skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
And we never imagine what the internet would be like without Google. You think spam is bad now? It's possible that in a world without Google web search just wouldn't work because Bing or Yahoo (or altavista, cuil, powerset, or whoever) just couldn't deal with the spam.

Certainly Google isn't perfect, but they do a pretty good job combating web spam that is explicitly targeted at them.
RAME.Constitution: vote for which Amendments are relevant to a news article
I don't recall much. I think at least 3 women said something like that to me. I only remember details about 2 of them. They were both older and I think that was a factor in their reluctance to start over. I think they both had younger kids than mine, and that can be emotionally and logistically a lot harder to deal with. One had a life-threatening illness. I think the other also had health problems but I can't remember any specifics.

One of them had a history of very unhappy relationships and when I was getting divorced she spammed me with venomous divorce/relationship jokes. I ignored all such emails until she finally stopped. I felt it was clear she had serious baggage and I could not think of a good way to tell her that, sorry, I don't appreciate such "humor". I felt that would just be kind of like pouring salt in her wounds, so I just didn't respond at all. The other woman once said something to me along the lines of "One of the good things about growing older is how much more you get done. Young people spend too much time screwing." I don't think I really knew anything about her sex life but that remark didn't exactly paint a rosy picture in my mind. (From what I gather, some women hit menopause and go "Whoohoo! Party Time!!" because they are no longer living under the threat of unintended pregnancy.)

FWIW: In one case, I don't think it would be accurate to say she herself was trading sex for money. Her marriage was mostly sexless and, most of the time, she made more money than him. Yet here she was trying to talk me out of my divorce on the grounds that I needed his money. Go figure.
With some of the complaints about the language I have read from its users, squeal may be a more accurate name for it.
Interesting Analysis of the Border Patrol Incident
Brain Age Scans Check Child's Development
I know people like to jump on the 37signals guys, but I don't feel this article is a criticism of founders or investors who choose to sell or be acquired.

It's a footnote reminder that acquisitions, no matter how well intentioned or promising, often result in promising products gradually being starved of attention and resources as the fickle nature of the acquirer shifts to other matters. Condolences to the users as the product is left to wither in "maintenance mode", or mothballed entirely with the sourcecode & IP archived in a drawer somewhere.

It's interesting to contemplate what the del.icio.us and Lala's of the world may have become had they been able to go it alone, and conversely what would have happened to the Facebook or Twitter's had they been acquired in the first few years.
Yunus Emrenin hayatı ve şiirleri
I think it should at least explain something. "Re-Live Great Times" doesn't mean much.
Now we just have to wait for an Amazon instant as well. (With affiliate links, too)
Been thinking a lot about this space and am almost done with a prototype. Would love to connect with others who are similarly fascinated by it.
The closest thing is K/Q from kx.com but they're clearly too bone headed to lead the game on this one.

Why do you say "bone headed"? To me they're a stand-out success: http://kx.com/Customers/end-user-customers.php. Admittedly they haven't grown, but given Arthur Whitney's minimalism, who could expect them to?

The main problem is that Arthur's work is not open source. It would be called impossible if he hadn't done it, and I think it's a tragedy for the computing world that it has been hidden under a bushel.
Maybe a minor quibble, but isn't DDG powered by Yahoo BOSS with features added on top? Yet, Rob then goes on to say "Yahoo can't be taken seriously" and points out queries where Yahoo does a poor job of handing synonyms - DDG has the same problem for the exact same query if you try it. Furthermore, the other queries which he suggests give irrelevant results on Google seem to give me irrelevant results on DDG.
Resources: Case Studies to improve your Sales and Sign-Up Conversion Rates
You've done your part, you sold. It's not up to you to worry about the product anymore.

You may feel bad for what happens after but you have to think that it's not on your hands anymore, you sold...
I see. You and 3 buddies are driving along the road in Burma during WWII, and you run over a landmine. Two of you are dead, two of you are injured. You drag your concussed, burned selves to the next base. You get first aid, pick up parts from the depot, get a ride back to the jeep, repair it under fire, and drive it back to the base.

The fact that you can easily pickup and install the parts quickly in a mine field while under fire is a big plus.
This looks pretty interesting. We have a similar home-grown library at work with a lot more structure built into the headers. For example, a header can specify what datatype the column is (number, text, icon), as well as a title in various formats (html, text, spreadsheet). The basic idea is the same, though. Take a bunch of data, throw it in a container object, and export it in a bunch of different formats.
Not really. I've had this break for me all the time when searching for programming terms.

Proof:
Google for "what we have here is failure to communicate" http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8...

The first hit is the wiki article on the quote (good), but the exact search string is not present on the page.
This may arguably be one of the few probabilities in the natural world which does == 0.
Never had vim crash, but I've had the OS crash. Or X server. Better safe than sorry.
'Postgre' is improper always. You should either say 'Postgres' or 'Post gres que el'. There is a Factoid on the Postrgres site about proper pronunciation, and there have even been discussions about just going back to the name 'Postgres' which was the original name of the project.
Janrain seems really nice. I started using it for a site I was making, but had some issues with the Rails authlogic plugin for it (this was almost a year ago though). I never sorted out the problem after a lot of debugging, and then the project ended up on my back burner, where it still lies.

It seems like one can get away with the free plan pretty well. But the real issue is that now if either you or they have downtime, you have downtime. I assume they have some good HA practices, but one of the times that I was working on debugging the issue, I was getting 500s.

An open source version, especially one that could be easily used with any language, would be awesome.

It's possible that the best way to do that would be to essentially clone Janrain open-source-ly and write libraries for that clone. That way most of the work is being done in whatever language it's implemented in, and then to make it work in a new language, you'd just write a simple library integrating with its API, rather than rewriting the whole thing.

The advantage is that you'd host it yourself, and so you can take steps to ensure that it stays up. (And at the very least, it would be hosted in the same datacenter, so unless your hosted version of JanrainClone crashes, its downtime would mostly coincide with your own downtime.)
Co-Founder / CEO (TagtoTrade)
Intel Demos Ray-Traced Wolfenstein in Real-Time with Knights Ferry
Well, as a single sample, I tried the first thing that came to mind in google and duckduckgo. "breast shimming" which refers to the process of adjusting the magnetic field of a MRI scanner to obtain images of the breast (relevant to a project I'm working on). Every single duckduckgo result is irrelevant. Most of googles results are relevant. It's too bad because google is somewhat hit or miss for me. Someone needs to sic duck duck go on pubmed.
We're looking for a candidate with strong JavaScript skills, with experience in building advanced and interactive browser applications, located in (or willing to relocate to) San Francisco. We just raised $2m from August and Atomico: http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/13/memolane-raises-2-million-t...

Shoot me a mail at harry@memolane.com if interested.
Jesus christ that's horrible (the hex color thing).

It looks so NASTY.
What college town is that? I'm considering moving to SF next year and tidbits like that could be quite valuable.
How Shareaholic Reached 2+ Million Installs Of Its Browser Add-On
Really curious why the website cuts the right border of the text without allowing js for some external site...
"Backupify"? Really? Are we just throwing -ify onto any old thing, now?

Come on, people. Lets commentify this postification.
If a file exists, there is torrent of it. If not, it will be burned
Agreed. Browsing is especially difficult when you click on an app to find out more details about it, click back when you're done, and then find that you've been kicked back to page one.

Unfortunately I think this is one of the places where you're likely to get rejected by Apple for 'duplicating built in functionality', even if you've improved upon it, so I doubt anyone is going to do it
It's always encouraging to see someone who absolutely loves what he does.
Giving up on a blog that can't display the article in full without JavaScript. Progressive enhancement folks!

(Web apps get a pass, but if your site only needs to display text it should not require JS.)
Several YC companies have created browser add-ons as well. Would be cool to get a discussion going here about browser extension distribution and getting to scale.

---

Shareaholic was just a “nights and weekends project” until its creator reached a big milestone: 1 million downloads.

My goal with this interview was to find out how Jay Meattle, a single founder with no outside funding, got that many downloads for a web browser add-on, when convectional wisdom says that “no one” installs browser add-ons. As you’ll hear in this interview, he did it by creating a tool that was inherently viral, and he helped grow that virility by creating stories for bloggers.

You’ll also hear how Jay has since blown past 2 million downloads, why he decided to take a small round of funding, and why he’s ignoring revenues (for now).
Who cares? the question is when you say it do people understand what you're talking about? This is a holy war thing.
How sweet and well-intentioned. If I were my grandmother, I would want this bright and appeasing young counsel as my son-in-law! :)
I think part of the problem is that for many people google is the internet. Even for me (pretty technically minded) if a few google searches doesn't find what I'm looking for it isn't on the internet, or might as well not be. I don't think I've even tried turning to another search engine in several years.
I agree. People that have achieved something that takes a lot of skill or plain dedication and determination, but aren't in the technology startup crowd have just as much to say about overcoming obstacles as anyone else.

It's a lesson for the audience to abstract the ideas and apply it to themselves if they wish to use this as an educational tool.
I typed in "go" and SmartGo Pro was the first result. Impressive.
in my experience, many people working with microsoft SQL tend to call it SEQUEL, and non-microsoft folks tend to call it S-Q-L. just my $0.02
I'm with you - it's a perverse situation where you're intentionally designing an abstraction layer between yourself and individual or team sports. There's a neat-o factor in this, but one more suited for a fairground attraction rather than a template for day-to-day exercise.

It's just easier to circumvent the technology and go to the gym with a friend, or to join a rowing team, etc, etc. I wonder daily why I run past people inside on their running machines, when running outside is free and immensely more enjoyable.

I do sometimes worry that people are trying to abstract away too much of their life and live in solo-yet-connected worlds. Gyms are already a shortcut to getting real movement and activity in your day, but to substitute interaction along with your physical movement feels completely like an optimization step in the wrong direction, like freeze drying food for longer storage, when just going to the shop for fresh food is quite easy for most people, and a far superior solution.
I got my first job in programming by simply applying to every IT job at a company where I worked in the mailroom.

Because it was an internal interview they had to do it (some kind of rule they had to follow) and finally they gave up and gave me a chance with the testy remark that if I failed they never ever wanted to see my face again.

Worked fine :)
Shouldn't we feel more sorry for the people who can cash out and spend the next 50 years on a beach with their families and friends, but choose to work instead?

Don't get me wrong; I love creating and I am really looking forward to working on my start-up full time, but you know what I love even more? My family and my friends. If I had an opportunity to comfortably spend every day with them, I wouldn't think twice.
according to this, NYC is still the most expensive city in US.

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-8-most-expensive-cities-i...

#1 New York
#4 Chicago
#5 San Francisco
New Kindle Ad takes shot at the iPad
Parity with men financially would mean the highs AND the lows. There are more broke, destitute men than women.

I am aware that men suffer more when it comes to homelessness, etc. But I don't think "parity" has to mean "Our goal is for women to live more similarly to the way men live currently". I think if we are to get there from here, the lives of both men and women would need to change. But, as I stated elsewhere, I'm really not well tonight. So not up to posting any kind of lengthy explanation.

Thanks.
Good developers want to mature and evolve a process that is the right fit for the business and not the SOUP of the day. I just read a good paper about software development management and how process must fit the business objectives.

http://www.parasoft.com/jsp/products/article.jsp?articleId=3...
I'm less learned: the first thing I thought was case branches in Bash scripts.
No kidding! I thought that the quotes made the term inviolable. I wonder if this is new.

A big issue with Google is that, behind the scenes, things change without any outward guidance to longterm users on how to adjust.
The Girl Who Wanted To Be God
and Powergen Italia (powergenitalia.com)
Check your search history:
http://www.google.com/history/
Want an introduction to one of our portfolio companies? What not to do.
"Work for Hire" laws very depending on where you are, and where the company you are contracting is from.

Get proper legal advice, but you don't have to be totally open with them, just state that you have other projects. You don't need to tell them if they are for other clients or personal, and you don't need to tell them that you may start a company.

They should be fine with this unless they are making you an employee.

Some states like Wisconsin make it hard for companies to hire 1099 contractors and, so when I worked for Manpower, I was required to become an employee even though I was contracting for them, because I was billing hourly and I was my only employee.
I had really quite a good one with Django, which clicked to me in a way that Rails never did.

I miss scaffolding though, as I think that was the 'killer app' to RAD, but I'm to the point where I feel like even my simpler apps feel constrained by either Rails or Django at this point (though I'm probably just not knowledgeable enough), and have started doing everything with Tornado and SQLAlchemy, which, while they're currently kicking my ass, doesn't give me any sense of constraint whatsoever.

Of course, upper bounds have always been something that bothered me, even when they were realistically well about my own limits. When I was learning to play guitar, I went out and bought a Les Paul, for the comfort of knowing that whatever else goes wrong, I can't blame the tool. In reality I know that only poor craftsmen do that, but every time I get stuck trying to remember the 'Django' way to do something, I feel like I'm in a box I want to climb out of.

On the whole though, it's quite lovely.
You can quite easily (and elegantly) update 14 different tables from one form, using one request and one controller method.

You can very transparently do it with ActiveRecord associations, so that you're operating on only one instance of a model, or you can do it very opaquely, where you instantiate and update several models. Or you can just run an UPDATE statement; those haven't gone away.
Uh, no you can't. Or at least you're not supposed to.
I would suggest more than that. After 1 week, I hadn't really seen what DDG added in value. My experience says, give it 2-4 weeks.
Perhaps. <grin>

Actually, the entire NW sucks. Rains all the time. Heck, it's even raining on me right now in the desert of Central Oregon where it's never suppose to rain.

But seriously, after living in the Bay Area for 10+ years -- I ain't movin' back after living in the Pacific NW.
Search history is one of Google's creepier features – I disabled it awhile ago.

Not that I suspect it helps anything, but at least if someone finds my computer or something, that data isn't two clicks away.
Thanks for the heads-up. Actually it is designed to gracefully fall back without JavaScript, but there appears to be a display bug I wasn't aware of.

I'll fix it soon but right now I have a server down.

(BTW, do you have any idea how much extra time you noscript guys add to web development efforts? Ugg.)

edit: fixed.
Mustache -- Logic-less templates
I'm not a skilled programmer, but I defintiely see potential for some far reaching machine learning opportunities for this.
Fidel Castros Blog
"By endorsing this check you agree that all previous and future licenses sold by Autodesk to any individual, business or other entity afford licensee all rights and privileges under the first sale doctrine..."

It seems like buying direct via check might be able to cause all kinds of problems. Seeing as how language clearly matters more than common sense.
New Tech Talent Network for techVenture portfolio companies
Startup Bootcamp Take Aways
David Cancel of Performable

Creating a data driven startup.

Timing is everything.

Marketing, big data, analytics.

"98 percent of the people that come to your website leave and they never come back."

3 lessons learned the hard way:

1. The middle sucks. Don't be in the middle. That is the valley of death.

2. Your "demo" is useless. No one cares about your demo. Why would you spend energy on a demo when you could be creating the real product?

3. So is your business plan. Your business plan is wrong and worthless. It will not be the same at day 1 as it is along the way and at the end.
Tell HN: I accidentally ran up a $1000 Heroku bill
This is pretty typical. Every few years something slips my mind and I end up stuck with a "Erik, you're a moron tax".

I was experiencing a spike of traffic when my site was on national news a few weeks ago, and I turned my dynos and workers way up on Heroku to handle the traffic. The spike went down, but I forgot to turn off the dynos.

Flash forward a few weeks, and I am stuck with $1300 bill on a site that I'm not making any money on. I asked Heroku if they could help me out a little... I'm a good customer, and even though I'm a cash-strapped in-the-red bootstrapper, I gladly pay them hundreds of dollars a month to run my sites, bills payed on time and in full. I was hoping they'd maybe give me a little discount... not pay for my servers, but maybe not take a profit off of my stupid mistake.

They shot me down. No refunds available, even though these were virtual servers, and didn't contribute any real load to any of their machines. Although obviously they provisioned machines for me, so they had real costs.

Part of me wants to be upset, but obviously I was the one who screwed up. Still, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I guess a smaller host might offer more personal care, but I wouldn't get Heroku's world-class engineering baked into their platform, which I really, really appreciate.

What do other folks think? Am I just a dumbass who lost a chunk of paycheck, or is this poor customer care?
That's interesting and actually reasonable. Well, reasonable as far as pricing for a disposable license to a text that's required for a course.

You'd be hard-pressed to sell the $200 book for $160 at the end of the quarter/semester.
Huh. That's strange. Why would the API return results not available in the country the script's being run from?
Decent ruby developers are usually in high demand these days. If you are looking for someone to do a prototype and get paid crap ( which is basically what you are saying ), then I wouldn't be so selective about the language and just find anyone who might possible have those skills you want.

On the other hand, if I'm decent developer w/ great communication skills, why would I build your prototype when I could go out and get better paying work?
The text gets chopped for Chrome/OSX.
Study Finds That Many Don’t Wash After Using Public Restrooms
I can't think of any good examples now, but in some IDEs in the 80s and 90s they had an "expert mode" you could toggle on and off to extend the number of menu options and the like. A similar setting on Google would be great.

I know a little of Google's syntax like the + and " workarounds, but having a literal search as default would be worthwhile for many users. I recall that I switched to Altavista back in the mid 90s because it offered a feature like that.
Right, according to the condescending trolls at 37s, selling a company for $20 million is a failure.

Sounds like: "You poor thing, running a company by yourself so you decided to sell? Better luck next time, sucker"

37s built a good company. Congrats guys. Now quit shitting on other people's corn flakes. Deal?
What are people's thoughts on reapplying if you were rejected last time?
OK, it's not working comprehensively. I think the search term "book" should bring up waaaaay more than the 9 results I'm getting!
Drew from Dropbox was rejected the first time he applied, IIRC.
it's pretty cool idea to let people create their own torrents for their files on their blogs/sites/etc. they provide the torrent tracker server so you don't have to use thepiratebay or something like that.

toy.story3.flv 46.5% complete 1.67 GB =)
Reminds me of "Close your Facebook account" day.

Good times.
I looked at your page and said, who gives a crap. Literally. That is what went through my mind. Why on earth would I use your service to 're-live the great times'. Why do I need your service? Posterous can do this for me. If I just have pictures, Picasa or Flickr. If you are offering value, you aren't making it apparent from the beginning. I spent less than 1 minute on your page and I doubt too many others would spend much more.

Hmmm I decided to spend more than a minute by clicking a couple links but I just get a 500 page.
Very interesting – that is a conversation worth having.

The trouble with 37signals and posts like this is their tone. It's shrill, nose held aloft, almost scoldy. It's guaranteed to polarize.

I'm sure it's great for traffic, and thus builds their brand, but it doesn't generate the constructive conversation it could.

edit: What's more, come on, "condolence?" Selling a business you built from the ground up is a career-defining move.
Hmm, you might be out of luck, but it does bring up the question of why Heroku doesn't have load-triggered scaling, or some sort of dead-man's switch option.
How To Make Money Online From Home
Lived near enough and have friends there. It's nice for what it is, but I wouldn't live there. It's a better place to visit.
There was plenty of ice in Himalayan glaciers but, even though it was much closer than the United States, there would have been no reasonable way of getting it down from the mountains.