skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You may not be able to think of such legit businesses, but they exist. I've signed NDA's at at least two.

Simple reason why you might not want to talk about it: you want to sell to customers on the sly while avoiding creating competition. The product is probably easy to duplicate and doesn't currently exist right now because no one thought of it.
OK, so I decided to try to transcribe this, and I got about 40 seconds in and decided I can't. Why? Because at that point I can't actually understand about half of what he's said. I don't know the companies involved so can't get the names right, and half the time he speaks too fast for me to figure out what he's saying.

Forget it. It may be gold, but I'm not getting it.

Yes, this is a rant, but imagine I'm a potential customer, and you've got a great video explaining your product. I won't buy it - you've lost a customer - unless it's really, really good.

And for what it's worth, both these comments have taken me less time than I spent trying to understand the first 90 seconds of that video.
A smart way to get a job; using google.
What you you put in your ad to get a tech job?
Microsoft Attack CPAN Testers (Again)
A follow-up to http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1056158
My take is that there were a lot of tasks that were clearly delineated in the past: watching TV, reading news, paying bills, balancing the checkbook, playing games, catching up with friends -- no-one could see you doing one and confuse it for something else.

Now, we do all these things through a couple devices. I don't buy the idea that we're really doing that much different. It's just really hard to tell tasks apart; all we see is "guy staring at screen".

But that guy staring at that screen? He could be checking a Twitter stream, or he could be reading a letter from his mother. He could be watching porn, or he could be studying for an exam. He could be playing Peggle, or he could be looking at photos of his new niece.

The only thing I know for sure, is that it's wildly presumptuous to think I actually know what he's doing, just because it involves a screen.
Yes, and it is mentioned in the article ;)
I don't doubt that it can happen this way. I was mostly asking to know where we are in this process; is this still just a geek phenomenon, or are "regular people" (whatever that means) starting to get on board too?
Goes viral, gets loads of attention, decent potential to throw some ads on and at least make something (though not $1m). If it catches Ashton's interest enough that he tweets about it, you have a message going out to millions of people. Pretty inventive and yet another "wish I'd thought of that!"
I suspect that this is true, although in my view religious conversion is not very different from changing your clothes. Neither, in and of itself, affects how good of a person you are.
"With iPods and iPads and Xboxes and PlayStations, - none of which I know how to work - information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation"

100 years ago, people had less truly leisure time. Books were not as common and news didn't travel fast. I got to see photos of the plane going down in the Hudson minutes after it happened thanks to twitter and an iPhone. We are still adjusting to the new world and it will be some time before the filters get internalized. It isn't the gadgets its biology.

Now the quote. I find it disappointing for two different reasons. The first is simply that I felt we had elected a technology clued in President. It seems that was either a lie or he is being disingenuous in his speech. I really have a tough time believing he doesn't know how to work and iPod.

The second problem is that I hate how he claimed ignorance to make himself look better than the people he was admonishing. There were so many ways to give that speech that would have not put down geeks. "I don't play with those things so I am cool" cliche of his speech writer is a little heavy.
Tall Poppy Syndrome is not a cultural oddity. It's prevalent (but named differently) in Japan, Scandinavian countries, UK, Ireland, Germany, Canada, New Zealand, the Netherlands, economically depressed areas of the USA, most of the Midwest, and so on and so forth. I would wager that at least half of the world's cultures have the tendency to try to cut down the tall poppies...
Sorry - it was my first submission, I knew I couldn't post a link and body text together and didn't think to submit a comment straight after (not sure of protocol on that).
I am not deathly afraid of phones, in fact I have grown sort of fond of the challenge of calling of stranger and convincing them about something I believe in. In that sense at least, I am not very different from the preacher. (Assuming of course that he likes what he does. Didn't seem that way from his demeanor :))
Not to nitpick, but the OP, Wendy, is a she.
"I can't think of a single use-case where Subversion is a preferred way to solve the version control problem".

Developer expertise.

My point is not that Subversion is a better VCS than git , it is not. I am a big fan of git and will use it everywhere i can but i don;t get to make the decision to choose the "right" VCS every time , sometimes you end up in places where there are factors other than technical merit at play.

However, i think we are discussing a point orthogonal to the main topic at hand.
If you want to know how to programmatically construct an interface, fart around with a Tcl/Tk tutorial for a bit. That's very interactive and easy. It's a good way to get your head around the general idea.

I agree that C can be terrifying and confusing at first. The buggy GCC of the late 1980's/early 90's was not friendly for beginners. One of the class project's bugs disappeared for no reason when we changed the order of function definitions in one file.

It gets easier once you a) learn assembly language and b) write a compiler. Fart around with some CoreWars and Google "NAND to Tetris."
is maxim19055@yahoo.com not an email address you have used? Are those domain names registered with that address not your registrations?
Infants actually pay more attention when parents use infant-directed language, which is a slower, repetitive tone used in a regular conversations.

How many "baby-talkers" do you know speak slower or more repetitively? Most babble quickly and in a high pitch.

At least, that's been my experience with what people consider to be "baby talk". Speaking slower and more simply / repetitively with infants seems to be essentially the same as speaking "seriously" with them, as you don't use complex words or phrasing with adults starting to learn your language, and you deal with them seriously too. (or, you should be)
Yeah. I think Arrington misunderstood what they asked him to do (which is fine), and then flipped out when they tried to correct his misunderstanding (which isn't).
Technology use does not distract us from political engagement: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/social_media_is_slowly_...
6 Tricks for Halting Social Engineer Hackers
The Fortune PR person explicitly asked him to have his posts about the excepts put up at the same time as the actual excerpts on the Fortune site.
Get back to work, Scottie.
That's not an email address of mine, no.
Show HN: iPad port of my sheet music app Etude
That Simon & Schuster got involved says something. Fortune probably paid to run the excerpt -- a subsidiary right in the original book contract -- and then goofed in asking for free pimping from Arrington in the manner that they did. In other words, from the publisher's point of view, Arrington was getting a free ride that S&S believed he should have paid for. Fortune's mistake.
I laughed pretty hard when I read the definition you gave for 'pigeon management'. That's one of those phrases that perfectly sums up what can otherwise be difficult to explain..
That's a great point. We haven't been exposed to information overload long enough to develop wisdom about it and be inoculated against it.
The world does not care about what you think it should be like.
"referencing online route finders in certain ways"

What were these certain ways and can we see the blog?
It is less about a hacker breaking into my account and more about protecting sensitive transmissions from all prying eyes; including those that are an occurrence of government subpoenas/warrants.
if this is being voted down because of the url, it wasn't put up as spam, it is a domain registered by "a" maximus klein that sells "OEM" or discounted software...
I would think they'd be best-off with writing their own software as a plugin... though granted, that's more work than coding it once for Flash. It's one of the things which Flash is really quite nicely suited for.

But if they're interested in offering higher quality w/ lower bandwidth and lower CPU usage on more machines, Flash is definitely not the way to go if you're making a custom DRM. Video decoding isn't exactly its strong point.
Even if they aren't right now, how many non-geeks get their information on stuff like this to a certain degree from that token geek friend (aka their "tech support" or the like)? After all if you hear from someone you trust that you feel is "more in the know" about something than you feel you could ever hope to be, and their opinion can shape it.
I think the question that needs asking is if the geeks would drive the exodus of non-geeks.

Geeks may have driven the adoption by introducing their friends to FB, would they have the same capabilities of driving their friends away from FB?

I don't think so. They would need to give their friends an alternative which is better.

This is where Diaspora comes in. Getting geeks to set-up the hubs for them and invite all their friends. The non-geeks don't have to worry about the privacy, and server related stuff, but geeks who like that stuff actually get into it.
Grass grows from the root up, i.e. it's not like a tree. Whether you chop it off with a laser or with high-speed steel, it's going to keep growing from the root; it's evolved to grow after being chopped off by sheep's teeth, after all.
Created an mp3 hosting/sharing website using this new Dropbox API: http://boomp3.com
A friend of ours in Puerto Rico has one of those. Great stuff! They're available mail-order, but I never got around to buying one.
Why Being Serious is a Waste of Time
That's absolutely not me and I'd never do that kind of stuff.
The advantage Michael got was that he got early access to the excerpts, so he could write about them and link to fortune, before anyone else. This is the standard way things work.

But I love Michaels repsonse, good on him. Unless they explicitly say, DO NOT USE THE ENTIRE EXCERPT, go for it. I mean, fortune and the author sent thank you emails just after they were posted, either they did not read it properly, or they were not clear themselves on the licensing situation.

It looks to me like the contact at fortune made the mistake, didn't check properly, and is trying to lay the blame on techcrunch. This is also, the standard way things work.
Except, the bad code as shown requires whitespace (\s) before and after the "bad" terms, so the names the Daily WTF post mentions should pass through it.

if (preg_match('/\s['.implode('|',$badSqlCode).']+\s/i', $sqlcode))

They probably didn't realize this wouldn't catch any of the bad terms at the very start or end of their code, though :-)
I don't know -- two of the jobs I had were right next to a bus depot. It was actually a risk :-D
That would be admitting you are wrong. You can never admit you are wrong, it makes you look weak. If you look weak, you will not get anywhere.

This is really how some people think.
ITYM "the available antecdata" (the plural of anecdote is anecdata, doncha know ...)
I see how it changes personal computing, in that it turns users into pure consumers of content. I mean, that's it. You can use a few apps to do this or that, but the iPad is primarily about consumption.

Depending on how you count it, it's the 2nd computing platform where "pure consumption" is slick and worry free. The Web may have been the first. (Though popups were no picnic at first.) There is no reason that content creation isn't possible -- Apple's just not doing that right now.

Check out music related apps. There's a lot of possible use of the iPad for content creation there.

I bet that the mobile device landscape will have a lot of parallels to the early web.
Cool, but I can't make my own sheet music with it?
Basically, as of today, HTML5 video isn't ready. We all knew that.

Tell that to the people that think HTML5 is 100% supported, that technologies like Flash aren't needed, and that Youtube has actually moved to HTML5.
(I worked on Finale back in the mid 90's).
Perhaps the better option is to only send emails you don't mind anyone else reading. And I would even suggest that you extend this to everybody you email.
> I think the main advantage Twitter has over Facebook is that it doesn't try to include much of a security model which means everyone understands the security model. Nothing is really private on Facebook anyway.

Yeah, I think that's true. The historical problem for Facebook is that they got a lot of their build-up precisely by promoting themselves as having a security model. Unlike MySpace, which was a big sea of public profiles, Facebook was the place where you had to have an .edu address to sign up, and your information was kept within your circle of friends (for some kinds) or university network (for other kinds), and their marketing made a big deal of that info-stays-in-your-network aspect. So people feel that Facebook hasn't been handling privacy in keeping with how they said they were going to.

Twitter, meanwhile, never promised you much of anything: either your profile is public, or it's private, and they've stuck to that, and AFAIK haven't made any significant changes to what "private" means.
There's a song converter that converts music to Etude's format from several others (Sibelius, MusicXML, Lilypond, etc).

It's an internal tool now that just runs on the command line.

But there will be an interface exposed in the coming months so that people can convert music for their own use and also publish to the store.
Not really. Implementing obscure and browser-specific solutions isn't the same as supporting it by the standard.

http://www.longtailvideo.com/support/blog/11887/html5-video-...
Search for "aa route finder." One of my posts is now on page 2 (but used to be 2nd or 3rd) - the domain contains my HN username.

I used to post all sorts of trash on my old personal blog and was doing very short "reviews" of route finders as I discovered new ones. Once I noticed something crazy going on with my ad income, about six months on, I turned up the positioning (within policy) on those individual pages to see if I could maximise the income.

None of this has made more than $50 or so over the last year, alas. You'll notice there are now a lot of sites above mine doing similar things. There's a lot of money in things like that, but I only came across it by accident. It's not the sort of thing I'd go out of my way to engineer as it just feels cheap. That probably makes me an idiot :-)

(It's a great story, though, because a lot of people thought I was wasting my time personal blogging in the 2000-2005 area and it's amazing how random activities can pay off.)
Ask yourself, could they have been clearer? I mean, the fact that you are looking for clues like certain words suggests that they certainly could have written those emails better.

I don't enjoy trying to ascertain what someone is trying to say, I guess I am not a fan of mysteries. Say it plainly and clearly, and these sort of mistakes do not go on.
Ok, neat. I've passed it on to DanielBMarkham for inclusion in his quotes library.
It's Jon Gruber. It's basically his job to talk all day about how awesome Apple is. It's what he does.
GDP is a really bad measure in this case. First of all, the cost of even living, even 3rd-word-level living, is substantially higher here. Additionally, a lot of those 3rd world economies are composed largely of "non-market operations" (subsistence farming, for example) that don't get counted in GDP since they're not a cash transaction.

Also, though the state overall may not be that low, there may be parts of the state that are pretty bad. Rural parts of West Virginia come to mind.

An aside: The area with the 2nd-worst standard of living in the Western Hemisphere is in the US. It's the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. It doesn't quite apply to this conversation since it's an Indian reservation, but it is a good reminder of just how badly we screwed over the natives.
> He seems to have access to sources and facts that most people don't. He actually is a reasonably decent writer. Yet his conclusions come out of left field, and always in favor of Apple.

This supports the theory that "Jon Gruber" is a pen name for Steve Jobs. Have the two ever been seen in the same room together?
Why not an open source engine for modern pages and the old engine for Compatibility Mode?
Indeed! And "alter table", "create view", etc... I'm glad I didn't joint that credit union when I considered it a few years ago.
Sitting straight 'bad for backs'
I'm guessing that they aren't using "honor-system SQL Injection protection", but they are hard-blocking all of that in the UI layer, which is not a terrible thing to do, but not the most sophisticated and user-friendly approach.

After they got a handful of calls about it, they had to put it in their FAQ.

Sorry, I just killed the joke.
I couldn't find the part the explained why they should be scared.
Beautiful! Can I hook it up to any electric pianos?
Do someone know why they chose the name "Diaspora"? As far as I know, this word is heavily connoted, and may needlessly hurt some feelings. Would a more neutral name be fitter?

Also, could the name be changed at all, given the attention it already received?
Doesn;t this already kinda exist in the "Filter Messages Like This" option?
Dupe: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1342748
Television (and movies, and telephones, and newspapers) _have_ brought education and culture to the masses. Really. Go back in time a couple of hundred years and talk to some regular folks. Salt 'o the Earth, industrious (maybe), and worldly even, but _not_ educated or culturally sensitive in great numbers. It's important to remember that the teeming masses didn't use all that time they spent not watching television reading Shakespeare and Newton...
It's always a pleasure to have a friendly debate.
Not yet: Max Klein, drop the Klein, replace with Payne (same character count). Max Payne was created by Finnish developers. Rearrange the letters of 'Finnish' and you get 'Fish Inn,' which is a dumbed down reference to the Hotel Redfish in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. The main language spoken in Brazil is Portuguese, which rearranged yields 'toupee rugs,' which you plan to make out of the hair from the shaved head of your beautiful female prisoner, whom you've tortured to make fearless in hopes that she will one day return to aid in the execution of your plot. Now it's over.
Its a line from Livy's history of Rome.
http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?recid=24381

An early King of Rome sent his son out as a spy pretending to have run away from the tyranny of his father.

Rome's enemies promoted him to a senior position. When their spys told him that his father was cutting down the tall poppies, this was the signal that he should mount a coup against the leadership of the enemy towns - which he did and they all fell under Rome's control.
Sometimes, I come within earshot of a parent talking to their kid, and I happen to notice that the parent is talking as though the kid is an adult. This always surprises me a little, and the fact that it is surprising makes me sad, if I think about it.
Critique a Web Page in 30 Seconds or Less
It is possible that they server is not given access to these functions, so they didn't need to be checked for, in the input.

This presents its own problems, if for some reason in the future they need to add one of these missing functions to the servers access, and don't recognise that they need to add the check as well.

But anyway, it is great to see the boss' nephew getting some work.
"Tell people why you're being more open."

Yes, that would be nice, but Zuck can't really just come out and say "PAGE VIEWS. PAGE VIEWS AND AD IMPRESSIONS" now can he?
Instinctively, I disagree with you. But you might be right. I may even agree with you, intellectually.

What evidence do you have to support your hypothesis?

Alienation is a very powerful emotional force, used by all sorts of parties to all sorts of ends. Are there 'positive' forms of alienation?

Is there not a middle path that can be taken that doesn't alienate, but also doesn't bore?
If you're not going to adopt webkit or make trident open source, can you at least make it easy to run it on mac and linux without downloading insane amounts data of VMs.
uhm... your thinking werewolves....
"Currently NativeHost supports Mac OS X, but we’re working on other platforms."

Ah. Perhaps in time it will be a good alternative to Air.
TextMate Productivity Tips
Are you going to support websockets, canvas, SVG, audio and video tags, local storage, css3 shadows, transitions, etc, etc, etc, etc?

All of them in less than a year?

No questions asked? No catchs? No booby traps?

If not, don't waste my time, I've had enough broken promises from you already.
Is yours the app shown on Apple's new iPad commercial?
It is sort of an ad, but a useful one.

I disagree about none of it being hard; there are a lot of potential pitfalls, and disputes may arise not just between client and provider, but between either of them and the labor or taxation authorities.

For example, A hires B to develop software tools for A's business, which takes 3 months of full-time work, during which B does not service any other clients. B gets paid and assigns all his interest in the code to A and both walk away happy. A year later B goes bankrupt or is involved in a messy divorce, and a court takes control of his assets. In the course of assessing B's financial position, they find the transaction with A was equivalent to employment, and that B's financial position would be better if it had been treated as such for the 3 months, which would in turn have made more funds available for B's alimony or creditors. A may be asked to make good on additional obligations that would have been payable to or on behalf of B, if B had been classified as an employee (social security payments or suchlike). Even if both parties agreed that B was an independent contractor, a court could invalidate that agreement on the basis that statutory obligations of employers took precedence and hold A liable for failing to meet those obligations. Or that A's payment to B was far below reasonable market rates, and the administrator of B's trust/estate/whatever may seek equitable relief from A. Or...

This is hypothetical of course, but not so far away from some real cases. And as far as copyright is concerned, disputes can and do arise after the fact, and an agreement that looked beautifully simple during friendship is interpreted differently under acrimonious circumstances. I was involved in a case like that last year as a witness, where a dispute arose between client and vendor relating to payment and delivery, the client sued the vendor and was counter-sued in turn, and the paperwork between them turned out to have holes big enough to drive a truck through. After a second visit to court yielded no result other than the parties threatening further legal action against each other (though mainly out of bravado rather than serious intent), I documented, copied, and quickly severed my relationship with both of them, feeling that no good could come of it. Not fun.