skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Perhaps I've simply mis-understood you - I'd be pleased to discover that's the case. However, when you said:

> Using the "not about startups, not about .." argument
> for the NYT post about Israel, but not for the hugely
> popular Economist post about America illustrates your
> own bias

... it sounds a lot like you think I'm biased because one article is about Israel and the other is about America. That reading makes it sound like you think I'm biased against Israel and in favor of America, and so it is you that has brought up the question of nationalities and allegiances. That accusation is unjust - hence my reply.

If this was not your intention then I'm pleased, although that does confuse me as to what bias you thought you saw.

As to the suitability of either article for HN - both should be of interest to any intelligent person who cares about the real world, and both are marginal as to being of relevance to "Hacker News." I personally have more chance of thinking about and understanding the justice system than I have of understanding the specifics of a particular religion, even though I am interested in and following that issue as best I can. My reading of each article leaves me thinking that the question of the law and prisoners is more open to hacking than the interaction between a specific religion and the politics of the state that is so tightly tied to them.

You may think that's absurd, and I respect that opinion while, obviously, disagreeing with it.

And I will say no more on the subject.
The Basics of Social Media R.O.I.
Only in the same way that carmakers would find another way to make money if suddenly everybody stopped buying nonfree cars — they would stop making their unprofitable product and start making, I don't know, tractors or something. For people who like cars, this is not really a good situation.
I think minor forms of hazing can play an important role in teams. It is important to know how your teammates, coworkers, etc, will react when the shit hits the fan, and artificially inducing a similar situation can be a useful indicator. This can go too far, certainly, but lets not discount it completely offhand.
You know the problem with Google Hiring. I don't think Im actually smart enough or my resume isn't pumped enough to even consider looking at them...
The web stuff gets all the press, but there are other companies like Palantir that may be more suited for your skills and background:

http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/25/palantir-the-next-billion-d...

http://www.palantir.com/

Investment banks also like physicists and computer scientists for their quant trading work.

http://www.wilmott.com/
Polyvore is hiring! Check out our website at www.polyvore.com. Our team consists of people who led development of Yahoo Pipes and Google Maps. We offer competitive salaries; a great benefits package and a fun collaborative work environment.

please send resumes to jobs@polyvore.com.
Never Mind the Valley: Here's Toronto
Glad to hear it - I'm a co-founder over there. Let me know if you need anything. :)
Going one step further, I've preferred to see candidates with active open-source work available, and better yet, and active github account.

With a github account, you can see how someone interacts with projects, how they build their code (commit by commit), how they submit patches, how they communicate with others about their code, etc. This is all really important stuff for any developer working on a team.

If you don't see their code, and you don't have some live-coding exercises during your interview, how do you know if they can code or not?
Which is true for Vim as well, using the :e scp://host.com/path/to/file :)
How Not to Run a Business - Get Acquired, Lay Everyone Off
Startup Incubator
I participated in graduation for Spring session last night, & introductions for Fall session (San Diego location only) start tonight. Highly recommended, The Founder Institute experience surrounded me with terrific people. Show me your friends, I’ll show you your future. We became a team forged in fire giving each other the tools and time necessary to accelerate our own passionate ventures. Disclaimer: This start-up boot camp is not for the faint of heart.
Ask HN: What startup are you working on?
I'd like to see what everyone here is working on, but HN doesn't have a directory of its users' startups (which would be sweet, by the way).

Please post a comment with a link to your startup and add one or two brief sentences describing it and what problem(s) it solves for your customers.
I expect most responses here will be pretty negative, and I honestly can't defend his position because our politics differ so greatly (and his stance spins directly out of those philosophical roots). Nor can I forgive his personal attitude and general arrogance over the years, although it has softened significantly of late.

But I'll give the man a grudging amount of respect: he hasn't budged one inch on his position toward "freedom to tinker" as it relates to software in the entire time I've been aware of his work. And, more than that, he walks the walk; he won't urge anyone to do something or take on a position that he's not willing to jump into wholeheartedly himself.

He's a fundamentalist, but any successful movement needs people with "clarity of purpose". He has it in spades, allowing many of the rest of us to be rather more pragmatic.
You might want to read question 4, where his answer says the exact opposite of what you are claiming, and points to this article for further information:

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html
Nice idea. There is also a GistDoIt: http://www.gistdoit.com/about
Here's an article in which he does so:

http://lesswrong.com/lw/he/knowing_about_biases_can_hurt_peo...

This is also relevant:

http://lesswrong.com/lw/km/motivated_stopping_and_motivated_...

Both articles are an interesting read, and it's sobering when you catch yourself doing the things they describe.
Some good stuff here. I'm speaking on a little bit.
Companies downloading the recent facebook torrent data
Google Blocked in Mainland China
That's completely wrong. You're fundamentally misunderstanding what the free software movement is about. Ultimately it's a sort of grassroots consumer protection movement, not a bunch of hippies trying to abolish money.

Stallman believes that you should vote with your feet and avoid using non-free software, and that if we all did this for everything there would be no space for non-free software in the market.

That doesn't mean that you can't sell software. The FSF has always sold copies of their software (I know because I've bought some). All of their licenses allow you to sell software, they consider any license that doesn't allow this to be non-free.
This is slightly off topic, but I am an undergraduate student learning some of the subjects you mentioned in the parenthesis, and the curriculum/resources at my school are inadequate. Would you be open to a few questions? Please shoot me an email at loganfrederick@gmail.com!
One of the best things about vim for me is (for example) the command cib. This deletes everything from your cursor forward to the first "(", and everything after to the first ")", then places you in insert mode. How do you do that in your editor? I'm guessing you use your mouse to select all this stuff and hit backspace, which is a bunch slower.

Moreover, the command cib itself is built from composeable parts - c (not sure what the mnemonic for this is but its delete then enter insert mode), i (inner), b (block of parens). There are several commands besides c - d (delete), < (left indent), = (auto indent), etc. And these compose with any motion, eg gg (goto line 1), G (goto end), w (next word), etc.

So you have all these powerful ways to jump around the file, and you can combine them with all these powerful ways to manipulate the file. And this is just one of the really nice things about vim. The "." (repeat last command) is something I haven't found in any other text editor, and was the main reason I got hooked on vim.
There are some examples to help you start.
Launched my startup into beta - wish me luck
Daniel Ellsberg on the Limits of Knowledge
I imagine startups (especially when you're watching your money shrinking every day) can induce desperation, and when you're desperate, working crazy hours seems logical. You feel like the world is closing in around you... you have to do something
San Francisco, CA
Square
We're making it easy for anyone to accept card payments anywhere.
We're backed by a pretty ridiculous group of angels (http://twitter.com/Square/angels/members) and Khosla Ventures.
Check out http://squareup.com/jobs
Stallman is like a goalpost. He's as far over to one side as you can be. We need people like him since we all tend to measure our views and beliefs in reference to others.

I just wouldn't want to hang out with the guy. I say "Linux" and buy proprietary software. I'm sure he wouldn't want to hang with me either, but I do respect him.
Code samples are informative to hiring managers for a few reasons:

1. They immediately weed out the people who apply to a hundred jobs at once without actually considering the position.

2. It tells managers if the applicant understands the job. If the job is for an algorithm heavy position, does the code sample reflect knowledge in that arena or did they send a half-assed fizzbuzz implementation?

3. It gives some insight into taste. If a job applicant submits code that looks like crap it speaks to the quality of code you can expect to see from them. On the flip side, I've also seen beautiful code submitted from someone I didn't have in my top 5 list of people to talk to and it ended up getting them a job.

In the end, you shouldn't be offended by the request. It's not uncommon to get over 200 responses for a job opening, most of those coming from people who haven't really read it. It's a nice way to filter out bad submissions without resorting to using terrible HR software that analyzes resumes for keywords.
Ballmer - "Nobody is sleeping at the switch"
Right! You can specify even multiple inputs and clone them - helps while you need to modify/test a code snippet.
I agree with everything eventhough wrote. I normally use gmap-pedometer and the number one issue keeping me from using your app was 1) on eventhough's list: I need the route to stick to the roads unless I choose otherwise.

Other than that, great work.
In Australia, we have one of the cheapest electricity prices in the world. Wholesale(national pool price) is about USD 65 per MWh + Network charges.

But Solar PV electricity is 1/3 cheaper than the Retail price of electricity WITHOUT ANY SUBSIDIES.

The current Peak Retail price (Midday - 8.00pm)is circa USD 0.29 kWh (Aust$0.32kWh) and the 'real' unsubsidised cost of solar PV is about Aust $0.21 kWh.

With the current subsidies the price is NEGATIVE $Aust 0.50 kWh (USD -0.45)

Yes, we get paid to produce through grants and a Feed in Tariff
I think it is actually the opposite of that.

> You have a choice between deserving a reward and not getting a material reward, and getting one but not deserving it.

I think that RMS sees our current society as intrinsically flawed with regard to how it is that we reward people for their good and hard work (and the behavior patterns associated with that work). It is not that he lives in a world where no one has to make any money.

He is a tremendous hacker and has analyzed the system. He has come to the conclusion that the system in which we live is flawed. The way that you (generally) make money is by hurting other people.

Free software is based on the idea that we should change what behavior we reward. The idea being that proprietary software inhibits freedom of a computer literate (programming literate) person. We should not reward this behavior.

'Making money is evil' is a tremendous oversimplification of the philosophy. If everyone adopted the free software maxim of not using proprietary software, it would be inevitable that society would become extremely computer literate, and/or we would develop a way of compensating people for working on free software projects.

This might be putting the cart before the horse, however.
What is really needed is a way to reward people handsomely for working on free software projects. Then it would slowly become a norm to have access to the source code, and society (maybe) follow.
Thanks for the source.
The BEGIN { subtype ... } code is just pure perl/Moose. So its possible for the MooseX::Declare developers to add some extra sugar there.
You're not a bad person for wanting that. If your argument is that he is insulting you, and that is wrong, then I agree with you.

My point was that people should only expect to make money by doing something other people are willing to pay for, whether they love it or hate it, and whether it is hard or easy as hell. It seemed like you were saying programmers deserve to make money just because they work hard.
I am glad I have a freedom to vote with my wallet and buy software I like.
Apple job listing hints at 'revolutionary' new Mac OS X 10.7 feature
I agree 100%. This was useful for me to both learn a little bit of python and to learn a little bit of how tracert works. Great post.
I particularly want to get involved with any developers or companies in the Boston area that specialize in libraries. I am particularly keen on academic libraries as I think it's a great space. They need great developers (existing software sucks) and are willing to pay good money for their work.

I have 4 years experience working in Digital Library Services where I write services and web apps that interact with integrated library systems. I generally use PHP, MySQL, Drupal, and jQuery for work (this is the leading academic library web stack), but I'm trying to ween myself toward RoR and other Ruby frameworks. I also have experience with Java, C, Scheme, and ASM (in that order) from my CS studies. I've started working on a RoR project to help manage EZProxy, which is an existing, near-ubiquitous proxy service for academic libraries to offer off-campus access to licensed content, that I hope to turn into a SaaS business in the near future.

Website: http://bricestacey.com
good article.. to many entrepreneurs want to gauge success based on money raised.
Why the editorializing of the headline?

Though this article is shy on the details, it doesn't sound like the business was anywhere near profitable and people may have lost their jobs due to bankruptcy if not acquisition.
That's amazing. I wish I'd known about that sooner.
This is pretty normal (although not common, per se) and is generally a good thing. Good employers want to confirm what they see on a resume, because there's so much fluff out there. There are multiple ways of doing this: coding tests, open source, code samples, etc, and it's just a matter of personal preference of the hiring manager.

You have to see as a benefit to you (assuming you're competent), because:

1) You are much less likely to work with an idiot (most of them won't even submit a code sample, or it will be so bad it
will be rejected), and

2) Since they can see the level of quality of your work, landing the job and negotiating a higher salary will be easier than just going on your resume alone, which everyone has

For awhile I was always unsure of what to send as a coding sample since most of the code I work was either for my day job or for contracting. I didn't feel comfortable "making up" a purpose for code. If that's you, you can try answering a public coding challenge and submitting it to the employer, like this one http://dotspots.com/jobs/challenges/
We use CloudKick to monitor some of our servers and it is just completely awesome. It's way easier than monitoring a bunch of servers with htop and much quick than trying to roll your own solution.
No, I'm simply stating that I really like what they're doing with Perl 6 so far. I'm excited by the new grammar system immensely.

It's clear that doing it in an older syntax is clearly less elegant. However, it's very impressive though that the back ports of Perl 6 features to Perl 5 are proceeding relatively nicely though. The work on Perl 6 has definitely been a boon to 5.
Hm, let me clarify, I meant to say "either pay or even pay a premium". So yes, they are paying less but they are still paying for a functionality that could, in this particular case, for the most part also be fulfilled by the more versatile iPad. I wonder where the thin line is at which people will say "thank god, now I can pack all my gadgets into one device" instead of "X is best for x, Y for y, Z for z". Clumsy English, I realize, but I'm too tired now to try again... In any case, I still have a Sony PRS 700, expensively imported to Germany about a year ago, and can't decide whether I'll keep it around now that I have the iPad or sell it at a big loss (given my import costs and the iPad craze) on ebay.
Our fees are very reasonable for what we provide:
1. A viral fundraising format that significantly increases donations.
2. One-on-one help to market fundraisers. This is something charities typically pay consultants $100+ per hour to do.
3. All the standard donation processing and reporting that the other guys do.

We're the only fundraising website to do step up and do this. Online fundraising is begging for innovation and causes need more help than ever raising money.

The services that provide comparable marketing support typically charge much more. The donation websites that provide only a profile page and basic payment processing average 7-8% or more.

Professional fundraising consultants hired by most major charities charge much, much more.

MyDunkTank provides a great deal of support at a very reasonable cost.
The "A Bit More" Button
Stallman believes that you should vote with your feet and avoid using non-free software, and that if we all did this for everything there would be no space for non-free software in the market.

And this falls under the mantle of "consumer protection" how? Maybe a world with no non-free software would be better for me personally, or maybe it wouldn't (I think it probably wouldn't), but trying to create a world in which a particular product category doesn't exist doesn't exist isn't consumer protection.

[Silly counterexamples include: flamethrowing baby-cribs. Fine, abolishing flamethrowing baby cribs does count as consumer protection.]
"Where there's muck there's brass."
Who is the other goalpost? Are they equally necessary?
He must mean 'nobody other than me...'.
I've gotten scala to work on the simulator and on a nexus one. It was an enormously painful process, with many sets of contradictory and outdated walkthroughs on the net and clearly very little people actually getting this to work.
Yes, but people buy nonfree cars, and carmakers stay in business, precisely because people like cars. In the same way I think that proprietary software will continue to be lucrative because in many cases people prefer it to free software, regardless what RMS thinks.

I just don't think it's valid to say that carmakers should continue to be able to profit making cars in a world where nobody wants them simply because its hard work that they like.
Google over IPv6: Access Google services over IPv6
And do a few pushups!
I read all of his comments in a Dwight Schrute voice.
He got less than a quarter of that from MacArthur (http://tech.mit.edu/V110/N30/rms.30n.html) and not quite a million from Takeda either (http://tech.mit.edu/V121/N59/59stallman.59n.html).
This is what I get: http://imgur.com/dbLty.png

Opera on Ubuntu
If you read #30 it wouldn't matter.
thanks for the tip on what to submit. I ended-up giving a small app I had done for a client. But, this may be better way to do it.
Every San Diego and SoCal hacker should check out the Founder Institute! There is an introduction for the fall session tonight led by Adeo Ressi:

Date:
Thursday, July 29, 2010 at 6:00 PM (PT)

Location:
Cooley Godward Kronish LLP.;
4401 Eastgate Mall;
San Diego, CA 92121-1909

It was great to get to know you through the SD Founder Institute, Bill.
If the market changed overnight so that nobody wanted to buy non-free cars, which for the sake of argument we'll define here as cars where the full schematics are under a free license like the GPL. Nothing would really change.

The main effort of making a car is still making the car. Just because you can download recipes or a CAD drawing of a car chefs or car makers aren't going to go out of business. They provide a valuable service that people want to buy.

Similarly, programs aren't going to write themselves. There's always going to be demand for skilled programmers, just like there's demand for skilled carpenters.
I've just personally known so many professional programmers who grew up in a barely-middle-class household. Myself included. (Not that one more anecdote is needed, but I remember getting a Commodore computer one Christmas, and getting a hard drive the next Christmas, and the whole thing was hooked up to an old black and white TV.)

Also, I've worked with some good programmers who learned to program in college. Yes, the competition is tough, but that's because programmers tend to be smart, not because they've been programming since they were 8, necessarily.

The premise of the article just completely
Urbandictionary! A palpable hit! I retire from the field of combat...
The company was sold to Quinstreet, a publicly traded lead gen company. http://paidcontent.org/article/419-quinstreet-follows-up-ins...

According to link above, it follows the acquisition of Insure.com for 16million and PaidContent suggests that this sale may be for more money. So you're right that we don't know but it doesn't sound like a firesale situation, especially since the value is that domain.
One-on-one help to market fundraisers. This is something charities typically pay consultants $100+ per hour to do.

Do you provide one-on-one help because it's a necessary part of your business model? Or do you do it because you currently have very few customers?

Do you plan to scale your one-on-one help? If your customer base suddenly expanded by a factor of twenty, would you say "Holy crap! We need to immediately hire a lot more people so we can give more one-on-one help to each and every one of our thousands of customers!"?
Counting International Connections on Facebook
That just goes to show that normal English is highly unusual.
If you download the actual research linked from the article then one of the findings was that higher years of experience in the teacher predicted better outcomes in the pupils. So in this case the data supports the union. (Though, if you don't give the new teachers any work then how are they going to get the years of experience?)
This is what I love about Amazon: They know that they can't make "one device to rule them all", so they've simply focused on making Kindle available everywhere. Very often when people talk about Kindle vs. iPad, they actually talk about Kindle (device) vs. Kindle (on iPad).
Not to mention that Scala is explicitly OO, F# is based on Objective Caml, and Clojure owes a lot of its success to the libraries provided by a huge, thriving OO community. OOP is not waning unless you define OOP as the design pathologies imposed by bad OO languages.
I don't want to sound like a jackass, but this thread seemed to get way off topic of technology/entrepreneurship gems and into existential bullshit.

Tip: The three hours it took to read How To Win Friends and Influence People taught me more about running a business than 5 years of school and 8 years of employment.
any particular reason why today?
Netflix delights studios with big checks
Source code is not equivalent to a schematic. Source code is equivalent to schematics, raw materials, free labor and the key to a factory. All you need to do is run it through a compiler and you've got an operational program.