skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Don’t you think your life would be much easier if you got paid while you were eating, sleeping, and playing with the kids too? Why not get paid 24/7? Get paid whether you work or not. Don’t your plants grow even when you aren’t tending to them? Why not your bank account?[...] Smart people build systems that generate income 24/7, especially passive income. [...] Sure it takes some upfront time and effort to design and implement your own income-generating systems.

I can get exactly the same effect by working for a paycheck and putting my earnings in something that pays interest. What is the approximate net present value of a blog post, how many hours does it take to write, and how does this compare to the dollars/hour available from more traditional work?

...and that's actually the least stupid part of the article.
Not really unusual, look up Cotton growers opposition to growing hemp.
How To: CSS Sprite Menu
This has always been my impression. But when I've actually looked for resources on how to get those nuts & bolts set up, for someone who knows nothing about them, it's been non-obvious.

You wouldn't by any chance know of some resources related to getting over the initial hump of getting paid for software/services, would you?
How To Turn $15,000 Into $1.1 Billion Without Any Work
Yep, that I do. Isn't that the point of insurance, to protect you against catastrophic issues?

Is the solution to cut your pay in half by going salaried just for the health insurance?
No plugin. Just their HTML script for each shopping cart item that I embed in product pages.

They manage sales through PP and GC, and they even hold delivery on eCheck payments until they are cleared.

I think eJunkie + Wordpress make a great duo for eCommerce platforms.
Hi. I can tell you my experience w/groupon. I live in Argentina, but I've known groupon since march. They launched here like 2 months ago, and as someone has said before, they are trying to crush the competition with MASSIVE advertising. The thing is, that they wanted first mover advantage.

Now, considering that you are trying to enter to compete to a well established business you have 2 alternatives.
1) get funding and launch masively
2) start small and try to bootstrap.
Anyways..the question in the end would be..how fast can groupon copy your features? (if they are that good at all).
Best of lucks!
His business isn't going to scale very well. I've never been to NYC but I expect you can't cover much of the city in 15 minutes.
Redis VS Memcached (slightly better bench)
if true, this is huge...hugely bad.
Arrington has got a lot of balls to call out so many big players at once. I definitely want to see how this plays out.
Perhaps they should have named it Prøgrâm Filës, just to be sure.
No.

Cryptographically-random data + non-cryptographically-random data = non-cryptographically-random data.

In this case, the non-random data is (at the very least) where the checking code fails.

Good enough for an ASP site hosting a personal blog? Probably. Good enough for any moderate-scale target? No. Botnets break random delays pretty quickly, especially because a big attack means the server slows all operations, showing bigger and bigger differences between the two failure points.

I'd also be willing to bet that, even with custom errors turned on, at least slightly different code routes are followed between different error codes, magnifying the difference between the different errors despite displaying identically.

What I'd be interested in, if anyone knows, is if ASP.NET signs anything which is also encrypted. From what I've been reading / seeing, it seems it doesn't, and it's not just a checking-padding-first mistake. If that's the case, then ASP literally can't tell if something is valid until it hits code that tries to use it, which is a crypto-cracker's dream come true.
If I have one complaint about the article, it's that his idea of poor, and my idea of poor seem very far apart. My idea of poor makes his idea of poor look like a lavish paradise.
He conveniently omits mentioning the converse, that most of the time you don't get paid for actually working.
A followup: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/862869303/an-iphone-app-...
Props to Arrington for the post. He definitely has integrity, and knows how to write an interesting post.
The startup I was working for until recently (building scientific hardware) was founded by a couple in their 70's. They basically sunk all of their retirement money into it. I can't say that it was the best financial move in the world, especially when the economy went south and you're trying to sell $1M+ pieces of equipment.
Did he actually call anyone out? I thought this was post was extremely light on substance, actually.
Entire Tech World Piles On Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz
Are you still growing the product and company, and yes, as shazow says, sounds like you put a lot more than 3 hours into it... Don't take this the wrong way but are you baiting us because your traffic to Keynotopia is falling?
@icey: can u change the title to something that explains the nature of the post? Something like "Super-Angels Colluding to Keep Valuations Down."

I know u just kept the original headline, but it's confusing for people who haven't read the post.

Just a request. 'Tis a VERY important thing for all to read in the community.
Sony Ericsson Brings the "Funny"
He said "it included just about every major angel investor in Silicon Valley" - which people can make easy assumptions about who it is.
Tell HN: an iPhone app for the blind
I was inspired by an idea mortenjack posted on HN, and instead of thinking "yeah, that's cool." I decided to have a shot at it. I'm busy as all hell with college and other apps, but I'm sure I'll be able to fit in the time somewhere (pshht, sleep, who needs it).

This is the original thread that started it all: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1705463

Thanks for reading. If it wasn't for HN this idea would never have gotten off the ground like it did. Donate if you can (and don't judge the done-in-one-take video)!

Any questions, ask away.
I wish I could vote this up more than once!
The Provider's Dilemma
I do hope he's wrong, or that this a mistake of some sort. The rise of Angel investors has seen a lot of ideas and entrepreneurs get needed money when they might not have under the traditional VC model.

Something like this, if true, will cause the government to step in, and probably regulate and change things for the worse for a great many people. It won't just hurt these few super angels. It will take everyone with it.
I don't know their institutional reasoning, but I believe they are on a whitelist based system. They're not so much blocking Google as they are allowing us through.
I agree with you that the parent comment detracts from the discussion and deserves its downvotes. Nevertheless, Thomas Jefferson's hypocrisy, as exemplified by the Declaration of Independence, was obvious even to some of his contemporaries. For instance, in his Strictures upon the Declaration of Independence [1], former Massachusetts Bay Colony Governor Thomas Hutchinson wrote the following:

--

I should therefore be impertinent, if I attempted to shew... in what sense all men are created equal; or how far life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness may be said to be unalienable; only I could wish to ask the Delegates of Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas, how their Constituents justify the depriving more than an hundred thousand Africans of their rights to liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and in some degree to their lives, if these rights are so absolutely unalienable...

--

Evidently, Jefferson doesn't deserve the benefit of the doubt simply because lots of people back then had slaves. His positive reputation today rests on a much simpler and sturdier foundation than his intellectual accomplishments or (dubious) moral fiber, namely, military victory. We mustn't forget the lesson contained in the aphorism "The winners write the history books", which is that the winners write the history books. Jefferson (and the Patriots) won; Hutchinson (and the Loyalists) didn't.

[1] Thomas Hutchinson, Strictures upon the Declaration of Independence, 1776. http://oll.libertyfund.org/index.php?option=com_content&...
In retrospect, I should have shaved before I took the video, but I was too excited. Don't judge me (and the project, especially)!
A direct rip of Albini's much better "The Problem With Music" (1993 in MRR, IIRC):

http://www.negativland.com/albini.html
Evercookie: A cookie that undeletes itself from 8 different storages
I believe the saying that applies is: "Power corrupts..."
Notice, it says he was employee #23. I think Google's standards have risen since then, and even if they make the odd exception here and there, betting on being such an exception seems questionable.
The depression map: genes, individualism vs. collectivism, serotonin, pathogens
As self-centered as this may sound, not all people are as curious and intelligent as you and I may be. The mere fact that you would choose to stay and explore after school speaks volumes about you. I used to spend my lunches in the school science lab myself. Most people are deadly dull, and a slight barrier of entry to gain access to the really cool stuff helps to keep the morons away.
The link doesn’t need “Go to” at all though — it’s a link. “Your profile” works just dandy — if not just “profile.”

Edit: “See your profile” is a friendly alternative, too
If you hope to focus on the work as often as you can, I would recommend not bringing the kids. It can be done but boundaries need to be in place for your spouse/kids and your co-founders.
Ask HN: Are you still typing in your credit card number to shop online?
Over the years, there have been many alternatives offered to the clunky process of entering in your full credit card information every time you buy something online. But to this day, I do it whenever I am shopping at a new site. (Sites where I shop routinely, such as Amazon, have my information on file.) I just haven't found a reliable alternative.

What do you use?
People should read posts before they comment. Besides, I think the top post usually gets clicked on, especially if it has a weird title.

"What's all the buzz about?"
Peanut butter, honey, bread, powdered milk, canned foods, dried fruit

I actually buy many of these products anyway because I have a bad habit of buying food, forgetting about it, and then throwing it out when it spoils. Solution: Dried fruit doesn't spoil nearly as fast so if I forget about my raisins for 2 weeks chances are they will still be edible. Grapes on the other hand would have spoiled in that time.

Also most of the discussion around food in America is totally moot. Food stamps are available in all 50 states, and at least one territory because there are 51 state food stamp programs in America. The only group of the poor for whom food should be a serious concern are the homeless because they lack the ability to cook the food they can buy with food stamps, and even then some states allow you to buy 1 hot meal per day with food stamps because of this. All of this is to say nothing of food pantries and private charities and other government programs (cheese) that provide food for the poor. So can we please stop harping on the food issue? Most of that is all just argument from emotion fantastical progressive rhetoric and has no basis in reality; the poor in America are NOT going hungry (as has been evidenced by the obesity-poverty statistics posted earlier).
In what sense do antitrust laws apply to investors? Why is it unlawful for investors to band together to get better terms for themselves?

Wouldn't it be perfectly legal for these people to sit around a table an agree to merge and start a fund? If that's the case, how could it be unlawful for them to work on a joint venture? Just because I don't like the JV doesn't make it unlawful!
There's only half the story here because Arrington isn't naming names.

It was a meeting of a group of people in a semi-public place, I don't see why he hasn't named who was there:

"So, I went into the restaurant to find Dave, Ron, Jeff, Mike, Josh, Chris, ..." (I'm just naming, um, random first names here folks for the purpose of illustration!)

He's clearly running a power play around the identities...
After watching a couple of clips, here's my rant: This is why Apple wins and companies like Sony Ericsson are left in the dust and will continue to be. It's not Steve's reality distortion field, etc. etc., but as pointed out innumerable times, it's the attention to detail. These supposedly funny videos are not only totally humorless (and in some cases offensive, e.g. the Models one) but what is worse brainless. And even worse: They smell clueless wannabe. As wannabe as Microsoft's Seinfeld ad spots. They are obviously the product of a PR group working with a cool ad agency trying to imitate some misguided notion of coolness or something.

And this is exactly what separates the truly great from the also rans.
This is major. I worked with Michael Arrington years ago. He wouldn't say this without being sure and there is no stopping him now. He went to Stanford Law School and worked at one of the Valley's top law firms (wsgr.com). Mike, get ready for the witness stand!
Just a request. Can you spell your words out if you're over the age of 13?
Three Beautiful Quicksorts, a talk by Jon Bentley
1. “My” will inevitably contradict with “Your” (see the article’s LinkedIn screenshot). It seems forced. Using “Your,” when appropriate, approximates a dialog between you[r system] and the user.

2. Avoid both for simple labels, tabs, and buttons.
To figure out how much my co-founder or partners will get in equity.

Also figuring out who to include in the founding team and how not to make your other friends feel left out.
Not saying that he's wrong, but does it seem odd to anyone else that a group of people who are clearly very smart and successful would create a wiki to document their illegal scheme of collusion and price fixing?
What you mention is a manual mechanism which is not often used. Instead, developers say:

Requires: python

The automatic mechanism in place is to run ldd, identify the list of libraries used by the executables distributed, and mark those libraries as dependencies. Since the package is build on your newer, Debian 5 package, it requires (automatically) the newer libfoo (like python-2.7), while it would have worked just fine with the older libfoo (python-2.5).
This post reminds me of an interesting phenomenon I keep noticing in my friends-- those who are the least sympathetic to the poor (in the 'those poor darlings never had a chance' sense) are those which came from the most modest backgrounds and have achieved some measure of success.

The sympathy seems to be inversely proportional to the modesty of the background and the level of current financial success.

Similarly, it's those who had everything handed to them who are most sympathetic (at least, vocally so).
Based on the statistics I've seen, yes.
The maintainer does not specify a version and expects the automatic process of determining minimumum dependencies to take over.

But it takes over with dependencies of newer versions than necessary.
Ask HN:  Is there demand for an email as text messages service?
Here's my situation: I spend around $40-$50 extra a month for unlimited email access when I already receive free text messages. If I set up an email to text service, I can save money. I think other people can to.

I'm probably going to build this for myself anyway - but any thoughts of rolling this out as a full business?

I found a company that has a free text message api, but puts ads on the end of the text.

Is this a good idea for a business? Is someone already doing it? (that would save me time)
This is better than most LaTeX CVs I've seen, but I'd still only call it decent looking at best. Got my hopes up.
Steve Wiebe has reclaimed the Donkey Kong world record from Billy Mitchell
On the flip side, are valuations becoming over-inflated? I also think it's entirely appropriate for this group to be discussing strategies to increase their competitiveness versus YC, newcomers, and VCs. The real sinister claim is that they were talking about "more mundane things, like agreeing as a group not to accept convertible notes in deals." I wonder how that will pan out now.
I'd like to know the laws too, this could be construed as collusion, conspiracy and probably a few other things.
he also leaves just enough to the imagination. sure, everyone is assuming the top 3-4 usual suspects, but it was a room full of people -- wondering who were 8,9,10
I bet it's people leaking fake conspiratorial meetings just to screw with Arrington.

We need more information though. Were there any, ahem, cons there? How about any balding acebookfay employees? Were there fewer, greater than, or exactly 500 hats in attendance? Was there anybody there using saccharin? Did your spy camera catch theone?
Why the entire OS? All applications using a particular library would have to be updated individually, which is a drawback. So be it. Every solution has its drawbacks. I suspect that a system with a labyrinthine dependency graph is less robust and less secure. Don't forget that sharing a library doesn't just mean sharing bug fixes, it also means sharing bugs.
Hmm, somehow I have the inverse mental model, though it might be because of correlation with where I see each usage rather than anything inherent. I associate the "my" usage with cutesy/friendly AOL-style interfaces, where we're trying to make the user feel fuzzy ownership over their stuff: "Change my buddy icon", "update my profile", etc. I associate the "your" usage with a more cold, detached system-centric Unix model, where the programmer/system sees this as your stuff and responsibility: "enter your password", "choose your username", "wipe your home directory [y/n]?", etc.

Perhaps at the extremes, something like: "Hello, I'm Clippy! Let's edit our files together!" versus "Computron 5000 online, please state your request."
Rock Stars Then and Now
Let’s see how the famous rock stars have changed throughout the years.
How? What market power are they exploiting? There's no conceivable monopsony for "shares of all startups".
I changed it to add "[Allegations of investor collusion]", but then I changed it back because it looked weird. PG or one of the mods can modify the headline if it needs clarity; I generally prefer to use whatever the post title is.
Lisp: A Smug Geek We Abhor
The way to combat over-inflation is to simply not buy. You don't need a secret meeting for that. When investors aren't buying, that's a collective signal to founders selling that their valuations are too high.
Totally agree, no lag whatsoever. I really wish I knew about this before for a site I was making. And great plans - I love the pay-as-you-go pricing. As a person who doesn't do too much video editing but occasionally makes long videos, this is perfect for me. I don't have to be forced to subscribe to a monthly plan on vimeo, which doesn't justify the occasional video I make (which goes beyond their restrictions)
If you can stand to be away from them for more than a day. I can't.
Interestingly, the entire text of the book is right there on that page: just zoom in far enough (using some kind of Flash app): http://www.stephenwolfram.com/scrapbook/page8/#2002_poster
There's a quote I can't quite remember. Goes something like: "When merchants meet to discuss business, the public is rarely the beneficiary".
Gripping story, but not HN material.
The only other company I can think of with margin's like that is Porsche automobiles.

It's no coincidence that both companies pay extreme attention to design. Both innovators. Both premium products. Both create an emotional connection with the end user.
I cannot speak to the letter of the law, but I'd venture to say the alleged misbehavior violates at least the _spirit_ of the law, since these angels would be considered competitors outside of that room.
I wouldn't take anything he says seriously. [Edit: If it wasn't clear, I meant Arrington, not Jesse]
It's too early to write this blog post.

Arrington tried to manufacture a happy medium between not saying anything and outing every person at the meeting. Not outing everyone implies you're not entirely sure. Not being entirely sure, yet talking about it anyway is a cheap way to get a story.

Waiting until things are more clear cut would have earned him points in my book- I suppose it's not worth it when the alternative is having everyone follow the story on TC from now until its conclusion.
This story keeps getting media coverage and is presented as a good thing.

I wonder though. Coverage makes clear that running a small business like this is illegal in NYC and the only alternative is to acquire costly government permission to engage in basic entrepreneurial activity that would be legal in any normal free state.
I really like moderncv, check http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/modernc...

An example
http://mirror.ctan.org/macros/latex/contrib/moderncv/example...

You can also easily integrate your existing publications via an bibtex file

Edit: Fixed the link, sorry!
It sounds like price fixing, even though they are buying and not selling. Check out Wikipedia for a good write-up:

"Price fixing is an agreement between participants on the same side in a market to buy or sell a product, service, or commodity only at a fixed price, or maintain the market conditions such that the price is maintained at a given level by controlling supply and demand. The group of market makers involved in price fixing is sometimes referred to as a cartel.

The intent of price fixing may be to push the price of a product as high as possible, leading to profits for all sellers, but it may also have the goal to fix, peg, discount, or stabilize prices. The defining characteristic of price fixing is any agreement regarding price, whether expressed or implied.

...

Colluding on price amongst competitors is viewed as a per se violation of the Sherman Act regardless of the market impact."
Ah! Then I agree, practice is essential.

Sometimes you'll think something -- a particular brace style, a naming convention, a commenting convention, a design choice -- will make code better. But when you try it, it doesn't help comprehension or maintainence.

There is no substitute for honestly taking the time to make some code the best you know how, and then being stuck maintaining it for a fussy customer for several months. If you never had the time to do it right, you can deceive yourself about how good it might have been. But if you know you did your best, you have nothing to blame the inevitable mess on but your own abilities.
This is a terrible monopoly, because all "ten or so" angel investors are involved.
A joint venture (or a legal entity aka as a company) operates under very different rules than parties working together, probably without a contract.

I don't know how the antitrust laws apply, not even if what they are doing collude with any law at all, despite preventing healthy competition, but your questions come from the wrong premises.
They are a group of people supposedly conspiring to generate the worst possible terms for the people they are providing money to, while trying to force out or marginalize competition.

IANAL though - even if not illegal, it's still pretty stinky, and a big part of me hopes it's not illegal. If it's not illegal, I hope they're outed and shamed if this is true. If it is illegal, it give the government reason to step in and screw everything up.
Has anyone found any sort of a technical explanation of how this works or a privacy policy? I'm interested, but without some assurance my e-mail will remain private, there's no way I'm doing this.
Anyone know if anything similar is happening in London/UK?

Collusion is to be expected in all industries, but something of this scale — if true — just blows the mind.