skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I did some work for a comedy writer / actor a few years back that ran a company called Talking Panda, where they sold software that was basically iPods hacked to work as info decks & translation tools. At their peak I heard they were pulling in between $500k - $1m a year. Pretty sure the App Store squashed them out of existence, but pretty amazing story since I think it was originally an 'accident' as well
Wow, thanks for that. I never knew that was happening.

Cheers :-)
"Art Director", Project Manager or some Chief of design position.
Yes, I too am tired of all of this whining about the so-called App Store "jail." I, and most average owners, I suspect, just want applications that work. We don't care if we can only get them at iTunes. In fact, that makes it easier for us. Only techie-dweebs care about this.
My biggest problem with Django is that the entire data model layer is designed with relational database in mind (i.e. normalization and JOINs). Many of the new data stores (RDF stores, Google Data Store for App Engine, etc) are inheritantly non-relational.
Except that 'repeat' in English doesn't always mean to do something an additional time. For example, "Repeat this task three times," means to do a task three times, not four, unless specified by the context.
There are actually a bunch of Ruby frameworks (ramaze, rango, waves, padrino, camping, halcyon, to name a few off the top of my head), but it seems Rails and Sinatra meet the needs for the vast majority of Ruby web developers.
This kind of stuff is why I love Perl. I just wish I still had an excuse to use it on a daily basis...
5% is unrealistic. 1% is.

50 million * .01 * .65 (tax) / 4 years = 81,250

considering opportunity cost and time spent. likely not worth it.
I'm moving from regular design work for clients, to UI work at my day job. Love UI design. But I'm still doing regular design work, doing just UI would mess me up.
What got you back into tech?

I think that i am fortunate in that I direct all my wrath and loathing outward.
Technological innovations do make a big difference. I'm sure the Mongols or Ottomans would have implemented similar methods of mass execution if they had the tools. But OTOH the living conditions on European and American slaving ships actually make German death camps seem humane in comparison.
Well it took me about 8-10 hours, and its really not a full fledged start-up... its more of just a content aggregation site.
http://css3pie.com/demos/tabs/#

the tabs don't seem to work in any browser. i only tried ie8 for the styles, and while they are impressive they definitely lack polish. for instance, when enabled a border-bottom is added to each tab that shouldn't be there.

this is a tough problem and css pie could potentially be useful but i think it needs

a) polish
b) a bit more customizability

before it's production ready. good start though.
Exactly, which is why they put a condition at the end.

> But Apple needs to come up with a permanent—and free—fix for the antenna problem before we can recommend the iPhone 4.

If this was a piece of software wouldn't we all demand a patch?
If it's one item in a long list it seems reasonable to take it as one factor, especially if they're, in the case I've encountered most often, twentysomething male nonimmigrant whites who grew up in an urban area in the northeast or west coast, in a middle-class or better family. Any one of those factors aren't particularly predictive, but taken as a whole they narrow down a culture with some accuracy.
So now you're comparing Jews with Nazis more and saying they both did/do racial genocide. Why don't you take your anti-semitisim to Kos or DU? There's plenty of appropriate websites for you.
It's also often not even 1% of 50m, but 1% of (50m minus liquidation preferences).
I don't think it's true us designers don't want to work on someone else's baby. I love the part of UI design where something is already made, and I get to go in an make the flow of interaction better and coming up with new ideas.
Kinda hard with HN, coffee and white chocolate.
Cool, ever considered publishing your talk in book form? That might make you some more money.
> Neilsen tested only speed.

Neilsen tested only speed if you read only the first half of the results. You might want to read the next one as well. It's called "User Satisfaction".
I'd be willing to bet that this book
http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Java-TM-Virtual-Machine/dp...
covers that, but I've not personally read it.
"this sort of distribution is usually gaussian".

No. That distributions are commonly Gaussian is some quasi-mystical nonsense left over from 'psychometrics' about 100 years ago.

The most common way to get a Gaussian distribution is from the central limit theorem, and it's much worse than clumsy to argue its assumptions here.

Gaussian needs MUCH more than your "a whole bunch of average drivers, and a few specially good and bad ones".

Your "well-behaved" is asking far too much for practice or reality. Gaussian isn't "well-behaved"; from Melon in 'Back to School', it's "fantasy land". E.g., there's no reason to believe that can have your "controlled skewness".

On your "scale", sure, if know the distribution and if it is absolutely continuous with respect to Lebesgue measure, then can pick a scale that maintains order and yields Gaussian. The educational testing people love to do this. It's quasi-religion. And we collect taxes to pay them for that?

Yes, for stock market data can argue that changes in price each 15 seconds are independent and identically distributed with finite mean and variance so that the central limit theorem applies so that the change in price from noon today to noon next week will be Gaussian. Of course there are traders driving Ferraris laughing at that.

Do yourself a favor: For real data, assume mean and variance exist and are finite, but without a really careful appeal the the central limit theorem dumpster Gaussian. For multivariate data, don't even think about Gaussian.

Uh, some diffusion processes in physics might give you 3D Gaussian quite accurately.
Does Diversity Punish Asians, Poor Whites and Others?
You missed Classpath :P
Also, one of our rituals that we start every executive staff meeting with is sharing one personal and one professional thing occupying our minds.

Aaaaaaargh (runs away in horror). Is this an executive staff meeting or an AA meeting?
Someone who comes in for five is a potential founder anyway.

At 1 you have another fifty percent dillution from follow on financing, and the odds of any exit at all.

Exmployee 75 is making market, and a 75 man shop will not sell at 50. They are shooting for 500 or more, or failure.

A 5 person startup might sell for 5 to 10 direct, in which case your 1 just bought a nice car, after tax, but not a really nice car, and less than your risk adjusted forgone salary vs. Being a soulless corporate drone in defense, or maybe number 75 at a well funded tech company.
That's interesting that a piece of tape does indeed fix the problem. On last week's TWiT, one of the antenna engineers they had on kept saying how tape doesn't solve it.
Yep, in other words it's bullshit.
I've often found cliquishness when there's, say, five people, of which four are from the same age/sex/ethnic/cultural/etc. background, and the fifth is from something different. It's worse when the four are from a quite narrow background of similarity, like four guys of the same age/race/major/etc. from Stanford, or four immigrants from the same country.
How has your experience been with Azure? I've been looking at a few solutions for a possible new company and haven't really seen it on anybody's radar yet.
At 24 years of age, I have had enough time to attempt shaving with different razors again and again. I have hated every minute of it. Wether I have too sensitive skin or I have not given myself enough time desensitize myself, but none of the different gels, creams or even shaving oil combined with various razors have convinced me.

Basically, I gave up about a year ago and use a trimmer to shorten the hair to sub-millimeter length. A permanent stubble, pretty much. My girlfriend doesn't find it a show-stopper, so all is well on that front.

I sometimes wonder in morbid curiosity wether I should try again in order to look more professional, but then shurg it off quickly. I have two more years of architecture school left, so there's no rush.
Weird. Was totally broken for me, but a refresh fixed it.
I think he meant it's a real competitor for developers and geeks who are looking to buy a tablet. Mainstream buyers aren't going to respond to a sales pitch of "no rooting is necessary! All that’s involved is installing a different device driver and then a new Home launcher!"
Ok, I'm sorry. I've overreacted to this post and somehow mixed in my mind who is replying to whom (by not reading all posts in between, my fault, should teach me to think before posting).

I've interpreted your statement that all countries did sth wrong as statement that Nazi Germany, USSR were no worse than other countries, and their deeds were nothing more evil than deeds of other countries.

Should have deleted my comment, but that way it will remind me to read whole thread before replying.
GitHub's first employee owns more than 1% of the company, so I'm not sure why it's unrealistic. Maybe in the world of businesses letting VC's tell them how to run their company this is the norm, but it doesn't have to be.
The really good, grand ideas tend to be copied quickly because ideas are cheap to copy but expensive to come up with.

In software companies, I also think that a competitive advangage can only be hard, actual, time-consuming work.

Like customer service. Or making things easy for the user by doing all the smart work yourself and not leaving all the decisions to him, thus making your software "just do the right thing".

If you can afford to do such hard work then other's can't copy it except by doing the same amount of work to provide equally excellent service, and this only benefits everyone. And if they don't, it only benefits you and your customers.
Right..when your best case is less than salary differential, before factoring in working 3x more, and the ten percent or less odds of getting the 50 exit! Something is irrational about participating.

That said I would work with certain people or on certain projects as an early employee. With some, it would be economically rational, with others then entertainment value would be worth it.
I have some friends in the body modification industry including a NY-based practitioner who happened to have silicon-coated magnets. He has a habit of discounting everything for his friends so he only charged me the cost of the magnet ($50-60).

Aftercare was very minimal - once implanted your left with a sutured incision to take care of. I just kept it clean and tried not to use that finger much (which made typing very hard). The incision was completely healed in a couple of weeks.

I chose that finger because I'm left-handed and figured that was my least used finger.

I first heard of them in 2004 (I think) and was set to get one around 2005. However at that point most of the people with magnet implants started having complications due to the silicon coating getting damaged. I mostly forgot about it until 2008 when I read that the coating process had been greatly improved (the first generation implants were dipped in silicon, the newer ones are injection-molded).

At this point the novelty has worn off and for the most part I don't even notice it or mention it (although people who know I have it love showing it off). However I still think it's amazing and have no regrets. And it comes in handy whenever I drop a pin or paperclip.

EDIT: If you want to experience it temporarily, tape a small rare-earth magnet to the tip of your finger. I recommend putting your hand close to a motor (like in a fan) and putting it close to an AC-adapter that's plugged in.
So snes4iphone is $6 and it's available from a 3rd party appstore that requires jailbreaking the device. I don't know what those sales numbers would say, but I bet they're interesting.
Golang codewalk: Share Memory By Communicating
Are you sure it sharpens?

I have a similar setup due to my somewhat african-american hair. Grows in all directions and grows in. Used to have a TON of problems with various non-electric razors.

Nowadays I do a pass with the trimmer part of the electrical razor and then with the razor itself. Works like a charm, no ingrown hairs. I don't go for a super-smooth shave, though.
Inamorata? Did you mean to write that, or did your phone just teach me a new word? :-)
A question though...why? If people don't care to update IE, do you think they care about rounded boxes, shadows and gradients?

IE9 is supposed to support all this, I think. Let the people that don't want to update live in their "square" world...it doesn't seem like they care anyway.
Based on all of these responses, I'm wondering if the Hero's key layout (2x2 matrix of buttons) is better than the droid/N1's. The hero's buttons are farther from the screen, therefore impossible to ever hit accidentally.

(Also those who have issues with accidental keypresses should give swype a try -- since you rarely tap keys, the accident rate should drop.)
The on going war on Cyber-crime.
It's a totalitarian executive staff meeting.
GitHub also brags about not taking outside funding, so it's a potentially better deal for them: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1454597
Great rant on marketing copy.
More on the blog wars - the statistical evidence
I don't think anyone disagrees that China will out pace the US in technology at some point within the next two generations. They will probably outpace the US in all business sectors. This has nothing to do with the failings of the American education system or ineptitude of our leadership. No matter what our policies, we are a natural disadvantage. China has more people. With more people comes more consumers, larger markets, and ultimately more innovators.

Ultimately though, this doesn't matter. As the world becomes more globalized it will matter less and less where companies physically exist. Global companies will still hire the best minds from wherever in the world they graduate from, and global companies/investment firms will still invest in the best of ideas.
Really nice! I'm looking to possibly relocate in the next year, so this will be helpful in determining any jobs that might exist in other cities.
Google Spreadsheets (and the stuff coming down the pike like Google Fusion Tables) is, though. Really, you're competing with Excel (plus custom styles/plugins) and with Google Docs, I reckon.
I wouldn't call it a "real" competitor until the device launches. Until then it's in the same realm has the HP Slate and the other forthcoming Android tablets.
From http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html:

Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link.
Name one company in the USA which didn't take outside funding and exited for more than 30mm usd?
Or if any company wanted cheap advertising, they would give away free bumpers with their name on it. HINT HINT. ;-)
then you have oversimplified view of the world and I don't. let's agree to disagree.
A programmer working defense state-side does not make nearly those figures.

80 to 100 is much closer to what a software engineer with several years of experience makes working for a defense contractor than 250, though of course actual years of experience and how well one has played the corporate ladder game can make a big impact.

Past a certain point it is relatively difficult to advance salary-wise without taking on management roles and giving up the hands-dirty side of programming / engineering. Once you're there it's an apples-to-oranges comparison for the kind of startups that are typical for HN-types ~ certainly no early stage startup is going to hire a 10-year manager to be employee #1 when what they really need is a hotshot programmer.
Wow, that's interesting. I guess I would start by just trying to have a conversation with them on Twitter or something. A retweet from Snoop would be great!

Or, you could create a little badge on your site for social proof. "We're followed by..." Keeping it up to date would be a challenge, but they probably won't unfollow you.

Seriously, e-mail those advertisers though, it will be the easiest money you ever made. They would love to advertise on your site.
The first thing my dad says when I bought an iPad into my house was "hey was that that Apple thing? Pad something?" It surprised me that he even heard of it, given we're living in Thailand.
"Knowledge doesn't allow anyone to out-think anyone."

Tell that to the pilots in the Gulf War who few F-117s over Baghdad with the sky lit with flak and without any plane getting even a scratch. Then tell this to the people where the bombs fell or the people shooting the flak. Tell this to the Japanese military in 1945.

Can there be any such examples in information technology entrepreneurship now? Hmm ....
I bought a protective skin for mine (which I was going to buy anyway) and, as a side effect, it prevents the antenna issue. It's also barely noticeable. I got mine from BodyGuardz, but I think there are a few companies who make them. Just make sure it covers the sides.
Unless I'm mistaken, this is targeted at webmasters who want to use these features in their websites. I haven't downloaded/installed, but my guess is that it provides a workaround component that your page can link to. Similar to the existing javascript workarounds for transparent PNGs. The point is to improve the experience of IE6-8 users on your site, not for you to enhance your own IE installation.

But correct me if I'm wrong, like I said I'm just assuming.
Not to be confused with "Ook!" http://esolangs.org/wiki/Ook!

This is like "Go" / "Go!" all over again, except more people have probably heard of "Ook!".
Is it poor form to show up late? I might be able to stop by, but not at 6:30...
Very interesting. I remember hearing a story from someone that worked on a nuclear reactor on an aircraft carrier. They did the same radiation checks on the carrier, and it turned out that people out in the sun received more radiation than the people working inside on the reactor.
"Personally, I fear giving you the leverage of knowing about my personal life. Professionally, I think this ritual of sharing is bullshit."
All hail my Alma Mater.

-- just another Shootin' Fightin' Dynamitin' Mining Engineer
Nobody's talking about which is the better average. I was merely suggesting that this is how you can interpret the quote in a way that escapes your attempt to show how it is incorrect.
I would absolutely love to see something like this happen but with challenges from the major players in the healthcare market: Philips, Siemens, GE, etc. There is a spectacular array of startups and applications that could spring up if the extremely thick and crusty shell is peeled off of healthcare data access.

I worked on a team that spent 5 years on a realtime data protocol for one of these companies and didn't get very far. I left 6 months ago and they're still working on it.
After removing sense, the only thing I missed where the widgets. It detects vertical scrolling in widgets, which works well with twitter.

Also agreed on space efficiency - their weather widgets are much better done (fortunately tons of alternatives exist in the market).

There are plenty of things that annoyed me though. 1) The UI is slower and any of its minor gains is not worth this trade-off. 2) I dislike the iPhone style time select (android's key input is quicker to use, though it too has flaws (not selecting the existing text automatically)). 3) The clock that is a direct rip off of the iPhone. Its features are quite lacking (a stopwatch without laps, etc.)
At least the way I like to build infrastructure, physical servers don't really matter. If for whatever reason servers had to get moved, their mac address would be updated to reflect it's location. I wrote some code a while back which grabs all the mac addresses from a switch and use that to map their physical location. It's quite simple, it looks at a port to see if it has multiple mac addresses behind it, if it does, it ignores it, if not, it maps that port out and labels it appropriately. There's also a little bit of logic to figure out what kind of a device a port is (whether it's another switch, a server, a pdu, etc), which also helps with my own personal continuing de-emphasis on the physicality of computing.
Your comment reminds me of another thought I've had, which is that debugging is the part of programming that's closest to empirical science. You're faced with a piece of reality (a running system) and you don't know how it works.
I bet you could squeeze $10k a month out of that.

"Hi, I can give you 720,000 impressions/mo to weed smokers, would you like to advertise?"
Dangers of Deflation
Very cool, did you make that? Is it Sproutcore or Cappuccino?
Sure thing:

Series A, stealth mode:

http://www.npost.com/blog/2007/06/04/interview-with-david-ri...

http://www.nwinnovation.com/interview_with_steve_brodie,_ill...

http://www.seattlepi.com/business/327068_illumita10.html

Launch:

http://virtualization.com/news/2008/04/10/illumita-renames-i...

Series B:

http://www.xconomy.com/boston/2009/03/16/cloud-computing-fir...

http://www.techflash.com/seattle/2009/03/Skytap_taps_7_milli...

Regarding the founders: Dave Richardson went back to school to finish his Ph.D. Hank Levy is now the Chair of the Computer Science department at U of Washington. Brian Bershad is now the Site Director for Google in Seattle.
I don't know the exact process or tools he used, but I can describe how I'd do this.

First, you need footage of the game being played through, obviously. Then, take the static elements (the playfield) and create a giant animated map, including coin animations and enemies walking. Then, splice in the capture of Mario running through the levels, removing any collected coins or defeated enemies from the "static" playfield.

Once your giant resolution animation is finished, you then need to shoot some video for the backdrop. In his video, he obviously timed his walking to where the playfield would be (possibly by playing back the video on a handheld device while filming?).

Now that you have the video game animation and backdrop, it's simply a matter of layering the animation onto the video using camera matching. Most video post editors have this capability.

Most of the work looks like it resides in the actual animation. If you notice in many underground levels, they aren't arranged the way you see in the video; he did alter some portions to form a continuous map.
Cute, get the last shot in, then pretend its reasonable to stop discussing.

Books have been written about the "Stalin Personality Cult", his enormous personal power and his perfect control over all matters of state. And you dismiss this with a few cute remarks.

For your remarkable claims, you will have to provide MUCH more evidence. Try this: google Stalin and start reading.
Is your criticism really "fatuous? no YOU'RE fatuous!"? That comes across as a little, well, petulant. The point is not about what programmers or painters or line cooks say when they get down to work - it's whether any insight-bearing parallels can be drawn between them. The important thing being insight-bearing, rather than insecurity-assuaging.
I should also add that I'm out of Destin, Florida.

And yes, there are dead dolphin, whales (mainly finback), and turtles floating around.
"Pro-business" has apparently come to mean that any desire of a company, especially a large company, should be granted. That watch has a company logo? Pay up.
Not only did they theoretically forbid it, they actually took something very close to this out of the app store: this app maker is based on Scratch and there used to be a Scratch player for the iPhone (it wouldn't let you create Scratch programs on the iPhone, but it would let you run ones you had made on your computer) and Apple removed it from the App Store.