skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
What a great post.

Software is used by people who want to solve a problem. Big, big companies can bring connections, brand recognition, money and other intimidating resources, sure.

In the end, though, people use the software, not the brand. No amount of money can replace the value of genuinely understanding and serving the needs of the people who use what you make.

In a software matchup between guys who live and die by their ability to make and sell software vs. guys who sell rubber and plastic sewn together in sweatshops, you can call the winner before you even see the fight. My hat is off to Jason for understanding the value of his company's position.
One word. Hotel.
you can essentially do this (post a twitter message from the address bar) in Chrome or Firefox without installing anything if you just configure a custom search engine with the path http://twitter.com/home?status=%s

1. In Chrome, go to Options > Default Search engine > Manage > Add

2. Give it a name/keyword e.g. "tweet" and URL http://twitter.com/home?status=%s. Hit OK.

3. Now from the address bar, you can type: tweet [msg]

4. Forwards you to twitter. Although you still have to click a button on twitter, you could easily write your own serverside twitter API client that could post your tweet without the click.
Ask HN: Does anyone maintain a Twitter list of HN participants?
If not, let me know and I'll happily start one.
DNA also has lots of garbage: genes that aren't expressed and are just along for the ride.
I dislike these kinds of statements because, although they might have a kernel of truth, they tend to deflect useful criticism and inspection of a company's operation. The kernel of truth in this case is that Steve Jobs has a very good intuition of what people want and what they find to be aesthetically pleasing. However, I'm sure that the closed, proprietary nature of the various iOS platforms and their general hostility towards free software aren't exactly benefits that other companies should emulate.

Besides that, I will say that even if Jobs wasn't involved in the actual designing of Apple products, he's a very charismatic director and has a good intuition on what really excites people. Such qualities are generally rare to find in the human population.
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FWIW, Paul Lutus is calling this accurate over on reddit:

http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/daabf/steve_job...
I think this is a difference of the generations.
I didn't know who wrote this until I read the paragraph on "Time to Kill". A movie came out with that name just after I graduated high school and I was the only one of my friends to see it. Many years later, I saw him interviewed on Charlie Rose. The career transitions inspire me.
To the limited extent I agree with the critique, it seems exploiting it is a better resolution than writing about it. I tend to think the tech industry disproportionately ignores female customers, for example. That means writing for them is like shaking a money tree.

If one really believes there is a vast untapped well of ladies who want to code XML files for poor wages for 14 hours a day, identifying and hiring them yourself sounds like a sure fire path to millions.
Ask HN: What sort of survey data should I gather from my market?
I have the unique opportunity of be able to survey a large portion of my potential market.
My question is, what type of questions should I be asking to get maximum 'profit' from this data?
Wow, I feel stupid.
:) right I forgot to mention they specifically asked for an apartment. I imagine because 1 week in a Manhattan hotel for 6 would cost a fortune. Not that an apartment will be cheap...
Fixed up that last phrase. I meant our sales conversion rates conversion rates.

Hopefully my article helps you guys out.
What was http://readr.com ? That's a good domain name. Do you have plans for it?
Yes you can. It would not however poll for new mentions, and direct messages wich OmniTweet does.

Plus you have to wait for twitter.com to load which takes longer and longer.
very recent mixergy interview with their founder: http://mixergy.com/runkeeper-jason-jacobs-interview/

HN: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1641802
But that will only work if you (creator of the site) have a direct connection with the group of friends.
The assertion that spammers in Canada are "criminals" is incorrect. Canada does not currently have anti-spam laws on the books, as far as I am aware. The author does not understand the difference between a bill and a law.
Now I realized why PHP developers selected '\' as a namespace character!
so, without knowing your actual infrastructure, here are some questions/comments.

1. do you have a cache layer? the ability to batch-update multiple of the same event without actually hitting a db (or, shudder, disk I/O) can help you in general and provides an edge during huge spikes.

2. reliable monitoring is hard. you usually need an extra host to check the other hosts, typically with a very low resource service/protocol like snmp, ganglia, collectd. send alerts based on threshold or ramping. also try to benchmark your service and get numbers on the amount of memory, cpu, hps etc. that will make it tip over and set hard limits in your applications/servers.

3. i don't know your hoster or how they scale, but i'm a big fan of ultra low cost VPS's that dynamically scale. i wouldn't rely on any single hoster for my entire site, but for excess capacity there are dozens of good cheap providers you can scale out with. i don't usually look at amazon because of (iirc) the huge cost for short return. but definiely look to see if you can expand your hosters for DR.
It doesn't really seem to me like many of these rebuttals actually read Arrington's article; they're just angry in general about the state of women in tech. Arrington very specifically said that by the time it got to him and TC50 or whatever, it's too late. All this railing about "male privilege" and "ambient un-belonging" is pretty much tangential to what he said.
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I think you hit the nail on the head.

Everyone wants talented developers because companies typically pay them only incrementally more than lousy developers even though they're vastly more productive.

Perhaps the reason people are having trouble finding jobs and companies are having trouble finding people is because both sides are realizing this but companies are still offering the same terms which the talented developers are rejecting either by seeking out the companies offering more pay, the companies offering better projects and teams or by rejecting the system entirely and starting their own companies where they can be the ones that reap the rewards of their efforts rather than the often disproportionately paid executive staff.
I know this is the internet and all, but it would be prudent not to cast aspersions about executives having an "affair" when the fact was that Hurd left for other reasons.
Ask HN: what does Microsoft sell that you can't get for free?
Today I installed ubuntu and have been blown away by it. It actually is easy to use and works very well.

I'm looking at microsoft's product line and there are mature free alternatives to most stuff:

Windows - Linux

Office - open office, google docs

Exchange - gmail

I'd be worried if I was Microsoft. And I know their profit is driven by enterprise, but today's startups are tomorrow's enterprise customers.
Off-the-shelf retail prices for books are insane. $20 for a large-format paperback of Under the Dome? Please.

Perhaps the new model for physical bookstores should be that of a private library, except without the checkout aspect. The main income comes from impulse buys of high-margin foodstuffs and misc odds-n-ends, maybe even music and gift cards, but not from a high volume of book sales.

Bookstores have a lot of advantages over public libraries. Many libraries don't have many brand-spanking-new titles, and if they do they're tied up by patrons for months. The hours for public libraries (ignoring university stacks) generally suck. Many don't have free wireless, though that's rapidly changing. Most don't have, or allow the consumption of, food.

After some time, the store could sell off heavily discounted, gently-used copies that patrons thumbed through while sipping coffee and facebooking during their lunch hour.

I understand that book stores must mark up books to make a reasonable profit (at least, that's the benefit of the doubt I give them), but the markup is simply horrible. I once shopped around online for a set of books I wanted, found the best deal (think it was Amazon or maybe Wal Mart), printed it out, and took it to the nearest Barnes and Noble. I don't recall the price difference, but it was quite a bit. I wanted the books that day, so I snagged a sales droid and proposed they give me a price half-way between their price and the one on the printout. She looked at me like I was a moron, and curtly said they couldn't do that. So I kindly wished her a good day, walked out the door, and had the books delivered to my door a few days later.

I find it hard to believe that large chains must be so inflexible in their retail pricing. However, if they don't lower their prices, I won't shed a single tear when they go under.
I'm really uncomfortable with how other men deal with the subject of women in tech.

More than once, I've noticed developers who are women derided as less competent, less capable than their male peers. Their professional success is ascribed to their appearance, their male bed partners, or some other such male-invented loophole. One of these conversations happened just the other day where I work. The really disturbing bonus is how suddenly "bitch" becomes a synonym for "woman."

I don't really know where I'm going with this. I can't claim to understand a cause or a solution. My mom was a single mother who started her own business to keep me fed and clothed, so I maybe I'm immune to this business of discounting the capacities of half the population with no more information about them than their anatomy.

I only know it makes me sad.

edit: Initially terrified that this got voted into the negatives. Thanks for restoring my faith in you, HN.
Working on it. Hope to get working on it in the next couple of weeks. Thanks for the support.
Ah, it was sales conversion rate. Pretty awesome improvement. Thanks for sharing. I've already started a test to see if menu/no-menu makes a difference on my home page.
Having thought about nothing other than iPhone or web/SaSS apps in the recent months, seeing this makes me fascinated at just how much of the web (and creative outlets) I don't know.
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I tend to think the tech industry disproportionately ignores female customers, for example.

You won't believe the number of times I've heard Ben Affleck's "don't pitch the bitch" line from The Boiler Room presented as a serious maxim of doing business.
Why don't more americans simply start your own business? If i was laid off for an extended period, that'd be what i'd do.
Review: Microsoft Hohm and a whole-house power monitor
MULTI/EXEC (transactions!) Pub/Sub, virtual memory! wooo!

(if you've been running on one of the betas, the change is that WATCH was taken out.)
Success of Samsung Galaxy Tab Doomed by Carrier Contracts
Even though the topic of women in tech rarely gets mentioned on Hacker News, it's encouraging that when it does the discussion comes to a consensus that really pushes things forward.
For me, Office is the killer. You cannot seamlessly transfer things such as PPTX files from Office 2007 to OpenOffice. This is a critical problem, and is the thing keeping me on Windows. All of the scientists at my institution in my field use Microsoft software for presentations and for some amount of data exchange (the 'high-level', post-processing stuff--the actual data lives in flatfiles or databases). This, unfortunately, keeps me a bit locked in.

I suppose I could just run Wine...
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The best way to get a feel for it is to download the free demo of Galcon. It's a great game and it's available on Windows, Mac, Linux, iPhone, iPad, Android, and even WebOS; give it a try.

The answers to your questions are simple addition, no growth, random numbers, yes, and yes.
That's a great story and a decent service. I especially liked the part about going on a date with someone you met on the dating site you yourself built. You're living my dream, man. That's what they call taking your life in your own hands.

I have a feature request however. It's actually a difficult one and I guess you won't consider it, but wouldn't it be wonderful if the website analyzed tweets and built recommendations and matches, like okcupid does?
MySQL Diehard vs. NoSQL Fanboi: The Animated Movie
until fresh hot coffee can be downloaded over the Internet I think Starbucks has a brighter future than B&N.

I've sometimes thought B&N should turn into something closer to a cross between Starbucks and a library. Maybe make them members-only, so help filter the demographic that walks in.
Isn't that choice a false dichotomy? A bet on Gates is not a bet against Jobs.

An investor who could only envisage one winner may be a little naive. It's not a horse race.
Also, remember that the meaning of the words and phrases in the independent claims are subject to intense debate.
In Feast of Data on BPA Plastic, No Final Answer
Readr was a social aggregator, like Friendfeed but without the Facebook acquisition. I just sold that name a few weeks ago - we'll see what the new owner has in store for it.
I'd be worried if I was Microsoft.

I'd be worried too:

Windows Mobile - Android

IIS - Apache

.NET - PHP, Java, Python, Ruby, etc

SQL Server - MySQL, PostgreSQL, etc
Since Oracle is a direct competitor to HP, I wonder if HP (or even the SEC) are going to be investigating the hire for conflicts of interest regarding trade secrets just like they went crazy when engineers left Google for Apple.
Give 'em hell, Jason!
That used to be the case for me, but around here the Office ecosystem has been increasingly fragmenting between versions--- some departments are all on Windows 7 with Office 2007, but quite a lot of machines are still on XP with Office 2003, and some folks (esp. on laptops) are using the Mac version of Office. The interoperability mess that causes is pushing people away from sending out Office file formats at all (mostly moving towards PDF), and to the extent they do, they choose save-as for some old version of Office rather than sending docx/pptx.
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The disconnect is that can (or want to) hire college graduates for $25K - or preferably as unpaid interns.

They don't want to hire 20year experience engineers for $100K
Whoops, I should have stayed around to field replies.

I should have mentioned that most programmers who look to join are grad student aspirants who want to enter the institute's prestigious PhD program via that route. The alternative to that is the mainstream route which has an entrance exam and a huge amount of competition.

The other thing is that this is a world-class research lab in an area attractive enough to hacker-types that the young people who apply are not too worried about the money. These are of course young folks with no dependents. You get free or cheap housing and food, and access to a wonderful library, etc.

It's about as exploitative as grad school, let's just say. This of course voids any suggestion you might think I made to adopt this as a general business practice.
htty, the HTTP TTY
I just published a first release of a new console app called htty. I like to think it’s something of a cross between curl and the Lynx browser.

Some bullet points:

* Intuitive commands and command aliases
* Support for familiar HTTP methods GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE, as well as HEAD, OPTIONS and TRACE
* Automatic URL-encoding of query-string parameters and URL fragments
* Transcripts, both verbose and summary
* Dead-simple cookie handling and redirect following
* Built-in help

Why do this when the admirable Node.js-based http-console exists? To begin with, not everybody is into Node yet, and so installing http-console is not as simple as 'gem install htty'. Furthermore, http-console's spare UI is not as full-featured as it might be.

I have some killer features in mind for the near future. Fork and contribute!
Yes. I am not a tax professional, but my understanding is that business entities operating in the US are required to have a business tax ID number, called an Employer Identification Number (EIN).

You may find better and more detailed answers at these links to the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS)...

http://www.irs.gov/businesses/international/index.html

or

http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/article/0,,id=98350,00.h...

As for applying for an EIN, that can be accomplished online, here...

http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/article/0,,id=102767,00....
I really appreciate the plucky nature of this post, but I'm really not holding my breath.

Right now the Nike app is $2.99 and number one in the Healthcare & Fitness section - Runkeeper is $9.99 and ranked 24th.

Yes - Nike really wants to sell shoes, but they really want to sell shoes this app can be a loss leader for them, they don't need to really show a profit - heck if it breaks even they're fine. You really don't want to compete with someone like Nike with an app where they don't need to make a profit. Heck he mentions that they're 14th (actually 13th now) and Addidas is 18th in the section, but thats the free apps section. Again Addidas doesn't need to make a profit with their product when they are really making their money on shoes.

As far as I can tell runkeeper is just an app? eek.
Surely (not betting on) != (betting against)
It looks like a perfect example of minimalist usability, and definitely not something you should feel guilty about. Aside from the rough edges, of course, like the fact that it's hard to install until Chrome makes some more progress on their extension API.
make email for idea updates for users
Why do this when the admirable Node.js-based http-console exists?

To begin with, not everybody is into Node yet, and so installing http-console is not as simple as 'gem install htty'.

Furthermore, http-console's spare UI is not as full-featured as it might be.

I have some killer features in mind for the near future.

Fork and contribute!
And if your hiring is based on 'all we need is C++ programmers' and everybody who 'knows' C++ is equivalent - then that's what you do.
Heh, my bad everyone :)

This blog came in my Google Reader feed from Planet Lisp and I was mostly excited about the possibility of a CL package. I just submitted with my Reader + HN greasemonkey script (http://github.com/fitzgen/reader-submit-to-hn) without a second thought...
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"H.P. found no evidence of sexual harassment, but said Mr. Hurd had tried to conceal a personal relationship with Ms. Fisher by removing her name from his expenses for meals. "

Interesting. He's a multimillionaire CEO and couldn't be bothered to just pay for the dinners out of his own pocket, but expensed them to the corporate card instead? It must be good to be da king. Until you're not...
1) The tracking stuff is static, nothing actually happens except "OK" being returned. Hit logs using a standardized format are generated from the requests which are then bundled up and sent off for processing. The processing stuff does 2 rounds of merges to reduce the volume of db work. The real problem (aside from the volume of data to be processed) was as simple as a ton of people connecting at once which is pretty much just a hardware problem/solution.

2) Yeah, I'm not sure long term what the best option on that is going to be, it's definitely something I'll be researching soon. Benchmarking pretty much just got done for me, I can comfortably do 80k concurrents on a vps, more on the dedicateds although the exact point is unknown.

3) Absolutely agree on the vps boxes. I also don't look at Amazon because of request based billing - that stuff adds up crazy-expensive compared to 'normal' hosting.
I tested green, orange and red on http://www.webdesigncompany.net and green won for us but even more important than the color was the call to action text in the button.
PowerPoint and publisher are the two office apps that seem to be hardest to replace. But they're both ripe for web-based alternatives.
Don't reply if you don't want to say, but how much did you sell it for? I wish I would have known, could have used it!
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You're assuming it's in the US, it isn't.
Normalization has nothing to do with storage or performance, it has everything to do with modelling the problem correctly. The point about a product's name changing or a person's name changing is valid, but the solution there is to keep revisions in the DB when it's important.
And their web stuff isn't strong enough to hedge them against a diminishing desktop market.
The parent is correct. Many vendors make 24 cores in 1U nowadays. For example you can get an Asus barebone with two Opteron 6168 processors for $2290: $800 barebone (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816110...) plus two $745 processors (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819105...)
Maybe TheRealTweetBox? Hehe. I have a couple of ideas for new names rolling around my head.
Actually no, since you need to have the service for atleast 1 month before you cancel the contract, which runs at 39.99+15 (=55+tax, cheapest voice + data plan). So thats about +$20 for avoiding all the hassles.
I think the sort of person who thinks that signing a 2 year contract is the same person who would be paying $50-60/month for cellular service anyway. If you need (or just want) data and text messaging, plus relatively basic phone service, you will likely pay close to that amount no matter whether you are or aren't under contract.

Given that assumption, and if you expect that your life won't change in a dramatic way that will require you to drop your cell phone plan in the next two years, there's really no downside to getting a subsidized device.
That line, which I've never heard before, richly earns a bozo bit. [Edit: This idiom means "marks the speaker as an intellectually and/or morally unserious person who is not worth effort to speak to."]
"the millions of liberal arts majors who used to be quietly employed but now are finding that many companies simply don't want or need them"

Come on. I know the general disdain for liberal arts amongst this crowd, but couldn't you instead pick on, oh I don't know, those who never even went to college or even finished high school? The unemployment rate for those with college degrees _of any kind_ is 4.5%. Among non-degree holders over 9%, and among non-diploma holders over 12%. Yet, you're assuming it's all those philosophy majors that make up the bulk of the unemployed?

Case in point, I'm an English major who has been working for a major mid-sized public software company for over 8 years now making about 40k above the median US household income, not including bonuses or stock options. Believe me when I say I'm not one of the luckier ones, as I have colleagues in the same field (technical publication writing, course developers, or technology journalists) that make US$110000 or more depending on the region and experience level.

Employers look to a degree - _any_ degree - for proof that a candidate has discipline and is a generalist who can adapt to fast-moving actions and targets all under tight deadlines; a person who, through creativity _and_ technical prowess, can solve business problems and work with clients, partners, and fellow associates. That seriously can't _just_ be CS majors. In fact, what makes you think you're safe, if _FTA_ it says you'll have to bring more to the table than just a CS degree with some C++ or Java skills? You're just as vulnerable if you're an average coder than if you're an average desktop support jockey or technical writer.
I doubt Phillips will have a problem finding another job.