skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It depends. If they are talking and it is barely audible, sure...I do this, and with the exceptional expletive, it's more or less silent. Most of the developers here, myself included, wear headphones for the day unless we're talking to one another. I don't think anyone even notices I'm mouthing things to myself or reading "out-loud" (e.g., moving my mouth).

Not totally related, but I'm also bobbing my head to music all day (usually groovesalad on some.fm)

All that said...how would you know if you're going to hire someone who talks to themselves anyway, or is this just hypothetical?
I don't consider myself screwed at all. They held my money until I gave them proper documentation. When you run a business this kind of thing happens all the time. Just paying taxes to the government was way more complicated and intrusive.

Yes they can earn interest on money, but it's much more likely to me that they are covering their asses about the money rather than earning a small amount of interest on it.

Paypal has to deal with a lot of fraud. If you listen to the owners in interviews they say they lost a ridiculous amount of money in the early years to fraudulent users. It is reasonable for them, in my opinion, to make sure the money was owed to you before giving it to you.
My brother-in-law is a chef and he, and almost all of his chef/sous chef friends all have pretty impressive knife collections they bring with them to the job each day. Primarily Japanese knives, purchased one at a time as they save up the money.

While prep cooks will use stock kitchen knives, most chefs will use their own tools, which tend to be pretty expensive.
Ask HN: Best Free Higher Ed Methods
We've heard so much about how higher education is a bubble and overpriced, but as is always pointed out here, having a good degree really helps, so...

What are some good ways to get someone else to pay for your college tuition and board? By someone else, I mean not your family either.
So let's say a man asks for some food, and Apple says "well, we've got some beef jerky here, but I know you're a strict vegan so you'd probably be more interested in the tofu we set aside for you yesterday", and the headline is "Apple blocks starving man from food".
...yeah, but that's not what it means.

Although I suppose letting words mean whatever you want them to mean is fairly postmodern.
That is certainly an interesting way to look at people talking to themselves, definitely correct with children. Personally I talk to myself a lot when working at home, and never when in an office (it is rude and distracting for other people). I think I do much better work at home, especially when trying to solve problems. For some reason saying something out loud can often make it clearer, easy to see something stupid you've done etc.

In theory anything you can do in a meeting, talking with others, can be done in email, but IMHO well run meetings are a very good way of bringing ideas together, solving problems etc. Talking to yourself is like having a meeting with yourself :-)
What part of the copyright assignment process do you find bothersome?
I don't really get this, other than being layed out in a nice minimalist way I can do all this on any blogging site. If it is social networking I can do all of it on Facebook - why would I use your site?
This is truly unique. Loved the idea. He can put something funny over in Advances Search.
How can that feedback be helpful to you? he is just saying your service should not exist. I think instead of bending down and take it and being nice you should prove him wrong by arguing the WHY USE of your product.
Where do you differentiate yourselves then? is it just the convenience of having an combination of different services in one place?
Your link reeks of Wikipedia-esque POV. It reads like someone who's been hurt by a sociopath. On a scientific level, I might argue that something is "wrong with them" as the article states. These seem like prevalent enough traits to serve some evolutionary purpose, however much our culture despises and may be harmed by them.
How long did it take you to build?
> Not only that, but the academic humanities are totally infested with continental post-structuralism. If anything you're just setting yourself up to be the victim of the next Sokal's Hoax.

That's not entirely fair. My beloved has an English PhD, and I have brilliant conversations with him about art that never descend into the absurd (unless that's the point).

Which reminds me -- if you're paying for your PhD in the humanities, you're wasting your time. He had the good fortune to get full scholarships plus grants to cover fees, room & board. Now he's off to get an MFA... at least one of us pays the bills. :)
You asked people to “rate your startup”, so I think that 14 was his jokey numerical rating.
Hey, thanks for that!
Ask HN: Best examples of successful pitch decks?
I'm preparing a pitch deck for a startup event in October. I've come across a few incredible resources on what works/what doesn't (a few linked below) but I'd like to know....what are your favorite (real) pitch resources (examples of successful pitch decks, videos of winning presentations, etc.)?
The user experience is a very sensitive variable. "Cheaper" matters to Enterprise folks but lag will make the rest of us pay a little more.

In fact local maintenance is the driving force behind web apps already. They generally lag like a mother, have lame controls and update in whole-page flashes, but I see more every day.
Installing Open Alternatives to Flash on Linux
http://vator.tv/news/2009-10-07-aaron-patzer-lays-bare-mints... (Aaron Patzer presents Mint financials in a "post-exit pitch")

http://www.slideshare.net/hnshah/mintcom-prelaunch-pitch-dec... (I believe this was a study done by MBA students, correct me if I'm wrong)

http://www.garage.com/resources/perfectingpitch.shtml (solid Art of the Start advice on what to cover)
Aral Balkan: “The age of features is dead”
Yes, I smoke a few times a day. I have cut back the amount lately and quit smoking cigs.

Really depends on the high. Too much of a high is not good for productivity. Just the right amount of THC can bring out a level of brilliance, inspiration, creativity,
determination, reduced inhibitions, etc. I've had a lot of "eureka" moments and business pivots while blitzed.

It's also an anti-depressant and helps with carpal tunnel and countless other common ailments, aches and pains.
Nice idea. However, for me it's currently too slow to be really usable (sorry!). Just goes to show how amazing Google Instant is, I think.
I think the take away lesson here is that you can't judge an idea until it is market tested.

On the surface, I would say this idea would fail - I don't like it since it seems trivial.

However, I'm not the target customer segment so my opinion doesn't matter. As Peter Drucker says: "you don't define what is value, your customers do". The only way to figure this out is by releasing and shipping products.

The true test will be the # of reoccurring purchases for the service.
Python would be fun as well as easy.
JEE6: Change You Can Believe In
Higher education for the majority is a total scam, I'm sorry this just needs to be said.

I apologize for not getting into details, I am in the progress of a real post you may expect posted sometime after my work-day is done and I get home (expect it within 12 hours).

Here's the first few lines anyway:

We are indoctrinated into the belief from the earliest stages of our lives that we must head to the best schools and become specialists in an indescribably small target of knowledge if we are to ever "make something" of ourselves. In our capitalist society this means rich.

(Surprisingly, it's not a rant against capitalism, just the establishment, man.)
I've contributed many thousands of lines of code to free software projects, but I've never had to sign some waiver, walk down to the post office and send an inter-continental letter in the mail to go along with a patch I wrote.

I'd had have to do that if I submitted a non-trivial change to the FSF, just finding an alternative program that I can use and fix is easier, so I've done that instead of sending patches to them.
JavaOne Announcement: Java on iOS?
Look how they recently froze $10m that was donated to Burning Man.

Seriously, how does they review process work, exactly? They could try Googling the customer and find out it's an internationally famous festival that has been going on for years and years. Instead, they just seem to notice the money involved and try to seize it. I bet that somewhere in paypal, it works like DEA style asset forfeiture, and the people who freeze accounts stand to benefit financially, personally and directly.
Chunking & Gridding - Why parents can't do math today
"Adobe will continue to work to bring full web browsing with Flash Player 10.1"

So, according to Adobe, by browsing with flash disabled, I'm missing out on the full web experience?

Funny, I don't notice anything missing except a crapton of ads.

On another note, I do hope that browsers will add the option to selectively enable/disable html5 audio/video, because that'll also get rid of ads coming in the future.
I think the front page needs a link to a sample blog-stream-whatever-it-is. All I can guess from the front page is that Sprred is like Posterous (which I don’t use), but with supposedly better support for pictures and video. Alternatively, an overview video like someone else mentioned would work too. Even a screenshot of a sample site would help.
Their site really is slow as can be. I dread not being able to dig something up in my email, that means I have to go use Paypal's search - each page can seriously take 10-15 seconds to come up.
Well, the costs are reasonable, it's just that generally people make unreasonable choices. Yes, $220k is an unreasonable amount of debt. However, at big public University, the costs are much closer to $60K (for four years + living expenses, assuming in state tuition).
I should probably mention that I work in search quality at Google. The part I took issue with is "Google can take a couple of seconds if you throw a truly novel query at it." which is definitely not true.

Google can't cache nearly as much as you would expect, not because the queries change, but because the results change.
I'm pretty sure that $99 dollar google subsidized idea was never real. I remember when people first heard of it it lead back to some wishful thinking on a forum where someone just made it up. It got pretty big because everyone was excited about what it could mean for unlocked phones in the United States, but it never had any real backing or truth to it.
Directing to the original source is more authoritative and informative.
Besides Launchy, is there anything similar for Windows?
SHA1 won't kill you any time soon; people are not, despite the hype, rushing to replace designs that depend on it.

SHA256 is the conservative default for new designs.

In 4-5 years, SHA256 will probably have the same role as DES-EDE: a fundamentally sound design with unfavorable implementation properties (DES-EDE has a 64 bit block size, SHA256 has MD padding and length extension susceptibility), largely supplanted by something European.
Hmm. Postmodernism denies the existence of objective truth, right? Sounds perfect for PR and marketing.

Customer: "My laptop caught fire. My legs are scarred for life. Don't you guys do any QA?"

Marketeer: "Tsk. You're such an absolutist. Our preferred viewpoint is that you engaged in a thermal interaction with your ZX-Q17/6, did irreparable damage to its electrometabolic essence, and caused your legs to transform to a uniquely valuable configuration."

Customer: "...now my legs are scarred for life, and my head hurts."
It's not 'virtual' money. We're not talking tokens here, this is actual money.
Girl Develop IT Takes Off With Low-Cost, Women-Only Programming Classes
@rakkhi its a better personal website, better than having just a blog. You can show-off all your content and info in here, easily. Facebook profile is for your friends, it doesnt exactly serve as your personal website.
Android Will Be Number 2 Mobile Operating System Worldwide by Year-End
It also serves as a warning to other people that might give away information on FB that will lead thieves right to their house.
Ha, that's funny. I work with web advertising for micro businesses and some people just will NOT pay even $10-20 for a web ad to be designed.
What do you use now instead of Eclipse?
Why Structural Unemployment Is Here to Stay
what if they're really good waterproof socks that never smell?
It's simple and it works.
It's excellent that you managed to work and get an engineering degree.. but I'm not convinced this is something that can work on a large scale. Where did you live?

I knew a guy at UCSD who was trying to major in computer science while supporting himself. He was working about 30 hours a week in retail at a department store. San Diego is expensive, and just making ends meet can be a challenge for someone low on the pay scale, and he was trying to balance this with paying for tuition, books, a laptop, and so forth.

Now, add in the fact that he's trying to get good grades in data structures and algorithms, vector calc, physics, and a general education elective. He ended up dropping the data structures class.

Now, people drop that class for all kinds of reasons. But personally, I'd rather not see America's promising young minds struggling with a 30 hr a week retail job while taking a heavy course load of math, physics, and engineering. I've heard of students putting 20-30 hours a week into data structures alone. This can lead to 70+ hour weeks. It's character building, and some extraordinary people will succeed, but I think we need to recognize that this would knock many students with above average motivation, study habits, and intelligence out of the game.

Unfortunately, the answer for the "middle class" may be to target universities near home and stay with the parents. UCs are about 10K/yr now for in-state undergraduates. I think a student could swing that with moderate part time work and limited loans. This would come with its own kind of costs, though.
Our cook in college would use the most beat up cheap aluminum pots, pans, and roasters but he insisted on bringing his metal briefcase of knives with him to work every day.
I hate to disagree. I dont think he means the servive simply shouldn't exist. From most of the feedback 'Im getting here, indicates I need to convey my message/usp more clearly. Very few are complaining about the service, after what they are seeing on signing-up.

PS. Our USP is 'Create a complete personal website'. Sprred is more than a blog, it's your blog+photostream+videostream.
Each to their own I suppose, I have a few laptops generally replace them every 2-3 years. Currently an Alienware M11X and a Acer 1215N. Even for "just" email, browsing, reading I really like the "instant" feel from the newer core 2 duo processors and an SSD.

I also occisionally fire up a bit of Starcraft 2 so the M11x is great for that.

I use an older computer at work and it is really painfull waiting for it to load apps and even Firefox - ultimately it is only a few secords but that is annonying to me.

For my phone the iphone is brilliant but battery life is a real issue. I read on it all the time (walking, trains, tube, waiting in line). Occasional game and youtube video also. Extra battery would be great espeically when I'm on holiday or weekend break or just have played a few videos and haven't had a chance to charge it all day

The performance is fine at the moment but I would love it to be faster - those apps to launch instantly, multitask instant, youtube vids play in HD with no lag and the ability to do more on it e.g. take HDR video, compress and edit movies I take on my camera, play full 3D games with great graphics e.g. upcoming Sword.

You can keep your 5 year old machine, but I am really looking forward to the Dual core ARM processors - thats why I own share in ARM and Qualcomm :)
The slideshow on the left talking about the selling points doesn't work for me. That means that I have to wait to know what they are and yet, I don't know how long I have to wait before I know them all. I'd assume most users are not that patient.

Also, the 3 boxes at the bottom could be a little higher so that I have everything visible at a glance on 1 single page.

You'd be better off having a select list of features that really define your product and have a find out more link that explains them a bit more in detail on a following page. Also, a nice demo page would go a long way.
For all the shit that MBAs get, one thing you will never hear is "hungry people have especially clear minds"

That is absolutely awful.
In Ontario, management have fewer protections under the law than rank-and-file employees. For example, it is illegal to fire a rank-and-file employee just for exploring other job options. If they look for a job on their own time and equipment, that's their business and they can't be fired for this alone.

Managers are entitled to no such protection. A manager is considered to be a more vital component of the company's value, and as such the act of seeking another job without negotiating this in advance with your current employer is considered a breach of your obligations to the company even if you do so on your own time.

There's some fuzziness involved. Is a team lead considered a manager or a senior developer with some project management responsibilities? Is an Architecture Astronaut with no reports but crucial IP responsibility entitled to job hunt without permission?

Getting back to this situation, my point is that there is a difference between the obligations of a CEO and the obligations of a rank-and-file employee. Laws erected to protect employees at the expense of the company shouldn't apply to CEOs. Obviously, California's laws are whatever they are for whatever reason. But even if Mark's actions are technically legal, I consider them wrong in every way shape and form.

In fact, debating the legality of his actions is ridiculous for me. I'm not a lawyer, nor do I consider it a worthwhile pursuit to argue what a law can be interpreted to mean with flagrant disregard for the moral ideal.

Morally, I find this repugnant.
See http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1678910 for some more details.
"@rakkhi its a better personal website, better than having just a blog. You can show-off all your content and info in here, easily. Facebook profile is for your friends, it doesnt exactly serve as your personal website."

No thats why I have my blog on blogger: http://www.rakkhis.com

It can do text, video, photos, links +++ a lot more
On Facebook I can also put text, video, photos +++ it has all my friends.

I can link to the two with likes and links but esentially they are for two different audiences so having them seperate is fine.

Again why would I use your site more or less pay for it?
The Borkware NSLog replacement seems like a rather a large amount of overkill and unnecessary clutter. __FILE__ and __LINE__ should always be implicit parameters instead of having to be passed into a method, every time. Not a MLog() wrapper that calls a singleton to make them implicit.

I personally like to define a Log() as:

#ifdef DEBUG
#define MYLog(fmt, ...) NSLog(@"%s: " fmt, __PRETTY_FUNCTION__, ##__VA_ARGS__)
#else
#define MYLog(...)
#endif

This way, I can log on debug builds only (add -DDEBUG as an "Other C Flag" to Xcode), and it gives me the method name that it was called on. Just enough context to be useful to track something down, not enough to cause a sea of output noise.

You can use any of the C preprocessor macro's[1] this way.

1. http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc-3.1.1/cpp/Standard-Predefi...
I think you've misunderstood what's happening (though it's also possible I've misunderstood your post, in which case sorry).

Unless it's HTML/JS/CSS, there is no way of embedding an app, Flash based or otherwise, in a web page on the iPhone. iPhone Apps are standalone and interact very minimally with each other. Safari on iOS certainly has no way of accomodating something akin to a Flash plugin.

What Apple have OK-ed is using tools other that XCode to produce standalone apps and one of the tools this now allows is Adobe's Flash to iPhone app builder which, very roughly speaking, takes the source of a Flash application and creates an iPhone app with the same functionality.

But the apps it produces are not Flash, they're standalone native iPhone apps, they can't download or run Flash from the web, they sit outside the browser, they still have to go through the app store and are still subject to Apple's rules and restrictions.

In terms of restricting things to the App Store - Apple already allow a mechanism for going to the web and running apps that don't go through the App Store. It's called web standards - HTML/CSS/JS/H264 and so on - indeed for a while it was the only mechanism they supported.

The App Store contributes 1% of Apple's profits (high volume but the margin is pretty low as you've got to host, review and distribute every app, regardless of cost or sales). I honestly think this is about the experience rather than the money.
Amazing work Julien. Thanks!
Compare a normal workflow, like submitting a bug to Git:

* Commit your bugfix

* 'git send-email --to=git@vger.kernel.org -1'

With the GNU model:

* Commit your bugfix / make a patch

* Send your patch to the maintainer of the project

* The maintainer has to look in a central file if you already assigned copyright to the FSF

* If not, they send you an email 'would you be willing to do this'

* You reply, "sure, send me the form"

* They send you this: https://gforge.inria.fr/scm/viewvc.php/misc/www/request-disc...

* You fill in the form, and thus hand over your snail mail address to the maintainer and the FSF

* They send you another form (snail mail!)

* You fill it in and send it back (snail mail!)

* They receive your form and add it to the list

* Your bugfix is now allowed to go into the GNU repository
Sending physical mail seems really odd to me by now. I haven't turned on autopayment for half of my student loans because they require me to fill out a form and mail them in. It's such a hassle; I have to find time during the day to go purchase a single envelope and a single stamp, fill out the form, and then go drop it off. So much effort.
I think you are got how its different from Posterous.

Now, we are definitely putting up a sample site!
Everyone has known for years that Paypal is awful, regularly steals large amounts of money held by perfectly legitimate customers, and does it all through inscrutable, unfriendly, customer-service processes.

I know this, man.

Yet Paypal is bigger than ever, and there's no glimmer of improvement on the horizon.

So either we assume Ebay, the parent corp, is so clueless about milking Paypal for profit while reinvesting as little as possible back into it, or we assume Ebay has a reason for not improving Paypal in any significant way in the past 5+ years.

I'm starting to suspect there's a great financial reason for Ebay to keep doing this. And it might be a similar financial strategy that Amazon has famously used from day 1. Amazon collect payments immediately, yet ships items much later. This means their cashflow is always more than their inventory expenses at any given moment. For however much time there is until that gap closes, Amazon is in a great position—essentially getting a short term loan, and if you consider their volume of transactions, that is billions of cash being held in floating pools.

What if Paypal provides a similar benefit to Ebay's bottom line? Paypal isn't a bank, so they can do whatever they want with the held funds. I suppose what actually happens to the held funds is a corporate secret they guard carefully. But I bet it props up Ebay's cashflow in a major way. If Ebay changed ways and forced Paypal to provide better guarantees, much like a bank, then their cashflow would take a hit.

Good idea or am I off?