skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I admit I was hoping for some sort of clever tie-in to http://manpacks.com
Why Bother With Stealth Mode?
Unless you have an actual batcave, comparable data is being transmitted without the GPS transmitter in the form of photons.
I've used Erlang for a while, although sporadically. Honestly, I think I can do more with less code in Ruby, though. Erlang's great for the things it's good at, but brevity and clarity are really things I think are critical.

Here's a small example I bumped into the other day, providing a default value if a hash value isn't present:

foo[:bar] || "beebop"

vs

case (catch dict:fetch(bar, Foo)) of {'EXIT', _} ->
"beebop";
Val -> Val
end

(or something close, there might be a typo)
Ruby programmers might be doing ok, but:

the general problem with Portland
is that nobody else is hiring... ever
If he forces through public pension reform, my opinion of Arnold as a politician would go way, way, up.
Depends on who holds the bonds. If the majority of those people are well connected a bailout is likely. It won't come without concessions though. Bondholders will be forced to take a haircut on their investment. Seems crazy to me.
I have never heard of this service before but it looks pretty sweet. $5 for unlimited backup storage? How on earth?

This is what they say about it on their website:

"How Can You Backup Everything Online For Just $5 per Month?
We have developed a highly efficient storage system that enables us to optimize how we store data. And we’re counting on some people having a lot of data and others not very much, but that it will work out on average. "

..but still. Almost sounds scary.
Out-of-print books for your iPad and iPhone
Sparkfun Electronics is Hiring, sysadmin & php dev
No mystery. Project Euler is a useful set of problems to tackle when learning a new language. It's not 'Wahoo with functional programming I can finally get past Euler 15'; it's 'Wow after a bunch of these Euler problems I think I am finally starting to get functional programming'.
Why Omega 3 Fish Oil Supplements For Preventative Cardiology Are So Successful
They're an absolutely fantastic way to start 'getting' any language. They're small, discrete, and varied tasks that require you to build different types of operations and structures. Sure, they're not at all reflective of 'real programming' nor are they necessarily particularly challenging, programming wise.

I'd rather cut my teeth in a new language on the first 50 or so PE problems, than take on a bigger, less defined, or more domain limited task.

I'm conversant in Python and Erlang because of PE problems entirely. They've enabled me to start actual projects in both languages.
> Network effects, more code contribution, and the like. That's important for open source software. For me, it's opportunities to get paid more. If I can expand my market, than I could raise my price or get money somewhere else.

I don't understand what you're saying here.

> The advertising effect of piracy may increase sales.

This I consider highly unlikely to weigh against the lost sales, but unfortunately it is pretty much impossible to find out.

> I was referring to less restrictive alternatives not whether or not if somebody broke the law.

I don't understand this either...

> It is certainly feasible to run small experiments on a small portion of your business. You do not have to risk your entire business operation to learn the truth about what work or not.

What kind of experiment do you suggest? Giving away the software for free. Something is telling me that that would not increase income ;) So what king of experiment do you mean exactly?
Love my Kensington Expert Mouse trackball. Much better than the thumb operated variety IMO.
It's not even a smart pricing model; it's built on the assumption that the first "byte-month" costs as much and is as valuable to the end-user as the trillionth.
It's worth observing that:

1) Orange County went bankrupt by cooking the books. After the scandal broke, their treasurer went to jail.

2) The Republican administration turned a blind eye to the Democratic treasurer's malfeasance because it was allowing them to keep taxes very low, which was making their government very popular.

3) The government refused to raise even a temporary tax to avoid bankruptcy, as that position was highly unpopular among the wealthy residents of the county. At various points the county insisted that it should receive bailouts from the California state and federal government, which drew anger from across the nation as Orange County is among the wealthiest places in the nation.

4) In bankruptcy, Orange County cut $200 million from its budget by clawing back commitments to its low level employees who had no part in the high level corruption, as well as through layoffs and reduced services. The OC bankruptcy, from the perspective of the average person, is like a minified version of the bank bailouts. It was a "heads I win, tails you lose" bargain between the wealthy people of OC and the average people who were hurt most by the layoffs and reduced services.
Yes, I did. I typed in "Mjoahlid 8, Reykjavik, Iceland", which works fine in google maps (I saw you were using google maps).

when I type that into your box it gets converted into "Capital Region, Iceland". Which is not very accurate :)
I'm sympathetic to your point, but you can't really make this comparison, because it's apples-to-oranges. The set of jobs in each set is quite different. For example, there are few farmers in the government employ.

However, we can still reach interesting conclusions from the data. For example, I would expect that regardless of the salary of the job, benefits such as healthcare insurance would be fairly constant for employees anywhere, and that in the private sector, healthcare is probably the single largest chunk of benefits. With this observation, we'd have to conclude that whatever salary you're making, the government is throwing in a pretty significant amount of extra value into their employee's benefits, whatever that employee's job might be.
Don't pop the champagne until the money is in the bank.
Everything is trivial in hindsight.
مشاهدة مباراة انتر ميلان واتلتيكو مدريد بث مباشر
Think about it: if you charged $5/mo and put an obscenely high cap on storage for the $5/mo account, then by your own math you'd be hugely improving your revenue [...]

... and also hugely increasing my costs. With all due respect, I've talked to a lot more Tarsnap users than you have, Thomas, and I also have the advantage of seeing how much data people upload and how much they delete.

Your suggested pricing model would result in people uploading far more data and never deleting any of it, and would very rapidly move Tarsnap from "profitable" to "bankrupt".
So thus we have a good reason to have more women founders - immigrant hacker-startup guys are usually male. Thus, they can just marry their US-citizen startup cofounders.
Morality Check: When Fad Science Is Bad Science
He got that exactly right, unfortunately he didn't go far enough -- debt financed projects are also a huge problem. Look at the big dig & the mbta.

People need to learn that you pay as you go, that's why 401ks are great the total cost of an employee is understood completely.

Taking debt in someone else's name, which is what essentially all government debt is, is fundamentally immoral and shouldn't be allowed. It causes people to be reckless since they're not the ones paying for it.
Let me try & put your mind at rest a bit.

(a) everyone @ msft takes the confidentiality of data uploaded to Watson (the crash reporting system) extremely seriously - you can't just 'look for useful stuff' in it without a good reason, and you'd be fired immediately if you were found to be reverse-engineering or copying bits of code out of it

b) on a technical level, trawling through dumps looking for 'useful stuff' would be an absurdly inefficient way to do anything. For one thing, it just crashed, which in my book is not usually a sign that you'd want to copy it.

c) your crash dump is a drop in the ocean. There are millions coming in. Nobody will ever look at it unless the system picks up that there a multiple millions of crashes occurring at the same point in the same widely-used app, in which case it's possible msft might contact the vendor (if identifiable) to offer to help fix it.

See http://oca.microsoft.com/en/dcp20.asp
Meet ExtensionFM, the Music Startup Google Should Buy
Memory consumption in Python programs: meliae
It depends on your market.

If you're entering a competitive space, announcing before launching gives your competitors the option of trying to neutralize you at little or no cost, by announcing that they're going to offer similar features. This clearly does happen sometimes.

It looks like YC has nailed an answer to the "stealth mode" controversy that kind of moots the question: move as fast as you can towards releasing a minimal viable product. The working concept trumps the smoke screen.
So wrap it in a function

default(Dict, Key, Default) ->
case dict:is_key(Key, Dict) of
true -> dict:fetch(Key, Dict);
_ -> Default
end.
Your argument is flawed, but the example is fine. Roman numerals are restricted in comparison with Arabic ones. AFAIK, there is no way to write "zero" or negative numbers in Roman numerals. Zero, in particular, was a major innovation.
Forgive my ignorance -- what does "relative job losses" mean, and how does it differ from "absolute job losses"?
Why are you disappointed?

I'm not clear how 'being acquired' is some how negative?
Yes but then it wouldn't make the (largely political) point that he wanted to make.

The comparison itself seems odd. If the state's private sector loses 1.2M jobs, should the public sector shed a proportional number of employees i.e. teachers, firemen, policemen, prison guards, etc?
show me an open-source IDE that can compete with the breath and depth of Eclipse

... Eclipse?
Outside-the-box Your Way To Success
It’s 2010 and we’re still in the thralls of the New Great Depression. We’re waivering, for sure, and that’s a solid sign of fortune in times to come. But whether we choose to acknowledge the reality or stick our heads in the sand, there are challenges ahead, for sure.
My understanding of what usually occurs in deals like this is that most of the price negotiations happen before LOIs are signed in the first place.
I'd rather not. It's off-topic and a dead horse if there ever was one.
Divvy for a window manager, quicksearchbar for shortcutting, and the vimium chrome extension or conkeror browser are super handy.

I prefer quicksearchbar to quicksilver.

I wrote about how to set up divvy shortcuts here:

http://infovegan.com/2010/08/18/manage-pixels-not-monitors

As a paying user of both divvy and sizeup, I have to say I'm bummed about my initial expenditure on Sizeup. Divvy is far more customizable.
Their post is really really f'king clever...

It's a massive "hey, we're prime for being acquired - come and get us!" solicitation.

The information contained in the post is fascinating, but its a by-product. What they are really doing in a subtle and suitable way is telling the world they want to receive new offers to be acquired.
Then lower the cap. Or do what Mozy does, and charge $5/mo + $1/mo/g (they charge 0.50/mo/gig, but with no Tarsnap sauce).

If Mozy can charge 0.50/mo/gig, 0.30/mo/gig is way too cheap.
It's important to remember that "expensive" is relative. Depending on an individual's income or company's revenue, $10/$15 can be huge difference or just a drop in the bucket. When a business is billing out consultants at $150/hr, spending even $100/mo on something that makes employees more productive or efficient is generally a good decision.

It's important to not only look at the cost of the product but also the benefits that it provides. Do the benefits outweigh the costs to the degree that you're comfortable spending the money?

To put it another way, it's more useful to think about the value of the tool relative to the price. It's less about whether a given dollar amount is "expensive", and more about whether the value exceeds the cost.

For example, all told, we gladly pay upwards of $200/mo for hosted services that are not necessary to run our business. However, the value that we receive from that money far exceeds the dollar amount that we spend on them. So in this case, even though $200 isn't insignificant, the dollar amount alone isn't relevant. We consider the services "inexpensive" because the value relative to the price is amazing for us.
I say: "Economists have no problems talking about economic efficiency when a few benefit at the cost of many." However, for clarity many means society at large including them.

Vs his argument:
I distinguished in last week’s post between changes in public policies (reallocations of economic welfare) that make some people feel better off and none feel worse off and those that make some people feel better off but others feel worse off. The first type of policy can unambiguously be said to enhance social welfare. But no such claim can be made for the second

He ignores magnitude of change. His actual argument is if any one person is worse off then it's not an economic argument. So, if one person lost 1$ and 1 billion people gained 1 billion dollars then according to his argument it's outside the scope of economics.

And yes that is his argument. He disagrees with: the Kaldor-Hicks criterion and the efficiency criterion amount to the same thing. When Jack gains $10 and Jill loses $5, social gains increase by $5, so the policy is a good one. When Jack gains $10 and Jill loses $15, there is a deadweight loss of $5, so the policy is bad Because: Evidently, on the Kaldor-Hicks criterion one need not know who Jack and Jill are, nor anything about their economic circumstances.

Edit: There is actually a lot of research into both corruption and monopoly's and the negative effects both have on an economy. Farm subsidies are another example of a harmful policy that benefits a few people which has been well researched.

PS: Yea, I am tired, but I this guy is so out there I can't help but wonder if it's some sort of parody that I am missing.
He being the Berkley professor, if I read right. (I had to read it a few times to parse..)
Two simple hacks for weebly to get pro feature @free
two simple hacks for weebly to get pro feature @free
I never even thought about the pricing model. But you're right he isn't doing rent extraction properly. I merely saw how he presented himself with "picodollars" and thought to myself "I know this guy. He spent twenty minutes telling me about the great deal on peaches he got".[1]

Seriously, switch to $/Gig, and sell the hell out of it. I don't care how smart you are. Show me how you can make my life better/simpler then get the hell out of it.

1. True story. I've gained a good nose for these people and I just walk away after the first encounter.
"They (they agro-pessimists) like agricultural research but loathe genetically modified (GM) plants."
I have a problem with articles that show a clear ignorance or disdain for the role of heredity and genetics when it comes to talents and temperaments.
The usual solution for that would be hiccup, with a few custom functions.
at least be humane about it.

you don't simply "fire" people for performing below expectations. do the extra legwork, and find a way to get them properly "laid off", ie, "eliminate their positions" -- which shouldn't be too difficult here, as after all you say you'd rather hire more senior people -- so they can (1) get unemployment benefits, (2) roll their insurance off into CORBA if at all possible (or the equivalent of you're not in the U.S.), and (3) have at least a theoretical possibility of rehabilitating themselves and getting another job.

"firing" per se is just plain vindictive, and seriously endangers their ability to look out for their physical welfare on the short run, and to right their course (in terms of finding a career that's better suited to them) in the longer run

I know that you aren't particularly concerned with their welfare (you sound like you're basically fed up with these people, and couldn't care less). but the bottom line is that you still have to recognize that the company shares at least SOME responsibility for the situation. (after all, who hired them, anyway? was it, umm... you, by chance?)

and also, treating people humanely just happens to pay (considerable) dividends. as in, the morale of the rest of the team, your company's reputation (and your own reputation).

i've seen the (lingering) after-effects of letting go of people gracefully and magnanimously, and of doing the opposite, many, many times. it's well worth the money to do these things properly (and humanely).
Reading tip:
http://www.amazon.com/Effective-Negotiating-Sunday-Business-...

The book is good on a practical level. But formeost I learned to understand the mindset of those folks. An eye-opener for the 'nice guy geek' in me.
I haven't used Tarsnap, but it looks very similar to duplicity at a cursory glance. Are there many differences?
After this one gets to +250 can we have a politics moratorium for a while?
I think stealth mode is not just for the fear of your idea to get stolen, there are a few good reasons IMHO to start quiet in the first stage:

1) You may significantly change what you are doing once you actually started working. Maybe you start with a backup company and ends with a file transfers for the masses.

2) People eventually start to get bored about hearing just words without the ability to try what you have to offer. Probably at the release there will be less excitement... so the stealth mode is a good idea IMHO until there is yet not some non-vaporware thing to show.

3) In the first strage of a startup you will likely get crazy with a lot of work. Managing the communication is a very time consuming task, it's better to delay this as much as possible, that is, when you are starting to actually have users.

4) Stealth does not mean that people should not be aware at all of your existence. Actually to have the brand, logo, and a very general idea of what you are doing (just the field: databases, social things, ...) can be good and sometimes absolutely required in order to try hiring other programmers and so forth.

Once you have a minimally viable product is definitely time to release it ASAP: users feedbacks and pressure will be invaluable.
This is why IDE's are a bad idea.
Thank you MediaSquirrel. I sure will talk to other lawyers. But based on your talks you find the above scenario not feasible?
Hmm, this makes me think that I'm charging way too little for historious at $3/mo, but, then again, something tells me that if I charged $15 nobody would buy...
I know loads of people who have applied for the Greencard Lottery (a couple won Greencards) and none of them have ever had a problem getting into the US. I'd suggest the immigration service had other issues with your friend.

On the Visa Waiver there is (used?) to be a box to tick if you had been denied a visa. I would imagine being denied a visa and not winning a Greencard are two quite different things.
You're probably getting downvoted because you seem to be implying, without real evidence, that California is bankrupt because Arnold was complicit in cheating California out of billions because of shady dealings with Enron.

These are the sorts of allegations that one would typically see in a political forum populated by partisans and hacks. Downvoting is just HN's way of saying this sort of discussion belongs elsewhere.
Except aren't there only like 3 "fiscally responsible" states? I don't think Wyoming and North Dakota are going to be able to pull off such a bailout.
His point isn't that the public sector should shed a proportional number of employees, but that the collective income of private sector taxpayers has decreased, yet they are forced to sustain public-sector pensions with that decreased income.
...low level employees who had no part in the high level corruption,...

The low level employees didn't vote for and join unions which helped that Dem treasurer to get elected? They didn't push for overly generous pensions and non-transparent accounting?

They must have behaved very differently than contemporary unions.
Yes: Tarsnap is extremely secure, and so it can be used inside companies with sensitive data without wasting time classifying what can and can't be backed up remotely.

It is like the Iron Mountain of backup solutions.
Yeah, I was never a sysadmin, but for 8 months in my university days, I worked as a systems programmer for the CS Department at my university. I worked on stuff that automated system deployments, backups, imaging, etc. Its actually in the process of being open sourced now at http://www.labnet.ca/ (Its actually a pretty incredible system I recommend anyone who is interested in this type of stuff to check it out).

Because of this I worked with some awesome sysadmins and unix/linux gurus so even though they were a bit rusty, I had enough core systems admin skills to have a good intuition about how to solve most of the problems I have normally. When I run into roadblocks I know some awesome sysadmins that I can hit up to get me over the hump.
Http://www.smsdose.com/lovely-and-funny-sms.htm
I think he means as a percentage rather than absolute number. I doubt the state even has 1.2M public sector employees; this CNN article indicates 240,000 so even if every single one was fired it would still make the graph look like the public sector wasn't cut enough: http://money.cnn.com/2010/07/08/news/economy/california_pay_...
Relative meaning take the ratio of jobs lost to total jobs in each sector and compare.
Since you seem to know a lot about pricing, could you give me a few pointers on what one would charge for something like http://historio.us/? Apparently you guys feel that $15 isn't a lot of money, but where I live it's not disposable income...
This has nothing to do with Iranian Government. The ftp mentioned are for education/research organization. I grew up in a third world country, we use to have a ftp like this in my university for all kind of software for students. Most of these research/education institutes are under funded and usually the sys admin will think piracy is the best way around it.
Mozilla releases Fennec Alpha for Android and Nokia N900
I don't think this is correct. NEVER stay in the US longer than the duration of your visa on your i94 under ANY circumstances. Even if it's day 89 and the airport is closed for bad weather you must drive to the border (or whatever) to leave otherwise next time you come back into the country it will be picked up and you can get deported + bared from entering US.

PLEASE get legal advice if this is your situation.

(source: I'm a foreign national working in US on a visa, having spent a lot of time + money with my visa lawyer on this issue. I also have a startup investor friend who went over his visa duration and is barred from entering the US again.)
On their product:

I was all set to pay up for Backblaze last week, but the GUI you use to define what's backed up has a hard-coded list of excluded directories and file extensions (!!!).

Why can't I back up /Applications/ or a .iso file?

If those files push my total backup size larger than they tolerate then that's a separate issue. Too user hostile; uninstalled the sucker.
a fascinating thought: worth looking into.
lol no one knows? that's fishy
Perhaps I should have said "less fiscally irresponsible".
Best response: "I don't sell time, but here's how much I charge for the product."