skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
As an alternative, you might consider writing some portion of your app in a language that generates Java bytecode. Languages such as JRuby generate bytecode that currently cannot be fully decompiled.

This is a little different approach as the bytecode code isn't mangled as an afterthought.

http://jimlawless.wordpress.com/2010/03/07/jruby-as-a-java-o...
The original motivation was getting fed up with spam in Google. Here's an interview where I explained: http://www.snugd.com/2009/04/24/3361/
the ordering of the thread has become skewed, and now it sounds like I insulted starkfist's mum from the outset.
A lot has changed in a year. I'd love if you'd try it again and email me your detailed feedback, so in another year maybe you'll switch :)
"We try to find someone who has (1) technical or business (or design) skills"

You don't know whether you need a business person, a designer, or a developer? Then the question to ask is why get a third co-founder at all? It will complicate communication, equity, etc., so you should actually avoid a third co-founder until you really need them.
"Richard Fuld of Lehman took home $480 million even as the company was falling apart"

This is a misstatement that rises to the level of invidious lie in context. That's his compensation over 15 years (1993 to 2007), much of it in stock. His net worth was around a billion before the crash in large part thanks to that stock. Now ... it's not so much.
Thx. Servers are currently in the US; hence, the slowness for some people outside of the US. Eventually I hope to improve the infrastructure there.

Special character handling will be much better as I index programming documentation and Stack Overflow with the special characters.
I don't think he needs to do much scaling - DDG needs some machines, and adding a couple of people may be useful, but it seems to do well enough so far, and expenses can't be very high. It certainly doesn't need Google's profitability to keep going...
It was "no spin" only a few months ago.
The first result at http://duckduckgo.com/?q=createwindowex is not what you want? It goes to http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms632680(VS.85).aspx
I usually start my visits to HN with my threads page. I frequently answer comments well after articles leave the first page but only on threads I got involved. There are times I go back to the root discussion to read more, if I see some reason to assume much has changed after my last visit.

Only when I see nothing new there is that I move to the home, and then to the "new" page, where I frequently do some flagging.

If something has led me to perceive the quality as degrading, it has been a surge in articles that are much more "news" than "hacker".
Well, that, and the fact that users really hate pages that are slow to load. (Although most of the loading would happen off-screen, this can still slow down users/other requests/...)
Arimaa is a game that you can play with a chess set. Its designed to be easy to learn but hard for computers to play. There is an unclaimed cash prize for the first bot to win the annual open tournament. Google 'arimaa' to find the rules.
Because it is convenient :-)
The main issue is that we are currently 1.5 founders, actually. I am developing the product and my co-founder is involved only half-time (~20 hours per week). We make a very good team, but he just does not have more time to invest, and I would need support really pulling the project. That's why I'm looking for another founder, whether more focused on the technical or business side.

A developer would be great for brainstorming, for building a technically great framework, and for bringing motivation and inspiration to the whole project. I would enjoy working more on the business side of things too.

A third founder with business skills would be great too -- we need to incorporate and do a lot of different business related things such as risk management and research into law and the kind of guarantees we can give to our customers, amongst many other things. If someone else would focus on that I would be more free to develop the actual product.

We can go forward with 1.5 founders as well, but it would be a lot more fun with a third person, would increase the motivation, the speed of iteration, and overall the chances for success!
Rule No. 1, Make Money by Avoiding Rules
Ah Redlettermedia! His review of the TNG Star Trek films is hilarious.
There are two things at work here. There's harmonics, where you're working with a relationship between two or more frequencies; and then there's the absolute frequency, which is needed to get different instruments to harmonize. Tuning forks give you an absolute frequency.
Technological and Product Commitment
The actual plot in question is interactive. You can select regions on each axis.
"In Germany the banks are far more regulated"

That may be true but it hasn't kept them out of serious trouble or from requiring bailouts. As I recall, the major trouble they avoided was direct risk from German home buyers, but e.g. commercial real estate has been another matter.

I'm not familiar with this movie and only skimmed the fine article, but it's worth pointing out the systemic global nature of this bubble and crash. The US wasn't the only place to have a residential housing bubble or solvency and liquidity bank crises.

I think we pretty much have to acknowledge that there was a global credit bubble that expressed itself in different ways in different places (e.g. the Japanese didn't really exit their lost decade) and work backwards from that.
It sounds like you need a new 2nd co-founder if you want to take this seriously, not a 3rd.
The article doesn't mention that his moniker "Mendax" in the book Underground is Latin for "liar".
Most of the wealthier people I know have reasonably nice cars. Maybe not Zonda/Lambo nice, but Audi, BMW, MB, Infiniti, Lexus and Cadillac are the norm.
My current understanding of monads is that they are just a formalisation and a generalisation of an execution (or composition) mechanism that is implicit in most languages.

For example, in a language like C, the active part of the program is a composition of statements that are "executed" one by one and in order. The IO monad in effect implements this strategy.

The big thing is that the monad abstraction allows for other composition strategies too. The Maybe monad for example could be compared to a language that keeps executing things one by one until one of the computations fails, which results in the entire computation yielding a null result.

The type system helps keep these different strategies separate from each other, so that eg. one can't execute in parallel operations that require sequential composition.
Bet On Yourself, Not Markets
Owning an expensive car is actually not as bad as the author suggests. Once you get beyond around $80K cars depreciate at a much slower rate than other cheaper cars. One reason for this is that the more exotic a car is the lower the mileage it is likely to carry becomes. Another strong factor is that when you are paying more than $80K for a car you are paying a lot for the brand of the car and this is likely to be evaluated later at an emotional rather than mechanical level. A 5 year old Aston Martin is still an Aston Martin, whereas a 5 year old Honda is basically a commodity to be evaluated on its mechanical merits.

In terms of this argument the worst car to buy would be something like a BMW 5 Series - its not expensive or rare enough to ensure it would be evaluated on its emotional appeal when you are selling it - but it is still pretty expensive.
The Complete Beginner’s Guide to Barefoot Running
Reminds me of the iPad Keynote Superlatives Edit:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHZzb42s3y4
perhaps.

but i do appreciate our collaboration - it's highly inspiring and working together with him is very helpful for the project. although i do 80% of the work currently.
> How much would I have after three years? Assuming a modest 10% return per year

Is 10% really a modest return?
Yes, you can edit the title. If you want people to click on it, you need to accurately describe what you're after. Right now it reads like spam.
A Feed Apart (new version freshly launched this morning)
Is this the white iPhone HD?
This comment pretty much said what I was going to say. Definitely do the trial period. Vesting shares. Don't measure hours, it just leads to a mess. You don't care about hours, anyways - you care about results.

Okay, actually, a quick story - I was running a business where we had maybe 20 hours of mindless busywork each month that could EASILY be outsourced for very cheap. It would've cost $400/month or maybe less to outsource it. I kept trying to outsource/automate/remove this stuff, but my partner at the time wanted to have max cash in the business and insisted on doing it. But then he'd call me upset that he put in more hours that week, even though I was directly accounting for 70% of the business' sales, and had some responsibility/involvement for the other 30%.

Long story short - don't compensate hours for founders, or people will fight to keep their fiefdoms of packing boxes and bringing them to the post office, which is a totally useless waste of time if you could be making hundreds/thousands of dollars with that time and paying someone $20 to pack boxes instead.

(Edit: If you're not profitable and have no money, okay, pack boxes. We were making money, time spent on customer acquisition would've been MUCH better spent than extremely rote mindless busywork that anyone with an IQ of 60 and two working hands could do)

Also - interview A LOT. Even with the trial, you want to be doing at least three interviews, and maybe more like 10. Do them on a few separate days. Ask hard questions. After your favorite has been doing well, go to a bar or somewhere super informal and just chat about life, try to get perspective on his/her goals, ideas, thoughts on lots of stuff. Make it as informal as possible and you'll probably learn more there than you do in the formal interviews. But yeah, interview A LOT, I think it'd be hard to have too many interviews for such an important role when you're already deep into.
Why can programs empty the clipboard when they start up?
Dupe: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1283523
Technically, owning anything that is depreciating is a bad investment and that includes cars.
I apologize for not having the time to make this comment appear less like interrogation and more like a discussion ("if I had time, I would have written a shorter letter"), but I'm in a hurry :) Rest assured, I'm not arguing with you, but genuinely interested in your responses.

> My current least favourite patronising language feature: in C#, you can only override a method if the base class lets you.

My recollection from the design of Java is that such "finality" is necessary to allow the type system to reject code that attempts to override security-sensitive methods: is that not still true of C#?

> I think it comes down to the rationale. With the C# feature I mentioned, the stated reason was, inter alia, that programmers tended to misuse inheritance. I found that patronsing.

What of a language that eschews inheritance entirely, both because it makes reasoning about software more difficult and because the vast majority of programmers cannot use it correctly?

"Patronizing" seems to indicate that a designer considered himself smart enough to use a feature, but determined his "subjects" were not. What of designers who recognize their own limitations and remove features they know to be error prone in their own practice of programming? Is that still patronizing, or does it deserve a different descriptor?
I am not affiliated and I, too, was struck by the quality and effectiveness of this product launch (a file sharing app).
It's super nice, but one wonders -- if you're going to make a highly interactive email web app, why on earth would you copy such a terrible source material? Sigh.
No, it's not. If you're steadily earning a 10% return on your investment, year over year, you are doing amazingly well and should stop doing whatever day job you have now.
Fact-checking the death of the open web
Ask HN: I don't get this privacy awareness outburst, can anyone please explain?
Really, I don't get it. For a few months now everybody on HN, reddit, slashdot, stackoverflow or any other god-damn hacker hangout is talking about how everybody is ripping us off off our privacy. Facebook has been crucified already, maybe they will target google as here on HN I can see people moving to DDG just for the privacy (and not for the excellent programmer friendly results it gives). Every morning I log into HN and see a new article from someone's blog which tells how everyone and their uncle can attain more privacy. We have had privacy scanners and fixers we have had intense discussions on this topic.

I read all of this, understand most of it but I could never comprehend the idea of "privacy" online. I always assumed that whatever I put on the internet would be public now or in the future. Come to think of it, I put most of the stuff on internet just so a large mass of the world population can see me. My blog, my twitter, my facebook account all are there just so people who want to find me (or someone like me) can find me easily.

Google knows where do I live from my IP, so what? Facebook knows who I am friends with, so what? All this stuff was put up there just to make it public. If I don't want anything to be found I won't put it on the internet. It's not like they would steal my identity by knowing whom do I friend on the internet or what TV shows I like to watch. Nor would it harm me if webmasters know what word I searched to get to there website. All they want to know is what makes people want to come to there website. Where is the harm in it?

Maybe most of the people here would develop a deep seeded hatred for this post (maybe for me), but I just need to ask this question. Everyone I like from Cory Doctrow to the HN community wants to talk about something which I don't get. I know its a matter of principle to most of you. But I even can't understand that principle. So can you please explain all the privacy awareness outburst to me (without,preferably, flaming me)?
I find it difficult to believe that a Ferrari would consume 100x on all of fuel, fines, insurance and licensing costs.

But I would rather consider your choice of car beyond basic requirements as consumption, much like food. I'm sure one wouldn't consider fine cuisine a good investment either under these circumstances, but that doesn't justify living off ramen your whole life.
Errr, which are free to those who don't have a ACM Digital Library subscription?
I love it when somebody makes an intelligent distinction in an overarching argument. Thanks.

Especially when it's something I can use to talk my husband out of his delusion of getting a BMW as our first car, when we'll drive it 10 hours a month. In Europe, where BMWs are twice as expensive... and four times as common.
Hack Download account on GRABOID
So have I actually, on some smaller projects, but it's going to be a major change to switch over larger ones. I'll be sticking on 2.3 with them for the time being.
Only if the value you are getting from using the asset is not more than the amount by which it is depreciating.
In my paste buffer: "Assuming a modest 10% return per year"

The article lost me at this point too.
"If it flies, floats or fornicates, always rent it.. it’s cheaper in the long run." - Felix Dennis
I have a fairly nice car. Have owned it for 7 years now. While there have been minor problems like scrapes on the rims, trim peeling, etc., the engine, transmission and all the real guts of the car have performed flawlessly the entire time. The car has been paid off for 4 years.

I feel I could drive this car for another 5 years at least. That would be at least 12 years without purchasing a car and 8 years without making a car payment.

My car was expensive, but I feel it was engineered so well that it can last. Quality cars last a long time.
If you have a 4-year vesting schedule with a one-year cliff, then anyone who walks away before 12 months have passed leaves empty-handed. Anyone who walks away before 48 months have passed will be giving up at least a little.

However, I think vesting only protects you from co-founders who quit. I'm not sure how you can deal with situations where a co-founder simply stops contributing (or only contributes an extremely minimal amount). HNers, and advice in this area?

On a related note, splitting the company equally might not be the best decision. People are different, and as a result will contribute differing amounts. Later down the road, you don't want anyone to feel like he's doing a disproportionately large amount of work. Sit down and agree on what you expect from each other in terms of time, commitment, and effort, and make sure the equity is split fairly based on that.
Film buffs community « filmaster.com
This can be summed up as being because "you want to make infographics only because they're trendy, but have no idea what your're trying to say, or why, or how to say it effectively."

Fixing labels, simplicity, interactivity, animation, etc., won't solve the problem with the whole conception being wrong, useless, or boring.
Activity feed with rails, AR and observers
Yes cars are extremely expensive. But for many the ability to live within driving distance of work is worth it. I know people who don't have cars. They really miss them. I can drive 250 miles to see my family on a whim. It takes 4-5 hours. Taking public transit requires 7-8 hours, and only gets me within 25 miles of my parents' house (which is pretty good compared to much of the US).

And something like reliability is difficult to quantify. The difference between a $20,000 car and a $4,000 car is often that the $4,000 car is more likely to fail on you unexpectedly. You'll wake up one morning to find the battery dead, or you'll be halfway to work and your brake lines will rupture, or maybe it's just that the door sticks and is a minor subconscious annoyance. Eventually the amount of money you have to sink into a clunker to keep it running will be as much as it would have cost to buy the newer car.

But yeah, anything more than that, unless you need the car to impress clients, is pure luxury. If I had to blow $50,000 on a luxury, it would not be a car.
The author makes a good point, similar to those made in the excellent book "The Millionaires Next Door." My wife and I have make it a habit of saving for new big ticket items like cars to avoid debt payments and it makes a difference: both in saved interest payments and fewer purchases. I have worked just part time my whole life making a good but modest living while my brother owns two optometry offices, has lots of income, but not so great investments and buys a lot of "toys." It seems really strange to me that I am ending up with more assets than he has when I took it easy in my career and had fun.
"he just does not have more time to invest"

This is your core problem. I can think of two main possibilities: a business problem or a team problem. Either he's not a committed co-founder or your startup's business opportunity is not good enough to pull him in more. Adding a third person won't fix this problem, it will just give you another.
Awesome, the order of the DB columns was my biggest pet peeve with migrations
Fred Wilson Analyzes his Audience
This is complete bull. Owning anything that depreciates in value is not a smart investment idea.
Most wealthy people don't go around in a Prius. Even if they own one, they will always get a "safer" car for their family (at least) such as a Volvo, Benz or Range Rover.
A short puzzle about heap expansion
Don'tcha know, social software does all the work of being social for you.
This is definitely my approach as well. I have a BMW and take exceptionally good care of it - and feel that this is the best way to deal with the fact that cars depreciate. Get a really well built car and use it for a long time. Due to the "lemon" problem it is not possible to sell a car second-hand at its proper value if you have maintained it well. But this isn't actually a problem if you don't mind driving a slightly older car. My BMW has 60K on it and I expect to drive it for at least 6 more years.
considering that the author is South African and the inflation rate there ranged between 5 and 10% in the past 10 years (http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=south+africa+inflation+...), 10% would indeed be a modest return.
Please don't misquote me - my sentence started with an "if", and I was referring to the theory put forward in the article (Hence the "if" - meaning "if we assume the theory put forward in the article is true").

Nevertheless, as you say, it is group behavior and greed - I don't think any kind of regulation can prevent that. People will just find other ways to screw up. And I think it IS fair to blame the greedy people at least a little bit.

As for banks having no risks, I don't really buy it. Could they count on the bailouts?
Extremely useful and great code examples. I really liked the sliding content demo.
Try a very quick project with both languages? Maybe a todo list using Ruby/Rails and PHP/CodeIgniter (language/framework). Not really answering your question but you should also see how these two work with your own eyes instead of just relying on anecdote, even if you’re just starting programming.
BMW's are twice as expensive in Europe? You lost me there. I currently on vacation in Europe, and you won't believe some of the deals (on both brand new and used) BMW's I've seen.
Except for sophisticated users who think that showing a box shot actually makes it seem MORE scammy. The gentlebox doth protesteth too much, as it were.
quick notify ferrari, lamborghini, porsche, maserati, aston martin, jaguar, bentley, audi, cadillac, morgan, rolls-royce, bugatti, TVR, volvo, spyker, saab, land rover, lotus, bmw, mercedes, lexus, lincoln, maybach, pagani, gumpert, koenigsegg, acura, infiniti, weismann, mosler, ascari, mclaren, ssc aero,..that they are in the wrong business.

First of all a luxury car is not an investment. A person doesn't buy a Ferrari, thinking it'll appreciate, they buy it to show off their wealth, and at a certain point, the 200K for a Ferrari is only a small portion of someone's income. And since high end cars tend to hold their value really well, they don't depreciate as much as regular ones.

Second of all, the lost opportunity cost is just the cost of owning a car. Live a little, you don't get to take the money with you when you die.

Finally, there are only a few types of millionaires who don't own a nice car. 1. those who lease the luxury car with their companies. 2. those who are always traveling for business, and who pay the $30K/yr to belong to those super car rental clubs. 3. those who see a car as just something to take you from point a to b.
When was the last hot party you went to?
JUP - Javascript Markup
"For starters, it wasn't just the housing bubble the caused the collapse."

I was referring to the theory put forward in the article.

"Telling people they can afford something when they can't isn't fraud. Never has been, either."

But saying something has an AAA rating when it really is junk might be fraud?

I still don't get how a bank can be irresponsible. At worst, they should just go broke. If they decide to give a loan to somebody with no income, it is their risk. If that person can't pay, the bank loses the loan. If they manage to insure it (in a legal way), OK.
LikelySearch.com launched: Facebook likes integrated into search results
Stephen Fry's love for America and all its contradictions
Yeah, to extend the authors point it's probably worth making a clearer distinction between the cost of owning a car versus the cost of using a car.

If you have a $150,000 sports car that you drive four times a year and keep it covered in a secure garage most of the time, the yearly expensive probably won't be great.