skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
IIRC, SpiderOak doesn't encrypt your files "immediately after uploading". Files are encrypted on the client side even before they're uploaded. Therefore SpiderOak never even sees unencrypted data. That's their "zero knowledge" policy. They think it's better to make it impossible for themselves ever to have any idea what files they're hosting, rather than saying "We used to know X seconds ago, but we don't know anymore."

The blog doesn't mention whether or not SpiderOak uses block-level deduplication. Maybe it's part of their storage infrastructure, maybe isn't. But all that client-side encryption would severely reduce the number of duplicate blocks even if everyone uploaded the same file.
What right to privacy? Privacy is a very simple word. It occurs nowhere in the Constitution.
you might be in your 20's or younger because wearing a suit to an interview was pretty much the standard in white collar professions at least up into the 80's. The software field has probably been among the earliest to start shifting away from that. But you're right, today for a software dev interview it will often look like overkill and awkward. It's so hard to find people who can program period and are avail and are interested in your particular gig.
Hey, I am not disputing that the content isn't worth while. I just would rather have it in paperback (which is already out, I believe) so it's cheaper and easier to flip through. But I guess that is just my personal preference.
The nice thing about code is that (when version controlled) all mistakes can be fixed retroactively. As long as two programmers aren't having a bad day at once, pairing will catch "all" errors. As long as all your programmers aren't having a bad day at once, code review will catch "all" errors again. ;)
The thing about Opera is, it only has around 2.5% of the market. IE9 will probably have over 30% of the browser market within two years, which is a major factor when thinking about any web development, especially with HTML5 features like canvas.
http://www.googlelabs.com/?status=graduated

and to come:

http://www.googlelabs.com/
That's not the case at all IMHO. The top voted comment is just whatever the groupthink agrees is the 'right' stance on that issue.

Over time online communities such as HN and Reddit gravitate towards a specific set of viewpoints.

It means that you start only seeing certain types of article, you only see certain types of comments, comments that 'toe the party line' are upvoted to top, etc.

The other funny thing is how much Redditors etc love to sneer down their noses at the 'idiots' who watch TV. They don't seem to realize that spending hours on reddit looking at funny pictures, being outraged by liberal news etc isn't really any better than watching American Idol and being outraged by the stuff on Fox news.

</rant>
Paul Allen owns the entire Vulcan group. One division of that, Vulcan Real Estate, owns and is developing all the brand new buildings on South Lake Union in Seattle that Amazon is now leasing out for their new campus.
Does anyone actually know Dare Abasanjo as "Carnage4Life" or is that just his years-long ploy to annoy me and undermine his credibility in any forum of consequence?
Ink scratches on wood pulp don't have semantics either; it's the interpreter - i.e. the reader - that imbues them with semantics.

Similarly, programs manipulate symbols. It's up to the person who runs the program to imbue those symbols with meaning.

F=ma; that's some coloured pixels on your screen. It's also an expression of one of the laws of Newtonian mechanics. It can be used to calculate the approximate acceleration of a mass after a particular force has been applied to it. But the coloured pixels on your screen isn't doing that; you need to apply your mind.

Similarly, here's a function:

function calc_a(m, F) { return F / m; }

That might be part of a program which calculates the acceleration due to a force. It's also just a series of bytes, which, when interpreted by a translator, will ultimately shuffle bits of electrical state around a very complex circuit. You still need to apply your mind to give it meaning.
On average we get attacked between 7000 and 9000 times per second at Microsoft.com

I would like to know what his definition of attacked is.
Makes sense. Did you refund all users or just those that raised an issue ?
What do you mean by "risky"?

Concurrently testing 2 pricing schemes for the exact same service feels sketchy or unfair (to the customer) to me–especially if its a 2:1 ratio ($5 vs. $4.99 I can understand).

I'm sure it doesn't fall under "price discrimination" but it still doesn't feel right ... should I not feel that way?
Hacker Handicaps, Hamburgers, and CouchDB
While the fashions themselves aren't protected, the names of the labels etc. are trademarked. That's why you're seeing the Gucci and Dolce & Gabbana names on everything. And the Luis Vuitton luggage pattern contains their logo. A lot of stuff produced is basically nothing but a vehicle for the logo itself, without much fashion/innovation around it.
MI6 Are The Lords of the Global Drug Trade
Why sharing your product roadmap is a bad idea
my goal is to reach a point where i never have to subject myself to an interview or application process ever again. they are fundamentally broken and often irrelevant or carried out amateurishly. once you've shipped enough code and had enough successful projects under your belt it gets rather old dealing with it.
I would watch such a video if you made one.
Check out Stratus, maybe they do mobile.
Go through the portfolios of LAVCA
http://lavca.org/membership/current-members/

I've looked at some portfolios of Brazil VCs and incubators if you are are interested in Brazil.
> You're right: voiding other people's contracts because they (collectively) negotiated better deals than you did doesn't seem fair at all.

You're forgetting that govt is a monopoly. GM can promise anything it wants to its retirees, but if its customers decide to buy Toyota, GM won't honor those promises (unless the govt bails them out).

If San Jose makes promises, folks who had nothing to do with those promises are forced to make good.

That's why public employees and public works projects (SJ Arena, light rail, pro-sports facilities) should be on a pay-as-you go or collateral basis. That way, the stadium failure won't be a burden on future tax payers.

If you think that such things are a great idea, buy the bonds. If you're correct, great. If you're wrong, you get to foreclose.
And see Russ Roberts' hint at why such things fail:

http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2005/Robertsmarkets....
Scala and Clojure run on the JVM. There's very little to Java as far as syntax goes, it's basically C++ without MI, operator overloading or real templates. The real value is in the runtime: the standard library, the concurrency model, the virtual machine. That part is threatened by the litigation as well.

Building your own competing JVM can, as this suit demonstrated, get you sued too.
Not if you grandfather.
Both the theory and the model depend on the definitions of their constituents. If you don't have a theory of temperature or pressure, your theory is similarly useless, because you will have no way to interpret the words "temperature" and "pressure".

Your theory assumes these things, but you want to say that the model is invalid because it also assumes these things.

But the more important misconception you appear to have is that you are not considering the human element; no representation of the theory has meaning unless a human interprets it. Programs manipulate symbols; but it is the human who chooses what the symbols mean, and that includes incorporating theories / models implied or assumed about those meanings. It's no different for a theory written down in a book.
True, but there's also the massive anarchistic user base. /r/all is/was yelling censorship top to bottom. Starting to look a lot like the Digg Revolt[1] circa '07 regarding the 09 F9 .. censorship.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AACS_encryption_key_controversy...
I'm glad to see a post highlighted here which shows the limits of bright engineers and hacking in a business. Google Wave is just one high profile example..

Being full of engineering-minded people, Hacker News has a strong bias favoring the idea that if you hack away and create an interesting piece of technology, then that is what is required for a successful startup business.

That idea is wrong. That idea is more of a love of inventing and obsession over technology rather than successful business.

A successful business doesn;t need neat technology or having brilliant engineers.

It requires a product/service meeting consumer demand at the right time in a sustainable way at a cost that enables a profit for the business.

That's where Google Wave failed. Despite a huge financial backing in engineering and promotion, people didn't want it.

The core for a successful business is not innovative technology-- it's Business Operations.

If the business operations are wrong -- ie a product isn't fulfilling a consumer demand or has an sunsustainable cost-- then the startup is going to tank. (unless angel investors keep throwing money at it, but eventually they won't anymore)

On the other hand... if the business operations are right, ie. there is strong sustainable consumer demand for the product/service and a cost enabling a profit, then the the company will prosper regardless if the engineers are decent, great or so-so.

There are plenty of companies making good profits year after year, growing there business and equity sustainably, which have just ok engineers and average non-innovative software.

It would be nice to see more startup-related articles here on Hacker News showing technology failures, not wasting money on too much engineering and the importance of the business operations side of things.
If you've got a lot of pirated media use SpiderOak, otherwise use DropBox. Got it.
How to fix Welfare!
Along those lines, it is not enough to force yourself into something you Think you may become top of field with. Although it is from Wired, many top performers "find" their niche through varied sports or actions before committing to becoming an expert. They have more access to a diversity of subjects and can identify their strengths on a larger sampling.
Perhaps some similarity to failed startups / job hopping.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/08/how-to-raise-a-sup...
I lived in the US for 7 years, did both degrees there and worked in between.

Thoroughly familiar with the immigration system.

The short answer is, without making a 'large' investment (i.e. $500K min) + showing that you can provide at least 10 jobs in 2 years - you have a steep climb to be able to stay in the US.

That being said, anyone can register a company - from any country. You can have the company in the US, register a bank account, get a tax ID, pay taxes, etc....but unless you are doing a certain amount of business and creating at least 10 jobs, you can't actually live here.

People will say you can register a company on a student visa (F1), that's BS. Don't do it. You might not get caught immediately, but it violates the intent of the student visa - which is a 'non-immigrant student visa'. i.e. you have no intention of staying in the US. You are just there to work.

The same applies to H1-B, and other work visas. All of those visas are non-immigrant visas, which means you don't intend to migrate to the US permanently.

Some people have successfully started a company on F1, but if you ever get audited by the US Immigration service, there is a very high probability that you will get deported.

All of that being said, don't worry about it. You can travel to the US on a visitors visa, or a business visa, for a few months (for e.g. to participate in YC), and then go home - while still having your company operating in the US. Once you are big enough, if you sell to a large company, like Facebook or Google or something, they can do an internal transfer (I believe it is a J-visa).

Also, there are paths to a green card (family, marriage, or investment) that given your situation the best would probably be investment once your company grows enough for you to open an office in the US.

All of that being said, make sure to see an immigration attorney and get good advice. But more importantly, read the various requirements for yourself - from the links others have posted here.

Some attorneys might tell you they can get you a green card through an F1 or H1-B....make sure you know your stuff, and be suspicious.

I have many friends that have told me that they have spoken to attorneys that assure them they can start a company on an F1 visa. I have spent hundreds of dollars and visited at least 4 different attorneys (including a past immigration judge) and they all tell me the same thing. By doing that, you violate the intent of the law.
I thought this was a fantastic article. Not too often do you see such a candid account of a failed acquisition.
Could be they're not threatened by marijuana so much as their other advertisers.

It's not difficult to imagine an account with much deeper pockets and an opposing agenda making it clear that if CN takes money from "pro-drug" advertisers, then they'll pull their own.
It's Apple returning to the Big Why. It worked. Apple at the time was in deep trouble having been the "other PC" for too long. They moved away from their "why" to a "what" and they had copied the "what" of every windows PC at the time to abysmal failure.

This speech could have been part of a film "How Apple got its Groove Back".

The iPod ads have nothing to do with this "Think Different" campaign. The iPod ads maintained the "why" as in "Why do we produce these things?" Answer: For fun! For expression! For freeing you from the shackles of a 60 minute CD. For choice.

They didn't go on about what the iPod was (and the iRiver H100 series at the time was a far better machine and the one I chose). They instead went for why it was. That resonated with their audience. They then took that theme and ran with it with every product since.

And yet, just being fun and frivolous doesn't work for everything. Take a look at the iPhone ads; all about function through the app store... and yet withthat function they declare "Fun!". Take a look at the words they use; magical this and magical that. Meanwhile their competition tries to tout function this and function that... and price. Even HP now recognizes what Apple did right and they tried to rip it off with designer notebooks. Too bad that while they have the product the ads still suck (does HP advertise?)

Apple has nailed down what works in marketing for now. They control the mobile space. They control the music space. They have far greater impact on web development than their products have reach. If Adobe/Microsoft/Google ever "get it", watch out. But maybe that is Steve Jobs greatest asset. He knows that they don't "get it".
13 lessons from 18 months of self-employment
>the air of superiority that Reddit users have over religion

Arguing that it should be taken seriously without evidence really doesn't help your case.
So... They didn't to a single minute of due diligence?
hmm...
I think the author is talking about a Sharper team.
http://www.srds.co.uk/cedtraining/handouts/hand40.htm#Shaper

This can be good for getting the ball rolling and keep it rolling. There are several problems with a team like this:
1) Leads to lots of arguments and falling out.
2) The team in unbalance, it may lack creative elements. Might produce stuff but nothing world changing.

Start-ups have seen traits that they see as necessary for them to win. For instance, Shopify has identified the Resource Investigator/Plant team.http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2378-profitable-proud-shopify . They only hire creative programmers. What they have seen is that creative programmers might be slower but they make up for it by reducing the amount of code written. The problem with this team is that rarely creativity people follow through with stuff to the end. They like the creating part but once that is gone they don't want any part of it.

Just a side note Shopify team would whip the shit out of wePay team any given day. But they don't have the tough guy act going for them(Data taken from belbin's book).

The main thing I think start-ups should realize that a lot of studies have gone into what makes a good team. Belbin Team Role Theory is a must: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Management-Teams-They-Succeed-Fail/d....

The best team is a mixture of people, not a unbalance team.
The Importance of Being Punctual
Paul Allen's Patent Infringement Complaint
More docs at my blog post here: http://blogs.forbes.com/taylorbuley/2010/08/27/paul-allen-is-suing-half-of-silicon-valley-heres-the-document-dump/

I'd link that but I know you guys just want the juice.
Not to mention doing it on all 3 platforms as well as translating OpenGL to Direct3D on the fly using ANGLE.
Both are extorting open source projects based upon dubious claims. In the SCO case the claim was that Linux consciously or unconsciously borrowed from SCO's purported property because there are superficial similarities. In this case, Oracle is claiming that Android borrowed from their newly gained property because there are superficial similarities to some vague patents which virtually any modern VM runtime runs afoul of.

I think the similarity is overwhelmingly obvious, so demanding that I prove that it is "remotely" similar is pretty aggressive and uncalled for.
If you're nearing or over 30, ask yourself: have you made any fundamental scientific discoveries, conquered any world-wide empires, or founded any major religions? Many are called but few are chosen. And many of the young think they can. But as Steve covers himself, o cynical one, those are the ones who do.

An appeal to youth's vanity, yes; yet also the absolute true.

And let's not forget that there are people at Apple who actually are changing the world, with the "lame" ipod, the doubted ipad, and (the associated) pixar. That adds credibility; and the branding is also of Apple's identity to itself, for passionate workers, and to attract talent.
When you get a lawyer make sure you know the jurisdiction you are going to do the acquisition in and make sure the lawyer not only says they know about that jurisdiction but has a case history. You may need more than one lawyer, e.g one in each jurisdiction.

It's incredibly important to not just get any lawyer but one that is familiar with both what's legal, and enforceable where the sale takes place, as well as the tax implications of the various payment options you will be negating on in whatever jurisdiction you want the money to end up in as well as the one it's leaving.
We're really drifting far off-topic here. My point is the Oracle lawsuit has nothing to do with Harmony (the library, which implements no part of the VM) or ASF, it is not a suit against 'open source'. I imagine that we're all in violent agreement here that what Oracle is doing is icky and lame. But it's also mildly distasteful, FUD-ish and insulting to intelligence for Google to be running around saying 'Oracle is suing open source'. I think bringing up Harmony (or OpenJDK, or Clojure, or a bit of Java you wrote in college, etc) is either being a worrywart or taking Google's verbiage at face value.
When you go to subway do you pay for the sandwich or do you subscribe to a $x/month recurring charge that gives you up to y sandwiches/month whether you eat them or not?
The first three, in detail. I even tried and failed to do many of the higher exercises :-(
The fact that he is leaving out Microsoft and Amazon says to me that he is exactly what he appears to be: a complete troll.
Exactly the same applies for the amount you charge in consultancy fees. A couple of years back I charged X per month in web development (spare time work) but have slowly increased to where I am now charging 4.5X; and still getting more offers than I can handle.

Always try upping your prices, that should be the first rule of business :)
Soundbyte. :)
Remember, this is one side of the debate. There's a lot more to the story than you're reading here, so perhaps you should hold off on the laughter.

I generally agree with the governor, but I also tend to believe that the state has to make good on past obligations -- especially when real people have planned their lives around those obligations. The 55-year-old retiree with fat benefits is a political straw man, but reality is much less clear.
Agreed. He really did sound like he was ad-libbing that line.
In my sleep deprived state I was thinking you wrote Monsanto...I was trying to justify my dislike of the company with how much I liked this policy, including the amiable words used in the policy!

Glad to see I was mistaken :)
It's interesting that Apple never uses the word "computer" in their iPad marketing. Nor do they use the word "tablet" much.

"iPad" is friendly. "Tablet computer" is "beep boop, processing..."
Fractals in R
Your Amazon policy is almost better than stock options and a 401k. I'd probably never willingly leave a company with that policy.
It's hard to say, because we weren't there. But I would have just said, then and there, "bullshit, I'll talk to Bill" and walked out the office - 10$ says he wouldn't have made it to the exit :)
Nimbuzz Download - Nimbuzz lets you Chat, Message and BUZZ
I don't watch general news on reddit (and I don't subscribe to /r/atheism, which is almost unbelievably bad, though I'm an atheist), but subreddits that I'm interested in seems to present much more diverse opinion. /r/energy isn't that small and while it's generally very pro-nuclear, there are, time to time, anti-nuclear opinions and a lot of "renewables" as well. And there aren't that many places to get opinions and news about such topics (that can match reddit in diversity and even in objectivity).
Hmm, that's not entirely accurate. They list Google Docs under Labs, but the word processor part at least came from their acquisition of Writely, if I am not mistaken.
This is the fun part.
Wave as is may be dead, the technology will live on in other google products. Introducing it as a big bang was maybe not the best way, too much change at a time. But gradually it will emerge in another form.
Sintetic Skin From Cows Spanish
This will likely not help you build your startup unless you need a really strong understanding of Programming concepts. In the words of the wise Wikipedia:

"The famous offer of a reward check worth "one hexadecimal dollar" (100HEX base 16 cents, in decimal, is $2.56) for any errors found, and the correction of these errors in subsequent printings, has contributed to the highly polished and still-authoritative nature of the work, long after its first publication. Another characteristic of the volumes is the variation in the difficulty of the exercises. The level of difficulty ranges from "warm-up" exercises to unsolved research problems, providing a challenge for any reader."

For some people, it will be a status symbol. But honestly, you shouldn't be buying these books unless you actually want to learn something. Just saying you have the books will do you no good and is just a waste of paper.
True Ventures' Trip to YC Demo Day
Firstly, are you sure he literally only works 1-2 hours a day? Could he be continuing from home when you aren't aware of it?

If he's making stuff the stuff you need and it all just works then I'd count your blessings. That's a good problem to have.

Finally, you are asking us whether it's a problem or not. Do you think it's a problem? If so, can you articulate clearly what you think the problem is? That would probably get you more useful feedback.
> Doesn't this put the lie to their "we're our own business and don't have anything to do with Conde Nast, that's why we need your charity" line?

The fact they have take the decision to run the ads for free possibly puts lie to ''that'' :)
How games will rule the web for next decade (TED) [video]
"took longer"? They are likely to beat IE9 to official release.
Latest version is here: http://steveblank.com/books-for-startups/
Always looking for new suggestions/additions.