skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Zynga is considered the winner not because it milks the most profit per customer but because they have the most popular games.

So really it's not so much about getting people to pay - it's about getting people to play. FarmVille is famous because 84 million people play it.

World of Warcraft still makes more money than FarmVille, but World of Warcraft has nowhere near that userbase.
What exactly makes you migrate to EC2? It doesn't look cheaper or more reliable than VPS from a solid provider.

To be better positioned for rapid growth in the future?
A book is just paper with words printed on it. So long as there is no danger of permanently erasing the content from history, then it's just like burning any other paper.
Thou Shalt Not Chatroulette Or Russian Roulette: The Best Of The App Store Rules
Even by the scrum ideal of <1 minute per person, that's longer than most traditional "status meetings." Must've been loads of fun.
Ideas taught in these subjects would have to be nearly purely conceptual. You get the idea, you make sense of it, and it's in you for life. Because of this I think it only makes sense that a majority of such classes should be spent outside the classroom, experimenting and discovering for yourself what works for you. I somehow doubt they are though.
This is very exiting: his new technology will truly revolutionize many technological fields, and lead to huge savings for humanity (and make him one of the riches guys on earth in the process).

Unfortunately... extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence. And patents and publications in peer-reviews papers do not constitute extraordinary evidence.

Moreover, there is a bad bad smell form his claims and web site:

- Nuclear waste disposal, cheap superconducting wire, new incinerators... This technology solves too many problems, it seems too powerful. Does it cure cancer too? Hey, no, he does not claim that; but he does claim (from his web site) that this could reduce worldwide GHG emissions by 15%. That’s almost as good.

- From his web site: one plant for manufacturing radioactive resistant packaging would bring owners $265MM/year. One plant manufacturing 15,000km/year of his new electric wire will cost $49MM. Some other plant would cost $51MM.

WTF? It would take months or years of experienced people to make estimates like these, and they would be much less precise. My guess is that these numbers are totally random. Moreover, some of the quoted ROI are 500%. I would guess that historically, industrial projects with projected ROI that high did not work out as planed (to put it mildly)

- He speaks about "room temperature" superconductivity without giving any more details about what "room temperature" means.. Hum, he seems to be skipping some important details there.

I could go on.

I hate being harsh, but my guess is that this guy is either lying or delusional.
Well, since VS2010's interface is written in WPF, it'll have to stick around as long as that is true. Plus, Microsoft never kills a technology, they just don't improve it.
Historically book burning was offensive because books were the sole record of ideas, and they were expensive to produce. Thus, burning one might actually reduce the chances that someone else might get to read it.

In today's world, there is zero chance that any organization could ever hope to remove a "book" from the world. Further, this group first purchased all the copies of the Quran only to burn them (this actually helps make printing Qurans profitable).

There is so little similarity between today's world and the world in which book burning put ideas at risk... and this is so clearly a publicity stunt, that I can't even remotely bring myself to get irritated by it.
None of the ones in this post do, though.

Using an appropriate number of buckets would actually reduce memory usage.

Using an appropriate hash function (one that at least considered all the characters in the key) wouldn't increase the time to hash a string read off a floppy disk, because he's using the first and last characters anyway.
The couple I sat in for were 10ish minutes (I think the NBC Nightly News segment has a program manager saying "Alright, 12 minutes"). They were done so that each team reported to their team lead what they were working on beforehand, and then at the scrum, the team leads aggregated everything that was going on with their team.
Bro, every response to you has been a point of discussion you could have responded to, to convince us you're older than 14 and persuade us of your viewpoint. When your face stops burning, think about what you've said, and answer this question: Have you ever met a Muslim?
I'm looking at the source and the code that interfaces with the PHY has had every single comment stripped out of it. I don't see the point of that, it'll just take a bit longer for the code to be understood... after all, these guys have even black-box reverse-engineered many NICs.
Actually I think you could just do it on absolute test scores, thus making the smart children more valuable. Schools would compete to bring in the best students, not just to fill their classrooms, otherwise there's no particular incentive to offer the best educational programs. The best schools get the best students and get the most money, the worst schools get stuck with the dumbest students.

Could lead to increased stratification. On the other hand, is it worth spending a lot of money to educate a student who is dumb as a doornail anwyay?
Makes sense. Few scrum teams get that large where you need to start thinking about optimizations like that.
<waves hand> These are not the TPS reports you are looking for .....
Big fan of SEOmoz!
Thanks for commenting the difference, but what would happen when people use rational thinking only to construct excuses, that is rationalization of what they do.

An example: I am a rational people, I will pick certain portion of reality that allow me to construct a good model of myself, with blind eyes for the part I don't want to see.

You can use "rational thinking" to construct rationalization of your behaviour.

Since there is no logical notion of justice, rational thinking and rationalization are not far away.
Also, it is worth keeping in mind that "nano technologies" is the fad in Russian Federation at the moment. It is something that is used to milk government and private investors for grants, subsidies and any other form of loosely packed cash. At some point Putin let it slip publicly that "nano technologies" is where the future of Russia lies, and all hell broke loose.

Want to keep up with times? Make sure to wash your car in "Nano Carwash" (two dudes with buckets). How about some "Nano chocolate" if you are hungry? Or perhaps "Nano operating system" is your thing? Please have two.

I kid you not, it is this ridiculous. So anything coming out of Russia with "nano" in it should be treated twice as suspiciously.

(edit) Tangetal to what I said above. The About page on the site says

American Ceramic Society recognized Dr. Rokhvarger among
100 greatest innovators of the 20th century for development
of "Conveyer Technology of Ceramic Tile Using Rollers Hearth Kiln"

This "Conveyer" invention being one of top 100 greatest inventions of 20th century has from zero or one hits in Google depending on whether it is misspelled or not. While I don't think the above statement is an outright lie, but this looks a lot like an unsubstantiated cheek puffing, and it makes me wonder if the actual subject matter is of the same quality.
If you owned a store, and someone, say a regular customer, came into your store and started insulting thuggish-looking passers-by from inside your store, would you kick them out?

I know this is different. This is like a store where you pay to yell at people from inside, I guess. But still, you own it, you have the right to draw the line.

That said, if Rackspace had decided to make this their fight, I would hold them in high regard. There is far too much fear of "Muslim outrage", and too many in the press have shown a lot of cowardice.

This preacher is an irrational man, but progress depends on the irrational man. G'Shaw!
While I realise that the HN guidelines encourage keeping the original headline, knowing the size of the gas tank he used to drive those 1400 miles would be much more interesting than knowing the fact that he's from Washington State.
I was tempted to start developing for their platform, but the start-up costs are huge (get a mac, I doubt learning objective c would be that bad since I can already program both in c and c++) and it allows me to do less than I can with Android (no background tasks, no way to replace and augment the existing software).

Apple could solve both of these issues, and at least the first point wouldn't go against their business plan (very few people buy a mac just so they can create apple apps) nor would background tasks be much in the way (for some reason they are currently only allowed for music).

The upside is that the store works much better and makes developers more money than the android market (which is broken beyond belief if you don't live in the US) which would be enough to sway me.

As it is, I will properly get an Android soon and then I will have to find some way to sell my apps. But hey, at least they wont be just another game.
Iphone jailbreak on iOS 4.1 coming soon
If you've ever studied persuasion, for example Cialdini, you'll find that there are very specific, concrete concepts and techniques presented. The type of theories Cialdini presents can very easily be taken into practice.
It's not that no one knows how to make a truly magnificent social game. In fact there are many people who know exactly how to do it.

Right now the marketplace is too young to appreciate quality. The masterpieces are overlooked and the winners are whichever games are the loudest and most accessible.

That's how it will be until the public as a whole gets more experience in this area and develops a certain level of taste.

There was no equivalent to HBO or Mad Men back when TV was new. It took a long time for quality shows to make money - and even now The Wire was considered only a modest financial success.

Great art often makes no money. The better an artist you are, the more likely you are to die before your works are appreciated.
Looks good, quite addictive! As long as we are showing off js1k games here is my submission: http://js1k.com/demo/688

It runs nicely on my machine (especially with chrome/safari), anyone care to give some feedback? cheers.
As someone who works for a large software company. I can assure you that feedback from developers is not only hard to obtain, but highly valued and used to shape future decisions.

From my personal experience, people "in the trenches" use feedback from their constituents to add weight to their messages to their superiors.
Found Footage: Project 2000 from 1988 on the direction of computing
see also "The DENNIS System"
The toshiba portege g900 has a ppi of 310, yet it was released 3 years ago. I remember some android phone released earlier than the iphone 4 with a similar high ppi. Many people don't like high dpi due to the pixels being too small and using software designed for 72-100dpi.

Metallic laptops tend to have wireless reception issues, conduct heat a bit too well onto consumer laps, have warping issues and can add weight. All of these problems have been present in macbook pros.
Kinda like the old punchline: "I don't have to outrun the bear, I just have to outrun you."
Ask HN: How much equity should I give to a non techie founder?
The short of it:

What would be a reasonable amount of equity that I can offer him?

The long of it:

I am considering bringing in an old friend as a co-founder. These are the facts:

Though he had done quite a bit of programming on FORTRAN at university level (MS) he is not from IT background.

He has been a very good sounding board for many years for me and a source of lot of practical advice, including when I started my previous company.

He can be very straightforward (which is important) and tells me when I might be wrong.

He has got loads of practicality, good discipline with managing money and time, good at dealing with people, on all these accounts he is better than me.

He doesn't have people managing experience.

The idea is mine. Initially, I will be doing most of the development before I can bring in the employees of the older company. I am the one who is ready to bankroll the company to the extent I have to and am not expecting him to shell out any money.

The main reason I would like to bring him in is to avoid single perspective decision mistakes, speed up my decision making process (which is lot easier when I have somebody to talk to and understands the stuff) and speed up implementation by splitting up non-technical tasks (inlcuding managing employees, resources and project timelines)
Nitpick: If there was a actual historical character who was anything like "King Arthur" he lived a long time (probably about 600 years) before the first accounts of him written in the Middle Ages.
Demonstrate Value

Engage Physically

Nurture Dependence

Neglect Emotionally

Inspire Hope

Separate Entirely
How to Edit Your Theme Files
Excellent summary of how to be an effective programmer. In any group situation, it's not good enough to merely be right.
As someone who actually played farmville at least from quite early on, and the competitor that they copied, I can tell you that they didn't emulate, they copied EVERYTHING.

The entire interface was identical, right down to the little people that depicted your sex, everything was identical, the layout, the images, the user interface, everything.

I will give them a grudging credit for being able to copy everything with more style, but I have to say as a user it was very confusing to see a game, pitched as a NEW game, that was identical in every respect to the competitor.

I have NEVER seen such blatant copying, and it was the same with many other games, they weren't "inspired by", they were image for image, ui for ui replicas.

I did play Farmville for a while, but they just don't know how to make these games compelling, and I lost interest.

I don't think that there is anything wrong with taking an idea and making it your own, but to take someone's work and copy it almost verbatim, that seems pretty low to me.
You have the right to get on a soap-box and say whatever you want. You just don't have the right to use my business's facilities to do so. All businesses should reserve the right to refuse service, and exercise that when they feel it's warranted.
> The optimal way to signal that you do is to subscribe.

Agreed.

> I think I'm paying for high-quality journalism, unbiased stories, and deep reporting. It happens to be delivered in a convenient package of pages bound with a stable and mailed. What do you think you (or others) are paying for?

You're not paying for that. Anyone can get that for free. You're donating your money to them so they can continue to do their work. You don't actually want what they're selling, you just want them to continue producing the stuff that they give away to everyone. Sounds like a non-profit to me.

High-quality journalism isn't in much trouble. People are willing to pay for it (and my job security relies on that fact), but most publications are using a psychologically suboptimal way to get that money. If they explicitly said, "Donate money to us or buy a subscription so we can keep producing great journalism", they'd probably be more successful.
Risk-based Payment Fraud Detection
This is the very definition of politics.
Non sequitur; you can't call your actions driven by being a rational person, yet choose to exclude data points because run counter to your desired conclusion.

If you're excluding data points because they lead you away from your desired conclusion, then you're not thinking rationally, you're rationalizing.
Evolution is About Divergence
Justin, my apologies on that, I misread the screen and thought I only got 104 answers.

It was a great experience overall, and for micro-testing (where something like Usability testing is too much) PickFu is on my short list for future projects.
OpenVBX 0.83 Released
Betaworks and The Times Plan a Social News Service
Watch Alexis keynote live at Swagapalooza, plus WakeMate and Picwing - 7PM EST
Watch minnesota vikings vs new orleans saints live streaming
Match scheduled

Last updated:09-09-2010

from Time: 8:30 PM(ET)

Thus day, 9th September

Week 1 - American football League NFL

Season: Regular

Competitors: minnesota vikings vs new orleans saints

Stadium : Superdome

Telecast : live
actually I'm a designer, I work with a bunch of developers and their personal sites look awful. maori is just a simple way of presenting links to your, blog, linkedin, github, facebook, etc.

its supposed to be a personal hub site.
This is a great idea. It's also a two-thousand year-old idea, updated to include golf and "art (specifically design)." Missing from the list of possible courses is a study of elevated language as a tool of persuasion (as in Longinus' On the Sublime), but aside from that it looks like the study of Rhetoric in the most generalized sense.
I went to pull the url for Wiki's page on Rhetoric and noticed this gem half way down: "The Greeks liked to use rhetoric especially if there was a fire."--something Scott Adams might have said. I'm sure it'll be gone tomorrow. Anyway, the link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhetoric
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nihaar,

I'm not familiar with that site, but it sounds like you are doing all the right things.
Bacon Hot Sauce (another presenter) will also be presenting. They are sort of a side project of Gamador (YC w10).

Anyway we forgot the charger for the video camera, so we aren't broadcasting now but we'll go live in about 30 minutes.
Seems like it would take a lot more energy to be manipulative than it would be to excel at something.
For the most part, the reasons that hosts don't permit Porn is that pornographers are notoriously bad at paying their bills, and the amount of fraud and theft in the online porn industry is staggering. It's also why it's nearly impossible for pornographers to get merchant accounts with credit card processors.
Just charge a fixed fee. Why charge a %age? Not necessary. (I know, everyone does it. Doesn't make it right, though.)
Poll HN: to Python 2 or 3 (or even to build at all?)
You can still add value to people's lives by improving on what already exists versus creating from scratch.
I agree with this one, but that's just because they're an overpriced, incompetent hosting company.
This is awesome, now it's super affordable for me to run beanstalkd and a few queue workers as necessary and communicate with my Heroku app over the Amazon private network.
Exactly. And while the Bible has a huge range of tone and message, having been compiled from a bunch of books written over a couple of thousand years by hundreds of authors, the Koran was all written by one dude over the space of a few years, so it's a bit more consistent from page to page.

It would be interesting to imagine that you're a Martian given copies of these two religious books for the first time divorced from any historical context and asked to determine which one has the nicer message. The Bible does have a bunch of nasty stuff towards the beginning, but turns into a feel-good hippie tract about love being nice towards the end. The Koran, on the other hand, seems to have an awful lot more about being a dick to the unbeliever. Still, I don't claim to have read either all the way through.
Iteration: until condition iterate state=update(state).

Recursion: recursive(state)=if atomic then state else recursive(refined(state)).

condition=atomic, update=refined. One is not a special case of the other; they are just different models for the same process (one is top-down, the other bottom-up). See also objects vs. closures.
Riak SmartMachines Now Available From Joyent
I got ENFP but it was a 1 on the Extroverted scale, compared to 50 50 44 on the others. The Intro/Extroversion questions are always tricky for me, because I generally would rather be social with people than alone by myself, but my adolescence was rocky so I'm still playing catchup on the social skills.
What's not offensive to you (burning words on paper) still has the propensity to be offensive to some.

Effigies are just straw or wood, but burning them can be abhorrent to some witnesses.
It's more than semantics. The term "burst" carries the implication that you only get something for a short time. That's really not a good reflection of reality in this situation.
> and I think their action will inflame the loony right even more.

Who cares? If you let yourself be guided by whether or not the fringe dwellers will get 'inflamed' you've become part of the problem.

Rackspace made the right decision in this case, good for them. I wished the hosting provider of the cos would be just as pro-active.
Very impressed that these are available in 64 bit. That means that one OS image can scale from micro to ginormous. WIN.
Bryan Cantrill and Justin Sheehy talk NoSQL in the cloud
If there are no bakeries there, you might also ask yourself why that is.

If there's a secret hidden market somewhere well the hard part isn't starting a business there, it's finding it!
Pray together. The rest will follow.
Ask HN: Creating an internship program
Hi everyone,

I'm starting to think about setting up an internship program for next summer and I'd appreciate advice from anyone who has done this in the past.

There seem to be two aspects to setting up a program like this:

1. Making it productive for both the company and the interns
2. Finding the right students

For the first, it seems like a good idea to make the work both meaningful and independent; perhaps having them work on a new product rather than just having them fix bugs and add small features.

For the second, I'm wondering if you all have specific advice. Should I go straight to the career center at nearby universities? Talk to engineering frats? Something else?

Also, how early does it make sense to start recruiting students?

Thanks!

-----
* edit: if you're looking for an internship email me: tim@mixpanel.com
we are a realtime analytics company, coding in python and js :)
I thought this is why people get juris doctorates.
Weird, I know of a couple of web communities/businesses that work like this. Some astute members have even noted that they work like a dysfunctional relationship... here it is all laid out like a game plan.
{Insert comment realizing despised OS/Compiler/App as long-running joke}
Netscape much?

Although I mostly agree.
How I Saved A 747 From Crashing
Race cars are safe, but not comfortable or pretty. People want nice seats, powerful air, a quiet ride, loud stereo, leather, room for the dog, etc.
A good nitpick. I'm definitely on the 'Arthur as fiction' side of the debate. The first proper account of 'King Arthur' was from Geoffrey of Monmouth in the first half of the twelfth century; historical details place that Arthur in the late sixth century.

Ignoring the accuracy of a tale told more than five hundred years after the event, if Arthur was real and such an important figure, why did the Venerable Bede fail to mention Arthur at all during his remarkable (for the 'dark ages') history of Britain in the ninth century? /nitpick
Personality tests aren't very revelatory though. Telling someone whether they are shy or not is almost the same as telling someone what color their eyes are -- they could've just as easily looked in the mirror and figured it out a long time ago.
Floors accelerator.