skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Please don't take this wrong way, but: GAAAH my eyes!

The text is way too big, the margins way too wide, and the letters way too run-together.

(Readability ftw!)
Ha, ha, ha. This has an element of truth to it, but does that mean we can't get kids into programming? Or can they learn C/Perl/etc at the same way?

I got started in basic, then assembly, C, Ada, Java, etc... So there is hope, or maybe I am a lost cause.
philliphodgen, my main reason is to be able to get a US bank account, merchant account, payment gateway, etc. which all prefer that I am an incorporated US company.

I have incorporated in Jamaica, and as far as I understand it, there is a double taxation treaty between the US and Jamaica that allows me only paying taxes once (i.e. more than likely in Jamaica) and not having a liability in the US.

I could be mistaken, and if there is another reason for me to take a step back, please let me know.

All I want to be able to do is easily accept all major credit cards, from customers in the US & Europe (all in US dollars), and have the funds deposited into a bank account that gives me the ability to wire to and from electronically.

Based on my research so far, there are a number of banks that have this setup, but the first step is to be incorporated.

Thoughts?
thanks, but yes, that was assumed, and speaking in rough terms to convey the core idea ;)
Brought to You by the Letter S
In Law Schools, Grades Go Up, Just Like That
8 fingers + 2 thumbs.

It would have actually been more useful to use 8 fingers = octal.

But then who counts with their fingers these days?
"Interested advertisers would contract directly with the DMV"

Me: hi, I'd like to purchase some ads

DMV Guy: Please complete form LPA17 and get in that line
Absolutely, making any prediction of this nature is opening oneself up to ridicule when future breakthroughs render it obsolete. But the comparison isn't with the hardware technology of the Kindle, as with the Walkman, but the benefits of transferability, ease of use, and brand trust. All are less vulnerable (especially the last one) to a competitor's breakthrough.
You could write to a text file, in broken English, a vague description of a song and I bet VLC could still play it. Great piece of software, thanks to the devs.
Base 10 is arbitrary in the sense that it is "based on or determined by individual preference or convenience rather than by necessity or the intrinsic nature of something."

However, if you bother thinking about the word arbitrary too hard (as your comment inspired me to do), you end up in the realm of existentialism and down the proverbial rabbit hole.
Sure, I just don't understand why, unless he's really desperate for cash.
Know when to change tables - Poker & Biz Advice from Tony Hsieh
Before you do anything, go talk to the bank you want to do business with. I formed 2 companies in Delaware for gentlemen living in the Caribbean and getting accounts opened was a nontrivial task. Can be done, but line it up first.

Same thing is true for your merchant account.

Once you jump those practical hurdles the next question is tax. Are you "doing business" in the US or not? This is going to drive your US tax exposure. This is at a Federal level as well as state level.

Once you understand the tax implications -- then you probably form the company and start making money.

Consider also the overhead of having the Delaware (or other location if preferable) corporation. I figure you should budget $3,000 per year in overhead to keep it afloat. Filing fees, accounting fees, legal fees, etc. That's with minor business operations.
It’s very much un-iphone-like. They should put it in the App Store.
Students create video-chat program for deaf kids
"The core problem is we're great nerds who are pathetic at marketing"
Maximum theoretical downtime for a website: 30 minutes
Help: Likeness used in comic
Wait, you run Firefox through WINE? Whatever for?

I used to run Mac OS X, and there's still one or two things I miss about iTunes (album-shuffle in a generated playlist, for example) but Quod Libet fulfils my music playing needs nicely.

One thing I do miss is iPhoto. I'm stumbling along with F-spot at the moment, but so far as I can tell there are no decent photo-management tools available for Linux.
I see your point (I didn't before).

There is no force on the black hole, so if it moved at all it would crash into the wall. Only when it actually ate some of the wall would it turn around. So each swing would eat more and more.
You missed the point. The misconceptions some Indians have about the West are absurd. Here are a few samples:

1. Every American divorces at least once. An average American marries about 3 to 5 times. I have no idea where this comes from.

2. Americans disown their kids at 16. I've pointed out that American teenagers often work part-time, and that this is a good thing. I'm usually just shouted down.

3. Americans don't entertain guests because food is too expensive. Nobody spends the night at anybody else's place.

4. Americans are materialistic and value money over family bonds.

5. American girls always dress in skimpy outfits. American guys sleep with every girl they can.

6. It's always party time in America.

Honestly, I don't know where this comes from :(
Depends which area your looking at. But for, say, ISO9001 qa and other auditing there is a distince lack of lean, usable tools. Esp for smaller businesses.
+1 For the mythologιcal reference . For robotics you could also check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talos
VLC 1.1.0 Released: GPU Decoding, WebM and More
Yes, but be careful with this line of thought - it is a result of a person being aware that there are known-unknowns. That is why they avoid using concrete terms, because they know that they are ignorant about many things. But there are still things which this person will be unaware that they don't know.

I have always felt that Richard Feynmann's greatness devolved largely from the fact that he was better at identifying things that he didn't know than his colleagues. Where one person might develop a theory that works to explain a particular phenomenon, Feynmann would understand that this answer would just reveal new questions, so he would dig further than others.
I'm surprised he's such a mediocre speaker. This speech is full of tired clichés.

I know, case in point - kindness is hard.
Look, I ain't no fancy U of T CS grajuit -- just a Sudbury-area high school dropout of approximately Reg's vintage -- and I fell into programming quite by accident, but I see the value in having a common language that is very specific to what we do. Call it a jargon if you want; it is the correct term. That doesn't make it invalid as a tool for communication. Mechanics would expect that others of the guild would know the difference between a Phillips screwdriver and a Reed & Prince; they wouldn't expect it of the average tinkerer (and unless you know the difference, you will strip screws and wind up cursing a lot). Every trade, every profession has its "in" vocabulary -- why on earth should programming (or, to elevate the craft beyond its current state of the art, "Software Engineering") be any different?

Whether we want to admit it to ourselves or not, we do some pretty serious stuff (once we progress beyond "Hello, world" or Aunt Nell's cat fancier web site). Why shouldn't we take ourselves seriously? I mean, cripes, I worried about big O, edge cases, maintainability and profiling when I started developing Notes applications after transitioning from years as a shoe shiner and apprentice cobbler. OO concepts were not far behind, and anyone who has done anything non-trrivial in JavaScript should have knocked up against functional programming principles at some point. Each of those has its own associated terminology. As an autodidact, I understand that there are some things I just plain ought to know if I want to participate in this little part of the world. I see no particular reason why I should be responsible not only for re-inventing the wheel, but for reconceptualising roundness on a daily basis.

If as high school dropout I can take the time to learn the language and the concepts it represents, why shouldn't I be able to expect the same from people who entered the guild in a more conventional manner? It's nothing more than Mike the plumber would expect from his peers.
> Utterly confused and scared of getting married.

Might as well just say 'scared of interacting with people.' Any sort of relationship can go bad. Partnerships, marriages, business agreements, etc.
Those are just the two extremes; the effort required to scale from one to the other is probably a bit too steep in that case.

But if you read the post a lot of the same skills are there.
AFAIK not only does the browser cache the IP address, but the many DNS servers (user ISP or any others) also cache the IP addresses.

I wouldn't expect all the DNS servers out there to check for a new IP every couple of minutes. Many of them manage their cache according to their policies, not strictly according to the arbitrary constraints set by the individual domains.

BTW shouldn't some default variant load in the site if your service is not working?
It depends on what you want. Do you want people to just do whatever they want, then go with MIT or a BSD license. If you want people to contribute back (and 'keep on giving') use one of the GPL licences. Personally I always use MIT.

It's no harm to go over your code again and clean it here and there (not having seen the code, just in general ;)

Regarding documentation: If you want people to do stuff with your code, providing documentation is very helpful. Writing documentation is a boring task, so most open-source projects conveniently forget to do so. If you have a well documented source even, it's much, much more useful to others.
If you are selling into the US you can configure your business operations to be nontaxable in the US. If ownership/title transfers from you to your US buyer outside the US, you are not doing business in the US, hence no tax here. That is the simplest way to go but now you have the banking problem.

Your idea will cause your Delaware corporation to be doing business. Depending on how you configure your business operations your Delaware corporation might be acting as your agent (taking a commission) or it might buy from your Jamaican corporation and resell at a profit. Figure out what is best. in situations like this you can often operate your US corporation so it makes modest profits in the US thus pays modest tax in the US. Google "transfer pricing" for he way this game is played at high revenue levels. At low revenue levels it will work fine.

You mention tax treaties. Be sure you qualify for treaty benefits - look at the Limitations on Benefits clause. Be sure that the US won't tax business profits derived in the US.

What you think you can do with a US bank and what you will actually achieve - light years apart. You have to be sitting there in front of the banker with your documentation and your passport and everything. Dim Bulbs Everywhere. :-)

Action plan:

1. You or a trusted intelligent friend in the US gets explicit advance approval from a bank, credit card service provider, etc. When Mama's happy, everybody's happy. Bank = Mama.

2. Then solve your tax questions by figuring out how you will sell from Jamaica through your US corporation and through to your US customers, then follow the trail of money back from the customer's credit card through the merchant account to your bank for your US company, then onward to the bank account of your Jamaican company. The path of least resistance (until your revenues push $1 million or so) is to configure your US company to show a modest profit and pay modest tax, with the bulk of profits earned in Jamaica.

US international tax rules are written as if every company is the size of Mitsubishi. Be careful not to be strangled with government-mandated overhead in the form of accounting and legal fees.
Oh come on. I know several people in their late twenties being pressured into marriage by their families. Why? Because, according to their families, if they don't marry right now they'll never find a husband/wife for themselves and spend their lives childless. Or something.
GTK/Glib/whatever is more than just UI just as Cocoa/Foundation/whatever is more than just UI.

Oh, and GTK runs on far more platforms than Cocoa (Cocoa runs on Macs and iPhones/iPads, whereas you'd be able to use GTK on Mac, Windows, desktop and handheld Linux, as well as other Unix flavors)
Chasing Men Who Stare at Arrays - a film about APL
I'll be ... yep, tucked well away under Accessories/Ease of Access. Who knew?

And try this one on for size: Microsoft Office 2003 came with built-in voice control and dictation, which could also be used in other applications!
Hollywood, where else?

Frankly all your misconceptions ring so true. Just fire up HBO, Star World or any other western channel here in India and you will see all these misconceptions come alive. How else are Indians supposed to make opinions? :)
I heard about Trading and Exchanges from http://scottlocklin.wordpress.com, which has since become my gateway to the world of trading. Along with some very good posts (like http://scottlocklin.wordpress.com/2009/08/17/a-bestiary-of-a...), there are also great links--like to the author's Amazon reviews, which are a gold-mine for reading suggestions and to the NuclearPhynance forum, which seems to be a gathering place for actual trading professionals.
My reasoning is: the first time most people will encounter an elevator is as a child, with a parent or teacher, and the proper use will have been explained then.

Failing that, they will often encounter elevators with other people present -- and observe what they tend to do. Hopefully, as either a child or adult, the novelty to the experience will cause them to pay close attention to figure out a new thing.

Failing that, they will reason it out or experiment on their own. They are aided in the 'right' conclusion by several factors. First, many elevators don't show where the car or cars are, so there's no chance you'd have to guide them to your floor -- you don't have the information to do so. Requesting a desired direction from your current position is the only sensible interpretation. If you encounter a mix of elevators, some with car indicators and some without, but all with the exact same up/down buttons, you would have to strain to believe that you must consult an indicator that is not always present before choosing the right button.

Second, at least in buildings (as opposed to car parks), most elevator trips begin on a ground floor that may only have an up button. No matter how vivid the car-level indicator, or how closely positioned to the button, it's hard to interpret that single up button as a command to move the elevator up from its current level (as opposed to calling it for an up trip).

Finally, if you have the 'wrong' model in your head, and encounter elevators more than a handful of times, there will be a lot of hints that your presses have been counterproductive. Empty and full elevators going the wrong direction will stop on your floor, and then the call-light on the button you pressed will go off. Only sometimes (when there's not a pending call past you) will pressing the alternate button then reverse the elevator.

Altogether, that's why I think this person must have had only a handful of experiences with elevators, or some very uniquely impaired (and possibly even recently damaged) way of learning about the world. Perhaps it's a dyslexia-like difficulty understanding causal sequences of events or modeling non-human systems. (I'd hope it was offset with talents in other areas, such as artistry or empathy.)
Please include "trivial" as well. I cringe every time I hear that word.
lets put an limit on companies that they cant work more than 5 year :D

harami saale
Wordpress + Twitter Blog Commenting System
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking on commenting recently. Most of our information is out on the web already, why is it that we still have to re-enter it every time we want to make a blog post comment? Good design is all in the details and the only reason for the email form is to keep in contact, I can do that on twitter. Besides, isn’t this a little overkill?

I am not a big fan of authentication badges, due to the very fact that people are not quite sure what they will be giving up or posting by clicking. I am even hesitant to click on the badges when there is no clear call-to-action what they actually will do.

I decided to come up with a completely custom commenting system that is a super fast, simple and auth-free way to collect all the data needed. The solution – a wordpress twitter hybrid commenting system.
It may be obvious to you, but not to me so why not? If you can find a way to get it to land on earth without burning too much in the atmosphere, isn't that better than mining it in space?
What game design can teach us about motivation and UX (large pdf)
This is clearly a man who doesn't do anything at ordinary scale. He eats bigger than we do, travels bigger than we do, and starts companies bigger than we do.
I don't know. This seems stupid to me. I'm all for chasing your dream when you have an actual dream to chase. But to quit a good job that pays well just to randomly walk around and try to figure out what you want to do doesn't seem wise to me. It seems much wiser to wait till you have an idea that you want to pursue and then quit. That way you have more resources to devote to the idea that you're actually dedicated to.
Here's the idea behind my company: iPhone developers want people to download their app. Generally they pay for ads through a service such as admob which has a terrible conversion rate. My company gives users paid apps for free and provides the developer with downloads.

Here's how it works from a developer standpoint:
1) You create a campaign. This campaign contains a multiple choice question that would be hard for someone to know that didn't actually buy the app. (aka whats the second persons name under the credits or something like that.... its partly honor system based although incorrect guesses are punished).
2) A user downloads your app, and answers the question you created. If they answer correctly they get paid the amount you specified (minimum of the price of the app).

In this way users get great apps and developers get their app out in the wild!

Does that clear things up?
Will it? It already has
Very interesting article.

On a related not, check out the book "Negative Math": http://www.amazon.com/Negative-Math-Mathematical-Rules-Posit...

This book builds up a mathematics in which multiplying two negative numbers gives you a negative, not a positive. The results are very interesting, particularly this: There are no complex numbers. The root of -1 is -1.

This is another example of something you never think to question, you always assume is "just the natural way", but which was a somewhat arbitrary choice and can be changed.
You’re smarter than you think
I also prefer the dot in the zero. But the l shape is too close of the number 1. The original font is better on this regard. There is more space between the dot and the bar in the exclamation mark which makes it more different of avertical bar.
Hmmm... Textmate for Windows, finally? Heh.
And we have 12 non-thumb phalanxes on each hand. Point each phalanx of one hand with your thumb (of the same hand), and you can count up to 12. With 5 fingers on the other hand, you can count 5 dozen: 60.

Base 10 may not be completely arbitrary, but is is undoubtedly lazy.
As the author, I couldn't agree more. This diet is about losing weight, not being healthy. My overall plan is to get rid of the weight first, then, once I reach my target body fat percentage, focus on being healthy without regaining the fat.

I've found that losing the fat was impossibly hard no matter how healthy I tried to make my lifestyle. I suspect that once I have gotten rid of most of that fat, exercising will result in more visible improvements (muscles are much more visible when not covered in thick layers of fat), which will generate motivation for me to keep exercising. We'll see.
hopefully soon! It's the main thing (shoutcast streaming music) I use VLC for.
This is true once you get into the mechanics of algorithmic trading, but maths aren't needed to understand the basics of how markets and trading function. In fact, one recommendation of Trading and Exchanges starts "Although this book doesn't contain a single equation...".
the example does not show his "improvements" on the 1-digit/L-letter shapes...
Yes, but screen readers don't care about CSS either.
1. Buy once, read anywhere

3. It’s always about the software

This is it. If a device is compelling, Amazon will make a Kindle app for it. If the device maker tries to keep off competing apps, especially from a major competitor like Amazon, the device will have a hard time becoming popular. (Even Apple had to welcome Kindle, a competitor, onto the iPad.) To me, Amazon feels like the good guys. They make an e-reader, but if I don't like their product, no problem! They'll help me read their books on a competing device. Awesome. They go out of their way to make their DRM a non-issue for me (Joe Consumer.) When I buy a book, I get to read it wherever and whenever I want. PC, iPhone, iPad, Android, they're on it. They're making money from me by doing what I want, and that's the way it's supposed to be.

Barnes and Noble isn't doomed, though. They have their own advantages, and to exploit them, they need to play me-too and copy what Amazon is doing in software. They should combine Amazon's strategy of ubiquitous software with e-book stations in their stores where you can search for title or just scan the bar code from a book you found on the shelf, and voila, you're downloading the book to your reader. Browsing physical books before you buy is not dead. It's the best way to gauge the quality of a book before you buy, and it's the best way to choose between several similar books. Also, people just enjoy going to the bookstore. People looking to buy e-books are just as likely to go to the bookstore as people looking to buy physical books. If you can shop for either online, or shop for either in person, some people will prefer the latter. They will go to a bricks-and-mortar bookstore to buy an e-book.
Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon (a recency effect) I'd guess.
Wow! On my old iMac (Core Duo 1.83GHz, RadeonX1600) the new VLC plays back a 720p mkv using 25-33% less CPU. Way to go VLC guys, you rock! Keep up the awesome work.

VLC has been the default media player on my Mac for years because it plays EVERYTHING.
It was a bit slow at first, but after a restart and a few minutes of usage it seemed to be back to its old speeds.
> That way you have more resources to devote to the idea that you're actually dedicated to.

Sometimes the scarce resource is not money, but free time and mental availability. "Randomly walking around" could increase his chances of bumping into a hidden opportunity. I say go for it.
"... I'm all for chasing your dream when you have an actual dream to chase. But to quit a good job that pays well just to randomly walk around and try to figure out what you want to do doesn't seem wise to me. ..."

Then you don't know Xavier. I do ~ http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/4588097990/in/set-7215... He's not your conventional hacker by any sense of the word. If you're in the US and interested in Ruby and DB's maybe you can check out his DBIYF tour ~ http://www.dbisyourfriend.com/
Two years of saved living expenses is great, but at a six figure salary, you can easily double that in 6 months. It seems a little foolish to back away so early.

Though I'm sure the short-term result of quitting must be wonderful. I especially liked the anecdote about staying up weeknights to watch B-grade sci-fi.

Best of luck!