skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I agree with everything you say -- and I'd like to add that the reasons people who buy things treat books like commodities, is because publishers do.

Everybody's heard about that practice where unsold books have their covers ripped off, & are just thrown away. The publishers handily put a notice about that in the front of the book.

If that doesn't make something a commodity, what does?

On top of everything else, everybody with a Kindle who's bought more than a couple books has noticed that over 30% of them have horrible, amateurish formatting & OCR/character replacement errors.

And on top of that, at least in the tech/nonfiction industry, publishers have drastically cut back resources & services offered to authors. O'Reilly, for example, wasn't planning on paying anyone to tech edit my book. They were hoping for volunteers, at a chapter apiece, instead of one person with a consistent viewpoint thru-out.

That screws authors and it screws readers even more.

As a person who did paid tech editing work for Que, Sams, McGraw-Hill & other publishers I can't even remember, I found this ludicrous. (And those publishers regularly told me I did the best work they ever had, which is saying something. Furthermore, I know most of my changes were never incorporated, probably because they "took too much time.")

Basically, publishers are shitting where they eat & are too stupid to realize it, or too terrified to admit it, and instead, they are crowing about how the "consumer" is stupid, horrible, no good, very bad, and just damned stubborn.
If you can't modify the software (or have no concept of what source code is) these freedoms largely become meaningless.

I hear this again and again, and I think it's absolutely false. It's like saying

"I don't have the time to shop around for the cheapest product, so a market economy is useless to me"

In both cases the point is that even if you don't have the time or the knowledge someone else does, and only a small number of such people are required for the system to bring benefits to everyone.
Published: http://antoniocangiano.com/2010/05/16/benchmarking-macruby-0...
Eh, not really. If you were talking about a fully defined cryptographic protocol like SSL I would say you were right, but if you're talking about actual cryptographic implementation I would say that it requires a little more knowledge.

See tptacek's post about "Typing the letter's A-E-S'" into your code and cperciva's many post about improper use of secure cryptography.
Oooh Zak is cute ;)
Great points! Yes, I am going start pitching to industry-specific blogs very soon. But I thought my startup's story will be relevant to web startup blogs as well. RWW had written about on of my earlier product (http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/identify_any_websites_s...) but this time I didn't even get a reply.

I may have been wrong about Mashable because they cover consumer-oriented stuff. (And RWW too, since they mostly cover cloud related startups). But for TechCrunch and LifeHacker, I thought the story is aligned to their blog readers' interests.
Yes, attended most of the events that Braindead_in mentioned but I have started finding them boring. Same people, same stories, same topics!
I'd be willing to bet that a large amount of the most used applications out there are proprietary, in many cases because there is no comparable OSS equivalent.

Your argument would be significantly stronger if you actually gave examples here.
Faker.js - generate massive amounts of fake data in Node.js and the browser
The ROI per dollar of associates degrees and technical certificates is like 3 or 4 times higher than a bachelor's degree. Telling people not to goto university is not the same as telling them to get no further training after high school. I think even Obama conceded this when he phrased his admonition to return to school as "some form of post-highschool education"
A Summary of Hugh Macleod's Ignore Everybody http://bighow.com/news/39-great-lessons-for-creative-people-...
I am not a lawyer, but I am a Canadian running a business, so I'm at least partly qualified to answer these questions.

Company formation: You can operate a sole proprietorship under your own name by saying "hi, I'm in business". There is no dollar limit on this. Depending on your local laws, you might need to get a municipal business license. You can register a business name for ~$50 with your provincial government -- this is distinct from incorporating.

Incorporating: This has two major effects. 1. It creates a new "corporate person" which can go bankrupt, thereby shielding you (usually) from liability. 2. The new corporate person is taxed independently of you, which will affect the net tax rate (maybe higher, maybe lower) you pay and will give you considerably more flexibility in tax planning (since you can move personal income from one year to another).

Income taxes: If you're incorporated, you file an income tax return for the company. If you're not incorporated, you file a "statement of business activities" as part of your personal income tax return.

GST: You will probably need to collect GST, but only for customers who are (a) canadian residents, or (b) registered for GST. As an exception to this, if you're taking in less than $30k/year you probably qualify under the 'small supplier' rule which gives you a choice of whether to register for (and collect) GST or to pretend that it doesn't exist.

Payment processing: Canadian banks are almost completely clueless when it comes to transacting with the rest of the world. Credit card processing sucks. I just use PayPal.

Payment processing data security: If you're handling credit card numbers (i.e., not going through paypal) the rules are exactly the same in Canada as they are in the US -- they are set by mastercard and visa.
what, girls thinking you are 'too serious' goes beyond being introverted? It seems like a pretty normal experience to me.
The Ruby requirement makes plenty of sense to me. But the Textmate/Heroku/rspec criteria make for a pretty tight Venn diagram, especially since you should be looking for someone who doesn't think exactly like you do. And do you really care if your roommate uses a different text editor than you do?
online demo in case you missed it on the github readme

http://maraksquires.com/Faker.js/
Malcolm Gladwell found in Outliers that the most dominant determinant of professional success was parents income not intelligence. He talks about a study where they tracked a bunch of gifted children from primary school through mid-life and many of the gifted students born to porn or lower-middle class parents fared poorly in life, whereas the average or sub-average students born to wealthy parents did well.
Internet drama really has come a long way, hasn't it?
Since you asked...

Similar to Zune, Google's efforts with Android seemed really promising at the start. They took a different approach, attempting to be open from the start...and then went, what? six months without an update to the "public" source? That was just the first sign of trouble though, and the first indication that Google was not willing to do what it took to stand up to the carriers and stick by their original idea: an open phone OS.

Since then, we've seen time and again how Google has essentially just thrown this OS out there and the handset makers and service providers are free to do with it as they please... Want to never update the OS for your users? eh, Google doesn't care. Want to provide a custom, potentially inferior, UI while still claiming the "Android" brand? bah, who cares about brand purity anyway, right?

Seriously, outside of the hacker community I don't know of anyone who identifies their "Android" phone as an "Andriod" phone. In other words, Google seems to have done a giant favor to the handset makers by doing their job for them and demanding almost nothing in return, including nothing to improve the situation for Google's customers. If I buy an HTC phone from Verizon running Android, who's making sure I get what I want? and not just what happens to be most convenient and profitable for the companies involved?

When Apple went carrier shopping, they went to Verizon first. Verizon was the biggest. Verizon had the best network. But Verizon demanded their typical suite of extortions and lock-downs on the phone. Did Apple cave? Nope! GUTS! They said, "You know what? AT&T might not have the best network, but we see this as a platform. Trust us, the call quality might not be great, but we're going to give you in a phone something no one has ever thought of giving you in a phone, and that's going to change everything!"

Oh, and Google is no less schizophrenic of a company at the moment than Microsoft. Worse even! They seem to be frantically trying to find some way of earning money that doesn't involve advertising, but at the same time they seem too timid to really put all their chips behind anything.

(edit: Oh, and yes...dropping "Computer" wasn't huge, but I also didn't mention the drastic change of processor architecture, the complete reinvention of their OS, cutting their product line down to 3 or 4 major SKUs...I could go on.)
USA only.
In the three fastest formulas all the pilots are solo : Champ Cars, Formula 1, MotoGP.

Two person vehicles are available but they are for the experienced pilot to give the novice passenger a thrill.

So use logic, not metaphors.
You're fine until you upgrade your hardware, or install a new plugin, or need to import a new file type. You end up in the same predicament as people still using IE6 - the software is as good or bad as it was when it was still being supported, but the rest of the world has moved on around you. Beyond that, in most industries there is constant competitive pressure to be using the latest, most powerful tools. If you don't have an upgrade path, your setup falls further and further behind your competitors. The recent fashion for overt Autotune is a good example - in a relatively short space of time it has gone from being a relatively unusual effect to being de rigeur in some genres. If you can't keep up with those trends, you're going to lose work.
"By the way, what have you done that's so great? Do you create anything, or just criticise others work and belittle their motivations?"

Burn.
You're right. Modern nomadism isn't about leaving stuff behind, it's realizing that stuff is now mobile.
What is really interesting here, is how many jumps were committed from the same roof.
obviously it's worth it to the merchant, or the businesses wouldn't be accepting credit cards at all.

The problem is that there are two payment processors that matter, visa and master card, and both charge quite a lot more than it costs to provide the service.

Now, normally, this would just mean another competitor would come in with lower prices. The problem here is first that the person who pays for the service (the merchant) is not the person who decides what processing network to use (that's the consumer, deciding which brand charge card to get. ) This is further distorted because the fees that the payment processors charge are partly given back to the issuing banks who then give some of that back to the consumer.

so... as a merchant, either you pay exorbitant fees to a credit card processor, and essentially give a discount to every one of your credit card customers (but not your cash customers; the visa agreement states you can't discount your product for not using visa) or you turn away the charge card sales. That's what this law is trying to address.
Are a human? Do you work on a product that you would want to buy from yourself? Seems like a pretty easy target if you ask me... (hint: you're not as unique as you think, and that's a good thing!)
you have paying customers that is really great.
you objective in reaching bloggers is to reach more customers.

Why not follow the other approach instead of waiting for their posts...............

one idea is

1.Make your product viral.[Focus more on creating a component which helps the user to refer this product to their friends at some benefit etc..]
Dropbox is a great example free 250 MB storage if you refer a friend.
"Completely shafted" seems a bit strong. There's no contract that says you have to keep updating an application forever, can never sell the company/app to anybody, or have to maintain all hardware implementations for eternity. If there were it would be much more expensive. They took an economic decision that made sense for their employees and shareholders - to do otherwise would be shafting them. You can still use what you had used for X years - it just won't be improved. If it had so many years of work then it's likely still useful. Compare that to hardware, which needs updating every couple years (like my screen, which died yesterday).

The alternative is that Visicalc, or Deluxe Paint for Amiga continue to be updated forever. I wouldn't invest in that business, and I'd hate to be a developer there.
Amazing. The past doesn't even seem much like the past when it is in colour.
جدبـــد فلاشة نوكيا n76 - شركة الصباحي
I love that there is no reply after Steve's final question. What DOES this guy make?
Sure, many tests are conducted in a wrong way, I fully agree.

About multi-gets, this is how Redis handle this, we have a concept called key tags, that I think it is very similar to the one you described. Basically a key in the form foo{bar} gets hashed in a special way, only the part inside {} is hashed ('bar' in my example).

So a client willing to optimize for multi get will use {user0}:name {user0}:surname and so forth. Well, not the perfect example as with Redis in this specific case you could use an Hash that is much more space efficient and will provide locality of related keys automatically.
You decline the job offer from BigCorp

See, this right here^^^ This is the key: why did you decline the offer from BigCorp? Only two reasons I can think of...

1. You were naive and thought you could make a quick buck with less work by developing for the iPhone platform without doing it the way Apple suggested you should.

2. You had the drive to strike out and make it on your own, BigCorp be damned!

If it's #1, you only have yourself to blame. If it's #2, you're not about to let something like 3.3.1 stand in your way...
You're right.

It's a little tight.

I've updated the website to say Textmate is preferred rather than required.

The "heroku ftw!" remark is just a deployment option that I added in there to express my feelings towards the company. Technically it doesn't matter what platform we work on. I just happen to find them to be a rather unique and creative service that suits my needs.

As far as RSpec - it's a matter of personal preference, but again... technically it doesn't matter.

Anyone who doesn't meet the requirements EXACTLY should not feel unwelcome in sending me an email :)
Discussed here last month: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1282513

In short: the disks are needed to hold multi-page scans - think collating multiple copies, double-sided printing, etc. The problem is that normal file-system deletion is not a secure wipe, and files can be recovered with simple tools.
I don't think that really matters. Imagine someone makes a disease, and starts infecting people with it. Should you really dismiss the guy who says, "hey, this disease is bad, stop infecting people with it" simply because he doesn't make a vaccine?

If anything, not making anything means you are less likely to be biased. Steve likes the iPad because he made it, not because it's intrinsically good. This biases his views on how it affects the software world.

Anyway, making something is good, but not making doesn't mean that your commentary on other people's products is not useful.
Indeed. Instead of arguing with Apple fanbois on your favorite forum, you can have the exact same inane and irrelevant argument with one of Apple's co-founders! And it even ends with namecalling and a personal attacks! I love it.
One thing I remembered from the Mint.com case - they were selling to the news not themselves directly but their by-product.
What do I mean by that? In your case you can analyse your customer cases and find some interesting common patterns like "using word Love in the tag line usually gives 50% better results etc etc". Or "compelling tag line can not exceed 5 words - our research proved etc etc"

You have plenty of data to play with and I'm sure there are extremely interesting points you can make.
Alternatively, you could be wrong and it is his real name.
It wouldn't?
It's when reading non-HN fora that I thank science for this small outpost of literacy and reasoning. The level of discourse elsewhere is physically painful.
I've never read much of _why's work so I don't have much to add to the thread, except that: I did read that quote by _why some months ago and it hasn't gotten off my head since then.

It's like a mantra, and for me it alternates between being inspiring and depressing.

Perhaps I disagree with you. I think programming is a craft, but that's different from art. In any case, though every time we write some code we're creating something, I don't consider the code I write for my day job to be "meaningful" creation (if that was the case every act of labour would be creation and the quote would be meaningless). That's why the quote is depressing sometimes.
You're kind of embarrassing if you think porn malware is anywhere near being a solved problem.
This is a great tool, I used it to palettize spritesheets for my last game. Caveat: it sometimes palettized the 0-alpha values to 1, resulting in a very faint box around affected images.
The common theme about doing business in China is that China is very adept at making sure that money invested into China never, ever leaves the great financial wall of China.
It looks like some commenters here and on the linked site actually believe this is a genuine email exchange with the real Steve Jobs... Why?
Sorry, didn't mean to rant. I agree that it's perfectly fine to complain about a product that you otherwise like well enough to have purchased. I guess what angers me is all these hackers and programmers and creative business types complaining so much...when they're precisely the ones who can do something about it! You know what? I have a lot of respect for Fusion Garage. They may be far off the mark, but at least they are trying!
You can say the same about Goldman Sachs
It depends on the person or project, I think. I personally work badly with someone over my shoulder; it somehow gets me totally out of the problem-solving/coding zone and makes me extra self-conscious. Same for writing text, actually--- some people can collaboratively write articles or books while sitting at the same computer, or live online in something like Etherpad, but when I've co-written things, it's always worked much better if I could write some bigger chunks on my own, at least on the level of paragraphs, before trading edits/etc. with my collaborator. Partly perhaps it's because I use the text-editor (in both cases) to externalize work in progress and brainstorm, often typing stuff that's clearly wrong and not the final product, before I get to rearranging/editing/fixing it, and it feels weird to have someone in real-time reading my scribbles as I'm working something out, when it's not yet intended to be anywhere close to done / ready-to-review.

On the other hand, I know other people who love people watching them code, and people who work really well writing English collaboratively too.
>For me personally, I only want to work with people who want their compensation directly tied to their actions (contribution)

Really? Why? The thing is, Engineers who are also entrepreneurial types are /much/ more expensive than engineers of equivalent skill who are not entrepreneurial.

I'm not saying what you are trying to do is useless; I think it's very interesting, and I'd like to see how it plays out. But I am saying that there are problems with limiting yourself to only hiring entrepreneurial types.
Heh, I chuckled pretty hard at the Skunkworks joke.
Looks like you're a pretty decent designer too :)
As a programmer I thought that preventing the use of some language on a platform by contract really sucked, but I've seen applications written in flash on the IPhone since and they are painfully slow.

I don't have an IPhone but I can understand that having lots of applications in the store and not knowing whether an application you try would be slow or fast would really feel like a lottery. It's sad because the adobe flash tool are great animation tools, and I don't know of anything coming close on the Iphone.

The impact on the battery would be unsolvable too. Sometimes it's better to avoid issues.
RedHat made $653m last year, mostly by selling support.
and you're not even sacrificing freedom. all you're really doing is paying someone to do some work for you.
Anyway, making something is good, but not making something doesn't mean you lose any credibility.

It means you don't have credibility to start with.
My apologies if it seems that I have misrepresented anything, I was giving numbers from memory. I'm not a Logic user myself. Even assuming that no Logic users upgraded from the Atari ST to the PC, I think the point still stands that six or seven years is a long time to sit in front of the same piece of software. It's a heck of a lot of "continuing professional development", of setup tweaks and hacks and workarounds and little bits of expertise.

The extent to which those skills accumulate is highlighted by the fact that "Pro Tools Operator" is a job title in the industry, and that their pay varies more widely than that of session musicians. Using a DAW isn't just a secondary task, like a writer uses a word processor - at the high end, operating a DAW is a job in itself. People have built whole careers simply off the back of being very quick at piloting Pro Tools. Being told that your DAW is being discontinued is a bit like being told that all your old electric guitars are obsolete and won't work with new amplifiers. It's vaguely tolerable if you're a hobbyist or an artist who can afford to be fussy about their kit, but if you're a professional who needs to get the job done every time, it's a catastrophe waiting to happen.
Without these 2 pieces of data from zach and you (which were not present in the article), it does look like news.
Perhaps one could say that his book was a tipping point in the wider diffusion and knowledge of the term? :-)
Anecdotally, non-entrepreneurial engineers are also more likely to stick around long-term, if your workplace is enjoyable and the pay/benefits are good. It's hard to keep an entrepreneurial type around too long unless your company is the kind that's always launching new products or projects. If you want someone to build and maintain a system with a 10-year horizon, it's probably not going to be the same kind of personality who makes for a serial entrepreneur.
I still can't figure why _why had to disappear just because his real name was discovered. So what's wrong with that?

And why hide your real name in the first place ? Considering that he gave presentations and made appearances, it was only a matter of time.
I am not sure I agree with that. I like subsidized loans. They should just be more careful that the loans go to worthwhile schools and degrees.
Upvoted for hilarity factor. But from a logical standpoint this is really a bad argument. Writing often has a destructive purpose; what the person has "created" has very little to do with whether his criticism is valid or not.
“Already using CS5”? Ok, he doesn’t understand designers (yet :)
Thanks! Initially, before I was a programmer I use to be a designer.

Once I started coding - I was hooked. I haven't really done any design work since I started being a developer, but I sure have had a few people ask :)
Can someone summarize it. Only plays in USA.
Enlighten me :)
Demographic Consequences of Defeating Aging