skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I perma-deleted my account several weeks ago. I was fed up with watching the not-so gradual erosion of privacy which has been occurring since I first opened my account in 2006.

My problem is that the contract, whether legal or implied, that I had with Facebook offered me a certain level of privacy, and protection of data. This is what Facebook built their reputation on. Because of this contract, I uploaded a lot of personal photos, notes and information and generally became deeply involved in the service.

Every time Facebook have a new API release or re-design, however, I became familiar with the uneasy awareness that another slice of this personal information was about to become available to businesses, friends of friends, the general public and goodness knows who else. The final straw for me was the realisation that my friends list was going to be made public, and there was nothing I could do about it. There is no way I want the list of my personal friends and acquaintances being made public: it is just beyond the pail. In hindsight, I should never have put that information on the web at all, but there you have it -- I trusted Facebook to look after that information, and Facebook repeatedly broke my trust, and that's why I've left.

I believe that there is very good reason to protect the basic tenets of our privacy online, and Facebook have shown themselves singularly incapable of doing that. As well as that, I am highly unimpressed with the direction and quality of the product, particularly the UI which has devolved from one of the best on the web to a cluttered, unpleasant mess.

I haven't missed Facebook once. Nowadays, I stick to Twitter, where the contract is clear. Everything is public, and we all know where we stand.
Of course it's not a "degree"... and yes, I have a bachelors degree, and this is what we learned also. That said, I just used an existing course list from _one_ graduate program in (yes) software engineering as a base.

The whole idea is that if you wanted to do this, you could make your own list of topics to cover. :)
This (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knuths_up-arrow_notation#Introd...) describes how it can be extended without limit. And there's are numerical examples at the end of that section demonstrating how. And this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentation) focusses specifically on the next step on "pentation".

I'm not aware of any "real-world" applications of tetration in the way that eg exponentials can describe certain physical or economic processes. But it does have some genuine uses in pure mathematics such as calculating the upper bound of some numbers. It's not just making big numbers for the sake of it.
Twitter was never about having your personal info on display. There's the 'bio' section and that's it. Twitter is a broadcast medium where the information is the primary interest point. I think the stickyness of Twitter correlates to how interesting the tweets are of the person you're following, rather than the person itself (like facebook).
hehe, funny, I just caught on to that (see edit above).

It's pretty logical really, but I can't seem to come up with what it should work out to. But the notation, once you go from ^ for exponentiation to ^^ for tetration immediately suggests ^^^ for the next step. I feel pretty dumb now for not realizing right away that was what was intended. (edit: I suck at math, in case that wasn't clear yet...).

Thanks!
I really like the tech talks. I think the most significant part is the notion that when we feel an emotion, we are "exercising" that emotion. We predispose ourself to anger when we are sitting in traffic, fuming mad. Likewise, we exercise joy and love when we feel those.

I think I have been suffering from too much anger of late.
Doesn't look like it:

http://www.infynity.spodzone.com/vim/HTML/HTML.txt
Researchers Hijack Cell Phone Data, GSM Locations
Don't you think you should be entitled to earn some of that money that Facebook is making off of your information?

I think that's what pisses me off about FB the most. This entire website was built on the backs of hundreds of millions of eager users. And sure, the users get some benefits (meeting old friends, finding a new job), and some downsides (affairs, posting that picture of you drunk for the boss to see). But all in all, we've all made Zuckerberg a millionaire for doing very little, in the big picture.
I think we all read his email and understood it. The point is that this is not reasonable. The gift card was purchased in good faith that it could be used to purchase whatever products Apple sells, on demand. I have some gift cards that I'd like to sell you, but you can only use them when I say so.
You can say that about any new tech, but truth of the matter is that there are certain advantages to using well know & widely used tech.

I'm not talking about zen-coding or pandoc or any tool specifically, you can make the same argument for e.g. clojure vs java: as much as you'd like to use the shiny new tech, you must at least consider the fact that it's a hell of a lot easier to find x new programmers that can use java proficiently than even x/10 that can use clojure proficiently.

It doesn't mean it should be the overriding deciding factor, but the cost of retraining/learning should at least be taken into account when making that decision.
How Plastic Popped the Cork Monopoly
Surely the answer to that is to set up a UK bank account and use a debit card (I make most payments with a debit card).
I alternate between sitting on a normal chair and kneeling on the (carpeted) floor and sometimes kneeling on a bean bag chair. Kneeling is also nice because its easier to randomly stretch.
I'm not advocating that. I'm just pointing out that secure languages for embedded programming must be possible.
Yes, but on network firmware cards, I suspect that more than 10% of the vulnerabilities are buffer overflows.
Matthieu Ricard shows results of recent experiments with experienced meditators
Ask HN: Just finished coding my new startup; need ideas for getting traction
http://www.meshipu.com

The concept is simple. Millions of cars on the road everyday, many traveling long distances. Millions of package delivery shipments everyday. Match these two groups and everyone wins.

Value proposition:
Instead of traveling with an empty trunk, you could offset cost of gas by carrying a small package for someone at maybe 50% discount from what they'll have to pay UPS,USPS, or FEDEX.

Major competitor: www.uship.com

My other project: www.colabopad.com

Any ideas on how I can go about getting traction for something like this? I have built what I think is a bare minimum of functionality (staying true to lean-startup idea), no pretty UI stuff.

follow me: http://twitter.com/twitlooter
The claim that facebook has changed defaults in order to indirectly make more advertising revenue is very different from the claim that checks were written to facebook in exchange for private user data. You implied the latter, and it's bogus.

None of these programs involved facebook giving user data to advertisers. Even the dreaded Beacon was strictly one-way: it allowed sites elsewhere on the Web to publish to facebook, not vice versa.

Out of curiosity, do you hold Google's AdSense up to similar levels of scrutiny? You're aware that a little pixel is on about 70% of the web by hits, piping your interests, proclivities, and browsing history to Google advertisers can target you? Or is it not evil when Google does it?
There was a pertinent discussion about height adjustable desks few days ago, see here:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1285775

I highly recommend them, if you can get one for your home office (or if you work in a office that allows desk of your preference). Some people go even further and get a treadmill underneath the desk, but I like to switch between sitting & standing personally. Standing up while working gives me an active feel to it, and I find myself avoiding procrastination since my legs would get tired if I were to spend hours surfing the Web (sure, I could adjust the height so that I can comfortably sit again, but the decision becomes more 'conscious' in a sense).
I'm curious about this too. Many Buddhist monks sit cross-legged (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sitting#Cross-legged) for long periods of the day, and I haven't heard of them having any health problems due to this.
there is a big difference between potential customers and actual customers. And the network matters a lot.

Search Engine CPC programs have the most bang for the buck here. Sure you pay a lot for clicks, but those clicks are much more likely to convert.

Social media cpc programs are much cheaper...but the quality of traffic is crap too. Sure you spend 10 times less for clicks, but they are also 20 times less effective.

Personally I find search engine cpc traffic to be useful if you are selling a product that people are searching for. And social media cpc traffic if you are promoting a product that people don't know exists(so they don't search for it).
I closed my FaceBook account because they keep changing the privacy settings. They also made the new settings more complicated than it needed to be and it seems to me that they are trying to trick people into sharing more information than they might want to.

Additionally, I find the Facebook CEO's view on privacy disturbing.
How do you get a 100 clicks for $5 on there daily?
OSM is very good for where I am now - the center of Edinburgh (much better than any of the others).

However, rural locations in Scotland look very sparsely mapped.
"Don't you think you should be entitled to earn some of that money that Facebook is making off of your information?"

Out of curiosity, do you hold AdSense to the same standard? After all, a pixel and a cookie on 70% of websites by hit is being used to infer your interests, location, demographics, and purchasing history, all so ads can be better targeted at you. Why is it more shady for Facebook to do this with information you explicitly provided, under terms that Facebook disclosed, than for Google to do so with 99.9% of the web having no idea it's happening?

Sorry, I forgot: it's not evil when Google does it.
How long before account deletion becomes an event for friends to view? "X is deleting their Facebook account. Tell them to reconsider!"
It's because the signatures aren't used as a security system in the first world. Here in South America i get checks and credit card receipts rejected on a pretty regular basis because my signature is slightly off. By which i mean, i didn't make the curve of the P the same way. Believe me, i prefer they didn't check.

When i complain, they offer to let me put each variation of my signature on file, so i could have several which pass the test.
Emacs: M-x sort-lines
The infographic says that Mininova has less users and visits than The Pirate Bay, yet Mininova is the 108th most popular website and TPB is the 109th. How is that?
Funny how that document mentions De Beers for suing him for 'unjust enrichment'. If there ever was a pot that called a kettle black that would have been it.
This isn't the first time the licence has been published. There's a copy in a Divx regulatory filing:

http://apps.shareholder.com/sec/viewerContent.aspx?companyid...

About 4/5 of the way down.
School Building
Never, because they wouldn't want the negative social proof that publishing deletions would cause.
You've got folks who'll offer to tweet the content of your choice to 10,000 followers for 5 bucks, or put something in front of their 5,000 friends on facebook. That kind of thing.

You get what you pay for, but it might be worth five bucks to give it a shot. My biggest concern with a strategy like this is you might be seen as a spammer even though you're not the one directly doing the spamming.

Maybe I'm just cynical, but anyone who supposedly has 10,000 followers on twitter and is willing to say ANYTHING to them for $5 may not have the best followers.
My impression is that Jim Breyer has been running the show for a while.
If I'm reading a magazine that has advertisements that is fine. They help cover the costs of production. If I join a club and they sell my information (where I live, who referred me, what actions I perform in the club) to another company that is an entirely different matter.

Tracking via cookies/pixels,etc is getting pretty invasive too. When google does it, it is just as bad. Look at Buzz, have we already forgotten the outrage when it came out?
Ubuntu 10.04 - Perfect
Hoping to very soon but can't do it until viemu support arrives. Should be within a couple weeks.
http://www.dnsserverlist.org/indexbeta.php?oby=Q_RTT
BIG BOLD LETTERS AND NUMBERS WITH OVER-"ACCURATE" SUMS LIKE 12341324.234!

That could not be less easy to read both from the visuals and the actual text. And the typography is so bad, just look at the Ts in the first "BITTORRENT". Isohunt is a search engine, not a tracker.

This is the worst kind of attention whoring ("Infographic! Bittorrent!") and gives me a bad impression of Mozy.
Whoa! Congrats! I hadn't heard of the offer to buy the company. Drop me an email with an update when you get a chance. Congrats again!
For a technical explanation of the difference between participating and non-participating preferred stock, see http://www.startupcompanylawyer.com/2007/06/15/what-is-the-d....

Liquidation preferences at the angel stage are not in themselves too critical so long as they are generally reasonable and 2x/non-participating doesn't work any particular hardship for founders and early-stage employees where the investment amount is in the $1 million range.

The problem is the impact on later rounds. If VCs take a 2x liquidation preference, say, for a $10 million investment, then any exit of $20 million or less is a wipeout for founders and early-stage employees. Couple that with the pressure to shoot for a 10x return on whatever that VC investment is and you can get a shoot-for-the-moon mindset that heightens risk on the one side and a let's-cut-our-investment-risk-and-get-rid-of-this-non-performing-startup mindset on the other that heightens risk on the other (assuming the VCs have control, which they normally do).

Thus, 2x (or higher) is usually seen as highly unattractive by founders even if its immediate implications at the angel stage are not necessarily bad. In my experience, in all normal investment environments, founders will resist it and fight for 1x only (usually going for participation with a cap).

Your experience may vary but this has been mine over many years in Silicon Valley.

I can understand the logic of 2x as explained in this fine piece from the angel perspective. On its own terms, it makes sense and is reasonable for that stage. As long as it doesn't spill over into subsequent rounds, it creates no problems in itself.
No, actually I hold AdSense and Google to the same standard.

But I also believe people are way less aware of what Google is going with the Adsense click data. They're also blinded by the smörgåsbord of goodies flowing out Mountain View. And maybe to most that's a fair trade. Google is at least giving out free email servers, gigabytes of cloud storage, navigation, docs, etc etc etc.
Your target customers are probably going to be young people, college students, and the like. Businesses and older people may be more worried about the security of their package. You might try making a YouTube or Vimeo video about your service. Make it sound cool and efficient. It might get you a few customers.
Nice, but do you remember <blink>? How useful will CSS animations really be?
It's safe, secure and reliable.

You will seriously need to expand on these points to get customers. Looking at the idea blind, I can't see how it can be any of these things. No pretty UI stuff will be needed until it's a viable business, and addressing these three concerns strikes me as paramount.
Or drug dealers looking for mules.
Zero Zero
Ubuntu doesn't ship with H.264 decoders either, it's not in their interests to support encumbered codecs.
How Foursquare and Location-Based Social Networks are Changing the Internet
Before you get carried away with how to build the site, I think you need to think a bit about the economics of this business.

1. What would you charge someone for postage? It would have to be less than UPS etc., otherwise there's no point not using them.

2. What would a driver earn for carrying a package? Some amount of money not greater than the postage charge (otherwise you'll go broke).

3. For what amount of money would a driver think it is worthwhile to pick up this package, or several packages, and deliver them to where they need to go? Surely more than just a few dollars.

4. What are the extra costs of your business, such as insurance?

I don't know the answer to any of these questions, particularly postage (I don't live in the US, so I don't know what the cost of sending a parcel is there). But you might want to think about it.
very funny:) I have considered all those things, I think they are mostly knee-jerk reactions. You could pretty much make similar arguments against any web-initiated transaction, but as has been demonstrated by the incredible success of e-commerce I think concerns about safety are mostly just that. I don't see why a drug dealer would want to risk so much by trying to use such a service, on so many levels it will make no sense.
I had this book as a 5-6 year old in the mid 80s. It's easy, now, to underestimate the importance of short, high level books like these on the imagination of children.

Is there anything similar today? (That, ideally, is not 99% software or content creation focused, as most introductory computing books I've seen recently are.)
According to John Sullivan, the operations manager for the FSF: "Those terms have previously even been unavailable for examination online. We are publishing them on fsf.org today in order to comment on their unethical restrictions."

Analysis of the H.264 patent licensing restrictions in the context of the Apple/Adobe back and forth on Flash and "open standards":

http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/04/pot-meet-kettle-a-...

The meaty part is that they require all licensed software to include the following notice:

THIS PRODUCT IS LICENSED UNDER THE AVC PATENT PORTFOLIO LICENSE FOR THE PERSONAL AND NON-COMMERCIAL USE OF A CONSUMER TO (I) ENCODE VIDEO IN COMPLIANCE WITH THE AVC STANDARD ("AVC VIDEO") AND/OR (II) DECODE AVC VIDEO THAT WAS ENCODED BY A CONSUMER ENGAGED IN A PERSONAL AND NON-COMMERCIAL ACTIVITY AND/OR WAS OBTAINED FROM A VIDEO PROVIDER LICENSED TO PROVIDE AVC VIDEO. NO LICENSE IS GRANTED OR SHALL BE IMPLIED FOR ANY OTHER USE. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION MAY BE OBTAINED FROM MPEG LA, L.L.C. SEE HTTP://WWW.MPEGLA.COM

So even a $12,000 video camera needs to include a limitation on non-commercial "consumer" use. But would it be legal to try and enforce that?
IPhone/iPad apps are for making money and the web is for innovating
Checkout http://www.shiply.com too.

I'd solve the initial chicken and egg by finding a few shipping companies and promising to find them business for free. Get some packages posted on the site. Get them delivered. Get some shipping companies some ratings. Rinse and repeat. Start charging.
What about Download a Free Assignment
We know school can be a pain in the neck sometimes… with all these essays and assignments, tons of books to read and no time to relax and have fun. You don’t always have enough time to meat deadlines and so you think you may as well and in a free assignment you downloaded from a random web site devoted
This is an interesting departure from Metcalfe's Law [ the value of the network is proportionate to the square of the number of nodes in the network ].

Perhaps Metcalfe's Law applies up to a certain size, and then tails off thereafter.

There is a limit on the number of people that us humans can reasonably be expected to have friendships with. I have a feeling that it is substantially smaller than the number of 'friends' that facebook attracts.
One of the big challenges in shipping is distribution. Even though someone may be going from place x to place y, they will have to go 'the last mile' in both the x and y locations to complete the transaction. Anything like this that adds complexity also adds both time and money.

Obviously you can't have people who fly do this as the air carriers prevent bringing packages which you did not pack.
Except you can opt out when google does it:
http://www.google.com/privacy_ads.html
Shipping can be quite expensive through the usual channels (UPS, USPS,FEDEX). If you have ever tried to ship a used textbook then you know what I am talking about. The application allows the carrier (ie person carrying the package) to specify a rate(per pound per mile). Obviously the intent is that such a service should be significantly cheaper than what the existing shipping companies charge otherwise no one should use it.
Not really. Microsoft's one is more like a "don't buy theirs, ours will be better".
Nice website. I think, unfortunately, the concept may have some fatal flaws...

1. If you need to ship a package across the country, don't you think it would be much faster to go with a major carrier because they can ship your stuff by air?

2. Would people really trust just any person with a car to deliver stuff that might be important? What if it got stolen by the driver? What would you do then to make the situation right?

3. Would you provide tracking information for packages that are shipped? What about day estimations on delivery?

4. How would it be profitable for the driver? Usually the major carriers are able to use economies of scale to spread out the fixed costs over many packages. If your driver had 3 packages to deliver and their delivery addresses were in different parts of town, wouldn't your driver lose money on gas and the time it would take him to drive around town to deliver the packages?
This.

I can't imagine why I'd want to give a package to a person I've never met who has no obligation to deliver the package to it's destination. If I didn't care too much about the item being shipped... I wouldn't be shipping it.
Using iPad Camera Connector with other USB Devices
I'm malicious, so I wouldn't actually delete my account. I'd just gradually falsify all my information. That way they don't get any data mining benefit from my account, in fact, their data collection is being confounded by it. ;)
yeah... I made provision for carriers (people carrying packages) to specify by how much they are willing to deviate from their planned route. That is a key aspect in the search algorithm i developed. Say you are willing to deviate 5 miles then any package that is within 5 miles (both pickup and delivery points) of your planned route is a match. There are other issue of last mile that will be addressed only if the site grows, mainly how do you deal with receivers who aren't available to pickup their package at time of delivery, considering that carrier is traveling?
You can opt out on facebook as well; and when you do so, you stay opted out. The above button works on one browser, until you happen to clear cookies.
Looks like someone lost his head: http://www.pkdandroid.org/disappearance-of-android.htm
I was all set to agree with you, but then I looked up VISA's Merchant Agreement online [pdf]: http://usa.visa.com/download/merchants/rules_for_visa_mercha...

I was surprised to see on page 28 that it is considered a security feature.
For FB I suspect that the ideal would be a network with lots of nodes but few connections; I want to be able to find my friends but I don't want them to be connected to so many that they have to sanitize their posts/thoughts.
If you could link this idea up with a social network you may be able to increase the trust level by searching within your social network, perhaps by extending that network by one or two degrees of separation. If everyone that you know and all of their friends entered their vacation plans into a database so that you could find someone that you have a chance of trusting who could deliver your package, you may be able to make it work. On the other hand, now people have a way of finding out who's going to be on vacation and when, that could be bad.