skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I posted this form a throwaway account because I was afraid there might be a karmic backlash/ban to my main account.
Perhaps that wasn't the best idea.

Do you have any suggestions for looking less spammy?
I guess it came out as something of a salesletter, you're right. At the same time, I think it provides genuine value and information to HN members.
Ask HN: Heard of any good startups?
Three times a week, I write about a new startup at Venture Pimp (http://venturepimp.com/). It's actually really hard to find cool things that haven't gotten much press.

So, as always, I'm on the hunt for interesting startups. If you've got a startup, or have heard of something nifty, let me know. I'd really appreciate it. :)

Happy Sunday, folks.
The stores here still do it. They think my name is Ramon Vera, though.
"I wasn't invited to Apple's event"

This is an important sentence.
I love that you reference "Leiningen vs. the Ants" in the name. Etymology meets entomology!
It would behoove you to:

1) Indicate somewhere what sort of financial arrangement you have with the product, which goes to your credibility and

2) Provide some sort of authority--the more scientific, the better--to support your claims. I'm not a biologist, but there are plenty of people on HN who are capable of evaluating real research on this sort of thing.
Hacker Profile with John Arce, founder WebGeek Philippines
Hackers/Startups Directory for the Philippines
I believe I learned about manpacks.com from Hacker News and received my second "pack" about a week ago.

Brilliant concept, well-executed. The main danger I see is the increasingly complex number of options: they may want to make an obvious default easier to see and pick.

Nonetheless, I'm happy.
(1) simple, declarative project descriptions in clojure

(2) straightforward swanking

(3) dependency resolution

e.g.,

$ lein new scratch/itch
$ cd itch
$ emacs project.clj
... // add swank-clojure deps
$ cat project.clj
(defproject scratch/itch "1.0.0-SNAPSHOT"
:description "FIXME: write"
:dev-dependencies [[swank-clojure "1.2.1"]]
:dependencies [[org.clojure/clojure "1.1.0-master-SNAPSHOT"]
[org.clojure/clojure-contrib "1.0-SNAPSHOT"]]
)

$ lein deps
$ lein swank
user=> Connection opened on local port 4005
#<ServerSocket ServerSocket[addr=localhost/127.0.0.1,port=0,localport=4005]>
Expertise is mostly just a way to reassure clients that you will be able to do the work that you promise to do and that after they have cut the check the system will actually function.

The single easiest way to reassure someone that you're capable of doing X is to have done X before. (Or even better, to have someone trusted say you have done X before.)
yeah it looks like a grift where you make money off the s+h. I also googled the company and saw where you had posted a similar offer on another forum w/ a custom message etc. so it seemed a bit form letterish.
1. Send out promo codes to all the major iPhone game review sites. TouchArcade.com is a must

2. Create an account at the TouchArcade forum and give out a lot of promo codes (be sure to mention the promo codes in the forum thread title!). The users who receive the free promo codes may get the game for free, but if it's a great game they will spread the word about it through word-of-mouth. They will also give you valuable feedback. Be sure to respond to their complaints, feedback and praise on the forum thread, they will love you for it. Customers who feel like they are taken seriously will be happy customers who will gladly spread the word about your game for free.

3. Keep updating the game and spread the word about the updates. Constant updates is the reason why old games like Doodle Jump, Pocket God and Angry Birds still are immensely popular.

4. Your website sucks. If a game peaks my interest enough, I'll check out the website. Your page was just a boring support form. I want videos, I want screenshots, I want summaries of reviews (linking to the full review), stats, a blog with updates etc.

This is a good example of a page for an iPhone game:
http://www.rovio.com/index.php?page=angry-birds

5. Rotate the screenshots.

6. Shorten the link to the youtube-video with something like bit.ly. It's impossible to copy it and it's much easier to visit a bit.ly-link than a youtube.com-link
Nipping in the bud Clojure's version of Java's coffee puns, before it's too late?
"... Nobody in the 90s but the wildest visionaries saw Wikipedia coming ..."

I bet Ward Cunningham did ~ https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Ward_Cunningh... It's reported he even toyed with patenting the idea behind the Wiki in '96 ~ http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3648131
STFU troll
I think Alex3917 is right on the money here. Often, the way that you harm yourself is by depriving your body of the drug you were previously consuming.

Theoretically, what you propose could be possible, but would probably involve multidrug therapy with the goal of inhibiting the regulatory pathways that would counteract the drug of choice.
Last time I was in Chicago with the Droid it was snowing pretty heavily, and I figured bad GPS readings were normal with that kind of weather. Didn't get to test it out in clear weather, unfortunately.
It does get harder, yes. Some levels are hectic, and some levels are tricky. And there are some surprises along the way. It's a bit hard to capture the difficulty in a video since what's different is, well, invisible. And also I don't want to give away the solutions to the more interesting episodes (or ruin the surprise). To quote Osmos:

"Is there a demo of Osmos I can try first?

Yes, but don’t let it fool you. The game starts gently, but there are some truly difficult levels later on in the full game."

http://www.hemispheregames.com/osmos/

That said, your point is well taken. I'll think if I can improve the video somehow, or perhaps have an Osmos-like disclaimer around it.
Custom Reporting Utilities for Shell
What do you mean by "financial arrangement"? I'm selling the product, that's the arrangement.

As for scientific studies, there isn't that much research on nootropics out right now, although I link to a few from the ingredients/about page.
Pretty much all of those things require you to memorize some arcane series of steps to accomplish anything. Most likely, she is taking that mental model of how to use electronics and applying it to the computer.

I believe you said that, once given specific instructions to accomplish a specific task on the computer, she can generally remember and repeat those steps in the future. This fits the model of those other devices, where you must memorize some arbitrary button or combination of buttons to make it do what you want. VCRs, TVs, fax machines and digital cameras do not have a "right click" menu attached to them, and these are the devices on which she has formed her mental model of how to use electronic devices.
It's a shame .. if functionality is going to converge into one device, I think it's important that the individual functions aren't limited.
I thought the drag could be beneficial in a way similar to wave power generators: pull on the balloon would operate a hydraulic piston, etc.
I mentioned I had given this product away in a couple other communities I participate in. This post was written for HN with hackers/coders in mind and how this can benefit them.

Obviously you don't have to believe me, but I'm actually losing money on the free giveaways(cognitive booster ingredients that actually work are somewhat expensive). The expectation is that it will translate into repeat customers and word of mouth.

Thanks for the feedback though, it's obviously tough to create credibility.
Thanks for that interesting info. I guess it's all of the buildings that are interfering.
N.B. The bug with closures is associated with a problem in a single use case with IE6's garbage collector, and Microsoft patched it two-and-a-half years ago.

Are you sure about that? From what I understood they couldn't patch it because some major unnamed web sites actually relied on DOM elements not being cleaned up to work properly.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ericlippert/archive/2003/09/17/53028...

As of IE 7, I remember I still had to close out memory leaks on some code that was binding an event to a DOM node.
Python command line project
Hi,
I'm wondering if anyone has any ideas of a project I can work on? I've been trying to generate ideas for days and I just can't think of anything "new" to build. I simply want to practice more python and I've been using it for around 2 months.

I'd prefer to build a command line app just because I hate working with GUIs :). Would it be better if I improve my Python by rewriting some GNU tools?

Thanks!
I know this was a joke, but adding condoms would be fantastic.

I find it mildly embarrassing and equally annoying to buy condoms, and yet I definitely do not want to run out.
What I wouldn't give for damp, 3ft-thick sandstone walls here in California :)
No, you got it right. Got tired of the puns.

You can work on projects with names like that, you just can't use the "new" task to generate them. The official workaround is to generate a skeleton with a different name and rename it, or to use Leiningen 1.1.0. Awkward, but hey--it's an edge case. =)
I think this is basically what people mean by “miserable state”. It’s not just more lines, but more very-very-high-voltage lines. Also, these lines are generally regulated at the state level: the government of Nebraska may not be exactly eager to authorize a high-tension swath being cut through its land just so that power can get from North Dakota to Texas.

Regarding switching technology, Technology Review had an article a while ago (http://www.technologyreview.com/microsites/spain/wind/) mentioning the wind-power industry in Spain: “Because wind is an intermittent resource, providing power only when it blows, the grid has to be able to cope with fluctuations and dips in electricity. When wind accounted for only a small percentage of the country’s power, such dips made little difference. But as this resource achieved greater prominence, split-second losses of power could have caused problems, especially since Spain doesn’t have strong grid connections with neighboring countries....” The article goes on to describe how the grid management system adapts to this problem.
Well disclaimers don't actually mean anything to anyone. It is worth ruining some of your good levels to get customers. If someone plays the game, loves it, and wishes they hadn't had a couple of levels spoiled for them - thats a win for you (and for them mostly, they probably wouldn't have played it otherwise).

Also I just played "This Is The Only Level" as per waxpancake's comment. It's a fun flash game, but it still seemed fairly disposable. The thing your game has all over it is the graphics - but you haven't really given it any character - your dragon and princess don't say anything. A bit of humour and characterization goes a very long way in fun little iphone games.
after he stopped using them, he reportedly had difficulty coming up with 'new mathematical ideas' (see comments in 1st thread for the full quote)
Millions of routers vulnerable to new version of old attack (DNS rebinding)
Apple is now subject to the kind of scrutiny any other corporation has to put up with. The honeymoon might be over, but this is a good thing.

You can only spin the public for so long, before the public starts to feel sick.
Maybe give this a go? http://github.com/jessemiller/HamlPy
Remix This Game
This is why when people like chromatic invariably comment in a "still waiting for perl 6 thread" that "you can write perl 6 now!!11!" I roll my eyes.

Almost five years ago now I ported a piece of Perl 5 code used millions of times a day to Perl 6. Where is the hyperbole in my statements?
Zed came by our office the other day to talk about supporting streamed logs with Mongrel2. As we already use 0MQ, it's a small change to our clients to support taking HTTP POSTs as log events. It's fucking fantastic, as Zed would say. :)

He was talking about the config file viewer thing too. One of the things that pops out of having a SQLite as your configuration store is the ability to programmatically change your server's configs on the fly.
"That is also why I don't understand everybody raving about Macs. Macs are not consistent with the second mouse button rule (they used to have only one button), therefore there is no way to become an instant expert on a Mac."

Although you may have answered your own question, as it seems that the right-click button does not fit the mental model of non-computer-experts (at least, that is what we have been discussing).

Maybe the Mac works better for those people because it does not assume that the user will just right-click to figure out how to do something?

Right-click does work well, of course, in most contexts on the Mac. Interestingly, though, I've been finding myself appreciating having a big obvious button to click even when I know the functionality I want is also in the right-click menu. I suspect Fitt's law has something to do with it.
In my mind they made the same marketing mistake Microsoft did. You had VB6 and then .NET came along and they tried to say that VB.NET was just another VB. VB.NET is totally different. Perl6 is not Perl.
Pittsburgh Hacker News meetup: Church Brew Works, 8PM, Monday 7/18
Heh... agreed.
People are uncomfortable with this because it inverts the roles of the sensor and the sensed. The participant loses control over their decision whether to check in or not.

It reminds me of Cory Doctorow's "Are You the Scanner or the Barcode?"
http://www.make-digital.com/make/vol22?pg=12#pg12
The main point I'm trying to make is that one _can_ memorize something and not understand what it means. And one can understand something without having memorized it verbatim. If you accept this, then it follows that memorization and understanding are orthogonal.

One can memorize something and not understand it. One can understand something and not have it memorized. This is not a subjective claim. Memorizing may have helped you understand, but objectively (if you follow the previous logic), it's not a necessary component of understanding.

and the individual in question has none to draw from and is merely extrapolating from off-the-cuff opinion

I don't see how you can draw that conclusion.
I just tried to create-a-pack, silly thing wants $7 in shipping for an order a few dollars above their 'free shipping' threshold. Still a few bugs to hammer out, I guess?
> stigma of prejudice that's perpetuated by jokes such as yours.

You've had personal experience with stigma for being Nigerian because people you talk to think you’re a scammer? Willing to share/elaborate?
From a marketing standpoint,

Without disagreeing with you, I wonder how you can judge the marketing success or failure of a project intended to last at least 20 years at this point in its adoption cycle.
That's an interesting perspective about the use case - I signed up at about the same time, never use the account and deleted it a few years later. I was more the steady girlfriend type than the party type in college, so perhaps that use case passed me by.
Calculating Color Contrast for Legible Text in Ruby
@markchristian

Sending you an email with more info, but in the meantime, check us out http://www.repustate.com

And we're Canadian, too. Double-double anyone?
Exactly. Almost a year ago I was considering the same idea. I talked to many people, some of them thought the idea was good. But then I talked to a friend of mine (she was all supportive, btw) and mentioned that I didn't feel right about the project. I said I felt like maybe we should do something for life, not death. She agreed and said she's glad I said this. So from this moment on I decided I'm not using this idea, knowing, of course, someone else would do it for me.
... but added a new typo :)

Everyone holds a sliver of someone’s life and the letting everyone share those slivers can create a wonderful place to vividly remember someone.

Tip: proof-read a text backwards (word-by-word) to catch things that your brain would normally gloss over.
I would be amazed if you could get that price for that domain. It's 2 words, but they don't really 'speak' to me. I think you are overvaluing it based on your idea. What you must realize about domain selling (passive domain selling that is) is that it is a probability game. Big portfolios passively sell maybe 2% of their portfolio per year. They also charge much higher price than the liquid rate.

If you wanted to sell that domain right now, I would say $50-100 if you were to offer it to resellers.

However, if you go into active selling mode and contact potentially interested parties... the price can go higher. This depends entirely on your ability to sell and your network. I have no idea who you are, perhaps you are wolfgang puck and know every restaurateur and can sell it for a few grand no problem. However, based on where this is, I am going to say you're a programmer and probably don't have a deep network of restaurateurs.

So the question you have to ask yourself... how much time are you willing to spend on selling it and what is the price you would be satisfied at? If I am looking to liquidate generally I would find maybe 10-20 businesses and contact them, my reply rate is 5-10% on average. I take what I can get, I am dumping it anyways. Emotional attachment to domains lowers your chance of making a sale.
I used to live in a co-op with Corwin (the CEO/CTO). The main thing I remember about him was that he was really into kite surfing.

He was also scary smart and about as good of a mechanical engineer PhD as I have ever met.

Him being the CEO/CTO of makani makes a whole lot of sense.

Good luck, makani!
Fair enough. But that's also one of the reasons we're successful, because we make stats/analytics easy to understand. GA is a very powerful piece of software but it also has a fairly steep learning curve. A lot of our users are ex-GA users who stopped using GA because they just didn't get it.

We have plenty of users who use both Clicky and GA together though. Clicky does "most" of what people need and they like the real time aspect, but when they really need to dig deep into complex analysis, that's when they hit up GA.
What Windows Phone App users want
If you use ant and it doesn't drive you crazy, it may be that your project just has very simple needs. If you read through the tutorial (http://github.com/technomancy/leiningen/blob/master/TUTORIAL...) and don't find anything in there you need then that's great; you should consider yourself lucky.

The main thing you miss out on with ant is dependencies. Not only does Leiningen make it easy to depend upon other libraries, it also makes it easy to publish your library so others can depend on it. It's an ecosystem thing.

If that's not a big deal for you then the only advantage Leiningen could offer would be having one fewer violation of Greenspun's Tenth law in your life.
It's interesting to see the divide between the haves (iPhone/Google app users) and the have nots (Windows Phone users) when it comes to app selections. Decent place to look over and choose which apps have a decent market and either build or port them over.
The pancake paradox
This single-item subscription business model has really been taking off lately, so I'd really encourage people who can carve out their own unique niche to try it. i.e. Ask yourself what niche market you could possibly service with a well-designed subscription-based service. So maybe it's just me, but these one-item subscription services really seem to be popping up everywhere lately...

Blacksocks.com was one of the originals and has been doing this for a decade, Netflix does it for movies, there's ShoeDazzle that girls use for shoes, InkFlip for ink cartridges, and Manpacks proves it again with a great execution (and that list goes on). To be honest I feel like this is a guaranteed win if you find a good niche that you know well and (of course) can execute well.
Ask HN: How much interest needed before idea is valid?
Hello friends,

Curious to know how much interest or evidence of customer interest is needed before an idea is valid. Kind of a silly question I know, but here's the situation.

I'm researching a product that already exists and serves a market. It is software thats given away free by big companies as a complimentary service to help their customers. Now here's the opportunity: I've found people interested in using the same software, but do not want to pay the fees associated with using the big companies main services. I could develop the software and charge for it, helping people save money by avoiding the big company's costs and getting what they want.

In my research, I've found at least 14 forum posts (however, some of which are a year old) from different forums, looking for the same kind of software solution. Nobody has produced a solution to handle this exact problem aside from the big companies. But here's the tricky part: the technology already exists in other 3rd party products, just simply not directed as this particular market. It is simply a matter of adapting existing products to fit the market.

There are a couple other factors that limit immediate growth; for example, the software fits extremely well into complimenting the big companies' main offering. Since I'm not interested in competing with their main product, I cannot offer the convenience or security that their integrated systems do. That means there are switching costs. But for now, I probably shouldn't be concerned about this.

So anyway, I've got 14 forum posts and I assume there are more out there that I've yet to find. Is the idea validated yet, or do I need to find more people asking for the same thing? I am currently trying to get into IM / skype contact with some of these customers to gather more information. Would it be a bad idea to dry test this as well? My concern is that it is fairly low barrier, and any hope of success requires a first mover with fast execution. A dry test may only alert others. I'm usually not paranoid about keeping ideas secret; but this software has been around for at least 4 years, its just that nobody has created a 3rd party offering for it (and maybe for good reason).

Appreciate your help and comments. Thanks
The main point I'm trying to make is that one _can_ memorize something and not understand what it means. And one can understand something without having memorized it verbatim. If you accept this, then it follows that memorization and understanding are orthogonal.

Ergo, your teacher's assignment was stupid because you can go through the motions without actually taking advantage of the opportunity. QED.

By that measure, you might as well drop out.

Snark (and your painfully affected over-use of "orthogonal") aside, the two aren't orthogonal if memorization aids in understanding, and understanding aids in memorization, and both aid in long-term recollection.