, I also know that I inevitably curve my back if I am sitting down for long stretches of time.
10 things I hate about corporate IT
I'd like to have working suspend/resume on my Thinkpad while using Compiz and the FireGL. I'm going to blame this one on ATI, rather than anything under Ubuntu's control, but it's still short of perfect.
He should have multiplied the price by ten or whatever the market would bear. To do otherwise would create shortages.
I'd call the ability to "cheat" a plus.
blink was pretty basic. CSS animation are really powerful, and provides lots of options. And we can already see lots of similar effects around the web using javascript techniques.
CSS animation can surely replace a lot work that is currently being done in javascript.
HAR to Page Speed
I am going to use a "Twist Board" at one of my desks, and a compace elliptical at the other. Both desks are going to be converted to standing desks.
Open source Cross-Platform Mobile Development – MoSync
2011 will be the year of the Linux on the desktop.
Incidentally, the ability to move around in different positions while reading is a major reason I bought the iPad.

I find my spine tends to be in a C shape more while using the iPad, unless I am lying down.

I am going to experiment with a twist board and an elliptical trainer with standing desks. Starting today, with the desks.
Like the quality of service and customer response you get with paid for cellphone and cable TV services?
I used it for a bit and I have to say that I like the window controls on the left. For me the mouse pointer usually hovers in the left side of my screen so they are closer to it = require less mouse movement.
I would partner with shipping companies. Not Fedex or USPS but the thousands of other companies shipping goods in large trucks. There must be extra space in these trucks and it can be monetized.
I had huge problems with my proprietary nvidia driver and the new nouveau drivers (which replaced nv).

Because of this, the experience of upgrading was very painful. It's fine now - but, on the surface, there really isn't much difference to karmic.
this particular one can be useful to open new areas iphone-style. it's neat.
Exactly. And honestly, it's basically a first draft vomited up onto the web. It's not as if it's a manifesto on education/college/etc, just some thoughts on the topic.
مشاهدة مباراة الهلال والنصر بث مباشر
Introduction to the Polymath Project & "Density Hales-Jewett and Moser Numbers"
You had to have given them your Gmail password at one point. They keep on asking me to do it. (Yeah, right.)
Technically your iMac came with that iLife software preloaded, it didn't come with the OS. If you had an older iMac and bought an upgrade for the OS then you'd have to buy the upgrades for iLife separately. (You almost always got a game too, again that wouldn't be there if you bought the OS itself).
Yes absolutely rite...
I'm sure they'll do really well by appealing to 18-34 jocks. Because no other channels are already trying to do that.
Congratulations for the fantastic work you've done. You're really an inspiration to many of us. If I may ask you a question: How would you manage SEO if you were testing several product ideas at the same time and needed the 100 clicks/day for each one of them? Is content the main thing? Thanks :)
Where geeks go, the jocks, preps, and prom court crowd eventually follow?

The WWF with Kirk and the Gorn mentioned in the article probably wouldn't work for long. The format didn't work for very long for the anime crowd and Kaiju.

What's the deal? Are geeks and nerds really such a terrible demographic?
One show doesn't signify the ending of a network. Yes, SyFy has a LOT of dumb channel creep going on. But, to be practical, it's hard to get mad at 1 hour out of a 168 hour week. They've been adding really good shows at the same time. Stargate Universe is terrific and the first Stargate show I've been able to get into. Eureka and Warehouse 13 are both excellent, light shows to watch. There's still some good stuff there.

If I don't like what's on, well that's why I bought a TiVo :)
Don't you think there is a different license for commercial encoders? That commercial license probably comes with a stunning set of fees outlined in byzantine detail, hence the need to keep businesses from using the consumer license.

(I think the professional camera crowd doesn't do interframe compression in the camera anyway. It makes editing a little funny and they like very high quality source material. Google shopping for "video camera h.264" over $1000 only brought me a bunch of security camera packages.

The Canon Vixia HF S21 is over $1000 and contains the prohibition (well, the MPEG-2 version of it), sadly I can not paste it here because Canon set the no-copy bit on the downloadable PDF manual! Yes! That will defend the company from the evil threat of… umm… I can create no scenario where copying from the users' manual is a threat.)
Important both for heavy-duty persistence and security.
Well, that minefield map for H.264 only shows what patent mines the MPEG LA has laid down. But when it comes to hidden patents, why assume that H.264 is any better than Theora?
For now but in the future, facebook will be the only way to communicate with your friends once they are placed in this little entertainment box with no window and only copyright safe media.
The point is that, while Zen Coding is easy to manipulate (C), it's being converted to something hard to manipulate (Assembly) as you go, making it challenging to go back and rearrange things.
Junk mailers might love you

Please don't cater to junk mailers.
Not saying I could do any better, but all things visual just can't seem to shake a decidedly amateur quality level.

Perhaps an empty desktop looks good, apart from the Firefox icon scraping the top pixel of the screen, but open a few applications...

http://img203.imageshack.us/img203/9595/fffb.png
I'm paranoid enough that I thought it might be a decoy.
You're right. That's one of the disadvantages of linking to the printer friendly version of an article. You miss out on those "link" things that made this "interweb" thing famous:

http://images.businessweek.com/mz/10/19/0509_chairs.pdf

I'm just going to continue as usual, using the ball chair and alternating with a normal chair if needed. My spine feels great and definitely has a more natural shape when sitting on the ball vs. a normal chair.
the bar is continually being raised by other OSs all the time, so the definition of perfect changes. Try using windows 2000 or MacOS 8.55 and see if you don't prefer Ubuntu tremendously. Then ask yourself what has changed about Windows and MacOS in the last ten years.
A vibrant ecosystem is worth 1000x high profits.
Geeks are too demanding. Smackdown's production cost is low compared to an average sci fi show. Unless someone can make a cheap survivor in space, were not going to get anything of average scifi quality soon.
Living with a long sales cycle
Most of these concerns are the same as with any site that deals in blind transactions (ebay, used things on amazon, paypal in general), but these sites only require you to risk your time upfront where as in the case of this site the customer is risking something they already own with the hope of future payment. Essentially its like requiring people on ebay to send items before they receive payment.

The most basic way I can think of to deal with this imbalance is to have the shipper make a deposit up front to "insure" the item being ships. Upon arrival the shipper gets their deposit plus payment. There is probably a more elegant way to frame this so that the shipper does not feel like they are risking so much.
It's become rather difficult to set up UK personal bank accounts, thanks to the "know your customer" anti-terrorist regulations. Plus, UK retail banks offer uniformly terrible customer service by international standards (I've experienced three UK banks). Using offshore credit cards has long been a common choice.
Take a look at the Popplet iPad app. I think this would support most of the functionality of Microsoft Courier, but in a multitouch friendly way. It also needs a web component to be a killer app.

I'd say this is either real innovation, or at least the packaging of innovation for a larger audience.
Well, maybe I'm in the minority - but when I'm not happy with something I pay for, I make damn sure it gets changed. It takes a bit of effort - and usually involves a bit of time, but it works.

What can we do with a company like Facebook or Google when we're no longer happy?
The ridiculous thing is that SyFy is owned by NBC Universal.

How many other cable channels in the same package does NBC own that could get the offtopic (yet profitable) programming?

The same viewers would watch the same show.

NBC's owners would see the exact same sponsorship dollars.

The only difference would be that those numbers would appear in a different row in NBC's spreadsheet, and a different channel-level manager would get the credit. I'm surprised that top-level management is allowing the different channels to peck at each other's bailiwicks and dilute their brands when it doesn't make the corporation whole more money.
Ask HN: Single loyalty card?
Been thinking about an idea for awhile and want to see what people think.

It seems that every company has their own value/club card of some sort. Be it Safeway, Subway, Best Buy or one of the other thousands out there. For the end user, this is a major pain in the ass. There is no way to carry everyone's card with you all the time. Because of this, I just stop taking new cards and it's really a loss to me but I can't fit them all in my wallet (or better yet, I don't need a 8th Subway value card).

Now to me, this is an easy problem to solve. Instead of every company having their own card, why not accept a single network card? One card to rule them all. It's not a magical idea, one central database that contains std. user information and a unique id that other networks can tap into to retrieve data. With a simple system, you could reduce the number of value cards down to one card. Making it much easier for end users as well as increase user participation.

Ok, so one other value a system like this could offer is the ability for smaller mom and pop stores to create their own value card system without having to shell out a lot of money. Using a simple application and DB, they could start offering rewards to customers that buy say the 15 plant from the local nursery and get one free.

Anyway, that's my idea. It just seems odd that with today’s technology we can’t do something better than fitting yet another card into our wallets. Let me know what you think.
How to install and start your own XAMPP on Windows Server 2008 R2
How evil would it be if they tried using your LinkedIn password with your profile's gmail address to access your gmail contacts? Probably 90% of people would have both passwords set to the same thing.