skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"Dog goggles" - whenever I get feedback that bashes my ideas I think "dog goggles" a million dollar business... Who would have ever said that's a great idea!

Just take a look at the feedback and then move ahead. What was his motivation behind detailing why you would fail? Is he trying to save you the pain of failing? Is he working for or on a similar concept? Is he just a negative person? I just don't get it. My advice is never ask an insider about doing or making something different. It's so easy "shit all over an idea" and even site facts and figures but does the guy really know that your concept will fail before you try it? When I worked for a newspaper - I tried to tell the powers that be - that they should consider changing the way we did things but the current facts and figures told them I was wrong.
Thanks for the quick info. I will RTFM more on "Founders at Work".
Nice to learn that. I wonder whether it would be possible to distinguish between polite comments and sincere ones. I think so, but I would like to test.
Do you think it's possible to think a situation is worse than it is? If so, realism and pessimism would be different things.
I'm not assuming that. I assume they lease a lot of their space like everyone else.
And they complain that journalism is a dying profession.
If someone starts learning a foreign language at 7th grade something is wrong I think.

Question: Is this the general case for US Education?
I was thinking executive bankers and chief policy makers before you mentioned officers.

Value = Number of Active Users X the Depth of their Pockets
How to fix a team
I've experienced this a little bit too.

The richer you are, the bigger the loopholes get. When you get really rich, you can do offshore accounting and all kinds of big-ticket tax-dodging that results in you paying less taxes as a percentage of your income than the person who makes your lattes.

I'm actually in favor of a flat tax (maybe trailing off to zero at the extreme low end of the scale) with absolutely no loopholes. Everyone pays X percent on all income, period. You might have a few deductions, but they would be for things like healthcare, child care, and education and would be strictly monitored.

That would actually raise taxes on the rich dramatically.
Choosing New York over San Francisco
Kindle Development Kit finally births two games: Shuffled Row and Every Word
Just some general business advice. I know absolutely nothing about the stock photo industry:

1) Critical, i think, to any successful business endeavor, is value creation. The best companies create something tangible, and something of value.

2) It's very hard to compete on price. You cannot build a duplicate product and sell it for cheaper. Consumers might buy a product if it is cheaper from a well established player, but as a startup, you have to also show some value creation in the product.

3) From a layman's POV, here's the problem I see with your idea: you're not really creating anything of significant value. You're taking a niche (stock photos for cheap) that's dominated by some "big" players now (istockphoto), and trying to divide it up into smaller niches.

Your value-add of "well once I have the platform built, I can expand to another niches" doesn't really help the consumer, it only helps you.

4) Presumably, you would have the same content/subject matter of stock photos as istockphoto. They're a big site. What's stopping them from having advertising campaigns, adwords, more marketing etc., attacking your niche? You probably will not be able to outspend them, so how are you going to draw in customers?

5) It's not enough to say, "well we'll give our photographers better margins." In my experience, they're going to have a value-add other than potential income stream - mainly because their current revenue stream is actually real, as yours is well, only tangible. Once you submit to iStockPhoto, can you submit elsewhere (I don't know how this works, really). If someone is making $1 per photo from 10,000 sales at iStockPhoto (and cannot submit anywhere else) they're not going to switch to you even if you offer $10 a photo. Their existing revenue stream, current relationships are worth more.
I would like more info. I am in the position to invest on this scale and the idea of being a landlord is not too scary to me (actually sounds kinda fun in a twisted way). Some questions off the top of my head:

- What attributes constitute a good rental property?

- Is it ever worth it to hire a manager?

- How often do you have to visit the property? I live in SF but I understand being a landlord here is difficult due to renter protection. If I were to buy a property in an outlying area, how often would I need to visit it? I'd also like to take some extended travel in the future. Would being a landlord get in the way of that?

- What else should I be thinking about?

Thanks!
Startup Weekend Lesson Learned #1 - The Pitch | startupSQUARE's blog
Get yourself a partnership deal with Cisco or Juniper UAE. And before you set feet in Abu Dhabi, sell your monitoring services to another government (preferably the U.S. government.) Then enter into a public negotiation with Saudi Arabia.

Hard, I know. But as soon as you sell to the UAE the rest of the Gulf will follow. Wherever Abu Dhabi goes (not Dubai!) the rest go. Dubai is such an anomaly, it's hard to predict your success if you first gain traction there (unless you're targeting South Asia; success in Dubai almost guarantees success in the Indian subcontinent.)

Saudi Arabia is always the first to show interest in a new technology, and the second to last to adopt it. Dubai gets the first regional office. Abu Dhabi buys it first. Kuwait and Qatar watch from afar, and only join in after they negotiate the best deals for themselves, and they're the first to iron out their laws to accommodate this social change (Kuwait, specially, is the most socially progressive country in the region). Bahrain and Oman usually take their time, and along with them comes the Saudi government.

Note: this information is extrapolated from vague familiarity with mobile phone adoption, GPS, broadband, Co-Ed higher education, franchise western food chains, etc.
Comparing Border Counties
I'm reminded of the git bell (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=482133) and git merge fail camera (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1039984).
You fail in academia too, but the floor is different. With a startup, you cease to exist or drop off into an abandonware project. In academia, failure means you get lackluster appointments, little grant money, etc. You kind of stagnate.

I've noticed that smart self-aware people in academia can right this by recognizing that kind of stagnation for what it is, namely failure, and responding by changing course, increasing effort, etc.

The dangerous thing about academia is that failure just looks like mediocrity... mediocrity is failure. This isn't the case in the real world, where mediocrity is just mediocrity and failure is... well... you see them sleeping on the sidewalk.

Your dopamine system is not calibrated this way. So to succeed in academia I think you have to realize that if you're not a star you're sleeping in a gutter and respond to your situation accordingly. Respond to mediocre results the way you would respond to sleeping in the gutter in the "real world."
I agree that journals do not have the quality control they claim to have. I was responding to the larger idea that academia is somehow unique in having such a quality distribution.
HTML5 File API, it seems - https://developer.mozilla.org/en/using_files_from_web_applic...

Looks pretty sweet!
Depends on the school. One that I went to in AZ had a Spanish class in 7th grade, which many people took, whereas another on in IN did not have foreign language classes. High schools usually do.
The Big Think interview (with Jason Fried), take two
Review my startup: Realized
MIT- arguably best engineering curricula, more focus on applicability/hands-on ability than Stanford (supposedly- I have not attended both), and Boston area is prime for start-ups.

Also they have a very strong culture of entrepreneurship with the 100K, E-club, venture mentoring, etc.

As for specific degree combination- as previously commented- it doesn't matter that much imo.
I went to a public elementary school in Sacramento, CA, and in 2nd grade we began basic spanish.
hmmm - I think in a way it is good that the authorities have to prioritize which offenses to concentrate on. I forsee this as having a bunch of 'church ladies' glued to the cameras reporting every little j-walk and hit off a pinchie.
I think we all tend to overestimate the power of people "in the know" to predict what people would like. There was a time when all of the people with "insider knowledge" said that internet search was a shitty business to be in because all you did was send people to other sites, and that even if it weren't, nobody would ever get people to leave Yahoo. Google now has a market cap of $156 billion.

I am not saying that the guy who told you that your idea is bad is entirely wrong. But even if he's right, it may have the germ of something that will grow into something people do want, and you'll never know if you don't try.

So consider his arguments and let that be one mere data point informing the direction your product takes.
Hope this helps.

The service we use (globalnetwatch.com) will log in to our app using credentials we supplied, executes transactions we specify such as loading a specific page or bringing back results from a web service, tests the results(there is numeric data at this spot on the page, etc.) and emails us a daily status. It runs every 15 mins and alerts us immediately if there is an issue. We get to choose how many different locations they test from both within and outside the US.

Pings and page load are just the tip of the iceberg.

That's your competitor.

Best of luck
That's a strong claim, and I'm not aware of any support for it aside from anecdotes.
Denmark's Net-Zero-Energy Home
This study is really just confirming common sense, so I think you're being too harsh here. Obviously sometimes a person can legitimately have had a bad boss previously, but a lot of the time if someone is badmouthing their old boss/roomate/girlfriend it suggests a good chance of them having issues.
US education in regards to foreign language varies widely. I was not presented with the opportunity to take a foreign language until 9th grade (~14 years old), while the district I currently live in offers Spanish education to children age 7.

Edit: This is in Illinois. According to Wikipedia, we have the 7th largest Spanish speaking population in comparison with other states. In my experience, Spanish is the most widely offered secondary language, followed by French. More uncommonly taught languages include Italian and German, and rarer still are Eastern languages such as Japanese. Latin may still be offered in select places, but has been largely phased out.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_in_the_United_States#Cu...
I don't think that's typical. You're dealing with an outlier there, and a case of blatant flat-out corruption. Most union members do not make anything like that.
Very few mothers cannot breastfeed, in the grand scheme of things. The self-righteousness that exists is part of an ongoing effort to turn back 50 years or so of misinformation that existed in North America regarding formula vs. breast milk that caused women to turn away from breastfeeding in droves, mainly under the guise that formula was "better".

Why I agree that the judgments are unwarranted,(in every case) the fact remains that it is scientifically proven that breast milk provides numerous health benefits over formula. If you were fed formula, you have, on average, a higher risk of everything from a childhood cold/flu to asthma to leukemia.

While every mother needs to make the best choice in her particular circumstance, choosing not to breastfeed for the sole sake of some convenience to the mother and/or others is not a responsible choice, in many people's opinions.
If you truly believe that you have a good idea, go for it. Nobody believed in 1976 that normal people would want to use computers. Nobody believed in 2006 that anybody would ever want to use "twttr" in a million years.
Don't lose this oportunity. Fail as soon as possible!
The institution she is condemning is not necessarily responsible for her talent in writing. It is entirely possible to learn facts outside of the modern school system, and many students learn outside of the classroom by pursuing their own interests.

The real issue here is that the modern American school system is not designed to facilitate learning and growth, but rather it is designed to act as a daycare that produces consumer-workers.
One of my favorite quotes: "Who could believe an ant in theory? A giraffe in blueprint? Ten thousand doctors of what's possible could reason half the jungle out of being".

Naysayers could be right according to existing models, what they cannot predict is how things may change. Just because some guy wrote you a message shouldn't be a downer. The two choices you give are not comprehensive. Another choice is to still go ahead with the plan but taking some of his points into account. Giving up before you've tried anything is not very entrepreneurial.
Protip: keep settings in a separate file

Mark the file as excluded from svn/git.

Make a settings.sample file for the project.
This is a topic we should discuss more on HN. Both my wife and myself are currently working on an evening MBA program. People are shocked that we are able to do it at the same time, take classes together, etc. I don't understand, because I find that we end up supporting each other, motivating each other, etc.

Along the same lines, I would definitely love to run a company with my wife one day. Most people I meet are aghast when I suggest running a company with a spouse. Is this idea really that rare?
I bet reading those will develop grit... :)
Suggestion accepted. Now I only I could play a random sound...
I suspect some of this relates to the evolutionarily recent increase in Brest size. If you compare how an ape breast feeds vs a human there is significant advantages to a flat chest.
Schneier and WSJ seem to put an emphasis on the concept of government interest in monitoring its citizens (or subjects in the U.A.E. I guess). The internal motivations for this action may be different. For example, maybe the U.A.E. sees BB as a bit of critical infrastructure that they don't want other countries to be able to monitor.

First article: "The U.A.E. acted after RIM refused to set up a proxy server in the country as required by its 2007 contract with telecom provider Emirates Telecommunications Corp., a majority of which is owned by the government, according to the person familiar with the situation."

Second article: "The U.A.E. wanted RIM to locate servers in the country, where it had legal jurisdiction over them; RIM had offered access to the data of 3,000 clients instead, the person said."
Amusing Ourselves to Death (Huxley vs. Orwell)
Massive Fireworks Experiment [video]
How to contribute to Open Source
He basically shit all over my idea, and explained in a long and detailed email why I would fail.

This exact same thing has preceded every success I've ever had.

In fact, I'd say it's a prerequisite. It you're not getting extreme negative feedback, then your probably not pushing boundaries enough.

I'm not suggesting that this person is right or wrong or that you should abandon common sense, it's just that without knowing more, I would give his feedback the weight it deserves, which is probably very little.

If you can't "stand tall in the face of negative feedback", then what are you doing starting a business? Carry on.
A friend of mine recently wrote a blogpost about this, might be helpful: http://leftontheweb.com/message/Contributing_to_Open_Source :)
I wasn't asking specifically about this situation. I was considering niche markets like P2P. I know the government blocks torrents but I have seen many clients on the Gnutella network that are from the UAE.
All Your Context - You are a product of your times
Because schools are cheap. And I'm not talking inexpensive.
This is a failed attempt at a singleton pattern. The main problem here (there are MANY) is that there is no check to see if a Singleton already exists, meaning that the "Singleton" can be scrapped and replaced with a new object (most likely by accident) at any time.

This code does in fact suck unambiguously.
PragPub Magazine - August 2010
Meant to upvote this. Started learning German in 2nd grade, but that's only because my dad was in the US Army and we were stationed in Germany at the time. Learning a language at that age (and younger) should always be an option for kids as their minds are like sponges at that point. That early exposure always kept me interested in foreign cultures and their languages, too: Japanese, French, and of course, German.

EDIT: Use of simile vs. metaphor for describing the kid brain when it comes to foreign languages. Semantics...
thank you, that's the first thing I thought. "doctors can have multiple patients, OK, so patient->doctor_id right ?"

the way interviewers flip between "real world answer" and "assume X, Y, Z, Q, P, R don't exist answer" drives me batty. Write a union of two sets ? Sure. x.union(y). Oh now its "hypothetical" time, right lets break out the pointers..
8th grade for me in the 80s, and it was quite possible to go through HS without a foreign language at all.
Do you think you yahoo-part involvement in the project made a significant 'bonus' when you've got hired by Yahoo ?
But without continuously increasing GDP we will have deflation and will not meet our national goal of... hey wait a minute... don't our national goals look a lot like standardized tests?

Maybe we were invaded by aliens a long time ago, and this is our prison.
I didn't learn grit from school. I learned that life is pretty easy, and I could do well with very little effort.

Unlearning that lesson in the real world is how I learned grit.
Useful advice I heard as a child: don't judge others on how they treat you, judge them on how they treat other people.

If the guy you are having a business lunch with is extremely nice to you, but an asshole to the waiter, what does that say about how you will be treated after you enter the contract you are discussing?

If the girl you just started dating seems super nice, but hates every person around her for one reason or another, what will she treat you like after 5 years?
Google's Vertical Integration
StackOverflow for photo geeks:

http://photo.stackexchange.com/

Edit: here's a search for questions on stock photos, maybe of interest.

http://photo.stackexchange.com/search?q=stock
Rather than store passwords or sensitive config data in a file I'll usually try to store them in an environment variable. Heroku has a little guide on this: http://docs.heroku.com/config-vars
The author forgot to give instructions on how to safely dispose of these nasty chemicals.
Yes, we need to teach children to recall certain facts and apply various algorithms. The great thing about imagination, though, is that we can dream of a world where we are taught these things without being trained to submit to authority or be swallowed up by an organization.

I think her point is that learning the basics that are taught in primary school hardly necessitates being molded to fit within an industrial-age corporation
Photonic Chips on Silicon will change everything
"Apple has never tried to lock-out their competitors, they've never designed their product strategies for market share."

This statement is absolutely crazy insane.

Of course Apple design their product strategies for market share. EVERYTHING about how the iPhone was delivered to the advertisement to the application model is built specifically for building market share, and locking it in, building a network effect where it replicates even against alternatives. While people like to conveniently pretend that the Apple/AT&T relationship is some sort of anchor around Apple's feet, in reality it is the reason the iPhone shot to dominance so quickly, AT&T going all in on the iPhone, putting tremendous muscle (and nationwide coverage) behind a single device in a manner never before seen. Even Verizon's laggardly response was nowhere near as committed.

The iPod, iTunes, the iPad -- it's all about marketshare and lock in, and it has served Apple quite well, making it the largest most valuable tech company in the world.

I'm finding many of these "of course Android was going to overtake the iPhone" articles extremely curious. 6 months ago there was no "of course". One year ago, a very large portion of the tech industry was singing a very, very different tune, chuckling publicly about the futile efforts of the awkward upstart. While I suppose you need to adapt with the changing reality though, please don't insult everyone by revising the past.
if your mind was literally a sponge, I think you would cease to live.
Gmail has been adding simple, non-novel features like this pretty regularly for years (e.g. signatures with full text styles, undo send email, multiple inboxes on one page). I can't imagine that the bottleneck on rolling these out is developer time, so what is it? Customer research/feedback to find out what features are really needed without bloating?
Interesting - Actually, I built Femtoo.com which can be used for a similar purpose! But I have JUST posted this article about my content extraction web service cQuery.com:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1574214

small world!
Human babies are less well developed than newborns of most other species, so it can be harder for them to figure it out. We have to be born earlier or our heads would be too big.
"It's as if Google, not knowing who is winning the war, is fighting it everywhere, just in case it turns out that's where the true enemy is hiding."

That's a great quote. It seems that once a company becomes undisputed champion of a particular area they redeploy their resources trying to find something else to dominate.

Eg
Microsoft nailed the desktop, then went chasing the Internet and mobile. FAIL

Aol had a good grip on Internet access, then went to become a destination site, or content generator. FAIL

Google dominate search and advertising, now going for mobile, desktop (chrome), social. ONGOING

Facebook own social networking - where is their folly going to be? Fb credits?

Any other examples?
...it's a fitting metaphor. Meh.
How Zendesk makes customer support sexy
It really depends on whether you think his argument is right. If it sounds more or less correct, drop the idea and think up something else. (Of course, if you can't evaluate it for yourself, then you are screwed anyway.)
Very nice! I like the simplicity of it as I've used other services as well like Global Net Watch.

A big deal for us would be having some Asia Pacific locations as that is typically the area with the worst performance for our site and the one we most like to keep a close eye on.

I'd also 2nd the ability to have a nice restful interface that returns some json back to us for some automated testing.

Very nice clean design!
Not necessarily... Umicore in Belgium recovers >100 tonnes of gold (and more of other precious and base metals) from electronics scrap in a clean way (there's residential houses 10m from the factory).

I remember seeing a video in which it was claimed their electronics scrap was richer in gold (by weight I assume) than many gold mine ore.
Android overtakes RIM in sales, now leading U.S. smartphone platform
"Do you think all the people in those countries just have a lot more potential than most Americans?"

Yes, for the above reasons you mentioned.
Pretty clean interface. I understood what the site was about in a fraction of second and I tested a couple of website without any misunderstanding or anything in the design. Congrats on that.

+1 Because my girlfriend like those birds on the top of the page.

This might really be useful to system admins.

My suggestion:

- API (with good documentations!) to test from a specific country

- Use Notifo