skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
How should acquirers behave?

I've thought for a while that one thing that could change the dynamic is price. It doesn't make too much sense to me that a 5 month old company with $50K in it should go for more than $1M. That is the other side to the assholedom - the exuberant prices paid for young companies.

The price can and should change as the product and team grow, so this is mainly a comment about very young companies.
Being acquired isn't necessarily a negative, but all too often the next step after being acquired is "Hi, we've been acquired and this service is shutting down." (With a nod that they'll be back, and better than ever. Which generally doesn't turn out to be true.)
Stunning Sculptures made from Vintage Circuit Boards
Actually if you followed the whole looting of California by Enron & friends, the final conclusion was Schwarzenegger taking office and refusing to pursue a serious lawsuit agains the perps and letting them off with token payments to the state. And yes the proof was and is very clear that the "crisis" was in fact looting. The energy traders who implemented it were taped per regulation and the leaked tapes were ugly. It was a crime and the perps got off. So YES, IN FACT, the governor is culpable for what happened, or to be very exact, refusing to pursue serious restitution.
if you think it's too expensive relative to its operating costs, launch a cheaper competitor :)
Write an MLA Format Paper the Modern Language Style
If citing sources within the liberal arts and humanities, you will have to use the MLA format for your essay. As it is one of the most common formatting styles, having a good understanding of this format is essential. With this knowledge you will be able to submit a well written essay.
Extreme Productivity with Screen and Vim
No mention of Prop 13 eh? PG&E etc. are able to pay insanely low property taxes, often creating shell companies so the property can be passed between owners, while regular working schmoes pay sky high property taxes.

And what about Arnold's refusal to tax offshore drilling the same way red states like Alaska do?

Yes there need to be cuts in spending but refusing to raise a single tax is simply absurd. Both things need to happen to balance the budget.

The real problem is the need to have a 2/3 majority to pass a budget in the legislature. That is simply absurd.
I agree. Thats what I did. I made spotted.at and just want to get as much feedback as possible. My steath mode = My product sucks and not many people use it. As my product gets better and more people use it I guess im not stealth anymore. LOL
As somebody who used Python a lot and being unable to learn Ruby, I have to say that I don't feel they can be merged.

I have been successful at learning a variety of languages. Ruby was difficult for me because it is so similar to Python and yet so different. You have almost the same syntax getting very different results. So if you come from Python you get the exact opposite experience to the principle of least surprise. On the other hand, if you move from OCaml or Erlang there are no surprises because the syntax is different enough that there are no pre-expectations.

Also, metaprogramming in Python and Ruby are quite distinct. The way Python went about it using metaclasses and decorators is very different to the monkeypatching you get in Ruby, so I don't expect the AST results to be that similar for idiomatic code in both languages.
My downvote signals that if you want people to take interest in claims like that, you need to substantiate them. It also expresses disapproval at the insertion of a tangentially-related, flamebait ad hominem into a thread discussing a particular set of economic statistics.

EDIT: I retract my statement that it's an ad hominem. I think the parent has a reasonable point.
Javascript's treatment of anonymous function is the easiest to understand for imperative background since it uses the same syntax as a named function.

Defining an anonymous function:

function(a, b) {
return a+b;
}

Giving an anonymous function a name (or assigning to a variable):

var add = function(a, b) {
return a+b;
}

Defining a function with a name (just a shorthand of the above):

function add(a, b) {
return a+b;
}

This makes it clear that the object stored in 'add' is a function object and can be passed around like other objects. That's the essence of the 'function as a first class object' concept.

If you have the time, I highly recommend watching the SICP video. It very gently introduces most of the FP concepts and many others. It's a classic. http://freevideolectures.com/Course/2378/Structure-and-Inter...
"Fennec (codename for Firefox mobile) is the first mobile browser to offer add-ons..."

Ummm... Dolphin?
This, in my opinion, is one of the greatest strengths that OOP has over FP: data.map(...).reduce(...). It doesn't really have anything to do with OOP, you could just as well have such a syntax for calling functions. In F# you do have the |> operator that does something like this.

This may seem superficial, but it helps readability a lot. The human mind (or mine at least) is just not well suited to unraveling nested structures.
Am I missing something? I remember trying this on a Nokia N810 about 1.5 years back, was quite slow, I gave up.

Looks like they are still working on it.

http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=21428

http://www.mozilla.org/projects/fennec/1.0b1/releasenotes/
I can believe that such power can be achieved and scale within a single department-size group of "smart people".

The problem appears if or when you want to share the code between departments or give it to the world. Give "clever code" to someone who simply doesn't understand the whole process and they turn into a "dud developer" no matter how otherwise intelligent they are.

(And what's with down-voting the parent? It's a fair point even if I'm not in agreement)
Thanks for the info. Things have obviously changed since I had my TN in 2006.

However, looking at the green card application process on the TN it doesn't look like it's any easier than it is on an H1B.
All right, point taken. Perhaps /less/-balkanized was what I meant.
In OpenOffice spreadsheet, Command-Tilde toggles between it evaluating your formulas as you expect and it displaying the formulas in the cells. If you don't know this, it can be very confusing to figure out what happened after you hit Command-Tilde out of habit trying to switch windows.
Huh. Looks like the lack of a trailing underscore in my link let it snuck through. Shenanigans!
So I have a TN (as it happens). If you are looking to get a TN as a Canadian citizen (rather than Mexican, different rules apply for them) you can actually apply for a TN at any airport (not just via Canada). This is a little known fact.

The advice given to me was just to take a trip somewhere and come back into the country to get the TN rather than apply for an AoS with the DHS (which can take ages to process - they are not really incentivized to process it with a short turnover).

I got my most recent TN at SFO in secondary checking, it was trivial (assuming you qualify + your paperwork is in order, etc).
Being "tough" like this increases your value to YC, but it doesn't always increase the long-term value of your company.
Prefer Using Futures or Callbacks to Communicate Asynchronous Results
#2 is kind of a defining characteristic of YC-funded companies.
Brazil — and tropical countries btw -- climate is much more stable than temperate countries. In almost all of Brazil, there's just really two seasons: the rainy one, and the dry. It is less susceptible to climate changes.
I wonder if there's a clean way they could hide/collapse the URL field to a minimal width on the left side of the tab bar, then automatically expand it on mouseover or selection.

Agree that vertical size of the toolbar should be minimized, less scrolling helps everyone.
The Daily Mail’s Robots.txt File Contains...an SEO Job Advert
How do y'all feel about start-up "About Us" pages that try to make the company's employees look super cool? e.g., "check out these pics of us rock climbing, dudes!"
I couldn't imagine having a movie made about me and not watching it. Even if I didn't approve of it, my curiosity would get to me eventually.
A common misconception about the OSX UI is that its main virtue is visual. For me, an equally-prominent virtue is the far-superior ability to control it using the keyboard and a universal scripting framework (applescript/automator). No linux WM that I know of has such a unified UI paradigm.
The 2/3 requirement for raising taxes also comes from Prop. 13.

Best proposition ever!
Free Kindle anyone? How Amazon can dominate ebooks
I haven't had the chance to test it out yet, but my impression has always been that first-class functions should be presented to imperative/OO programmers as a replacement for polymorphic functions.

Frequently, for an abstraction X where I need different but similar behavior in different situations, I'll implement X by passing around functions in Scheme or Clojure, but I'd implement X with inheritance and polymorphism in C#. The frequent advantage (in my opinion) is that passing functions is more flexible, conceptually simpler, and usually shorter to write.

Do you see it that way?
This points out why I feel like we are about to hit another bubble in the tech sector. Ipad/Iphone/Droid app investment is starting to get out of control, there seems to be a lot of money floating around, and unlike 2000 when the bubble burst in isolation, I'd hate to see it burst with the current economy.

If I were an engineer or someone with an early stage idea i'd be careful that you don't get lead astray by some VC who is going to tell you your both going to get rich.

Develop slowly, good solid businesses weren't built in three months. If your idea is something that can't stand the test of time perhaps VC shouldn't be throwing tons of money at it.

A lot of VC and business folks don't understand technology and engineers often don't understand good business practices and practicalities of positive revenue, net profit and cashflow. I see the blind leading the blind on a regular basis.

These next few years I think are going to be a bunch of micro roller coasters, lets just hope they bottom doesn't fall out, like it has several times before.
Ask HN: Anyone developing J2ME applications on Mac OS X
Sun released WTK 3.0, which supports Mac OSX, but it doesn't have support for linux. Some of the other devs are on linux, so i cant use WTK 3.0. Anyone has experience on doing J2ME with WTK 2.5 on Mac OS X?
The article reeks of anti-iranian sentiment.

The truth of the matter is that there is no way to ' plug the hole '. Any carefully thought out business model will attribute for theft by there market share.

If there was a real need to locate every pirated file in the world, there would be no country left un-touched.

I like Iran for its particular attitudes of liberalism and just plain being real. Who the hell would buy a copy of photoshop, when you can get a few bullet proof vests, a weeks worth of groceries, and a tank of gas for the same price.

Software piracy is not the way to go; yet I think Peter Griffin made the best argument [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDhThhrd_UY ]. The famous two strong words "Come On... Come On..."
The real trouble here is probably closures.

function foo(x) { return function(y) { return x+y; }; }

bar = foo(3)
bar(5)
// Returns 8, wait how did the x in the inner function remember the 3?!
// It's supposed to be gone already because the call to foo is over...

One way to understand this is to notice that it always "just works". It seems like magic. The 'aha' for me was when I learned how closures are implemented.
2 founders. 1 is too little, 3 is a bit too much and 4 is out of the question (except for Reddit?).

I don't remember PG ever saying that. In fact, if I remember correctly, Flightcaster has something like 5 or 6 founders.
Microsoft Will Build Huge Container Data Center in Virginia
Since UCB gets state funding, this may make the professor and his pension a part of the very problem he (the professor) is complaining about.
> varied tasks

That's where I'd argue. It would be like saying you're an all around gamer when you play only chess but with different openings every time.

Varied simple tasks would be doing some Euler problems, doing some basic algorithms (Dijkstra's with Heap, A* pathfinder on a 2d map, etc... TopCoder problems are great for this), write a Mandelbrot zoomer, Conway's Life app with position setup and step-through and save/load, write a Tetris clone, write a basic HTML form builder, write a blogging engine, write a multi-user chat room server, write a simple side-scrolling shooter game, write a basic Roguelike game, write a simple text adventure. Things like this can all be afternoon projects.

Every time I read someone claiming that Project Euler is for developing general-purpose programming, I roll my eyes more than a little.
about.html > index.html
How to Start Learning Python by Another Beginner
Dunno about Erlang, but in Haskell, you can actually call this function ||:

import Prelude hiding ((||))
import qualified Data.Map as M
import Data.Maybe

(||) = flip fromMaybe

main = print $ result || "OH NOES!"
where result = M.lookup "baz" map
map = M.fromList [("foo", "bar"), ("bar", "baz")]

ghci> main
"OH NOES!"

With some typeclass magic, you can even make this work for arbitrary types. But don't waste your time with this, since it's already built in as `mplus`:

ghci> Nothing `mplus` Just 42
Just 42
ghci> Left "OH NOES" `mplus` Right "it worked"
Right "it worked"
what's with the "big booty bitches" in the background? haha
I think responsible economic action is very popular with the population of California in general. Unfortunately, the general population of a given state doesn't get involved in local elections (what's the name of your local state delegate?) unless they work for the government they're voting in. Therefore even though the population in general might be howling for reform, the state delegates that have to push it through have no incentive to, since they know the great majority of people that actually know who they are and are going to vote in the next election, are against reform.
The "job losses" graph is basically trash, since there are far more private sector workers than public sector workers. Better would be to rate it by percentage.

I'm slightly shocked that the WSJ would print it (the graph, not the article).
There are many small-to-medium differences between Python and Ruby, but in my experiences, no one actually chooses one language over the other because of these differences. When you ask someone, "Why do you prefer Ruby over Python?" or vice-versa, everyone has their favorite differences to talk about, but often, the choice is actually made before enough familiarity with both languages is established to be aware of those differences. Most people choose between the two based on je ne sais quoi, rather than an objective comparison of the differences.

More succinctly: "Ugh! Python? I hate the idea of syntactic whitespace," and "Ugh! Ruby? I have the idea of using @ for instance variables," are both cursory judgments that mask deeper preferential foundations therein.
Programming languages generally don't have semantics that include claims about the physical world.
On Business and Tech co-founders, you are correct. I commented on the article and said as much, since even the most cited example of Apple involved two technical co-founders (one of whom just happen to nail the business part, but he relied on a solid technical foundation):

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1606957

For everything else, it is a misnomer to believe that a recipe exists for startup success.

If you do not suffer from having to motivate yourself, have solid experience and a good network of friends/advisors/mentors, then being a sole co-founder is not a problem (pg says as much on the yc website iirc).

It is simple, and your points are valid - the answer is that there are no real correct answers in entrepreneurship, only case studies and experience. Anybody purporting or claiming otherwise is misleading you (especially those with little experience to back it up, and what works for some cases might not work in others). Take in what you read and allow it to help you form your own opinion and experience, but nothing should be treated as either gospel or 'right'.

There are tons of examples online of entrepreneurs who copied playbook moved from 37signals or another company and found them not to work in their instance (there was a recent case on HN of a company that dropped their free option to find that they increased revenue by a large multiple).

Most business schools spend a lot of time with case studies, and the reason is not because they give you answers, but a base of information from which you can build your own experience.

(Edit: just to add on the issue of co-founders, I would much rather have two solid and experienced advisors over a single mediocre co-founder).
It's ultimately about making code easier to reason about. Immutability (at least as a default) makes the dataflow between independent portions of your program clearer, since every value is determined by where it came from, not where it came from and everything that could have potentially touched it along the way.
Ask HN: My startup got an an acquisition offer. Please share your advice!
I'm located in the EU and have built a server software project which is currently in private beta. This week, out of the blue, I've been contacted by an US company expressing interest in an acquisition. They talked about some cash up-front (6 digits) and hiring me. This is all new to me.

The company and I communicate via email and telephone conferences. I guess such a deal won't be closed only remotely and they will probably invite me over before reaching an agreement.

* Which steps would be involved in selling my project and getting hired by them?

* What guarantees can/should either party ask for?

* Should they be able to see the full source code in advance?

I would greatly appreciate your advice and experiences!
Works in Singapore!
I don't. Nobody does. My point was that the utility pricing model is no different from the freemium model here, in that both eliminate those customers.
I agree, and it's brilliant.
Not many b2b social networks are based on Facebook social relationships...
Yeah, I'd say I work in a semi stealth mode. I'm happy to discuss with people I meet and it's not exactly hidden.

But at the same time I'm not plastering it online and listing exact features, no problem competing with bigger competition but if they were to remove any competitive advantage I would have before launch it would make it a lot harder.
Surprised nobody has mentioned the O-1 visa for "aliens of extraordinary ability":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O-1_visa

AFAIK, a couple of non-US citizens have gotten them to work in the US on YC (the Auctomatic guys). I know DHH was on one to work for 37S.
what is "Screen"?, link please!

EDIT, ty hubb
Any similar sites you'd suggest, besides Project Euler and TopCoder? I've worked through much of PythonChallenge, but I'm more interested in sites that aren't as closely tied to a specific language.
They give some details here on how they got the cost of a Petabyte down:

http://blog.backblaze.com/2009/09/01/petabytes-on-a-budget-h...
I am a python user, but I _really_ like that .inverse!() notation indicating that the object itself is being mutated. It's concise and consistent. Sometimes punctuation in names is exactly what you need. Same with ? for predicates. I'll take even? over evenp any day of the week.
I disagree. Everybody wins only if the API team fixes everything that leads to a request for help, and documents everything they find themselves giving input on. An open forum is the only guaranteed way to be sure everybody wins.

And I respect their API team a lot, especially for the changes made since the FriendFeed acquisition.
I sincerely hope that he doesn't follow any advice in this thread except for getting a lawyer because if he willy nilly applies for stupid things he is not likely to succeed in getting (Just apply for a GC? Come on what dream world are some HN'ers living in?) it will severely complicate any future correct application.
Right, nobody likes DBAs.
In search of power-laws: WikiLeaks edition
This is a GOP strategy called "starve the beast", and Paul Krugman has been writing about it for years:
http://www.google.com/search?q=starve+the+beast+krugman
http://www.gnu.org/software/screen/
I was thinking exactly the same thing.

In addition when you know an employee is going to cost you a lot of money in pension, the incentive to reduce the work force as much as possible is high.

You end up in a situation where your budget is used to pay for the retired employees and you have nothing left for active employees.

One of the reasons you are there is that it's pretty tempting for someone in command to offer a lot in pension. Under his command the budget remains clean and the employees are happy. That has got to ease elections!

One way to avoid that would be to change the way the yearly budget is computed so that it includes "known future expenses" clearly.
Honors course using Starcraft
Ask HN: Does anyone know of an online database schema designer?
Something browser based, allows me to create tables, specify field types and perhaps indicate relationships between keys?
Interesting point about taking debt in someone else's name.

Over the last year I've begun to wonder if people aren't going to start feeling like the deal is off. If granddad elected somebody who made so much of a debt obligation that my taxes can't fix the roads? Why does granddad get to leave me his debt? He's not even around anymore. How can dead people vote to make living people 100 years later poor? In some ways this was the exact same problem the colonies were having with Great Britain -- taxation without representation. One bunch of people making the rules and taxes, and another bunch of people having to live it. (And yes, I'm aware of the counter-argument that current voters can change the budget at will, but for all intents and purposes, practically speaking these things are our "legacy" code. We're stuck with them by default. It takes great upheaval to change even the smallest of things in these matters)

I don't think we're there yet. But we're not far off.
The Road to HAL Is Paved With Good Intentions: The Future of Google?
Actually never thought about the long term vs. short term benefits.

I think you may be right. The guy that's best to start the business is not necessarily the best person to run it a few years later. I'll let you know in a few years ;)
NoScript has click-jacking protection, some XSS protection, and some other things. You could theoretically run it with those things on, but no scripting disabled.

I don't know how good the click-jacking or XSS protection is. For me it has always been a false positive, and usually very quickly fixed and ack'ed in the changelog, and otherwise, I really don't browse the web in such a way that I'm routinely encountering such things. (Plus I do use it with scripting off, so anything like a malicious script to further trigger an XSS elsewhere won't work on me.)

But even if you don't want the script blocking, it can be useful.

(And as others have observed, it is less annoying that you might initially guesstimate. I use it on two machines with no configuration sync'ing, and it still isn't annoying to me.)
I love it when old becomes new again.
Okay, I'll be tough: this article has no value whatsoever.
Take charge of your online reputation
it definitely helps solve a lot of the common short-term problems with startups, though.
http://ondras.zarovi.cz/sql/demo/

and

http://schemabank.com/
Mophie juices up mobile payments on the iPhone with Intuit partnership.
Perhaps a batch confirmation once a week on facebook; "likes" don't become active until you look through a list of likes from the last seven days and ok them? Most of that sort of thing isn't very time-sensitive.