skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The site went down earlier because Youtube blocked my server. I rewrote the site to use client-side JS so it should work for you now.
I'm a huge fan of education, but spending 4 years on a liberal art degree is a huge waste of time. It will not land you a job.

If you actually want to learn something, go online. Most of the information is out there.
That's pretty interesting. Somewhat like DDNS, but not as useful?

I don't know if I want an ipq.co address, but I just realized - could I use my own DNS hosting (through slicehost, linode, whatever) to assign domain names to arbitrary IP addresses?

Like, if I own garlicgargle.com, and I have another system with a static IP, does that mean I can just assign salty.garlicgargle.com to that IP and it works fine? Sorry for the basic question, I guess I don't understand doing much with DNS beyond the common tasks.
It's like HipMunk for stadium seats! (Or is HipMunk the SeatGeek of air travel?)

How many more startups are possible on the theme of creating radically more interactive and usefully-laid-out interfaces to other sites' transactions?
> I'd much rather pay them through PayPal (where I can even pay from a bank account) than to give my CC numbers to some micro operation.

Really? I certainly wouldn't. I have recourse with American Express. They have far better fraud detection than Paypal, in large part because they know my spending habits far better than Paypal does. On the single instance I've dealt AMEX's fraud detection, they called me before they even authorized the fraudulent transaction, and overnighted me a new card when I confirmed their suspicions.

Paypal, on the other hand, flagged a transaction as potentially fraudulent simply because I had the purchase shipped to my workplace (a well known bay area address) and now they want me to go back to Kansas and wait at my home phone number for them to call and "verify my domicile." Screw that; my account can stay locked for all I care.
> The App Store is littered with garbage, and for the greater good, maybe there will be a few casualties, but that's the price of strengthening an emerging marketplace

Do you imagine it staying this way or eventually opening up? The reason I'm asking are the parallels made w.r.t. the web in general. There's plenty of garbage out there too but I don't think anyone would argue that a 'curated' web would be better. I see the app store in the same light.

If Apple want to check for malicious/incompetent code etc I can get behind that but if I want to put another fart app out there, why shouldn't I be able to? I doubt anyone would find it (or care) but getting hobby projects out into the open is part of the learning process to making something better next time.
The "American decline in manufacturing" is a myth. American manufacturing output has been on a continued uptick, the peak of output for the US was... 2006, and will likely exceed that shortly as the economy recovers. The US contributes fully 1/5th of the world's entire manufacturing output. What has changed is that US manufacturing has grown much more efficient, so there are far fewer manufacturing jobs than there used to be. Also, the US has grown much richer so we continue to import more and more goods.
I used Bloglines for a long time, and finally switched away a year or two ago after the lack of innovation and some frustrating problems got to me.

It's sad that Google is the only real game in town when it comes to web-based RSS readers - anyone know of any others?
Options are an opportunity to buy stock at a set price (the strike price). So if you're granted 10,000 options at $1 each, and when you sell them the company is valued at $2 a share, you'll make $10,000 off your options. If you go through a company like e-trade you don't have to actually have the $10,000 to sell them. You can do the trade without the $10,000 initial investment to buy the shares specified by your option grant(at least in my case with a previous employer this was true).

Since the option grant is just an offer to buy stock (vs. a stock grant which is an actual share and doesn't cost anything to sell), once you leave the company that offer to buy stock is typically rescinded after a certain period of time.
I hope you are right. Ross Perot once said something like "globalization will equalize all countries at the same wages, about $6/hr." I think he might have been right. I'm not really looking forward to a world where high tech workers can only make $6 an hour, but I guess it really depends on what you can buy with $6.
Please please please do this for the UK market!
Paypal was once losinf $100 million per month. Who is going to fund that in these non-2000 AD days?
Michael Mace: Why did Apple give in?
I have three friends who are still looking for jobs after college, including one who's had to do manual labor for the last two years. :/
Microsoft also had a first-to-market advantage with early versions of Windows, and they also gained from almost no productivity app competiton back in the 1990s.

So what you're saying is further multiplied by all the businesses who chose Win 95 over Mac OS 8, then stuck with Windows when upgrading their equipment.
You Don’t Own That Software You Bought
In light of this situation, where it appears that HP agreed to pay Hurd a large amount of money for a "graceful" exit to the company, how does this impact your view of California's rule on noncompetes as a public policy matter? I think noncompetes are usually abusive, but it's disquieting to me that California's rules prevent people expressing reasonable agreements.
I was going into a whole long comment on why search doesn't work for apps (no hyperlinks, web pages don't cost money to visit), but the whole thing is a bit of a red herring. Apple is not using curation to make finding apps easier. It's using curation to set a minimum bar for entry. Google is using search to find the most relevant web pages, not to find the worst web pages (which is a much harder, if not impossible, search).

Apple does need a good search so I can find the apps I want. (I think this is usually the case. Being unable to find an app hasn't been a problem.) But having a good search is a different question than "should apps be filtered for buggy, malicious, or useless apps?"
ABCL has both an interpreter and a Compiler.
s/semicolon/colon/
Being fired - don't know.

But if you are a minion at, say MSFT, imagine how many layers of management a sign-off would go up before somebody said - yes you can assign copyright to that little utility to Gnu.
Ah, that sounds familiar, have you seen: http://www.halfbakery.com/

Lovely website.
Where was this when I was doing my wedding. Cool stuff
Careful: you probably own the options only for a very limited time after you leave the company. You cannot generally hold on to your options until the company is (say) certain to be acquired; you generally have to exercise them almost immediately after leaving.

Unrestricted common stock you can keep long-term. Options, not so much.
To specialize in design you have to have experienced engineers. You're not getting them in non-industrial kind of places.
I think that apple intentions are different.
They want you to try really hard before you submit your application. In the same way YCombinator want you to.

By publicly claiming you only accept quality apps, people will try harder and self filter.

For example, many companies have job posting only for engineers graduated from a top university with honors. But in practice they hire a much broader spectrum.
You still need to be very careful about this as the difference between strike and fair market counts toward AMT. Folks exercise ISOs and then hold them planning on selling at one year. In the mean time, the market plunges making the shares worthless, yet you still have to pay AMT. Double ouch.
Project 11 Ventures, HackerAngels make first investment in startup Locately
>Really? I certainly wouldn't. I have recourse with American Express.

When I pay with Paypal I have recourse with both Paypal AND my credit card. It doesn't remove that right.

>Paypal, on the other hand, flagged a transaction as potentially fraudulent simply because I had the purchase shipped to my workplace

Why is the fact that it's a well known Bay Area address of any significance at all? Paypal demands that shipped items only go to the address on record for the account. That seems pretty logical and of obvious value.
I'm sorry, but you're so very wrong.
US haven't ever grown any richer since ~1980s. They just borrowed more with each month.
You should see US trade deficit and annual budget for proofs.
Designs are easily copied, physical widgets are not (until we get nano-replicators anyway).

Innovations in design and manufacturing tend to dovetail and drive each other. Doing both under one roof reaps more of a benefit from that dynamic.

There is also a historical argument. The most prosperous, successful countries have had a large industrial base. That doesn't necessarily mean one requires the other, but it does suggest a strong linkage.
When it's finally explained how service economy can be sustainable long-term, I suspect many people would have no problem with outsourcing production whatsoever.
OpenSSL is written by monkeys
Wouldn't a website like secondmarket.com allow you to unload stock before a liquidity event? That assumes that someone would want to buy the stock from you.
Mm, it doesn't sound like the parents "can't do math", it sounds like they aren't familiar with the algorithms and methods being taught these days.

I haven't taken the time to understand the new methods, but just from the names I get the feeling it's more like the methods I "natively" used to do multiplication and division very quickly in my head when I was a child (under 12).

My methods for both division and multiplication involved breaking the numbers into easy parts. For instance, if I had to multiply 16x7, I'd split it into (16x5) + (16x2). 16x5 I'd use a quick rule that it is the same as 1/2 of (the first number x 10), or just (half of the first number times 10). Multiplying something by 2, 3 or 4 is always easy, so even if it was like 12.3 x 47, it always works. For the latter, I'd so something like (12.3x50)-(12.3x3) since multiplying something by 50 (broken into (X5)10) is always easy, for instance.

For division, I'd do something similar, finding the nearest easy number, and then iteratively working on the difference. For instance, to divide 412 by 17, I'd start by saying 17x10 is 170, and that times two is 340, so we have 20 plus (the difference between 412 and 340, divided by 17). Then, I'd take an easy block of that, like 17x2, and see that we have 17x2=34, so you have 4 times and a remainder of 4. So, my answer would be 24 and a remainder of 4.

Of course, teachers didn't want to see this. The most boring and damaging teachers would insist that I use the standard 'long division' algorithm, though I could do division like this faster in my head than most kids could do it on paper. Of course, that method is valuable too, and necessary for more tricky problems, but the discouragement of my natural intuition didn't help at all.
I'm repeating myself as I wrote that already, but this is not the case in most European countries. The education is not so bad out here after all, and you can drink alcohol before 21.
Article Title (from WSJ):
Young Women's Pay Exceeds Male Peers'

2nd to last paragraph:
At every education level, from high-school dropouts to Ph.D.s, women continue to earn less than their male peers.

That's what happens when an editor writes the article title without reading the full article I guess. Maybe it's just me but I don't know I agree with the assumption that two individuals, one with a college degree and the other without, are really in the same peer group when it comes to salary.
It would reduce those complaints... and instead we'd get complaints from users that the store's usefulness has decreased and that they feel less confident shopping in it due to a substantial increase in crappy apps.

Personally, I think the Apple store is doing the right thing by prioritizing end users over lazy devs.
I could also fireproof and earthquake proof their rooms and never let them out, make sure they constantly wear rubber suits in case they trip, and only feed them formula through a stomach tube so they won't choke.

Yes, teenage drivers are scary. I'm scared every time my son backs out of the driveway (for him and everybody on the sidewalks). We have laws here that prohibit a new driver from having friends in the car without parents, which I think is great. I wish there was more we could do to make people safer and greatly applaud companies like Mercedes who are using technology to help with that.

However, I won't cripple myself or my kids by living for the worst case. I will try to teach and coerce so they worst cases won't happen, but I refuse to be a helicopter.
Ask HN: I created an app prototype, how do I hire a great developer(on equity)?
There are a few public transit prediction apps for San Francisco out there, but I created a prototype that is easier to use and more intuitive than anything on the market. I showed the prototype to 20 people, friends and randoms waiting at bus stops, and almost everyone agreed that I have a killer concept, once person even quipped "Now I wont miss my bus while trying to find out when it comes". I also have a killer marketing strategy.

Since I am non-technical, I need to find a developer. Ideally, I would like to pay the developer in equity, because (1) it is less upfront cost, (2) increased motivation to do a great job and (3) updating and expanding the app is easier with a partner than a contractor.

I live in San Francisco. Where/how do I go about finding developers? What is a fair % of equity to give in exchange for no salary? What is a fair % of equity to give for a very small salary? It will be very hard to find a developer who can also do graphic design (I plan on contracting for that). If someone can do graphic design as well, how does that change things?

Thanks, Hess

P.S. If you or someone you know is interested, please send me a brief intro and your portfolio to hessinvesting@gmail.com.

P.P.S I created my prototype with http://keynotopia.com/ after I saw it on HN. Being non-technical, I couldn't have asked for better tools to build what I wanted to build.
Austan Goolsbee to Head the CEA
Considering the way you'll make money, I would get a good laugh if you added some advertising to your site for fast food / ice cream places.

Kidding aside, this is an interesting post. I feel like I might have committed less on the design side and then revisited it at some point, but I understand where you're coming from too. Good luck!
You're right about the X+ years phenomenon, but I also see tons of job requirements demanding X/2 years of some incredibly obscure technology that maybe 1000 people even know exist. So maybe there's 100 competent engineers on the planet half of whom have less than one year of experience. Even if you're offering good money you just aren't going to find any candidates. It seems to be an enterprise thing with tech that is only used by top 100 companies or so. The problem isn't too little supply, but too little demand.

edited so it makes some sense.
You should pay them in the form of referrals and connections through your network. Also a small amount of options/warrants are always nice, but you need to make sure that they are adding value in exchange for them. As far as formal payment goes, I would run from any advisors that require it. Once the business is starting to gain some cash flows I would suggest holding a quarterly dinner at a decent restaurant with the entire board present. As busy as advisors are, placing them in a formal atmosphere with the rest of the board usually requires them to slow down for a second and actually focus on you and your business.

My 2 Cents.
wow i had no idea there were country-specific slates (slate.fr)... are there any others? (slate.de doesn't work, nor slate.co.uk)
Good point thanks. Have heard this from a few different folks now. We need to make it more obvious that people should zoom in. Will push a fix soon.
One of my NZ friends is doing an infographic-per-week project at the moment - http://52-infographics.blogspot.com/

Let me know if you want an intro...
Interesting comment in the article on the AOL/TimeWarner deal and on acquisitions in general. For example,

What price will the owner be willing to sell the asset at?

The answer, of course, is that he will be willing to sell the asset for the present value of all the future exorbitant fees he's planning to charge you, less a discount because it's nicer to get all the money now in a big pile, rather than in dribs and drabs over the years.

Assuming that your discount rate is approximately the same as that of the asset's owner, you can easily see that it is impossible to make money off the transaction; you'll just be giving him the money now, rather than later. The discount you receive for your troubles will probably be about equal to your borrowing costs, plus the lower liquidity you get from owning, rather than renting, an asset.
http://twitter.com/Chad_Hurley/status/24129459657
- I held hands with a stranger who brought me back to my parents when I was lost

- We opened the door when somebody rang the doorbell we were home alone

- We used to go around town to ask people if we could earn some money by doing stuff in their house or garden

- When my bike was broken a stranger drove me home with his car

To the parents who are freaked out by their kids talking to a stranger the above things may sound mind boggling. A part of this is a cultural difference of seeing kids as sexual objects. Who lives somewhere where people would find it strange if a dad holds hands / hugs / kisses / bathes with his young daughter? I read a story where a dad was arrested for holding hands with his daughter.
> I'm curious to which extent this is legal. I'm pretty sure a bank isn't allowed to block access to your accounts without a formal request from a legal entity.

It's simple to explain: Paypal isn't a bank.
> However, engineering school instills a deep understanding of logic, critical thinking, organizational skills and knowledge that is very difficult to pick up by yourself.

Disagree. I did that long before, and mostly outside and independently from college. If I can, others can too.
You would think so, and that was their original business plan — just make money off the float. Instead they ended up charging fees (30¢ + %3) to get to profitability.
I got back to using Bloglines, after I found out that Google Reader purges updates older than a month. Bloglines was obviously not doing very well and has had awful performance the last couple of weeks which has let me to try out Fever. That is, if my server didn't crap out. Heck, I think Bloglines' beta has been around longer than Gmail was back in the days.

For long, I've regarded the RSS reader market something missing some great minds and ideas.

This also brings up the discussion of keeping your data online - not only my subscriptions, but also my pinned updates - and what can be done about it. This obviously can't be exported, sadly. Sometimes, I just want Apple and Google to try to do everything so I at least know that I'll at least have all of my data somewhere.

Speaking of back-ups and portability, Bloglines seem to have removed its option to export the subscriptions as OPML in favour of XML. Can anyone verify this? It's pretty annoying to say the least.
Clickable:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1678111

http://feross.net/instant/
I remember also having read that while liberal arts are bad paid at the beginning of their career and strugle to find a first job that jumpstart their career, they mostly level (and in many cases overachieve) the difference with engineers after 20 years.
http://www.forbes.com/2009/08/02/college-degree-pay-careers-...

Studies and articles focus on just-out-of-college salary, but that's not the whole story...
Free online Decoder/Decompiler for .net, java, flash and zend encoded PHP
This is really a story of the rising cost of college. As it has grown well beyond the cost of inflation it leave many with debt our parent's generation never had. My father busted his tail in the summers and paid for half a year of college with what he saved.

Does anyone think the quality of educations has gotten better? Is it administration? Facilities? Research?

Reduce the waste in education and the value goes up for everyone (except maybe some people in the dean's office).
Outstanding! I'm going to use the hell out of this for any sports tickets I buy from now on. Well done!
I used to work on Bloglines. It's sad to see it finally die, but the writing was on the wall for years.

There are two questions I'd like Ask.com to answer: What will happen to the source code? and What will happen to the archive of RSS items?

Ideally, Ask.com would open source Bloglines and get the item data over to archive.org. We never deleted anything, so the item archive is around 11TB and has blog posts going back to 2003. I bet quite a bit of that data doesn't exist anywhere else. Although Sturgeon's Law applies, there are some gems in that data. I took a look once and found some interesting blog posts from the 2004 election cycle and Hurricane Katrina.

I seriously doubt that will happen though. Building an archival tool for the podserver/itemdbs would require more dev work, and there are the hardware costs of reliably storing 11TB.
Actually, I suspect that the victims just shared their addresses with everyone.
There has been a void for a great - heck, decent - RSS reader in plenty of years. Maybe Mac users didn't notice because they have the privilege of NetNewsWire.

As I said, I'm trying out Fever, and I'm sure others are willing to use a paid service.
Want to up your consulting rate? Try overwhelming force.
You're missing half of the value here: For $5 bucks, you basically get an advertisement front and center on his blog.

This strikes me as not a bad deal.
The only purpose of a resume is to get you past the first round of screening. Name recognition trumps everything else. A job at a well-known and respected tech company like Google or Facebook gives you an automatic pass to the next round. Right or wrong, this doesn't include many startup companies unless they're already successful enough that it's debatable whether they're still startups.

Once you've got an actual person on the phone, the company you worked for is much less important than what you did and your ability to relate it. Still, speaking from personal experience, you should be prepared for interviewers to question whether you worked for a 'real company'.
Startups: 4 Ways To Increase Conversions in AdWords
This is incredibly impressive Jack, Russ and team. Excellent job!

Who ended up working on the design? It's very sharp and clean inside the application.
bit.ly does 301 redirects with analytics. this assigns domain names to ip addresses
The US has gotten richer, and has also borrowed more.

Since the 80s median family income has increased by about 1/3, adjusted for inflation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:United_States_Income_Distr...
My first and only job has been at a startup. I've been here 3.5 years and gone from junior tech to senior sys admin. I hope this reflects nicely on me for my next jump. One thing I am afraid of however is a lot of what I've learned is self taught, I'm not entirely aware of the way big business handles system administration. I dont know kickstart, veritas, san arrays, perl, etc. Im all about open source and if it doesnt work then I'll write it myself.

To answer the question, I'm not sure how it will reflect on me when going for something in a banking environment, however for another startup, the experience with open source might be appealing.