skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The companies have argued to the government that there's nothing anticompetitive about the no-poaching agreements. They say they must be able to offer each other assurances that they won't lure away each others' star employees if they are to collaborate on key innovations that ultimately benefit the consumer.

Some economists believe that banning such agreements could harm Silicon Valley's open, collaborative model.

If the existence of an agreement isn't disclosed to the employees, then the model is not really what it is always held out to be, but something more akin to private industrial policy. I don't believe this is any better for consumers than for employees over any length of time. I've personally felt (as a consumer) that tech & internet development have stagnated in the last year or two, notwithstanding the existence of new things; perhaps this is why.

Settlement or litigation, this is probably going to set off a wave of cross-hiring because firms will no longer have the security of the agreement in place when negotiating employment agreements, and turning away a candidate from another firm with good skills may look suspicious. Good for engineers, good for the local economy, probably good for innovation; not so good for CFOs and CIOs who like sleeping at night.

I'm guessing companies will settle rather than fight; but if not, it'll set off a sector-wide feeding frenzy in the market. This should make the rest of the year interesting. It's partly political, to be sure, but slow wage growth in a period of generally rising productivity per capita has been a source of discontent for quite a while now. There is a lot of pent-up frustration, and also a lot of companies sitting on cash reserves in search of a market signal; neither situation is sustainable.

Incidentally, Microsoft, IBM and Genentech are all said to be in the clear.
In using the iPad I do constantly feel the lack of Flash. It's my biggest gripe about it. I'm not sure this device will stack up, but Flash is a big competitive edge.
Search for the headline on Google and click on the link from there instead of here. At worst, registering will let you read a lot more stories for free; they don't spambomb free registrations.
I was surprised that being above the fold didn't matter as much as I thought it did.
The Finnish Government is preparing just this kind of a system. Launch is expected at earliest in 2011.

Planning was started after the 2004 Asian tsunami. In 2007 the upfront costs of an emergency alert system were estimated at 1,5 to 6 million euros. At that point the Ministry of the Interior decided to mothball the project.

This year we've had record breaking storm damages. It's likely that development of such system will once again be a priority.

In Finland, mobile emergency alert system is seen as an alternative to current national emergency broadcasts (tv, radio - similar to EAS). Currently the system is very stupid - single bear sightings are pushed nationwide in every broadcast media. It's mostly a matter of too lax regulation on the use of emergency broadcasts, but ultimately a new, more localized delivery method would be needed. This would mean SMS emergency alerts pushed through local cell towers.

For further info on the Finnish project: Google "hätätekstiviesti" and Google Translate.
That 'long-haired guy brandishing that controller' today:

http://www.crunchbase.com/person/bruce-baumgart
Context-aware Computing: Intel Paints the Future of Devices
"We don't have any competitors"
> There is really no profit motive to killing the OpenJDK.

They could change the licensing on future versions of OpenJDK. Perhaps free for academic and non-commercial use only. And then attempt to monetize the JDK for commercial development.

I'm not saying it's likely to happen, just that it could happen, and it's these kinds of worries that are making Java developers uncomfortable. I should know, I'm one of them.

It would be in Oracle's best interest, and in the best interest of Java developers, if they make their position on the JDK absolutely crystal clear. And soon.

It sounds like they might do that at JavaOne, but I fear they won't communicate their plans with the kind of crystal clarity I would like, whether intentionally or unintentionally.
If you had done only one of those things, providing eyeballs, 20% would be a very reasonable cut.

The problem is that you were unprepared and unable to deliver those eyeballs, which is probably the main reason the site failed.
Go ahead: come up with such a set.
Screenshot: Skype for Windows Beta 5 uses Adobe Flash player
Well, "amazon" is from Greek mythology and wasn't really invented recently, but the rest of your point still stands.
depends on who you are marketing to.. Geeks not so much -- try to go general public though and you want an easy to spell .com

// I'm still jealous of Matt Mullenweg's personal domain though: ma.tt is a pretty awesome domain hack.
ARP Cache Poisoning - Man-in-the-Middle Attacks (Explained)
Good to know there's a wifi only version.
Iceland has horrible network connectivity compared to the mainland, and I don't think Google needs to do that much batch-only processing for it to pay off.

This is also pertinent: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/datacenter/how-to-kill-the-datacen...
I've always had a hint of doubt in the back of my mind about Groupon. They're obviously printing money for themselves, but with the terms they're offering local businesses, at what cost? Conversely, eventually local businesses will wise up and demand better terms, so the market will balance itself, but the casualties during the interim are a real shame.
In several of the author's examples - like vertical attention - different studies show different results - or as new measurement tools become available, old truisms fall.

I am all for documentation / proof in UX but at the same time the problem with vetting out ideas, or common sense "this worked for me " illustrations may keep you from testing that one morsel that puts your ux / conversion rate over the top.
It's easier to maintain those hours if you have a significant equity stake.

The equation doesn't add up when your primary compensation is salary (later hires).
How Diaspora killed itself before it even launched
Then Welcome To Android
Currying functions
How is the procedure described on that page in the "Exempting Your Documents From the Scribd Archive" section not a permanent opt-out?
Well, America is large, and there's always been this struggle of Federal Government vs. State Government. And every state is run differently. The less competent ones require more taxes, or, on the other hand, should really be split into two states (e.g California).
"It's possible that you hired the person you want for your company but you were not motivating him enough to work long hours."

I don't know what would motivate anyone to give up their personal lives and most of their free time for a company that wasn't even theirs. Motivation to me would be a large stake in the company.

Anyone not getting this for giving up their lives to a company is a fool.
Thank you for the intensely personal and heartfelt postmortem. It seems like everyone else in this thread is knocking you guys, but I'm glad to be able to learn from your failures.

I was sad to see you guys fold. I really liked your idea.
My law of girlfriends and employers: You learn more about them when you leave than at any other time. This speaks highly of YC.
Hmm, the balls puzzle has me stumped.

Say I pull one ball from each box, and I get two white balls and a black ball. Obviously the box that the black ball came from the box that contains all black balls.

But how can I tell which box contains all white balls, and which contains a mix of black and white balls, without pulling out a second ball?
They built a product that they didn't use. His entire post-mortem could have been that one sentence and it still would've taught a ton of entrepreneurs a great lesson.
I have felt this way about being successful for a long time. It does have to do with luck. However, without the right knowledge or experience, the lucky situation will most likely be meaningless to you.
Thanks. Nobody will go bust or anything, but a letdown is worse than if I had rejected him in the first place.
Article could have used a bit more explanation of what newstilt was, given that (a) I'd never heard of it and (b) it's been shut down so I can't look at it.
Someone already built this: http://csinsider.homeip.net/config/mchrisco/diaspora/diaspor...

Torrent here: http://burnbit.com/torrent/154764/diaspora_alpha_iso
Is it? Where are those ToS?
To extend your idea about redundantly entering a password when downloading a free application, Apple also sends you a redundant receipt for $0. That can't be anything but training the user to a set of behaviours.
I think it will be beneficial for most people to wait for 3.0-based tabs, which should also ship with such auspicious future features as Google Music & Google Me (presuming they're working on an Android app to display/interact with the activity stream). Apps will also be better prepared to support higher resolutions and I suspect we'll start seeing different form factor tabs... with dual-core CPUs, more accessories (BT keyboard, for one), and an even better UX.
The majority of recent graduates just spent 4 years in college instead of gaining relevant experience, so, yes. The economy is tough, they don't stack up to the competition, and adding more schooling wouldn't improve matters.

Their competition probably spent the last 4 years working.
while it might eventually have some value, the effort itself is noteworthy, even if it is just a proof of concept.
S3 glitch causes Tarsnap outage
1. It is absurd to expect to be able to make money from the work they are doing. That said, they may need to make accommodations to allow commercial plugins / complementary services.

2. The "you give your contribution to us" clause is standard in any open source project. How, for example, will they be able to update the project license if they don't own the copyright?
Code for open-source Facebook riddled with landmines
Become the customer, or: why projects fail
I can see 37 signals writing a big fat "told ya so" post about this soon.
Is this significantly different from bash scripting?
The MLA Research Paper
The bibliography, in text citation and the pagination are three of the most important elements in a MLA research paper. Therefore, having a basic knowledge of these elements and what they include will make your research paper writing process easier.
"It's not some aircraft company's trademark"

In the US, this is considered legally ok because nobody would confuse an aircraft with a query language. For example, you have Delta airlines and Delta faucet.
Classical music isn't just pretty. It's the written language a composer uses to communicate musical ideas to a performer. It's highly expressive. Many trained musicians can sight-read a piece of music on the fly and make it sound wonderful.

What you linked a cool idea for helping people visualize notes on a piano but is nothing close to a replacement for real written music.
we don't apologize for working hard. we're a startup trying to make it in a competitive business.

Past a certain amount of time, you're spinning your wheels, doing bad work you'll have to clean up later, and pushing yourself towards an early burn-out.

It's unhealthy, non-sustainable, a bad cultural precedent.

If there's no other choice, then do it -- we all have. But don't be too proud of it; it's not something you want engrained in your culture.
So they'll all just end up with a less talented workforce in the long run, leaving room for younger, more innovative, and generous companies to eat their lunch.
1. They're allowed to make $200,000 off of the community but other developers aren't?

2. That's not the problem. The problem is making developers sign a contract just to contribute to the project.
Ugh, much better article here: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/09/skyhook-goog...
You've missed a key piece of information: The labels are all wrong. Not just unreliable. Wrong.

(P.S. You can do it in one ball.)
Because no one in the history of the world (especially not a lawyer) has ever written a legal document that biased facts in any way?
Cool. Any ideas on how it should work?
Single-Celled Creature Demonstrates a Surprising Amount of Intelligence
Companies colluding to drive down pay is, of course, the mirror image of unions, which have employees colluding to drive up pay.
This definitely should be disclosed to the employee. From my understanding, it would make it difficult to get a job at Apple if you accept an offer at Intel. Basically, this closes doors for you, and makes a job offer at Intel less valuable.
Did you use HTTP Live Streeming?

I've been looking into writing a live streaming app, and came across the warning "Important: iPhone and iPad apps that send large amounts of audio or video data over cellular networks are required to use HTTP Live Streaming." (http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/networ...).

However, it also says "Typical latency with recommended settings is in the neighborhood of 30 seconds" in the FAQ.

So... I'm not really sure how to proceed.
Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz slams Apple’s iAd "That's going to fall apart for them"
http://www.wireless.att.com/cell-phone-service/legal/plan-te...

It's actually the very first thing on their list of prohibited uses.

Examples of prohibited uses include, without limitation, the following: (i) server devices or host computer applications, including, but not limited to, Web camera posts or broadcasts, [...]
Did either of the founders have experience in the news industry before starting the company? From a brief search, it doesn't look like it. And from the way he's writing about journalists it sure doesn't sound like it either.

I'd say that that doomed the company from the start.

Doing a journalism startup just doesn't seem like a good idea if you have no understanding or experience of how doing journalism works.
"Everybody Draw Mohammed Day" cartoonist goes into hiding on FBI advice
Your post reminded me of when I tried to monetize "blooks" (serialized books in blog format) about 5 years ago with PrintPusher.com (now defunct).

It was a tonne of work. Sourcing and promoting the content, publishing and layout (we were using WordPress, which was way jankier back then), and yes, generating traffic. It was so much work I didn't have time to enjoy any of the content, and it became unfun.

Heck, you should've just asked me. I could've saved you the hassle ;-)
+1 from me. The more I check out the code, the more screwed up stuff I find.

I went to go try and fix the XSS bugs and found no view testing, or integration testing. Just model and controller unit tests. I managed to get a general patch in [1] to help a bit, but there are other, deep seated problems. This needs a lot of work. I'm no security expert by far, so like he says in TFA, I fear for what tptacek or someone that knows what they're doing could do.

1: http://github.com/diaspora/diaspora/commit/22edec57766356cdc...
http://www.google.com.au/search?q=Deal+Near+in+Hiring+Probe+...
> They could change the licensing on future versions of OpenJDK

Possibly, but they couldn't change the license of the current version. Relicensing it under more restrictive terms would only prompt an immediate fork of the current codebase and focus developer attention on duplicating features of whatever Oracle decides to launch.

Larry makes some enemies, from time to time, but, in this case, I can't see a good reason for him to do it.
They do not set a limit, or at least didn't in this case.

"When I talked to Lucinda today, she asked if there was a cap on how many were sold to help protect the business from too much loss, and the simple answer is, no. When you sign up for Groupon, you are agreeing to sell as many as get sold."
80% to the author is a hell of a lot better deal than any traditional corporation will give.
Ask HN: Switch Away From A Smartphone?
Hi Everybody!
Until today, I was a smartphone junky. My Motorola Milestone was in constant use, I had to reload at least one DURING the day
It would be interesting to see companies genuinely compete for talented developers. I don't think the guys that are 10x as productive would be making 20% more anymore.
There's no Reality Distortion Field in effect so the author of that blog is in unfamiliar territory.
I remember hearing about it when it launched, when people raised some of your same concerns. It's interesting to look back on the initial reactions as part of the postmortem:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1264477

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/bwrew/iama_founder_of_...
He did follow-through on his first offer. What he wanted, but the VCs did not agree with, was to accept the last email two days prior to the board meeting.
Yeah that didn't really sit well. Especially considering he mentions elsewhere someone else working for free, not to mention the journalists who worked for free, or the investors as well. I start to see why the other founder might have been really pissed when in the middle of it all this guy went on his honeymoon. Also this guy is a programmer but was too busy CEO'ing to do any of the technical stuff - especially when the idea could have been implemented by customizing wordpress.

I think there is a lot more soul searching to be done here about from the magical ability of the 'right' idea to motivate you. But I do absolutely concede my limited understanding of what went on comes from a couple of blog posts.
Yes, Google has complete control over the Android Market. Good thing that's not the only way to install apps! Someone could create a competing market if they wanted. That someone hasn't already actually surprises me.
I don't know if this was secretly your intention but on the basis of the hookah credentials presented in this post I am sold on that hookah bar. Name please??
E-News? $$$
Speak out against these disgusting changes
"by thinking that a name change will trick us into buying what we avoided before"

It will. That is the only reason for the name change. "We" are fucking stupid.
jeeze man, it's 60 hours a week (assuming that we never leave early or take a day off).

It's nowhere near the hours worked by a first year analyst at an ibank, or by a first year associate at a law firm.

Bill is not saying we are particularly proud of how much we work, just that we aren't apologizing for it. Especially when we are talking about the first 5 employees in the company.

Trust me, I don't want to be working 12 hour days a year from now, but it's what the company requires right now. I enjoy coming to work every day and working on something I love. I'd much rather do that for 12 hours a day, than watch the clock for 8.
Google LatLong: View Near Real-time Flights over the U.S. in Google Earth
ah yes that's an interesting idea to ponder - exactly the things that I like to think about.

Why do things have to be the way they are? I mean we are the future generation. The current generation who run the banks will vanish sooner or later, why can't we imagine a space where pricing and inventory and investments and money are completely different concepts?
To be flippant but accurate, the landmines are riddled with Diaspora code.
Watching the evolution of Groupon clones in China has been very fascinating. First, there was an explosion of sites just like Groupon and a market leader (Meituan) pulled ahead. Just as Meituan really started to clean up, all the major social networks (the Chinese Facebooks and Chinese Yelp) tapped their gargantuan userbases and launched their own Groupons, integrated with their sites. They've really clobbered the original Groupon clones (I know firsthand because the salespeople who contact us from them have become increasingly desperate).

I wonder why Facebook and Yelp don't just clone Groupon and integrate it with their sites. It would be a money-maker, especially for Yelp, since the demographics are perfect.
Has any headway been made on the issue of generic programming in Go? I haven't heard anything since the discussion on Russ Cox's blog about it a few months ago ( http://research.swtch.com/2009/12/generic-dilemma.html ). It would be very, very interesting if the techniques described by Stepanov in Elements of Programming could be applied in Go without a runtime performance hit or the destruction of Go's fantastic compile times (commenter Rivorus from the blog post seemed to think this was possible, and that even the baroqueness of C++ templates could be avoided).

e: Unfortunately I'm too busy with class and work lately to really learn more than a trivial amount of Go, but it's nice to hear news every so often so that I can remain abreast of developments and hopefully not be flat-footed when I do have time to dive in
It would be interesting to see how many union supporters also support monopsony agreements between corporations.
I find it funny that the related stories for this article are all about security problems that Facebook has had.
I can't stand anti free software zealots like this guy.
http://code.google.com/p/flot/

http://www.highcharts.com/

Both good choices. I've used flot before and it's great, though there are some things that are hard to do. Highcharts I haven't used yet, but it promises more features and customizability, so I think I'm switching.
I don't know about the location thing, that seems a bit against the openness of Android, but qualifying a device/modification of Android to have access to the Marketplace is not. This isn't between the developer and Google, it's between OEMs and Google. Google doesn't want to hold the responsibility when OEMs make some modification to Android and their customers get a bad impression of a service because the OEM decided to make some incompatible change. Android devices and versions are already fragmented enough, and not having some kind of compliance built-in would be a downward spiral. In some cases, some OEMs and carriers have chosen to go with their own marketplace rather than use the Android Marketplace.
I can't say I've had much cause to regret my DFB boycott yet. The Google vs Apple fanboy thing has become tedious.
FUD. Unlike Apple, which mandates only One True App Store, Google does nothing to prevent anyone from creating their own "app store" (or just selling their app from their site, without relying on an "app store" at all).

As far as the Google Location Service claim I have a hard time believing Google bars the use of other location services on the phone. They may require the use of it with their Google branded apps, to maintain quality and prevent the apps from being used to harvest location info (and having fallout from that associated with their brand), but Google's apps are licensed separately from the Android OS itself.
Sounds quite similar to the problems people have reported with Yelp in some ways. Stories like poison the well for anyone trying to sell net services to small businesses later on, too, even if the deal is much better value. I gather a lot of cafe owners are done with the free wifi too.
If they price the wifi version at $300 it will be hugely popular. If they price it higher I think people will likely just spend the extra money to get an iPad. It has to be cheaper than an iPad since it's smaller in my opinion.
What I think people should do is fork the open source php version of Facebook that they released about 2 years ago, call it something else, and basically beat them at their own game using their own software.

Facebook operates on a lot of open source software.

The best thing diaspora can do is to take a look at that open source facebook release - and just run it on a server - add some federation functions, and voila, a prototype primitive facebook and twitter killer with a lot of potential

In fact, maybe I should do such a thing..