skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
do you have the money to spend? Many of my family members got liberal arts degrees, and they felt enriched by the experience. I know visiting them, it sure looked like they were having a good time, meeting interesting people, etc.

Me, I got a SysAdmin job rather than going to school, and continued on in that direction. Sure, when I was my sister's age, I made 5x what she does now, but I don't think that was her primary reason for going to school.

I mean people spend that much on cars that aren't any more utilitarian than a $15,000 civic, so why not spend it learning an interesting skill while living around interesting people?
"Can it not all be summed up as 'talk to your customers?' Isn't this the foundation of any business? Does anyone actually advocate not doing so?"

I don't think anyone advocates not talking to your customers, but Steve Blank makes a bigger point than that.

The point isn't just to talk to your customers. It's that the CEO, the founders, the people with the control have to talk to the customers.

A lot of companies have the CEO, the programming team, and the rest of the decision makers relatively isolated from the customers, whereas the sales team is the one out there talking to customers every day.

This isolation still makes it look like the company is talking to customers (they have sales out there, every day, listening to customer feedback). But because the real decision makers aren't themselves experiencing the way the customers use their product, they'll never understand it the way they need to to keep making their product better.
Unless I am missing a reference in "authoritas", anyone who can fire those engineers.
From information found around the web it sounds like you are stretching the truth a little bit.

According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic_Pro), Emagic and Logic weren't around until the 90's, even though Logic was based on ideas from previous software. It's stated there that Emagic and Logic, as software named "Logic" didn't exist until '93. Then Emagic was acquired by Apple in 2002 at which point the Windows version was discontinued. The information there, if factual, would mean that Logic was only being developed by Emagic for about 10 years before they were acquired by Apple.

Information here implies (http://www.tweakheadz.com/history_of_notator_and_logic3.html) that the Mac version came in '93 followed by the PC/Windows version in '95 or '96 which would mean that Logic wasn't being used on PC/Windows for more than 6 or 7 years or so before the Windows version was discontinued by Apple. Logic and all the previous software whose ideas it was based on were also originally on Atari.
It really depends on your use-case. couch and redis support are pretty good. Things are still rapidly changing and there isn't a canonical way to do things ( ry has encouraged developers to specify what versions of node their code is built to work with, but if it isn't specified you should be cautious and run the tests.)

When node 0.2.0 is released, we will have a lot more stability in node-core (though things are getting there now). Until then, this is still an "edge" project and should be treated accordingly. For instance, check out the recent addition of buffers and unification of stream interfaces.
Why write new versions rather than fix the GNU versions? More eyeballs, and all that...
(Disclaimer: My last startup (now sold) has been mentioned multiple times on all of the blogs you mentioned. I even turned down a full profile on TC because I thought we couldn't scale.. I'm still kicking myself over this ;-))

You need to focus. The e-mail you posted here is well written, but too generic to make an impact nowadays. You need to tailor your story to fit the sources you're most interested in. You will not get coverage on even three of the sites you mention, since they're all keen to get exclusives, so don't bother with the mass mails. Foster some relationships.

Look at the blogs you're targeting. Really look. Your e-mail provides no story - it asks me to come up with one and try to fit you in to it. This distinction is important, especially for Mashable, RWW, and LifeHacker. Go through their stories and look for patterns. On RWW you'll see a mix of "news" about well established companies and "how to" type stuff often featuring smaller companies (like yours). Mashable is very list and "soft" news oriented (note posts about Justin Bieber, dating, and "happiness." LifeHacker is very "how to" based.

Your story is basically "news" but it's not a "story." You need to seed the bloggers who are looking for stories (like the above three) with stories, not release news.

(I could write a lot about this but I've been up ages and need to get a few hours sleep before going to the in-laws.. I hope you can sympathize.. :-) Any questions, ask away and I'll be back later.)
New ‘OpenID Connect’ Proposal Could Solve Many of the Social Web’s Woes
I shouldn't be able to see this, as I have no idea who this person is. If she only shared it with her closest friends, the damage would have been more localized.
I'm a developer but I don't develop most of the programs that I use every day. I don't even read the source code of these programs.

With regard to programs that I don't develop, I'm very much a user who enjoys that almost everything I use comes nicely in packages with Ubuntu. Almost.

A few programs that I use need patches or modifications that aren't included in stock Ubuntu.

Because I use free software the appropriate patches do exist and are available on which ever website their authors have published them. Or they circulate around on the internet. So, the features I desire suddenly become available via side-channel distribution. Often someone keeps prebuilt binaries of the software available with the same patches compiled in. Or they're available via alternate or backported APT repositories. In some cases, being a developer myself, I download the patches and dpkg-buildpackage them into binaries myself, but generally I not.

If I had used proprietary software:

- No third party could write patches for it;

- I would have to stick with whatever the author decides to release;

- I couldn't run old binaries if my OS went through some big upgrade and the author didn't bother to support a yet another binary;

- I also wouldn't enjoy the vast repository of prepackaged and configured software that comes with Ubuntu: unless the author was agreeing to take part in an OS distribution, I would have to search, download, and install each program separately.

Free software is much more than a single developer's ability to hack on other people's code. Free software is a whole ecosystem that benefits each participant. But since all software will come down to programming, that software ecosystem comes down to individual developers' ability to hack.
Steve Jobs' response irks me because he equates (by association) "freedom from porn" with "freedom from programs that steal your private data" and "Freedom programs that trash your battery," "Yep, freedom," itself. "[...] their world is slipping away. It is."

Freedom from porn? Steve pulls no punches--what does porn mean to us? Is it something evil, something that only subjugated people will perform in? Does it provide an legitimate outlet for a different sort of sexual fetish? Who uses whom? I don't know the answers, but I'm sure there are a multitude, many of them with a nugget of truth.

I don't feel as if we need to be protected from ourselves. This is a statement--assuming that it was, in fact, reported in good faith--written by a man in a position of power which asserts a sort of moral judgement about our culture.

Please, don't misunderstand: Mr. Jobs is entirely correct in his statement that, "Microsoft had (has) every right to enforce whatever rules for their platform they want. If people don’t like it, they can write for another platform, which some did. Or they can buy another platform, which some did." Indeed, Apple appears (from my non-lawyerly perspective) to be exercising the same supposed right without serious challenge in a court of law.

I, myself, write on a MacBook. I enjoy using and working with the technology that Apple offers--but I'm not married to Jobs' vision. I wonder what the future holds, and Jobs' words don't paint a great picture for me.

What does the world he and Apple envision for us look like?
I lack formal CS training: "0 0 2 0 1 2 1 0 1" is a sequence of 9 integers. Why would you allocate 256 bytes? Edifying post, thanks.
Have you actually used a recent Android phone? I recently switched to an incredible after more than two years with iPhones (a first-gen and then a 3GS). In many ways I find the Android superior to the iPhone model.

App transclusion, in my mind, is a positive. The application stack on Android makes great sense. It creates a repeatable sequence of events that I find easy to navigate. My wife, who is very much non-technical agrees. She has a much easier time with Android than she did with iPhone(s).

While there are definitely issues with device fracturing it's an issue I'm hoping Google works to control more cleanly in the future. As it stands today you can safely target a small number of devices with more or less compatible specs and do quite well.

Android 2.2 continues to address a lot of these issues. The pace at which the platform has matured is very nice.

Overall, I think the user experience on Android is rapidly approaching (and in some cases surpasses) that of the iPhone. I do find it interesting that in my social world, 2/3 of my non-technical friends have Android phones (mostly Motorola Droids). Every single one of them is pleased as punch.
Thanks. Yes, I do have a question. I think I have no clue what a "story" email looks like. Well, I thought the one I wrote was a story but you tell it looks like "news" :)

Do you have any examples or references of "story" that I can learn from?

PS: Yes, I know about exclusives. Therefore, I didn't do a mass-mail. I mailed one, waited, mailed another, waited. But still no reply.
How could Facebook be a utility the the Internet isn't a utility. And if the o ternet was a utility, how would regulation play with net neutrality?
On the other hand, with CentOS you have to step off the beaten track and do things by hand more frequently - for example, where CentOS comes with Exactly One Python Version, and everything Python-related is packaged against it, Debian comes with multiple Python versions, and anything Python-related you install automatically gets set up to work with whatever (compatible) Python versions you have installed.
The entire essay is great. "The Iron": http://www.oldtimestrongman.com/henryrollins_iron.html
Don't get me wrong:

First and foremost, it's about making like-minded friends and reliable roommates.

Ideally, the goal is the create a valuable development team in the process - and then take on fun and creative projects through opportunities like ycombinator and kickstarter.

That being said, I am a Ruby developer. I do think that anyone I pair-program with should be familiar with Ruby.

However, I am not tied to the constraint that I have a roommate that is a Ruby developer.
Should you add spoiler alert to this your post?
Paras, any startup events you attend in Delhi or other parts of India? I'm from Bangalore, but wouldn't mind flying to other places if there are good startup events.
To borrow a phrase from the rollout of DNSSEC: It's really hard to rebuild a plane while in flight. Sometimes it's easier to build a second plane, fly it up parallel to the old plane, then jump across.

For what it's worth, I've talked to some people at linux distributions who are excited about ditching gcc too. (Not going to say who they are, because I don't want to get them in trouble.)
A few weeks ago I heard a live presentation by IT workers in Mexiko building smart phones, and what they told was not really nice. Employers paying sublegal salaries, harassment etc. Consumers should care about that but they (I also - mostly because of missing information) don't. It's not helping that an electronic product has hundred of different components in it, and all end manufacturers share the same few manufacturers. The current "solution" is to advise cities, governments and companies about fair(er) products so that these can put more pressure on the end vendor to control the manufacturing work conditions. We've still a long way to go.
Your addresses in this simple instruction set are 8-bit; 256 bytes gives you a full 8-bit memory space.
Just to share a quote that motivated me in university (and turned my grades around dramatically)

"Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated failures. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent"
I think there are two things at play here:

1. Your product is not easy to understand or write about in a consumer-facing blog. Mashable and LH are probably not your target audience. You want big blogs about web development, analytics, SEO, PPC and that kind of thing to write about you. Don't just go for the obvious big names, but go for the big names that your target market reads. Pop quiz: name the two most famous bloggers in A/B testing world.

I think that's your main mistake.

2. There is a difference between quick news posts vs analysis posts. Your pitch email (as per another thread) is just the wrong way to target blogs with very different strategies. Mashable likes to be the first with any big breaking news. RWW is the more thoughtful of the bunch in that they take their time to think about the big picture. TC is very interested in deals: raising funding, getting bought out, etc. Your email needs to target each blog properly. In short, each want something different because they've built a following that expects that.

So my question to you: what did your email offer each blog to get them interested?
There's a difference between "share" and "publish". People signed up intending to share with their friends; akin to drawing a satiric photo of a friend, and cupping your palm over it so he couldn't see it, whilst you showed it to everyone else.

Facebook is now trying to push users into publishing data. Akin to drawing a satiric photo of a friend, and sending it to the school newspaper.
Ask HN: What resources exist for a first-timer starting a "start-up" in Canada?
Good morning Hackers. First time caller; long time listener.

I lost my job a while back and during my involuntary downtime I came up with two website ideas that I would like to build. The first is a bit of a joke and I'd hope that I could get it to a point where it could support itself via advertising (e.g. AdSense). I'm planning to build this one out first in order to convince myself that I've properly learned web skills to an adequate degree before moving on to the second project.

The second project falls into the category of "building a better mousetrap." I was recently searching for something (tangible, for purchase) online, and found that the resources for this were rather inadequate compared to my expectations. I came up with a list of things I would prefer existed on other sites, and came up with something else which seems new and innovative (to me, at least, though nobody I've explained it to has told me it was a dumb idea).

This site would be selling listings (i.e. advertising for a thing, as in "car listings," "rental listings," "job listings" etc.) to interested parties.

What I'm interested in acquiring from this community is resources relating to such endeavours in Canada. It seems a lot of information I see online relating to startups or business in general is geared toward American audiences.

I should note that money is something of an object to me at the moment (unemployed, savings getting low, living with girlfriend who likely wouldn't want me to push us into debt), so I'm hoping to imitate patio11's original "$60 budget."

Key topics to get the discussion moving:

- Liability: Do I need to start an LLC/Corporation for this? I've heard you don't even need to register as a business (you can operate under your own name) until you reach $30k or more per annum, though I assume if you're selling to businesses it would be preferably to have a proper company name to use.

- Taxes: Do I need to collect GST? What are the mechanics of that? What about tax reporting (personal and business)?

- Collecting payment: What are the catches to accepting payment online in Canada? What is my liability when using a provider for this in terms of data security?

- What else am I just completely missing right now?

I realize I'm asking a lot of the community here, but I'm rather afraid of missing something dumb and getting into legal trouble. I'm slightly paranoid that way.

Thanks for any help you can provide.
Even rally drivers have co-drivers.
Why don't we pair program more often? From my own anecdotal experience, I feel as though the resulting code is more concise and contains fewer bugs. If programmers want to live up to the hot shot reputation, they should accept that professionals always want someone covering their back.
Wow, daeken! I didn't notice that it was you :)

You could create another poll about the language to use? Or maybe choose some language in which it is easy to implement? Anyway since your target audience is going to read this book and because they love what they do - write code - you could just write it in any language. Maybe even Clojure if possible. Yes, that sounds contrast to my earlier comment, but I gave it another thought (People would be happy to learn a new awesome language if it's going to be something like Clojure or Io).

Sorry, my understand of CPU emulation is nil. Will implementing this in Ruby result in slow output? Example, you are going to try and emulate a small pong game written for NES, IMHO, the FPS for these NES games/software is very slow right? Shouldn't that fit into Ruby well?
Number 2 is the biggest issue that is pushing this change

I disagree. Having just spent a week at BSDCan and the attached FreeBSD developer summit, I'd say that the biggest reason is code quality.

Apple very definitely supported LLVM/Clang because they wanted to avoid GPLv3. FreeBSD is very happy to have a superior compiler available, and the fact that it's BSD licensed is extra icing on the cake. But if LLVM wasn't happening, I'm 100% certain that we would end up importing a newer (GPLv3) version of gcc.
A home for those who delete their facebook accounts
A little meta, yes. I deleted my facebook account and setup a site for people who have deleted their facebook accounts.
Quit Facebook Day
If you agree that facebook does not respect you, your personal data, or the future of the web, you may want to join us.
If I'm counting correctly these photographs still retain copyright to the end of the year (in Sweden), as Albert Kahn died in 1940. Copyright in Sweden is generally uphold up until 70 years after authors death.
isn't this just another way of saying that nobody should ever pay for others to write code?
Why the comma after "Introducing"?
That's not necessarily a wise long term view. As the GP mentioned: lock-in.
Check TiE, Headstart Network, OCC (in Bangalore), Barcamp (inactive), MoMo Bangalore. All except TiE have mailing lists. DARE Magazine held a recent event called Startup City in Bangalore.
But one has to torture the English language a bit in the "freedom from" case.
"Accordingly, programming is not _currently_ a science."

Yes it is, it is just that in information processing, the problem domains are often ill-specified and ill-behaved. The system analyst's job is to pull the pin on a wish list grenade, fling it at the engineers, and run away before they realize what has been done to them. The engineers are then forced to pile crap together, reverse-engineer a problem definition, and see if anybody wants to pay for solving it.
For example, do you think the users might have considered it a bit of a risk continuing to use software they knew there would be no bug fixes for?
yeah, we definitely need to change that "democracies... free of politics" line. A more accurate statement would be something like "What if corporations where meritocracies... free(er) of personal politics"

As for Visa, I completely agree with you, they are in no way an inspiration on the social enterprise or 'values' front. They are however a really good example of how an innovation in organizational governance (namely a decentralized meritocracy) can be leveraged to compete effectively. They didn't start out with only one competitor. At the time they started Americard had the lion's share.

And I totally agree that the consumers are different from the people who pay the fees. Dee Hock (the founder) notes in his biography that one of his biggest regrets was his failure to give the consumers and the merchants decision-making power in the governance of VISA.
Wonderful pictures. It's so different in color.

What I'm wondering is what was Obama doing in Spain as a young boy? http://citynoise.org/upload/42155.jpg
Nope. PyPy is just a better design.

When you don't have to babysit C, you get to spend your time improving the actual application you are trying to write. This makes for a better application.
Were all of Facebook's service free software, that wouldn't guarantee interoperability.
Conversely, providing effective interoperability doesn't require free software.

Those concerns are orthogonal.
Dictionary.com lists Gladwell in the etymology. However, Wikipedia's entry for "tipping point (sociology)" (which, to my knowledge, is effectively the same as Gladwell's use) says, "The phrase was coined in its sociological use by Morton Grodzins, by analogy with ..."

The page on Grodzins says, "He is known for coining the term "tipping point" in studies of white flight, such as The Metropolitan Area as a Racial Problem (1958)".

No doubt Gladwell popularized the phrase, but I don't think he coined it by any means.
Very good demo video on the product page. I'm actually surprised that I didn't kill it after 30 seconds as I usually do.
Success is success. The details are secondary.
One tip would be to include references to past coverage.

Its relatively easy to blast your PR pitch to MSM folks in India and get heard. Especially Mint. Let me know if you need references.

For Indian Bloggers try and contact them personally through FB, LinkedIn, Twitter etc. and them send them a pitch. Helps to know them personally too. Buy them coffee/beer if you can.
> I really like it when my income is tied directly to my actions and effectiveness. The problem is, people like that go start businesses.

That's exactly the problem! For me personally, I only want to work with people who want their compensation directly tied to their actions (contribution). One way to look at what we're trying to build, is a governance system that would allow multiple entrepreneurs to work together. To create another choice besides wage slave/free lancer/founder
But it's kind of like building the new airplane out of rusty metal, to replace the rusting airplane you currently have. While you're taking the effort to rebuild something, you might as well use new metal.

What I mean here is, why replace a big collection of flaky C apps with another big collection of flaky C apps? Sure, maybe your new version uses strlcpy instead of strncpy, but that doesn't really fix any fundamental implementation problems.