skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"Fuck you" money, basically. The difference between $FU and 2 x $FU is pretty insignificant, so haggling past that point is irrational, but the difference between 10 x $FU and 0 - huge lawyer fees is enormous and the probability of coming up worse than empty way too high. In his position, I'd take a "large" cash (or easily-liquidated) settlement over almost anything available via litigation, even seemingly enormous portions of the company.

Of course, I also don't think Facebook's star is going to exponentially rise over the next three or four years, so I may not be in the majority here.
Certainly would have its benefits for residential issues, though baking cookies for the neighbors becomes a real efficiency challenge at 400 people.
An immediate issue with the article: the author takes issue with the liberal attitude taken by C++ in adding features and then proceeds to state:

Maybe you like [lambdas], maybe you don't, maybe you think
they're God's gift to programming and any language
without them is an infidel. But adding them would be
harmless, anyway.

Well I agree on this point, it seems like a poor argument. You can't just declare a feature harmless if you ignore it. You make lambdas first-class and you end up baking them into libraries. Now you must use them.

Otherwise no issues, but it does feel like the author is advocating C++0x minus heavy template metaprogramming - which is a perfectly fine language in my book. Why not just use that and get on with life?
Python: If x is list, why x += "ha" works, while x = x + "ha" throws exception?
I actually took a weeklong shell course through work where the instructor said not to put whitespace in there.

However, I've never read of any systems that have a problem with whitespace, so I suppose it's just as well to include it.
In my experience at big companies the distractions also involve money and disputes. Many of my distractions are involved with planning and budgeting activities where I continually re-justify the budget for projects I work on. The most common disputes I deal with are territorial. Someone wants to redirect my work or I want to redirect theirs.

As far as Google goes, I don't think the hands-off culture can totally eliminate distractions from turf or budget. I have read that there are steps that must be taken to get a project going beyond a certain stage. And the distractions seem to be related to human nature. Perhaps they have streamlined these distractions to the minimum needed. I'd sure like to know how, and I if was king of my company I'd institute them.
Isn't it a pretty big caveat to exclude people who've "worked for a startup and it's failed", given how large a proportion of startups fail? I mean, sure, if you only consider employees of startups that ended up with large exits, things look a lot rosier than if you look at the whole set of startup employees.
$30,000? Isn't the filing fee around a few hundred dollars . I guess they have some big lawyer fees.

http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/qs/ope/fee2009september1...
I go for a long walk: the inspirations come, plus it's healthier than sitting in a car, and better for the back.
As commented in another thread, it would be ludicrous for Microsoft, Digital Sky Technologies et al. to allow Mr. Ceglia a seat on Facebook's board. They will explore and deploy every legal option to avoid this. It is not so ludicrous for investment bankers to engineer a tax-minimal FU-style lifestyle for Mr. Ceglia by endowing a non-profit for some pet interest of his choice and paying him handsomely.

If Mr. Ceglia truly wants ownership of Facebook, he is going to have to fight for years. If he wants enough money for a private jet, he just might get it. As will his lawyers.

This could be the most lucrative transaction in the history of Craigslist.

And the twist is if Ceglia truly did have this contract with Zuckerberg, it leaves the ConnectU guys in a particular interesting situation (as the Facebook idea was being worked on way before ConnectU).
There is enough money at stake that a legal team could take this on a contingency fee basis. The visibility involved in being on the legal team, coupled with the high probability of some kind of settlement if it dragged on, means that there may be many attorneys who would be willing to prosecute the suit.
>While verses in Proverbs arguably align with the sentiment,

Your wording here suggests that the argument for the sentiment is a weak one. I don't think that is born out. All verses in Proverbs with "rod" in them in NIV.

# Proverbs 10:13
Wisdom is found on the lips of the discerning, but a rod is for the back of him who lacks judgment.

# Proverbs 13:24
He who spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is careful to discipline him.

# Proverbs 14:3
A fool's talk brings a rod to his back, but the lips of the wise protect them.

# Proverbs 22:8
He who sows wickedness reaps trouble, and the rod of his fury will be destroyed.

# Proverbs 22:15
Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline will drive it far from him.

# Proverbs 23:13
Do not withhold discipline from a child; if you punish him with the rod, he will not die.

# Proverbs 23:14
Punish him with the rod and save his soul from death.

# Proverbs 26:3
A whip for the horse, a halter for the donkey, and a rod for the backs of fools!

# Proverbs 29:15
The rod of correction imparts wisdom, but a child left to himself disgraces his mother.
2. Do not remove the cpp preprocessor.

7. One-time declaration/definition of functions.

Aren't these in conflict? A C-style preprocessor is crippled without the header-file model. You'd do better to replace it with some other kind of metaprogramming.
He said he was approached to do it, I consider most things I'm approached with.
Ask HN: Changing Video Online
I am considering taking a job at a video startup. I know many of you are saying yavs ( yet another video startup ), which sounds like a disease, but I really believe that video is a huge market and there will be room for more players.

so the question is, what are video companies doing right, and what are they doing wrong?

Ultimately youtube is turning into a Social VDN with some search, but Amazon, Netflix, Vimeo, and Hulu all have found niches' but is video being shared well?

How do you want to consume your video on apple tv, xbox, ps3, google tv, and maybe a roku?

If you have liked something like Dr. Horrible's sing along blog, when would you pull the trigger to pay for that video? Would you subscribe to something?
Hi Sharel,

I was actually referring to my biggest blog, http://programmingzen.com.
It sounds like they want to control something that works so they can claim credit, or at least reap the rewards. I went through this a couple years ago. It's painful.

I worked on a system that we had deployed and that was working. A competing group, highly process oriented, who were was still generating requirements paperwork, but not a single line of code. Their objective was to take over our project. They played mean politics. Eventually they took charge.
>If there is such nonblank text then for [most unices] this group consists of precisely one argument, as in the example above where argi consists of the single argument "-a -b".

Interesting. This seems pretty unintuitive, I would expect the "-a", "-b" behaviour. (I recognise that this would be more complicated to implement and make it impossible to pass an argument with spaces.) It seems like it could easily cause problems especially if you use `env` to handle paths. But I don't think I've ever run afoul of this.
Check 'man ssh' for escape characters, including for how to terminate an SSH session when the remote is not responding. Check 'man sshd' for the AUTHORIZED_KEYS FILE FORMAT section. I call particular attention to the "command='command'" option, which allows you to set up an SSH key in such a way that it can only be used to run a particular command. Of course the key is only as secure as the command, but that's a great start. I use it for when I want to cron a job where one server has to talk to another to do something as some privileged user, and of course can't enter a password then, but I don't want the key to grant full login privs as that user.
I think about patents as options on lawsuits. A 20-50k patent gives you the option of a ~1-5 million dollar lawsuit(s).

As you noted there are also concerns about time. It takes years to get the option and then years to exercise it.
>b) If the system worked, innocent parents who provided a loving and safe home for their children would not have been treated like criminals.

Your statements (a) and (c) seem sound to me. (b) and possibly (d) is a necessary part of the system. If guilt can not be ascertained without investigation then practically some innocent people will be treated like criminals by being investigated. (d) may be a necessary part of such investigation depending on the allegations.

That said in the OP's case I don't think (d) should have happened and I'm concerned that the investigators could have effectively opened the door to improper sexual activity by asking the children questions like "did an adult touch you between your legs" or something that would lead the child to see this as a forbidden fruit that they had previously not regarded but now desired to explore.
Good intent doesn't always end up with good result. Maybe this guy doesn't want Facebook to die, but without Zuck, the company culture, the engineers will flee away rapidly. It will never be a good change to hand a tech company to a "wood fuel salesman".
Actually, you CAN play around. If you got a compiler error message is because you probably typed something wrong.

And at later levels the tutorial asks you to make your own commands, giving spoilers if needed, so it's not all that bad.
Depends on what you're measuring and the distribution of it through your population. For example, most people have greater than the average number of feet.
Beta testing for the same website (operated by a huge parent company) he uses to peddle questionable pictures of underage girls while giving threats of bodily harm if those pictures are removed is completely normal?

Sorry that's not normal where I come from.
Practical Visual 3D Pedagogy for Internet Protocol Packet Header Control Fields
if you want to embed a database in a mobile device that can replicate with a the server, couch is a good fit.
Normally I would only look at the headers if there was a problem with the request.
Never did - never will. Incidentally, after such scam offers cam our way, China Mobile and China Unicom cracked down hard on 'sms spammers'. Folks whose services were suspended (for days to months)included some of the biggest portals in the PRC.
Ask HN: Is Posterous too Ambitious (specifically: Flickr)
I know there's been some discussion regarding Posterous and their recent aggressive user acquisition strategy. I'm not knocking them on trying to get converts from other blogging platforms but Flickr? That seems a tad bit TOO ambitious.

http://blog.posterous.com/turn-a-flickr-into-a-flame-move-your-photos-t

What do you guys think?
Co-routines in Haskell
Doesn't John Simpson Look Familiar?
I code all day - well, so long as I'm not on HN :)

As long as you don't believe that coding is work, you can do so much of it. Just find a project or a problem that you really enjoy working on and hack on it.
Inside WebM Technology: VP8 Intra and Inter Prediction
Well, if we're down to the portion of HFT/speculation that's extracting gains rather than contributing to the economy, we've made it pretty far.

As far as robots running the stock market -- I don't know. Frankly, I'm inclined to be awfully conservative about the stock market at present. If you told me we were going backwards 5 years in technology and there'd be way less money made on the stock market, I'd probably be ok with it, for a few reasons.

1) Frankly, I'd rather be conservative on cutting edge approaches to stock pricing for a little bit.

2) To my mind, the stock market doesn't exist to enrich participants, it exists to efficiently distribute capital. Enriching participants is good motivation, but it shouldn't be legalized gambling and game playing. If an unreasonable share of that capital is going to the console cowboys rather than being distributed to companies and investors (not traders), then something's wrong there. I'm not sure if we're at that point but I don't like the trend.

3) As I said upthread, I don't understand the gains for the economy as a whole of smoothing out the price curve in the sub-second range. I really don't. Anybody who's going to spend a lot of money on something takes more than a second to make up their mind, right? They probably had to get it budgeted and everything. So the subsecond trading on, say, commodities seems to me to be at the expense of actual purchasers of commodities. The gains have to come from somewhere, right?

In general, I'd settle for slower, dumber and less profitable day traders if the upshot is less risk to the system, greater portions of investment gains going to grandma and a more deliberately moving stock market. I'd be fine with that state of affairs, despite my general drive towards futurism on anything else.
Fair point, but I suspect the "Need an idea"-types (to generalise) are looking for anything that might have a faint hope of success. If you have the judgement/sense to discount ideas for the reasons you listed, I doubt you're on HN begging for ideas.
I'm not entirely certain that Holga is a 35mm lens on a 6x6 film transport, but it is plausible. I have never looked to closely at a Holga -- it's not my preferred tool.

I suspect that the chromatic and anastigmatic aberration that are characteristic of a Holga are a result of a single element meniscus lens, which is well known for having these problems. I've heard that the lens is also made out of plastic, which transmits lights differently from glass. All that combined with poor quality control at the Holga plant means that every Holga is special.

Meniscus lenses are simple enough to manufacture, which means that they can probably be made to vignette on a full-frame or crop sensor.
This shows a very poor understanding of NoSql options.
Thanks for this one Paul. After reading this I just had to draw this one - http://scrivle.com/2010/07/22/ideas-in-the-shower/
Common interest housing. A group of hackers together to inspire one another, maintain whatever tools and support everyone needs for their projects, and generally have a kickass time.
It delivers justice.

(if you've been taught to turn the other cheek you will not see why, but if you've been taught another way, you will. This is cultural and fundamental)
This is what I'm getting at. I don't quite understand his implementation, but the core problem is well articulated here.

Good notation is a prequisite to clear thinking. The kinds of notation we have available to use is severely limited by the medium we write software in.
Its really dangerous these days. a personal experience: someone quoted something i said in the college newspaper without my permission and then i find out a month later. to make the matter worse, the college newspaper has a copy of every article written published on the internet.

even today, when i google my name, i still see that article pop up. im getting around to issuing them a legal notice but its annoying... be warned
Google Images gets a new redesign
i have found that if i want to be a designer, it takes a few weeks to get thinking about design, about noticing good design and bad design everywhere and the imitating it in my work. however, if i want to think about raising money, or engineering the same is also true.

so it may be possible for people to wear many hats, but maybe it's best if you only where one hat a month.
By developers for developers does not always work. In my opinion it mostly fails when it comes to IDEs (with some notable exceptions).
http://isitnormal.com - Niche Q&A site that's been around for a while. Recently added a lot of cool features and it hasn't gotten much press in a long time.
smart pointers would also do it.
Yes, sorry.

I should have said: people who have never worked for a startup that has succeeded, or for a startup that has failed, but has provided a valuable enough experience to justify working there.
Well, he did have the foresight to invest a mere $1000 in a potentially worthless venture, but more surprisingly, he had the patience to hang on to it. It would make for a rather infamous turn of events either way.
That's a widespread problem, and I don't see how tenure affects it. The problem there is that we're no longer trying to win a cold war with the USSR, and there's no domestic demand for such things. People don't want to go to the stars. They want to gossip on Twitter.
Skype is available and works great on the iPad -- but Apple hasn't enabled multitasking there yet. "Fall", they say.
4chan Hackers Attack Gawker Again
I think the connection to tenure is obvious. Instead of a very select few people getting a vast reward for engaging with the field, a less select few people will get a less significant reward. More people will have the opportunity to contribute, and, because the stakes will be lower, it will be less risky for academia to hire and thus easier for people to switch between industry and academia.
When to go get more users vs improving the product?
The product I'm building is pretty new, and we're working on improving it everyday. However, it's very usable and we already have a few thousand users who discovered our product themselves or via some selective tweeting. We're getting good feedback from them, which is helping us prioritize things we already know we wanted to do. We're putting off promoting the product in favor of improving what we have and adding those features. It's helping build quality and scale, which are both great.

What I don't have a good feel for, though, is when to really start marketing this thing. There will always be bugs to fix, more features to implement and scaling issues to worry about, so "when you're feature complete" isn't a good answer.

I suspect the right answer has something to do with being happy with quality and confident in the ability to scale, but I can't really define what the criteria must be. Obviously, there's the business side too. We won't really be able to gauge demand/reaction unless we market this, but doing it too soon is going to backfire.

What would make your list of things to do before making a marketing push for a newly developed product?
Regarding the logins, have you tried 1Password? If you're using 1Password on a computer and sync with 1Password with your iPad, it will save you a -ton- of headaches trying to log into sites on an iPad.
> if they give up their iPhones so easily.

It's a choice between their jobs at Microsoft and their phones. I'd keep the phone.
Why would a Harvard student give up 50%+ of ownership for a mere $1000?
I'd spend a month making an iPhone app... :/
Playing Devil's Advocate: I would say that sometimes you have to bring unpleasant thoughts (like fund raising) into the top of your mind. Because if you don't do it now, then it becomes an even bigger problem later on.
maybe port an old adventure-esq style game like zork (call it bork).
Its quite common where I work (Australia) for people to carry two phones: a work-supplied phone (often a Blackberry or cheap Nokia) and a personal phone (often an iPhone).
The problem with C++ isn't so much that it's compatible with C or that you shouldn't pay for any features that you shouldn't use -- it's that they used the same dumb linker as C and so most advanced features are grossly limited and ended up as a twisty maze of text manipulation and includes.
For what its worth, my lawyer charges $2000, $5000 for a full, and $3000 to convert a provisional to a full. Not the kind of money I would find in my couch cushions, but not 30k either.

He's a good guy. I worked with him when he was at Greenberg Traurig and I was at Yahoo.

He is now captain of his own ship without biglaw overhead.

For a startup that can afford it, patents and IP in general can be a good investment.
The latter problem has very little to do with tenure. The latter problem is simply due to the inescapable fact that many people want careers in science while the funding allows for very few relatively badly paid jobs.

That will not be solved if you remove tenure. People will still be badly paid. But now everyone will be badly paid and scared for their entire careers, while before a lucky few could segue in a career of being badly paid but with safe jobs.
My understanding is that you can use Wufoo and PayPal Pro to keep users on your site AND not worry about PCI compliance. Seems too good to be true. Am I misunderstanding this page?

http://wufoo.com/2009/10/08/say-hello-to-paypal-payments-pro...
Yeah, taking credit is definitely a big part of it, but it's more than that. By simply doing what we do we keep making other groups in the company look horrible. I don't think we're all-stars, but in big corporations it seems that just doing your job with a results minded attitude easily sets you above the rest.

Also, don't think we anti-process :) I'm a stickler for SCM and testing, but we operate in an agile manner. Most projects start out with a 'hey, this would be cool' and then we iterate based on user feedback. Early on code changes can roll out daily, while the new process wants us to bundle our code and hand it to a 'deployment team' who might take 2 weeks to get around to deploying. How this is acceptable is beyond my comprehension, but it might explain why other groups never seem to deliver anything (or put 6 months on any timeline).

I told my boss today that if this goes through that it will likely destroy what makes us so successful and he agreed. I'll just look at it as motivation to work harder on my own ideas and maybe once and for all escape ;)
Plus, look at computers. They have almost never regressed, because they are a tool like phones. While select few (myself occasionally included) will always seek old-fashioned simplicity, not only is that rarely the overall trend but it almost never applies to information-age hardware. I like having stupid-simple hand and power tools, for example, but you will rarely catch me asking to have features removed from my computer. I suspect this is tied to the fact that actual physical tools have one job and one job only, whereas a computer/phone/etc is a multi-tool.

There is the netbook trend, and that whole minimalist trend might hit cell phones some time. But notice netbooks are rarely any 'stupider' than a full blown computer- they are just smaller, a bit slower, and cheaper. Yet, a modern netbook will still blow a 8-10 year old computer out of the water.
Identicon5 – Identicons using HTML5 Canvas & JQuery
That's no longer true; the linker has been massively extended to support templates at this point. (Otherwise every file that instantiated a particular template would result in all the code for that template being duplicated in the final executable. This actually used to happen in older C++ compilers.)
[Discount Jean Shopping Online Store]
Meniscus lenses are simple enough to manufacture, which means that they can probably be made to vignette on a full-frame or crop sensor.

The problem I see is that you still need a -better- meniscus lens in order to get the same quality photo on a smaller film plane.

Maybe this isn't really a factor, but it's certainly one of the reasons why I prefer my Holga over 35mm toy cameras - you can see a bit more in your crummy quality photo. :).
Guess the question is "why?" Is Microsoft trying to re-invent themselves as a phone company? Shouldn't they make sure the phone isn't a flop before doing something like this? Does apple give out iphones? I know Nokia and RIM do (they are phone companies). Giving out 90,000 phones is a chunk of change even for Microsoft. Does MS currently give out phones to everyone? If so then switching to MS phones makes sense.
I don't see anything too wrong with their approach. It's basically:

heads I win, tails I don't lose much.