skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
If you can build a $100K/year product, why not do that, and then use that money as your runway while you build your five million dollar product?

building a company is /much/ easier if you don't have to worry about where rent is coming from three months from now.
Assembly language and even C definitely aren't scripting languages for creating a home page. ^_^
Anyone? I'd like to know the emacs way to save the expression into a register. Or is there a way to cycle through expressions that were previously repeated?
I like how the advice to succeed at Google involves ignoring (tips 1 and 2) the distracting and fun things that distinguish Google from other companies.
You can do

x = if foo then 'foo' else 'bar' end

in Ruby, if you'd like.
eh, it's been a long time coming. corruption is endemic to the system; shareholders have outsourced management of their companies without providing any supervision. there's really no way that is sustainable.
If you have a good memory, think back to the thick and fast torrents of mockery and scorn dumped upon the names Vista, Wii, and iPad when they were first announced. Even "MacBook Pro", which now seems to be almost passé, got plenty of hate at the time - just one example: http://www.maclife.com/forums/topic/76264/1

When it comes to names, fortune favors the bold unless it has negative connotations.
they say when America gets a cold, the whole world gets the flu.

Sure, the US economy is in pretty bad shape right now. but where else do you suggest we invest? this isn't a localized problem.
Who cares?

Well, as an application developer I care.

As someone who runs a mobile company, do I need to start looking at android, and even other OS?
Seems pretty obvious to me that the American economy as a whole has so much shenanigans going on that investing broadly in it is a bad idea. Is it really that hard to move your money to a foreign currency

The terrifying part is that what you say is true, but America is still the best place to invest. Burying pirate treasure on an uncharted island is actually starting to look good.
Reality of start-ups: if you're a founder and spend all your time coding, you're going to fail. I love coding, so I'd have to have an extremely compelling vision were I to do anything else.
On a serious note, everyone wants their business/product to be a trending topic, next to the water cooler, on twitter, on CNN after the superbowl, but especially on any social website where the activity can be tracked and easily converted.

The social web, the very same sites like Facebook and Twitter that are used by individuals, are utilized [if effectively] in a very different way by businesses and organizations. When done successfully, traffic surges and the brand catches. But even when not done to that degree, companies are able to effectively take advantage of relavent discussion and engage potential customers. If you have a solution, nothing beats talking to people who you know for a fact are facing the problem you solve.

With or without the buzz words, businesses such as my employer are very eager to engage potential customers and be louder on the social web than their competitors. It means potential customers turn into sales easily and cheaply. I think it's smart. But I worry about the future of a social web, where our friends get paid to sponsor a message and recommend products to us. The result would probably be mostly noise. I think noise is a problem as data transfer and data storage becomes so cheap. (I'm starting to get off topic but that's why I believe in the longevity of search. Noise needs to be filtered out.)
In contrast to the always fair and balanced Michael Arrington, you mean?

In most countries where the iPhone is sold, Apple already has contracts with multiple carriers. Ofcourse, in most countries all carriers use GSM. Until LTE is widespread in the US, Apple's only choice to offer iPhones on other networks is to make one that has a CDMA radio. They may do so, or they could wait it out for a year or two.
That's true for independent app developers for sure. I guess I was thinking more along the lines of companies that have supporting apps rather than the people who make money directly off the apps (Amazon, Skype, Gilt, etc).
The double float tagging using NaN sounds like LuaJIT's approach

quoting http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.lua.general/58908

- NaN-tagging: 64 bit tagged values are used for stack slots and
table slots. Unboxed floating-point numbers (doubles) are
overlayed with tagged object references. The latter can be
distinguished from numbers via the use of special NaNs as tags.
It's a remote descendant of pointer-tagging.

[The idea dates back to 2006, but I haven't disclosed it before
2008. Special NaNs have been used to overlay pointers before.
Others have used it for tagging later on. The specific layout is
of my own devising.]
Wow, I filmed that video!

I cannot speak officially for the Genome Center, but I'll throw out there that the ORM that powers much of the GC's analysis platform is out on Github and CPAN.

It's actually more than an ORM in that it also supports features like automated creation/smart rewriting of class files based on database tables, quick and easy command modules that get turned into hierarchical command-line tools for free, and an automated test harness that can even parallelize onto an LSF cluster if you've got one.

Github http://github.com/sakoht/UR

CPAN w/ documentation http://search.cpan.org/dist/UR/lib/UR.pm
Can I pick your brain about how the table place cards would look like? Is it like a tent card with people's names on it so that the guests can find out who else is sitting on the same table?

The contacts/guests export feature is planned for, since I figure users may need to grab the existing data to give to their vendors, or to do mail merge as you suggested.

Thanks for the comment on the Vendor page. I was thinking this page is like a mini-CRM that user can track their vendors' contacts info. I haven't thought much about the vendors feature comparison, but it's definitely be a cool feature to have.

Sorry about the late launch of Marrily. It took me 3 years to get to this point. But I hope that with your feedback, I can help other people with their weddings. Thanks!
I get sick & tired of all this doom talk about a worldwide depression.

It's depressing.

If you play it smart then this 'depression' is an opportunity in disguise, more of a correction than a true depression.

The 1929 stock market crash set the stage for World War II, and it took until well after World War II before the world had finally recovered from it.

That was a depression.

The current situation is, compared to that, a mere bump in the road. As long as we're not seeing hyper-inflation, the general population still has food on the table and you can actually think about where you're going to take your holiday this year we're not even close.

The really bad effects of what is going on in the market are still limited to a number of markets, mostly financing and the more expensive consumer items.

There are knock on effects that hurt other industries but so far without the nightmare scenarios coming true.

One thing is for sure, the time of 'easy money' from stocks or real estate investments is going to be over for a while.
having watched inception recently, i thought this could be interesting to others.
Sorry but I don't see anything wrong with it. Personally I prefer a relevant (if cutesy) name like status.ly and enrolled.in than a made up nonsense name like Google. Besides, success and time will make these names seem normal and in 5 years there will be brand new silly trends to scoff at.
Duck  Length Depends on Other Guys
> Piaw quit Google, and so is biased by that,

Having an opinion resulting from direct experience with the matter under discussion is not bias.
I dont think this about self interest, Political democracy.

I think this is California Hippies significantly price gouging the competition out of its Highest profit margin customers. And Big Business is like you are price gouging us, when we are suppose to be price gouging them.

Those customers that are the quick and easy returns, might file themselves through the state. I would imagine consumers general risk aversion with regards to government oversight would be the determinate for logical consumers adoption of these government goods with a relevant weight with regards to the price savings and the resulting of a comparable net return.

If the california system is off in its returns or doesn't produce returns similar results as previous year. The customer is going to intuit next time.

The false positive is the trick for Califronia to catch in order to make their system a success. The guy that had someone doing his taxes for years. Really basic, but now that guy started a business, or bought a house and the deductions are not standardized enough for the flag to call a higher level of deductions.

This guy uses the system for years and now he finds out from his friend that intuit does it much better, and tax preparation service steps in and wham.. They have a wow loyalty customer.

This is just market signaling that the actuary boys at Intuit think that the free deal is going to be a winner for customers. Or false signaling, you tell me.
I have found Germany to be one of the most expensive places in Europe, certainly much more expensive than the US. It seems the further south you head, and the further east you head, Europe gets cheaper, with a few exceptions.

Curious to know what is cheaper in Berlin compared with Copenhagen, I am surprised there is much difference. Did not find much difference in Denmark when I passed through, and spent quite a bit of time in Stockholm, avoided light beers. Did not find much that was more expensive.
Entrepreneurs are inherently optimists. They have to be, otherwise they'd give up, get a job, and not bother sharing their stories of failure. That's why what we see is weighted positively.
I agree with you fully, the first thing to go when the economy isn't all that great is the stuff that you can do without.

So, no more lavish all employee trips to tropical islands and no more expensive speakers.

Time to get up and do some more work instead of talking about your previous successes.

And about dying penniless, who cares, you can't take it with you anyway. If you plan on passing your wealth to your kids better do it while you are alive and scale back accordingly. In plenty of countries that's the better strategy tax wise anyway.
Couch's design documents are protected, even though they are replicated, as you say. Unless I'm misunderstanding your question, your application will be safe from modification, as it will be update-able only by the author.
Hopefully, adding the need to record a five-minute video will weed out some of the resume-spamming applicants, so the total stack of your resume size will become smaller. But I assume you'd only get around to watching videos once you'd narrowed down your stack of resumes to a manageable number, maybe twice as many as you plan to interview.
Keep Your jQuery Code Simple with Templates
PDF Security Exploit Allows ‘JailbreakMe’
That only refers to Pyrex cookware, not lab or glassblowing glass. Historically, Pyrex was a brand of borosilicate labware, glassblowing supplies and cookware, but the cookware brand was spun off by Corning in the 90s. They started making Pyrex brand glassblowing glass in China, and it's still borosilicate (it makes a huge difference for scientific glass blowing!).
is this true? hot damn, I am behind the times. do you know if it's the paravirtualized kernel? last I checked it wasn't particularly stable... but damn.

I don't see it in their 'distro manager' thing
Ask HN: We just launched. Should we rework our messaaging?
We've finally got our alpha out of the door - but seem to have some very basic issues with our messaging. Any help is much appreciated...

Our app (http://www.eyesandfeet.com) helps US based local businesses understand and use social media like Facebook & Twitter. Our 'pitch' is "Social Footfalls for your Local Business".

We're increasingly of the view that footfalls, notwithstanding the fact that we've seen it used in some blogs & articles, is NOT a common enough word in the US. Considering that US based local businesses are our target, we probably need to rephrase as "Social traffic for your Local Business" or something of that sort.

So, is 'footfalls' commonly used or should we rework on our messaging? Thanks!
I doubt it. We're talking about trend info from a market research firm that estimates that in one quarter, the one preceding the launch of a widely publicized new iPhone model, more customers opted for Android handsets.

And even if next quarter Android handset sales continue to be higher than iPhone sales, iOS' installed base will still be higher than Android's, with all the iPod touches and iPads out there. That's not to say that Android devices won't ever outnumber iOS devices -- that day simply isn't here yet.
Best Replica Watches At Replica-King Replica Watches Store
Ask HN: Reduced salary during the first 3 months of work?
I'm about to graduate from university and I've been offered a job at a small startup. They're offering me a little less than half of what I expected to earn, with an agreement that 3 months from now we'll negotiate a proper salary based on my performance.

Is this common practice? I feel that the reduced pay will cause lower job satisfaction, and the uncertainty of my future salary unnecessary pressure and stress. What do you think?
Getting Started with the Android SDK in 10 minutes
hi MqMouse, thanks for the feedback. Do you mind sharing your startup? I'd love to take a look and see how you solves this empty canvas problem.

I was thinking about building a wizard to force people into populating their settings, but on the other hand, I want to let users use Marrily at their own pace, instead of stopping them at a lengthy sign up/setup process. I ended up with just one screen to let users create a new default event at the beginning. I guess it's about balancing the flow so that users can feel that they are engaging and not being forced to do certain things to get started.

I wonder if there's title for a "web application director", or a "web site editor" like in film to direct how the app would feel like, not just the UI is working, but the whole site can work cohesively and have the right the flow to it. A UX person maybe?
If you want a desktop-oriented BSD "to try" I recommend PC-BSD. It's a very painless install and the whole distribution is geared towards a fairly non-technical user.
Well, my first suggestion would be to have a shorter domain name, so that the URL is easier to remember.

Maybe WTFstrategy.com - this domain name shows as available at this point.
The author seems to generalize the "market" here. The effects described on the markets are/willbe much more subtle than the article claims. IT has always been multi-faceted. It's not like MS, Intel, Oracle, IBM or Cisco could have stopped doing marketing and still be where they are.
... Their are other devices running OS X too, but if we're talking OS market share for laptops those devices don't get counted. They are comparing Android phones vs. iOS phones. Perfectly legit. Apples to apples.
Actually, whatever is on the user's machine (or in a Couch in the cloud controlled by the user) is 100% under the control of the user. They are free to alter the application, validations, etc, as they see fit.

However, when the user attempts to replicate changes to another server (maybe the original source server, maybe another server not under their control) it is the validation functions on the target server that control which writes are allowed to proceed.

So if my http://jchrisa.net server only allows updates from me (for instance for blog posts), you can still replicate my blog to your machine, and edit posts there, but when you replicate the changes back to my server, they will be rejected by my validation function.
From my recent experience bio informatics community has now started to shift towards Python.
GroupSpaces - Online Tools for Real-World Groups
Actually the rules seem to vary pretty widely. All of them require some sort of application, but while some countries really aren't interested in immigrants, others will approve anyone who is reasonably qualified.
Confidence doesn't have to tie directly to the work you do. One aspect of confidence is knowing that you have the skill to find work, or the smarts and personality to get a new job and learn the necessary skills quickly. A person like that never needs to fear poverty, which is one aspect of wealth.
"Full-time equivalent (FTE) is a way to measure a worker's involvement in a project, or a student's enrollment at an educational institution. An FTE of 1.0 means that the person is equivalent to a full-time worker, while an FTE of 0.5 signals that the worker is only half-time. Typically, different scales are used to calibrate this number, depending on the type of institution (schools, industry, research) and scope of the report (personnel cost, productivity)."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full-time_equivalent
I'm very well aware of that, but sometimes I feel like I get too optimistic about things and need a reality check. That's basically all I'm asking for here through hearing failure stories.
I never thought I'd hear myself say that Java looked a little bit elegant.
he lost me when he spelled "center" as "centre" which is incorrect in North America. and I've built three PCs in the past six months and all three have an AMD CPU, not Intel. I feel the best bang for the buck is still AMD, hands down.
Because you don't have a team put together?
Thank you; that is what I meant to explain, but you were much more clear. I guessed that wil was asking about the safety of his own application once replicated by others, because I don't see the concern of having users replicate their own copy, as long as the damage is contained.
what exactly about unicode and mysql?
Hey Brandon,

I hear what you're saying. Not having an impressive GitHub/StackOverflow/etc account in no way means you aren't an awesome developer.

You sound like a smart guy who knows what he's looking for. I'd suggest applying. I know none of the YC companies care about whether you have a certain number of followers on Twitter or GitHub. They want people who are smart and get stuff done.
Humanity Needs to Start Farming Bugs for Food, Says United Nations Policy Paper
Most of that applies to OpenBSD as well, except we did let licenses stand in the way of importing DTrace and ZFS.
As a native speaker of en-US, I think this question may be the first time I've seen or heard 'footfalls'. 'Footsteps' is standard -- for the act, the sound, or the marks.

It would work better as a product/service name -- then your efforts can fill in the details; its lack of a literal meaning to many Americans could even be a benefit. But as a tagline, it obscures rather than clarifies.
Ahh.. you're right, of course. What I wrote has an undefined termination condition, besides not being consistent with the original algo. Thanks.
Now I understand. Anyone who is a good cook, should quit whatever job they have, unless they work in a restaurant as a cook, and start a restaurant.
Your "clarification" is incorrect. The article claims that the cost of this software is paid for by the fact that tax returns that use this software cost the government less to process than alternatives. So there is nothing but a win here for the taxpayers, they get to save time and money.

Of course Intuit isn't happy because they don't get to make a profit on a product that nobody wants to buy.
I've used FreeBSD for servers and my personal workstation for quite a few years. I love FreeBSD, and the thought of having to support a Linux variant is not a pleasant one. Not that I have a bone to pick with Linux, since I thought it was an excellent OS for the 10 or so years I used it before trying FreeBSD. But once I tried, and became accustomed to, FreeBSD, there was simply no turning back.

However, I take issue with your #1 bullet point above. If the FreeBSD camp truly was about the technical stuff, we wouldn't be stuck with a crusty, substandard version GCC in the base system.

For those not in the loop, the last GCC version with a GPLv2 license was 4.2.1 (from 20070719 according to "gcc -v" on my 8.1 machine). Due to not liking the GPLv3, the FreeBSD developers have stuck w/ this old GCC version, denying users the current set of optimizations and architecture support.

Sure, we can use GCC from ports, but that's not officially supported for the base system or the ports tree. True, they're working on getting the clang LLVM front-end to be the official base system compiler, it'll be 5 to 10 years before it's as stable and usable as gcc is today.

But that is about my only gripe with FreeBSD, and as far as gripes go, it's a relatively minor one.
Have you looked towards the East Coast in your searches at all? You sound like most of the engineers we hire.
I was confused about some of the jargon in Paul Graham's "The future is no fixed amount, no fixed closing date, and no lead" quote so I looked them up best I could:

no lead - A lead investor is basically someone who commits, and says "we're in" at the start of the round. They commit organizational and negotiating resources. They also typically take a board seat. See http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2007/10/the-lead-invest.html

mass syndication - Instead of having a lead investor and a big closing event, you drum up interest from lots of parties who commit based on the understand that other investors are also buying in with the same terms. See http://blog.rafaelcorrales.com/2010/05/mass-syndication-is-p...

no fixed amounts - This seems to mean that a valuation is set, but the actual amount of money invested is not. I imagine it's sort of like a line of credit, but the startup takes as little as they need. Does anyone else know more details about this?

no closing - I'm reaching here a little, but I think what's implied here is that instead of getting everyone to commit to one big agreement, which is signed at once with great fanfare and large checked being signed, the startup just gets interested parties to sign on one at a time, and they go until they have sufficient funding. This is obviously more of a leap of faith for investors, so you have to set your valuation below market. See http://venturehacks.com/articles/no-lead

Anyone else have details on what these things mean? I'm just clicking around reading blog entries.
They use a subset of python called RPython for implementing pypy.
Which country? Europe is worse-off than America, China likely has their own bubble. Japan has been in a funk for 20 years. Russia has recently been cracking down on political freedoms in a worrisome way, there's no guarantee that you'll be able to take your money out once you put it in. Same for many Latin American countries.