skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I started my screenshot Saas product, Urlbox (https://urlbox.io) as a side project back in 2013. There were times I did think about shutting it down as the amount of time spent on it initially compared to the revenue growth was just too depressing! A whole 3.5 years later it had grown just enough that I could begin to take it more seriously and actually support myself full-time working on it.

As with everything there are pros and cons. The pros are obviously that you get to spend your time doing something you enjoy (hopefully), and can work whenever and wherever you feel like (this can also be a con!). The cons are that you will always be worrying about stuff like churn, whether servers will go down whilst you're away on holiday, how you're going to grow enough to support a family etc etc.

The long, slow Saas ramp of death really is a thing, and there are no silver bullets in terms of growth/marketing - just many small things that all contribute. I also always used to think 'if only I could just get to $x MRR then everything would be so much better and I'd be much more comfortable and relaxed', but when you do eventually break through that barrier you realise you're just more worried about how you are going to achieve the next one, so it's kinda never ending!

I also agree with other posts here that if you're already a decent developer in a good market, then what is the worst that can happen really? Try doing some fearsetting. I'm sure you could always find another job if your thing doesn't work out, but you do need to give these things time. I also failed a bunch of times with other startup ideas, one of which was also YC backed.
> If there was ANY evidence of Amazon doing that it would destroy everyones trust in AWS and I suspect people wouldn't be able to move away fast enough

The major telecoms were all revealed to be giving American users' data, traffic, and communications directly to the NSA a few years ago. Did you move away from them? Did anybody you know?

As a historical reminder, those revelations were considered to be shocking at the time.
> I've never heard of conglomerates being broken up, as long as they didn't have too much share of any single market.

Maybe that should change. But... even if we take it at face value...

Name a company in the world that is competing at scale and cost with AWS.

In the US, Amazon is definitely nowhere near suffering a loss of customers from Google and Microsoft's offerings. and they're securing massive contracts with key institutions in the US.

There's 1 in China, I guess. That market isn't freely accessible.

Cloud services providers are a New Thing but a Thing which is absolutely critical to the world market. It's utterly unregulated right now, and that's pretty crazy given how much power it has. The only thing holding AWS rates in check is the threat of competition from 2 other American companies, and the hope of securing more critical telcom and bank contracts.
Was it? Weren't things like Distronic+ w/ Steering Assist (and Audi and BMWs equivalents) almost the same thing?
Billionaires Try Opposite Paths for Online Education in India
The Long Now Foundation and their 10,000-year clock.
http://longnow.org/clock/

It's a clock. A physical clock. Designed and built to run, accurately, for 10,000 years without human intervention.
What does that really mean? Do you mean projects that are being worked on right now and that will be delivered in 20 years? Or projects that are finished now and that will be understood in 20 years? Or projects that people thought wouldn't be possible before 20 years?

1: VR, self driving vehicles, nuclear fusion, artificial photosynthesis, quantum computers, robots that can manipulate things like men, wave energy harvesting, colonize mars, cure cancer, cure Alzheimer's disease.

2: no idea!

3: drones, deepmind, blue led, electric sports cars, flyboards, voice activated assistants, smart wearables...
It's not paranoia. An ex-Amazon manager told me fairly recently that they look at customer performance data (trends etc) when evaluating future business opportunities.

So once you start getting traction and customers, there's some internal product manager evaluating whether it's worth entering your market.
The AT&T video phone (1992): http://www.nytimes.com/1992/01/07/business/company-news-cons...
I used to carry a big wallet and a big keychain.

Regarding the wallet, I realized that all I need are 2 cards (ID and credit). I just put them in my pocket (no wallet needed).

Regarding the keychain, I made sure I did not need to carry keys. That means using digital locks (PINs or smartphone).

I like the freedom of carrying less.
How much do you pay for water? Did you calculate the pay-back time of those new toilets?
20 years ago I read about software as a service. The idea was that everyone would use thin clients and run graphical applications remotely. The idea was not new, as it is similar to the mainframes of the past.

The infrastructure and technology was not quite there 20 years ago, but we are getting close with today's cloud and webapps
FPV Drone Racing - While automated flight is making great progress, there are some amazing pilots out there. Something about a person standing in a field with goggles and a controller feels so future to me.

3D Printing - This is going to be the main way to manufacture things in the future. The lab that is 3D printing houses with concrete. That makes me terrified for home values going forward. It will likely shift all the value into the land. The house will just become something you tear down and reprint every 10 years.

CRISPR - s/shitty gene sequence/perfect gene sequence/g That's insane. It's like an anti-virus product for the body (irony intended). We're going to live a very long time and be practically disease free pretty soon. I'm planning on living until 150 (27 now). It's placing a big bet on medical science, but I feel like we're on the edge of some huge things.
This was pretty bad for openssh:
https://www.qualys.com/2016/01/14/cve-2016-0777-cve-2016-077...
The problem is that so many sites have social networking aspects to them, like the Supreme Court ruling pointed out. The North Carolina law is this: http://www.ncleg.net/gascripts/statutes/statutelookup.pl?sta...

This law does not prohibit the offender from _making a profile_ on these sites, but from accessing them altogether. So any site that allows users (news commenters, product reviewers, whatever) to have a "user profile" page cannot be accessed.

Amazon.com meets these criteria: https://www.amazon.com/gp/profile/amzn1.account.AGRXMFWYARWR...

Stack Overflow meets these criteria: https://stackoverflow.com/users/8131287/data-scientist

Github, all of Google, Wikipedia, ALSO meet this criteria. (Although Hacker News does not)

There are a few key things that are problematic with the wording of this law:

1. "Facilitates the social introduction between two or more persons for the purposes of friendship, meeting other persons, or information exchanges."
The key word is "or" Every website is involved in information exchanges. This effectively does not limit the scope of the law.

2. The requirements of the profile pages contain "and" statements, but they're fairly generic. Name or username/nickname, photographs, and links placed somehow to other friends and associates. If there's a profile page, you can usually access some sort of activity log of the user (comments they've replied to, which may lead to users they've interacted with directly or indirectly) The only real limit here is the photograph, which not all websites (like Hacker News) have.

3. There is an exception involving "Has as its primary purpose the facilitation of commercial transactions involving goods or services between its members or visitors." However, this does not exclude sites like Amazon, given the strict wording of the law. Members are not exchanging goods with each other. This would exclude sites like Craigslist.

4. There is another exception: "Provides only one of the following discrete services: photo-sharing, electronic mail, instant messenger, or chat room or message board platform" The problem with this is that there aren't many "discrete service" websites that exist anymore. Google provides all of these services, Yahoo provides all of these services. Hotmail provides all of these services. Services like chats, forums, e-mail, and photo sharing are often bundled by a huge collection of other services.

5. The vague wording of "Web site" Is it a single domain? A single corporate entity? A single subdomain? The vague wording only works in favor of the law here.
sold, 2012.
Ask HN: How to contact sponsors for Open Source?
I am creating https://serverjs.io/ and would love to have some sponsors [1] to assure that I can maintain the project long-term (while at the same time validating the demand). My thinking was:

0. Great idea, initial prototype and a track of open source commitment and deliverables [2] => done
1. Find mid-large companies interested in Node.js => done
2. Contact those companies to offer sponsorship with perks => HOW?
3. Keep working and improving the project

The problem is that those companies that can drop some money on a project like this seems like a unreachable fortification when trying to contact them. Some times I even have to go through many loops even just to get a generic support email.

I have also tried contacting few individuals who work at some of those companies with no answer at all.

So two questions:

- Who/what channel to contact companies in Node.js world committed to OSS.

- How to properly communicate this? I do not want to SPAM anyone, just letting them know what I am working on and how it can benefit them for sponsoring server.js

Notes: assume I am effectively isolated from anyone working at a big tech company since I am from Spain and the only US devs I know are freelancers as well.

[1] https://serverjs.io/sponsor/

[2] https://github.com/franciscop/
It is covered at http://www.expatsoftware.com/articles
Why would you need to change the number of spaces to read it? You probably have a different preference and what you get, but your preference is unlikely to be material to legibility.

Most people have settled with somewhere between 2-4 spaces, and a max of 80-120 character lines. I have an opinion on what I prefer in that range, but I'll live with a variety of stuff. And most others can as well.
The only reasons I even think about going through the ebay process is because either their price is significantly better than I can get on Amazon, or it is an unusual thing I can't get at Amazon (mostly used stuff). Most of that irritation comes from their desire to get me to use Paypal.
You are conflating the larger definition of the term "culture" with a specific, narrower one and it's not making the point you think it's making.
I worked for two startups in the 1980s that were doing online hypertext and searching multiple online databases.

Failure reasons were the ones you list plus lack of TCP/IP provision.
"since it contains a fallacy, its conclusion must be false"

Actually, this is not quite true in this case. I pointed out the fallacy but also the fact he uses no argument / data to prove his point. I made no such claim that his statement is false (or because of the fallacy is false).
>People should stop building stuff in C, it's that simple.

I would attenuate this in one sense and amplify it in another: it's (almost always) irresponsible to write network-facing code in C.
I'm a bit confused. Is @f a = b valid Python syntax? What's it implying? Why would it be a mutation? Is it because of a call-by-name convention you're implying, or because function metaprogramming in Python has write as well as read for properties?

If you dislike call-by-name, why is Python's practice of insisting all non-trivial functions be called by name is not distasteful to you?
I would argue that _every_ company needs to be worried about the question "can I lose all this?"

Even a company that is fully owned, with a sustainable and profitable business model, needs to ask the question "can I lose all this?" every day.

If the metric for "you don't have a real company" is you could potentially lose it, then nobody has a real company.
>In any case, enforcing an automatic price-matching ban would be difficult. Would you prohibit firms from lowering their prices to match competitors'? If not, it would just take a few turns of the ratchet to send the message to would-be competitors (and consumers). Whether the consumer surplus from those ratchet turns are worth the enforcement cost is an open question.

Couldn't you just make a law saying "price-match guarantees are illegal"? Firms who explicitly move prices to match each other is fine with me, but the match guarantee is problematic. It seems that your conclusion is that companies use matching guarantees to implicitly collude but that even if we got rid of this they would still collude. But we should still stamp out collusion wherever we see it even if that puts us in a whack-a-mole situation.
Yes, that thread is four years old, but the latest comment is _2_ days old...
So they are still having issues apparently.
The PwC assurance report URL gives a 404: http://www.qubit.com/sites/default/files/pdf/pwc-qubit-assur...
You may enjoy (or hate) Wikipedia's article on aptronyms: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aptronym
1620 MWh of output over several years? They'd be better off using the fuel used to construct it directly.

Amazing that that particular project got so much praise before the numbers were in.

I've played around with solar concentrators in the early 00's and realized very quickly that it wasn't worth my time due to all kinds of practical constraints, I always wondered why the companies and organizations that build these things don't do a scale model first. That way at least you get some real world data to plug into your spreadsheet before spending big $.
Transactions won't be free. Somebody has to do some mining. Some googling indicates that a typical bitcoin transaction costs about two dollars today. In my experience, paying money via Paypal or credit card costs about the same.
> And now those bugs are fixed

"Those bugs" are bad enough that they should have never been there. Moreover they exist only because the codebase was for all intents and purposes unmaintainable.

Given the above, I wouldn't be so sure there are no more bugs.
>Great privacy != public ledger of every transaction
>No fees? have you even looked at the state of btc currently?
> Switching languages requires a full rewrite ...

It's not ready for use in the wild, but I'll just mention that some good progress is being made on a "C to SaferCPlusPlus[1]" auto-translation assistant. (SaferCPlusPlus is essentially a memory-safe subset of C++.) At this point it can recognize arrays and "pointers used as array iterators" in C code and replace them with memory-safe substitutes. Hopefully an (incomplete but) usable version will be available before long and we can gauge the interest of developers/maintainers.

[1] shameless plug: https://github.com/duneroadrunner/SaferCPlusPlus
NYC:

Subways in the summer + rush hour (no A/C in the station).
That's the thing, it doesn't need to. Nbox fills the email text box with something random, and LastPass or 1Password takes it from there. It generates a password for you and asks you to save the login info for future use.
In NYC, the Yellow cabs have a huge, huge overhead because of Taxi Medallions that used to cost $1.2 million each which effectively added $125 or so for a 12 hour shift. The value of the medallions are now < $700K, but I don't know if the $125 overhead is still in force.

Uber is far more expensive in NYC than other cities such as Chicago.

Now that Uber has allowed tipping and since there is a rating system, everyone must now tip otherwise risk getting low ratings which effectively makes NYC rides even more expensive than they had been.

Most people don't own cars in Manhattan so that they either have to take mass transit or use Uber/Lyft/Taxi. There are many elderly on fixed incomes that have trouble ambulating (moving around) where lower cost taxi service is important.

In NYC at least, Uber doesn't need all of that corporate overhead and perhaps they should spin it off into some low-overhead operation.
is there a guide on how to hire reliable contractors if you're too busy currently to work on your saas product?
Applying via API is genius, I love it.
Yes. And I'd agree.

To wax metaphorical, I'd rather the monsters devour each other while we race for a super-weapon to defeat all monsters and protect real people.

This situation where corporations are effectively replacing the state is not exactly what I had in mind when I said the world would be a better place with a diminished role of the State in individual life.
How does this relate to pricing for top search display? (being $.01 less than others')

Same rules/ theory?
It's literally tapping one extra button in the app UI. I'm really surprised at how hard this seems to people.
Is Bitcoin the Future of Money?
Former Apple engineers and Scott Forstall discuss the creation of the iPhone
Upworthy Was One of the Hottest Sites Ever. You Won't Believe What Happened Next
Releasing Is Equal Parts Terrifying and Exciting
> Men hold the vast majority of power in our society. No cards are stacked against them.

If you "believe women who report sexual harassment", and more specifically, if you believe women who report sexual harassment in "less clear cut" scenarios than Susan Fowlers, then you are deliberately stacking the deck against the specific men who are accused of sexual harassment, some of whom will invariably be innocent. How much comfort the fact that other people with the same genetalia tend to fill the boardrooms provides to the accused, I will leave to your imagination.

> They aren't constantly reminded by our culture to be gentlemen or look handsome or bring home the bacon or do anything they don't want to.

Men aren't reminded constantly by their culture to do things they don't want to do? Where do you live, because it sounds like paradise to me.

> To say "think of the men!" here is either willfully ignorant or just being a dick.

It's neither. It was an attempt to puncture what I saw as misguided rhetoric. A good old WhatAboutTheMen is an efficient approach because the commenter's default reasoning for not "just believing" men would likely mirror mine for not "just believing" women. And so I don't have to spell it out for them.
Still better than driving in Bay Area I assume?
Fusion is not ahead of it's time... The future of energy has to be simple scalable and safe, fusion at terrestrial scales is extremely complex and very limited in fuel source, even if sustainable fusion is cracked that will always be true just like fission, it just has different complexities and different fuels.
If this desalination system allowed a city to generate even 50% of their water needs, that would be a significant step forward. I keep seeing this metric put forward: Does X generate 100% of the needed water/electricity/heat. Why does it have to 100%? Can't three systems each contributing 33.3% be enough to reach 100%?

Our household solar power installation here in the very rainy Seattle area generates 98.15% of our electric power needs, including that for our electric car. I wish it were 100%, and if the sun shines for a few days in a row, sometimes it does generate 100% of our electric power needs for the last 365 days. It is, however, much better to meet 98% of our needs that to meet none of our needs.
I want an adblock for smooth scroll js
I haven't seen this mentioned yet, but in the spirit of the high-profile failures (or misuse?) of the Tesla autopilot system, could it be that Chris had a fundamental disagreement with Tesla management over the direction and technical grounding of this feature?

All rank speculation, of course, but maybe he didn't like what was "under the hood" of this feature and how it was being developed and marketed?

Just spectator curiosity, but interesting to ponder none the less.
I assume the job is about coding, otherwise this would be a very interesting situation and will likely backfire as your friend will have no motivation to actually learn.

That said, here are some tips. Note that I have never taught someone to code, but I am familiar with mentoring someone through a skill set I already have. Consider all languages as placeholder terms for whatever stack you are going to teach, they are what I started my career in, so I'm using them here.

- Beware the curse of knowledge. Yeah, I know XYZ the most obvious thing in the world, but if you think back to the dawn of time, you'll remember when you didn't understand how a function worked.

- Start slow. This builds off the last one. Start with the basics. I personally learned to code in the following order. HTML > CSS > JS > jQuery > PHP > MySQL > PHP. Start easy and lay a solid foundation, then build on that.

- Teach the language before the framework. Okay, this is based off my learning experience rather than my teaching experience. However, if you want your friend to fully grasp and be able to keep going, teach them JS before jQuery and PHP before Laravel. Show them how the magic works. It will make it so much easier for them (and you) down the road.

- Have fun. I know that's a cliche ending to every list ever. But remember to make the process enjoyable. Presumably, you are a programer, and if you are anything like me, you love what you do. Try to instill that in your teaching. It'll make your friend more likely to stay and learn without fighting the process.

Good luck!
Newer toilets in the US are only allowed 6 liters max.
One of D's goals is to be ABI compatible with C and C++, ABI compatibility with C is 100% as I understand it. C++ is a work in progress.

What is ABI compatiblity? in a nutshell it let's you use libraries from another programming language. In D, all you need is a D file that describes the C/C++ library as a wrapper so the D compiler knows what you are using.

This means D will build upon everything that already exists for C/C++. You can intermix C/C++ and D in the same project if you so choose to. Which is really a big deal because you don't necessarily have to stop and rewrite years of code you might already have to start using D.

Syntax wise D is a kin to C#/Java, so if you know C# or Java, jumping over to using D is just a matter of learning the language specific Gotchas and core libraries. So the learning curve is quite low if you know C/C++,C#, or Java.

to see what D libraries are out there I suggest looking at http://code.dlang.org/
> sexually harassing women and his general brohaviour are good for business

Nowhere has he said this. You're conflating two very different issues. No one is disputing that he is an asshole, etc. OP was making a different point.
OpenVPN is very complicated and for that reason I use sshuttle[1] which is very simple.

It does require that you own an sshd running on an endpoint somewhere (like a VPS or an EC2 instance or your own server somewhere) - but if you can clear that hurdle, you end up with a very elegant and simple solution.

[1] https://github.com/sshuttle/sshuttle
NYC has the Arro[0] app for yellow cabs, although I haven't ever used it - every other vehicle on the road is a cab.

I suppose it might be useful during shift change?

[0]https://www.goarro.com/
just to mention what I am saying is not just my opinion.
Sorry for being so cynical. I'm sure Lyft will continue to exist in some form but I fear it will have the same amount of culture and values left as Costco would should it get acquired by some evil Corp like Walmart.
I had troubles recently too with Twitch and Chromecast. I was trying to watch Heroes of the storm Mid season brawl, and it was always saying that it could not display the stream. Other channels were fine. Would it be a case of encoding like others comments are suggesting?
I'd say down votes because it wasn't clear whether Apple would have fallen if Jobs remained. He pushed the same vision when he came back as when he was fired.