skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I don't know, even a cursory glance at the Ubuntu homepage, complete with shiny screenshots (theoretically chosen to showcase the best design elements), shows there's still a ridiculous distance to go before it'd be anything I'd consider "well designed". Further investigation shows similar inconsistencies across nearly every screenshot of included applications.

Better by far, certainly. The Ubuntu crowd has made significant strides in the past few years. But just look at the "Ubuntu One Music Store" image and tell me you don't see glaring inconsistencies in padding, form outlines, and control styles. Then look at other applications and notice which buttons are shaded and when, and resizable edge styles, and why does the shade get that dark near the bottom without a font highlight to counter the harder-to-read lower contrast?
I'm going to say it, because I know I am not the only one who must have misread/misunderstood the title.
> * Accuracy in pricing shares (and it is important to know the actual value of a company for many reasons)

Define "accuracy"? Preferably in such a way that helps me reconcile it with events like the flash crash.

One of my biggest problems in understanding the financial markets is how you separate the signal (events reflecting actual change in company value) from the noise (speculation, flash crashes, etc.).

While I realize that there is real information (e.g. earnings reports) that goes into the pricing, it seems like there's also a hell of a lot of worthless noise (i.e. I see the flash crash as a massive noise spike).

It seems to me that separating the two is how people make money long-term.
How in the hell is Weigel a Libertarian? What kind of Libertarian would like the Health Care Bill?
Have a filter option in the Market app a little bit like safesearch. You'd have a single slider. 3 or 5 positions (low moderate high etc).

Filtering would work in a metascore comprised of several metrics. The metrics would be opaque and Google would tune them regularly like it does with it's search ranking.

Example metrics might be:

1. 'Spam' score based on app description.

2. 'Spammy Developer' score based quite simply on the number of apps released by this developer (this would immediately clean up most dross but people would quickly find ways to game it)

3. User ratings (weighted by the rating given to that user by other users)

4. Ratings derived from Google's web rankings of the app's web presence

Problem solved. Can I have some money for that please Google?
I am guessing you haven't approached women much? Your "worst case scenario" only applies if they actually think you are a decent guy up to their standards. Otherwise they might be offended that you even dare to talk to them (best case scenario: they just pretend they didn't see or hear you).

Not that I advise against approaching women, just saying.
> I've begun work on a tutorial to get people up and running with Clojure, but I will be recommending Emacs in it.

Oh no. I hope I do not come off as a troll but this is exactly why I never could get started with any of the lisps. I can't stand emacs or netbeans or eclipse. This a personal taste for me but a very strong one. They all just feel wrong to me. Associating a sanctioned ide with a language is a bad idea. It brings unnecessary baggage for a new user. By closely associating your language to an ide and by having every tutorial throw it in my face, your community is just creating an unnecessary entry barrier for me. Please consider making the tutorial ide independent.
Programmers already have global mobility with the ability to work remotely. That article uses examples of Doctors and Football players, professions which can't be done remotely (though tech is also enabling doctors to head in this direction.)
> I'm insisting because I can't believe that someone actually think that no fallacy is worth eliminating. Unless he state it without ambiguity.

Principle of charity? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity

I took "mutual understanding" to be an alternative to "search for the truth" - and a very carefully chosen one at that. Although I don't agree, I can see a number of potential arguments for the idea (given some of his other premises) that in math we find the search for truth, whereas in human conversations we find increased mutual understanding (under the best conditions), but no hope of a search for truth.

I'm insisting myself because the debate is on a topic I care about and one that's inherently interesting.
So you would type out the word "nod" once in a while, just like you would nod your head during a physical conversation? That's curious. I've never seen that before - I don't use chat/IM a whole lot though.
Does anyone have any experience with low-cost TV ads?
That largely fits under "unable to see the forest for the trees"
I find flash-based ads extremely frustrating (and that's why I installed flashblock). Many of my friends did the same, so I guess that besides annoying, they are not effective.
>the land of glorious socialism.

as if it were a bad thing not to have to worry about your medical insurance fucking you up if you get sick...
I don't think Amy meant it in a bad way.
> Minor nitpick

Uh no it's pretty major.

> compared to it not being open source, so it's not an ideal one to begin with

Sparkle is not open source? Are you high? http://github.com/andymatuschak/Sparkle
Sounds like a great idea, but honestly - I would never pay 250 euros[1] for attending such a conference.

Good luck though, hopefully I'm just not your target demographic :)

[1] for a frugal Viennese hacker aiming at ramen (knödel?) profitability, 250 euros is almost 2 weeks' living expenses.
Privacy – the final frontier?
I know a few people who do it. I can see the point... sometimes you say something and you aren't sure if the other person has gotten up to use the bathroom or is otherwise distracted, or if they are thinking of something.

Personally, I prefer 'thinking...' or 'looking' when I ask a question and there will be a delay, but I can see the point of 'nod'
I'm from Vienna. I recently started letsannotate.com. It's absolutely true that role models help extremely.

When my cofounder and I were in the really early stages we often were looking for inspiration and while we knew very well that lots of US and many UK bootstrapped SaaS products exist and thrive, we feared their success wouldn't easily translate to us.

We were thinking "Oh maybe people from the US and UK won't buy from continental europeans, who aren't native speakers, wo live in a different time zone, where (in the US case) totally different laws apply" and while in no way this was going to make us stop, it was constantly nagging in the background of - at least - my mind.

It has turned out this is not the case. As of today there was exactly one case where a company from the US told us they'd love to use our product, yet feared to export their sensitive data to the EU.

But before we knew that from hard evidence we had inspiration: letsfreckle.com (Vienna), mite.yo.lk (Berlin) and mindmeister.com (Vienna and Munich) exist and thrive just as well as US based SaaS providers.

And this is IMHO what Amy Hoy is talking about in her blog post: These were our role models and while I don't think we would have stopped creating letsannotate.com if we wouldn't know about their success stories, it certainly helped to know we weren't the first to step into this unexplored terrain of bootstrapping in continental Europe.
Correct! I love my socialist healthcare. That was me poking fun at the typical American view.
What a brilliant idea! IT/internet entrepreneur role models were exactly what I missed out on growing up in Vienna.

Thanks for organizing this, Amy. I'm sure it'll be hugely successful.

(Believe me, I would attend did I not happen to live in New Zealand :-)

Sandy
Preious submission:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1327656

Also, non-Newtonian fluids have been mentioned several times:

http://searchyc.com/non-newtonian+fluid
You've only addressed the bureaucratic part of startup. Many countries are only now seeing the benefits of encouraging entrepreneurship instead of taxing them out of existence. But just because the government writes a decree doesn't mean everyone stops what they are doing to change course.

There is a reason its called a startup culture. It takes a societal shift to get one running not just a few tax incentives.

Also unemployment doesn't change it. There are certain people that have what it takes to run a successful startup. These people are in demand and are never unemployed.
Small organza bags
The wedding season is just around the corner and most of the couple would like to knot in this season for organza favor bags.
this will happen with any credit card processor, not just paypal. If the consumer says they didn't receive a 'digital good' the merchant doesn't get the money. hell, a lot of cards will refund the customer's money even if it was a physical good, and the customer just didn't like it.
Yes, I'm very familiar with that party line... and that is part of what's keeping you down.

If you want to be successful in business, you've got to learn the idea of investing for returns. 2 weeks' living expenses in exchange for the opportunity to learn from people who've made anywhere between "a very respectable living for one person" to "millions a year" seems worth it to me.

You can listen to their stories. You can walk up to them. You can ask them questions. Do you really think that you're not going to see 250 euros of value for that ticket?

The question of whether to go to a conference, or spend money on a professional designer, or hire an assistant, or outsource some copywriting, or a lawyer... they are all the same question at heart.

To run a successful business, you absolutely have to pay for things. End of story. You cannot do it all yourself. If you need to pay for something, and you don't have the money, you figure out how to earn more so you can pay for the thing and free yourself to earn even more money after that.

Look, I don't care whether you personally come, I'm not making a profit and - more importantly - there are people lining up for that ticket from Denmark, France, Italy, and even Serbia.

I just want you to question your assumptions so that you have a chance of succeeding.
Agreed. The Android Market is an absolute ghetto compared to Apple's App Store. It makes me think there's room for a third party to build a better, more heavily curated marketplace for Android apps.
The thing is, if you learn how to bootstrap a business you can easily make those 250 euros your daily expenses, without looking twice.
Anyone found some good reviews comparing the IPhone 4 and the google nexus/htc desire? I was going to get the Htc Desire but hesitated when I saw the IPhone 4 screenresolution. Any thoughts?
McKinsey/BCG/etc don't just hire "economics and finance" students (neither do the banks), that's just an urban myth. CS is fine for both, you do need relevant work experience + a good uni though.
I met my wife at the hospital while waiting for vaccinations before a trip to Africa. She was there for the same thing. How fortunate is that?
The Third Depression
I think it's an IRC-ism since there you can type

/me nods

And the "/me" token will be replaced by your username and the whole "action" will be a different style (font/color/what-have-you) on some clients.
App stores are not enough
APB and the Flat Rate Bias
Why does this turn up so often here on HN? It's cute, and interesting, and perhaps a fun hack to try to do, but I've seen it several times now.

Here's one earlier version found in 30 seconds with http://searchyc.com :

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=921959

... and here are some related links:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=659799

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=651810

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1298314

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1377012
Every federal government since the second World War, and especially since Reagan. Deficit spending is closely tied to currency inflation.
South Indian Diets
WWW (1989): Developed at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, a multinational, government-funded research organization.

edit: I've found your post http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1466419 in which you exclude CERN. Could you give an example for a valid organization?
Well, as I said I'm probably just not in your target demographic.

I would like to give you one tip tho:

He not only took his product from spare-time to $2
million, he's also a true mensch!

I think you are using that word the way you would in Yiddish, in Austrian German referring to someone as "mensch" can sometimes actually be seen as derogatory ;)
sdfsdfsdsfsdfsfs
kiran ..at.. 37sig
> (I’ve now distracted you and you’re probably less
> likely to finish this post than you would be otherwise;
> if I offered you $20 for repeating the penultimate
> sentence in the comments section, I’d probably get no
> takers)

Tripping over the word penultimate, brought me to an interesting train of thought. Distraction is not necessarily a bad thing when we are reading.

One of the reasons that we are told to read a lot is to increase our vocabulary. But how is that supposed to happen? We're supposed to come across a word that we don't know in a book, and then look it up in the dictionary. Isn't this the ultimate form of distraction? Unless you read next to a dictionary, you have to put your book/newspaper/magazine down, go find your dictionary, look up the word, and reapply that new knowledge to the content again.

Not only that, when we read content, aren't we supposed to be inspired by it (at least sometimes)? I was inspired by this small revelation to drop reading the essay/blog post and come back to HN to post this comment. The article triggered a small epiphany in me that inspired me to create/share information. Isn't this a good thing?
Maybe, but as a sell that isn't going to do me any damn good.
Apache And MySQL Monitoring With Bijk On Debian Lenny
Yep, see coderholic's post for Google and Facebook groups
Ask HN: What do you need to get started in stock trading?
I'm a stock market skeptic, but am becoming intrigued, mainly due to the number of stocks-related posts I've seen on HN recently.

What do you need to dabble very lightly with little expense in the stock market? Is it different for high frequency trading as mentioned in http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1466539 ?
Facebook | Regina Bangun
Actually, running through Odesk or Elance as he suggested can be pretty safe if done right, but the fees kind of suck. You could have also transferred your funds into Paypal. I didn't get from the conversation that he would have been a guy to screw you over with non-payment, but you could have been screwed over by changing scopes and unrealistic expectations. If you are okay with doing hourly, then that's probably the best way of dealing with these sorts of clients, and Odesk pays weekly for hourly work.
How is HTML5 going to affect your business?
I may be completely wrong here, but sometimes I fail at recognizing the real ROI of such conferences, especially in terms of knowledge that I don't know yet. Also, having the speakers being some kind of rockstars (Peldi is been 'on tour' all summer so far, does he ever work on Balsamiq?) might create a huge gap between you and them, and this dosen't help creating solid connections in most of the cases.
I'm not sure if the 'you've got to spend money to make money' motto applies here, but again, I may be wrong. Any real-life experiences on this kind of events?
Principle of humanity, more likely.

"Find the search for truth"? Either you search for truth or you don't. In the process, you may (or may not) find the truth, and you may (or may not) be closer to it. What did you actually mean by "hope of a search for truth"?

Now, trying to "find some agreeable progress in mutual understanding" sounds like a damn good substitute to "searching for truth". Mutual understanding is the best approximation of truth I know of, when truth actually has something to do with the conversation.

Now that I think of it, mutual understanding may not be such a good substitute, but merely a prerequisite. Meaning, until the different parties understand where they agree, and where they disagree (and maybe even why they do), search for the truth is hopeless.
The analogy with peak oil is somewhat incorrect, because new people are being born (and enter dating scene subsequently) all the time. Dating sites will not run out of people.

(As contrast, new oil is not being "made". Once it's all pumped dry, it's over.)
Free Happy Birthday Cards, Happy Birthday Greetings, Happy Birthday eCards 
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I think it was intended as a jab at the author :)
IIRC, the PS3 slim is profitable. The PS2 has also been profitable and has been a consistently good seller (with some decrease in late 2009 and early 2010 (but that's expected - the PS2 is old). Console death rate is also a problem: even if it's not replaced under warranty, it's still a loss for the 360.
Why we love to hate Microsoft
Why is it going into hibernation.. an example of fail fast? It'd just launched.
When Ruby was the same age as Clojure I don't think it was as easy as using RubyGems - the first time I became aware of RubyGems was when this new fangled Rails thing started!
All the Samsung "Galaxy S" models are being announced for the US right about now, some available immediately, some in the next couple of months.

http://www.engadget.com/tag/GalaxyS/

Key features common to the range are the Super-(i.e. works in sunlight)-AMOLED screens and the 1GHz Hummingbird SoC (basically the same as the iPad/iPhone 4 except the iPhone 4 is downclocked).

But you get the choice of carrier and hardware keyboard, 3G/4G etc. that you'd expect.
Jalopnik has a more critical analysis of the IPO.

http://jalopnik.com/5569882/inside-the-secret-178-million-te...

The IPO prospectus is available here:

http://www.retailroadshow.com/roadshows.asp
This is probably one of most important lessons taught by my mother: "A person making a million dollars a month but spending million and one dollar is not a wealthy person".

This is why "unfair" wealth distribution is actually good (please note that context for this statement is "developed world" not missmatch in wealth between regions). Since poor people (or poor families) are obviously lousy at managing their resources. Thus the acumulated wealth is actually protected by hoarders - since everybody else would have just spent it anyway.
> It doesn't develop the mind, it dissolves the mind. Self-improvement?
> Forget it, baby. It erases the self.
> Throws the ego out on its big brittle ass.

This doesn't sound like it fits the western culture at all. I'd think twice about going down a path that is so fundemantally different from what we've learned since kindergarden.
Sunspider Benchmark - iPhone 4 vs HTC Desire running Froyo
iPhone 4: ~10,000 ms
Desire : ~5,000 ms
Should we moderate what can be sold on Shoply.com?
We offer super simple ecommerce software (shoply.com)the goal being to make it quick, easy and cheap for anyone regardless of tech skills to open their own shop and start driving traffic and sales

We launched a couple of weeks ago and already have over 1,000 sellers, most of whom are selling things we don't have any problem with.

some though have launched shops selling things like, cigarettes, pets, seo services, sex toys.

do we stick to being a pure software provider and let people sell whatever they want, or do we begin to actively moderate and curate what can and cant be sold?

http://shoply.com/market/
100s Per Hour Finding Nerd Search Helpful
An idea to help out new starters, friend and colleagues to find information on Java, COBOL, PHP and .Net is getting > hundred hits an hour. It's great to be able to help!
So, let's review. Potential "rockstars" from companies with multiple employees & big revenue: Peldi, Tom P-W. Single founders who have stayed single and/or turned mom&pop (husband+wife team): Geoff, Garrett.

Not that there's a thing with G's or anything, but I think it's pretty clear from the get-go that I've (handpicked) a real mix of speakers, and only half are announced so far!

Additionally, if you want to get a perspective of how these "rockstar" guys act, think, and teach, they have essays online very clearly demonstrating that they do not think like rockstars, or talk like rockstars, but like everyday, thoughtful, smart, friendly people who want to help others succeed:

http://tom.preston-werner.com/2008/11/03/how-to-meet-your-ne...

http://www.balsamiq.com/blog/2009/08/13/donating/

And before you go "OH, well, one of those is a year old and one is almost two" - be serious. These are personal values at stake here, and they don't change overnight. If they had, I wouldn't be inviting these guys to speak.

As for the ROI - well. I can't tell you what ROI you'll get because I can't tell if you're going to sit in the back and read HN comments, or pay attention and take notes. I can't tell if you'll stare at the speakers without working up the nerve to say hello, or if you'll buy them a beer and strike up a conversation. Those things are beyond my control as an organizer.

But I can tell you that there is a tremendous amount of POTENTIAL ROI. That's how we designed the conference.

EDIT: By the way, do you think the only valuable thing is "knowledge"? Cuz I bet you know what you have to do, but you're not doing it. That's not "knowledge" - all you need for "knowledge" is books. But it is something you can get from being around people who are doing exactly what you want to do, and hearing them tell war stories.

We have one speaker, who you've never heard of, who runs more than 3 SaaSes you've undoubtedly heard of. We have another who is just starting his SaaS journey now and I picked deliberately for his approachability. (But all others are living off their products.)

And then, of course, there's me - veteran procrastinator, one SaaS in the world, another couple in the oven, one ebook, multiple training courses, and a veteran speaker of many conferences and former committee member of OSCON.

Trust me - it's not possible that you've put more thought into questioning this type of event than I have.
Yeah, honest feedback is a rare thing. Smart and honest feedback is even rarer. Well, maybe less so since the invention of HN.
I was also confused by a friend who came back from New York and referred to someone as a mensch.

It means human being or person in German.
As the organizer of a similar conference myself, take my opinion with a grain of salt.

1. It depends of course. There are millions of conferences and networking events. Some are great, some are terrible. You not only pay a price to attend, you also pay in terms of your time.

2. I always say that networking events pay off with an horizon of about 6 months to a year. Every time I went to an event with a specific, short-term goal, I failed. But amazingly, I bumped into people that I actually wanted to get in touch with eventually. And it helped me later.

3. Another major thing that pays off is the "buzz". When you go to conferences, you hear all the latest stories before they get written anywhere. You are ahead of everyone who didn't show up. Sure, bloggers will cover this or that rumor, but being there and having heard it all gives you an edge. Whether that edge will eventually be valuable depends of course.
Google can kill or install apps on citizen Androids