skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I assume there have to be limits to what a 51% stockholder can make a company do. Otherwise I could do this move:

1. Find a company with $100 million in assets

2. Buy 51% of that company for, say, $60 million

3. Force the company to pay $100 million for, say, a nicely framed copy of my autograph.

The company dissolves, I pocket my $40 million, and the other 49% shareholders get annoyed. I assume this is why there are various complicated laws governing what companies can actually do, and why they're obliged to work on maximising shareholder returns rather than anything else.

In answer to the original question, though: No, of course you can't, what on Earth made you think you could?
Twitter kills the password anti-pattern, but at what cost?
What about: http://www.pulseapp.com ?. I'm using the free version and I think it's okay for my needs.
> (Nobody at my office should have more than "P. McKenzie" and my phone number saved on their phone. Including full name, email address, a photo, my address, and the like would give me a cause of action against the company if the phone was ever lost or if that information were misused.)

That really can give you cause of action against a company?

In a similar matter what if I had all of that information on my personal phone, am I correct in assuming that it shouldn't give you the right to sue if that information were released. (As it assumes you either gave me that information, or it was obtained through you in some way)

And in the case of the email attachment, if you are sending radioactively sensitive customer data in any way through email isn't that the real problem and not that the phone could get out.
check efreeme.com. I'll fix it up as requested. :)
On the contrary, free stuff is the overriding trend for stuff that have the marginal cost of replication close to zero. It is not so much culture that is driving it, but the economic forces that does.

Also, the allegedly common complainers who only want free stuff is unquantified. You will need some evidence to show that most people are conscious freeloaders who complain a lot.
A favourite saying of a friend of mine: 'No balls, no babies.'
You could start with some 'safe' low-bar jobs to get a feel for it, like eLance or similar (back in the day I did some eye-opening work for clients through rentacoder and a British freelancing site). The experience may be worth more to you than the abysmal pay.

You could also try structuring your work and charging methods so you have a week or two of lower-paid 'research' at the start of the job to really figure out if you can execute or if it's something you should leave well alone. Once you have a client waiting and are in the swing of things, though, the ability to execute is somehow higher :)
The simple answer is not to store company email on your phone. Then you shouldn't have to worry about this.
Wiping your company's email, sure. But you don't seem to have a problem with wiping the entire contents of someone's personal device and (if I read the article correctly) rendering that device unusable thereafter (after a restore it remote wipes again)

Would you be happy with just an email wipe, if that option were available?
Correct. Don't blame the feature. It's designed to protect from lost phones. Not only can IT wipe your phone (presumably at your request), but you can actually wipe your own phone from Outlook Web Access.

What's interesting is this: the ability to hook up a phone via ActiveSync (the protocol in question) can be configured per account. If IT did not want him to hook up his phone, they should have not given him those rights. Wiping devices like this is a bad idea.

But don't blame the feature.

(full disclosure: I work on the MS Exchange team)
After the remote device wipe completes the device is usable again unless they try to link to exchange again. In the cases I talked about they shouldn't be joining again.

In most cases there is more than just email, and the line between exchange and personal blurs. How do you remove the exchange data from a contact originating from exchange but updated with Facebook data? What about company restricted WiFi passwords? Attachments saved outside of the mail program?

It's complicated, and when properly used: a last resort.

Edit since I can't reply below:
Linking with activesync is optional. The policies are part of the bargain. Your examples either weren't optional (RIAA) or were things you'd choose not to do (EA).
Switching costs
> This is completely what you would expect them to do.

And, sure, they expect evildoers to be using software that honors a remote-wipe command. Yeah, right.
You don't do it unless you want corporate IT to administer it

The problem is, there is no way a user will expect that they are giving away that privilege merely by adding an Exchange account to their personal phone. This is a gaping security hole in the mobile client software and it's entirely the fault of the phone developers. Just giving the server the name of my device without telling me is a breach, as far as I'm concerned.

It's not about data ownership, it's about access. Your data being on a device does not authorize you to access that device.
I disagree, and your comment is a case in point. An incredibly large portion of the valuable content on the internet is written by people who expect no payoff in the traditional sense of the word. You don't get anything money by writing that comment, yet you write it none the less. This is becoming more and more the case.
Maybe something like: ...I never have to think about... or ...never makes me...
Assuming that Apple is doing all of their MacRuby development around this 3rd party hosted, public git server, and that Apple doesn't have version control facilities on their own private network.

There is only one branch on that server, do you seriously suggest that is representative of all the development work ongoing internally at Apple and that one can infer "commitment" from what Apple has made public at this point?

I'm not saying that Apple is or isn't heavily committed to Ruby, I do say that it is unsafe to conclude that they are not from the limited information provided.
Absolutely agreed that it can't be as simple as proposed.

I'm just saying that even if it were that simple, well, you'd still have to own 51%.
I feel like in some circumstances there's a tendency to interview people even when they aren't that seriously interested in hiring them, which isn't exactly fair to the applicant. I wish people would be more open about this when it is the case.
Even so, you're offering functionality that people have wanted from iTunes for a long time, so you may be more successful than you think. :)
There's some really helpful stuff there -- thanks for posting!
This is negative news and media is biased toward negative stuff. Moreover, it is a mention of a few well known companies and sites.

I hypothesize that the players are merely changing and that their strategy of getting large userbase fail because the quality of content is falling, rather than rising, thus decreasing the traffic quality.

This is also in conjuncture with the hypothesis that specialized interests tend to convert better than general social interests because specialized interests tend to have product related items they like to buy.
Sun was all about Java and I think it's disingenuous to say that Sun ever threw any significant effort into JRuby further than seeing JRuby as a way to assimilate Ruby into the Java Borg.
I discovered Repustate.com here on HN and played with it some time ago. Although I believe it only works by giving it a URL and it extracts various types of semantic data from it.

http://www.repustate.com
Hummingbird @ GitHub - open source node.js web traffic viz software
we need to start forking over money

I like how you say we should pay, as opposed to we should ask users to pay. The funny thing about internet entrepreneurs is we want to get everything for free, yet charge users for something.
In twenty years I have never seen any message in any publicly documented protocol that means "nuke yourself utterly", much less ever expect to see anyone knowingly implement such a thing. So I was also unaware of this appalling misfeature, as was the author of the article. I believe this has not been widely disclosed outside the sadistic IT control freak set, and that they are not getting informed consent that this is possible before devices are reconfigured to permit it.
Ask HN: which of these ideas should I build?
I've put each idea as a comment so you can just vote for it. All comments welcome too. If anyone wants to join in, or is working on something similar just say.

My background: experienced web developer with a few tiny successes under my belt. Strong: technical, business ops, design, ideas. Weak: sales, marketing, biz dev.

I debated whether to use a throwaway or not - Went with it in the end.
Hence why I stopped eating figs.
A white label realtime companion site for sports games. People watching a game on tv can engage with other viewers online - chat, stats, form etc. The idea is to license the system to teams/clubs to use on their own sites. The clubs sell the tv rights, but benefit from eyeballs on their own site at the same time as people are watching on tv. Clubs have ready access to sponsors etc. If I can get peoples attention during commercial breaks then my screen is as valuable as the tv, without the cost of actually buying any broadcasting rights.
Seriously? :)

My, they sure are delicious fruits.
So would you be OK with the police randomly picking members of the public to investigate - just in case those people are doing something illegal somewhere?
But who you gonna blame? The marketers who try the "I have a secret and I'm not telling you" line in an attempt to build viral buzz, or the people who fall for it and start creating that buzz? ("OOoooooh, a secret, how exciting! I wonder what it could possibly be!")

At the time of writing at least 14 people have decided that this information-free teaser is worth upvoting. Why did you do it, folks?

The older I get, the more careful I get about guarding my brain cells from pointless speculation about information that will seem incredibly prosaic once I've actually heard it.
A visual search engine for porn. Using a wiimii type interface, users can create a (cartoon) picture of what they are looking for - a redhead, with glasses, and flat chested. Outdoors, doing X. You get the idea. Sites submit their content to the site for free, and add the meta data for each video. Essentially a youporn, but with good search.
Ask HN: Calling options, other than AT&T, from Iraq for US soliders
A family member is about to be deployed to Iraq for a year. They are concerned about the cost involved in keeping in touch with loved ones. Through AT&T it will cost $2.49 to receive a call from Iraq, on top of the cost of an outgoing call.

Bearing in mind services such as Skype, Google Voice, MagicJack, and plain old calling Cards, plus they expect a so-so to good (but possibly sporadic) internet connection, can anyone advice on some good options/setups for a intelligent but non-geek user?

Thanks
Of course. The OP is apparently off his damn rocker.
A site for people to meet other people. Facebook but for people you don't know yet. Works on location, interests etc. I see a huge interest on hn in plotting maps of who is nearby, or searching for founders. I'm lonely some of the time, Id be happy to meet people to chat - bounce a few ideas round, find a climbing buddy etc.
It's easier to find a swinging party than someone for a coffee. Chatroulette tapped into something here. It needn't be limited to real world, but can be global with people choosing to meet people over video, or IM, or skype.
Saying "Yes" is easy. Saying "No" is hard.

You won't be able to say "No" until you've said "Yes" and failed.
None, they're all shit.
Common stock only grants you a claim on the equity of a company. As a shareholder you usually get to vote who becomes a member of the board of directors and that's about it.

To gain decision control of a public company the OP will need to conduct a hostile takeover and probably take it private. Better get your checkbook out.
F.C.C. Likely to Open Airwaves to Wireless
Not useful. It would be much better if it just offered selectable search results than performing an "I'm feeling lucky" style guess. Wikipedia articles are often not sensibly named, and if you didn't know what you were looking for this tool would be very frustrating.
You have to be under 30 to win.
We don't require employees to link their personal phones. It's their choice, and the activesync policy is part of the bargain.

In fact, I'd personally recommend employees not link their phones. Work isn't so important it should be always on.
I absolutely love Clicky. The best feature is "Spy" which shows you a live view of visitors as they interact with your site. Careful- can be very addictive. I'm watching mine right now when I should be coding :)

Referral link: http://getclicky.com/245493

Non-referral link: http://getclicky.com
Turn off JavaScript altogether. NoScript makes the web sane.
Just a note: there is usually only one wasp in the edible fig, and it has been broken down by the plant.
You're going to be beat to this one by the big guys & their partners (Google TV, for instance). You won't be able to do it as well as they will, especially without device manufacturer partnerships.
Individual rights aren't relevant. This is a public health issue that doesn't infringe on anyone's rights outside of some Libertarian wet dream. We license restaurants based on health inspections, does that infringe on your right to serve or eat filthy shit? I think not ;)
I went to an all-boys school where it didn't seem to come up.
"No, it is not criminal, it is an essential component of ensuring security in lost devices."

You say that as if that is some sort of an argument. But there is no actual law or force in the universe that says that necessary steps to do something that you consider "securing your network" will therefore automatically not be "criminal". In fact once you start trying to think of what criminal activities someone might take in the name of "securing their network" it isn't that hard to come up with a very long list.

Something does not become legal merely because you have an excuse!

(Note I'm not saying this is illegal or not. That would take careful analysis of the law and probably a detailed specification of what jurisdiction we're talking about and the precise details of a specific hypothetical since it almost certainly goes both ways, depending. I'm just claiming the argument doesn't make much sense.)
Terrible idea. first, pick a random porn site and look at the hundreds (thousands?) of tags people use to label their fetishes/preferences. Secondly, think about how you'd use an avatar to search for porn verbs. Not pretty (unless you want to double the product as a "create your own hentai" platform).
Unfortunately, your opinion isn't very popular around here. People here don't seem to want to accept the fact that javascript was never designed to be a scalable general purpose language for writing large applications. It has slowly evolved over time, but is still not there.

I hope something like Google'ss NaCL becomes popular, and instead of javascript slowly creeping to the server/desktop/phone because we have no choice in browser-land, the browser opens itself up to all computer languages so javascript can start feeling some competition. I even think this would be good for javascript, as it would spur the language to evolve faster.
Isn't 4chan hosted in / run from the US?
I'm not disagreeing, but they are going for the tv. I'm aiming at a laptop/iPad on someone's couch. I may have misunderstood what google tv are doing though.
I see this as a logical extension of all the existing location-based social networking stuff out there (Foursquare, Gowalla, Facebook Places, and even Yelp). Since I'm sure all of these guys are already working on extending their apps to be more flexible in this area, you'd be doomed before you started.
Two of the three are a-ok, especially if you'd started two years ago. :-)
E.U. to Back Plan for Pan-European Mobile Market
I was thinking the same, but then I thought "What if this guy is building a competitor to www.icanhascheezburger.com ?" maybe on that context it would be appropriate.
The moral of the story: Don't spout fire and brimstone at someone unless you're prepared to back it up and give a presentation to the entire world about it at a moment's notice.
On one hand, a poor measurement of teaching performance do more harm than good. However, it is also true that human judgement of student performance can easily be skewed in various ways.

So, the solution is to find some kind of measurement that accurately reflect somewhat student progress. This way, teachers can reliably test education experiments. Of course, the larger problem is probably the teachers' possible resistance to the scientific method and poor training in devising experiments.
It was on good faith; upvote ('yay!') open a tab. But, frustrating as it is it's not quite info. free, we do now know /that/ it's getting an upgrade.
But they are all beneath Verilog, which is slightly below VHDL :-)
Thanks :)

I am working on an intelligent feed reader which keeps track of what kind of articles you like and show articles which are of your interest.

To learn user's interest, he has to like/dislike an article.
This is why I'm buying figs asap!
I use prepaid long distance cards to make calls to that part of the world. Iran for example comes out to be $0.7 to $0.9cent/min (depending on landline or cell number) compared to the Skype's $0.12/min.

The card provider is Goldline, see rates here http://www.goldline.net/prepaidPC-bitaUSA.aspx

It's very difficult to find a cheap phone-to-phone option in those regions. Telecoms shake down any foreign providers for ridiculous fees.
> The funny thing about internet entrepreneurs is we want to get everything for free

On the contrary, I'd say that entrepreneurs love rewarding fellow entrepreneurs who create a valuable service or product.
Theories about the etiology of schizophrenia are a dime a dozen. I did my thesis on the genetics of schizophrenia 20 years ago, and to this day nothing has come of it.

If the research cited is not in one of the top journals, I'd not even bother reading the abstract.
Isn't what they presented as a standard description of RDBMS servers incorrect, simply because only those kind of servers are available in FOSS world? Unless you want to spend a lot of money, your options in 200X were MySQL and Postgres. Not many others were mature / polished / known enough. There was always some niche for SQLite of course, but that's not reasonable for a multi-user service.

On the other hand almost every NoSQL solution comes as a FOSS project. If such project specialises in some way, it's a much better choice if you can prove that feature X (which the project provides) is what you need.

So the opinion of RDBMS as a "one-size-fits-all solution" makes some sense if you take the software availability into account.
There seems to be two quite distinct scenarios where this could be used; when a phone is stolen, or when an employee is no longer trusted with company data (they're fired or leave)

For the first scenario, I see no problem at all with remote wipe, but I do have a problem with the assumption that deliberate destruction of personal data is acceptable, for any reason. What if an employee had some paperwork at home? Would you condone burning their house to destroy it? Is a car bomb appropriate to destroy a briefcase left in a car?

What right does anyone have to destroy other people's property in the course of protecting their own? Would you support game manufacturers like EA being able to remote wipe your computer if they suspected you of running a pirate copy of a game? The RIAA if they suspect you of torrenting?
HTML Sanitizer
Is anybody aware of any HTML Sanitizer (Javascript or Java either is fine).

I have an app where I fetch data from different RSS / ATOM feeds and sometimes those feeds contain NOT well-formed HTML and it screws up my app (styling and layout).
Have you looked at webflows in Grails? I believe it's using spring's webflow stuff, but is more grails/groovy-oriented, which might be easier to deal with.
Bro. You got into USC. You're doing quite well, at least better than me :)
As an avid skydiver (67 jumps) and a lover of fine documentaries, I must suggest that you watch "Fearless - The Jeb Corliss Story."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzQ7pdTfp2g&feature=PlayL...

And an article worth checking out in Outsider Magazine puts the spotlight on Felix Baumgartner who plans on jumping from the edge of the atmosphere (120,000 feet). If you're into physics check out this article as it goes through the struggles his Red Bull Team is facing to ensure that he survives.

http://outsideonline.com/adventure/travel-ga-aerial-sports-p...
Schizophrenia is a rare condition

Schizophrenia is actually a common disease, affecting ~1% of the world population, regardless of ethnicity.
So you connect and store a bunch of confidential and important information on a device that you can leave at a bar?! What sort of security policy is that?
1. Project listings are terrific! Extracurricular work in the area you're trying to get hired into is a huge bonus as you apply for jobs.

2. One line descriptions are awful. If your resume is project heavy and light on school stuff, make your independent projects the focus and frame each in the context of how you accomplished what you did, what you learned during them, and what tech stack you chose for each one.

Going over one page is perfectly acceptable.

3. Listing your technical skills (programming languages, OS administration experience, DB development/support, etc) on a scale of 1-10 is helpful, too. It won't get you out of tech interviews but if you're honest it will help the interviewer figure out what to talk to you about. There's nothing worse than an interview where your resume and cover letter do zilch to help the interviewer get to know you.
GnuCash is great on Windows and Linux but is very flaky on Mac OS, if that's a concern.
The marginal cost of replication for things like news, drugs, and software, especially software, have always been close to zero, and your economics would suggest that these would have trended toward marginal costs of a few bucks per CD, but that's the wrong way to think about it. Software has large development costs that must be recouped, so marginal cost doesn't really play into what's going on here.
The word "useless" has been popping up in my free apps' reviews too. I don't know how to interpret it.

I'm wondering if this is a new word among young people now. Kind-of the new "sucks" maybe?
I never liked them much anyway, and I didn't particularly relish the idea of eating dead wasps.

(bugs? well, ok. Wasps? No thanks)

Although now that I read the wasps are digested by the fig, they seem more palatable again.
The YouTube Instant implementation did have predictions, though I believe it was just a hack using Google's own API.
thank you, didn't want to know that.
And yet (leaving the debate about whether these IQ numbers are meaningful aside) he never produced anything of any real value.

His one published book apparently "predicted the existence of regions of space where the second law of thermodynamics operated in reverse to the temporal direction that we experience in our local area. Everything outside of what we would today call a galaxy would be such a region. Sidis claimed that the matter in this region would not generate light.". This not only sounds wrong, it sounds like the kind of wrong that only somebody not particularly versed in thermodynamics (even as it existed in the 1920s) would write. His writings on other subjects seem to be equally wrong-headed.

It's a classic smart person disease, to think

(a) I have an idea

(b) I am smart, therefore

(c) My idea must be right!

See also: Einstein on politics.